Milestones

ENGAGED. Maria Owings Shriver, 29, Los Angeles-based feature reporter for the CBS Morning News, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, 38, Austrian-born champion body builder, businessman and movie actor (Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator) and her longtime steady. The wedding, scheduled for next spring, will be the first for both.

MARRIED. Doug Flutie, 22, diminutive (5 ft. 9 in.), highly paid ($1.38 million a year) quarterback of the New Jersey Generals; and Laurie Fortier, 22, his sweetheart since the tenth grade; both for the first time; in Natick, Mass.

ARRESTED. Peter Beard, 47, jet-set photographer-adventurer and estranged husband of Supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, whose work depicts Beautiful People and vanishing African wildlife; on charges of illegally cultivating marijuana on his Kenyan ranch and of possession of allegedly obscene materials, notably a book of Helmut Newton photographs; in Nairobi. Beard denied both charges and was released on $294 bail.

DIED. Shiva Naipaul, 40, Trinidadian-born, British-educated author and journalist whose much admired work nonetheless had not brought him the renown of his older brother V.S. Naipaul; of a heart attack; in London. His richly detailed, harshly scornful observations of the turmoil and shortcomings of many Third World nations, contained in half a dozen novels and travelogues, including North of South (1978), Journey to Nowhere (1980) and Love and Death in a Hot Country (1983), reflected his own postcolonial rootlessness and search for identity.

DIED. Lester Cole, 81, prolific screenwriter (None Shall Escape, 1944; Objective, Burma!, 1945) and one of the "Hollywood Ten," writers and directors convicted of contempt of Congress and blacklisted in the 1940s after they refused to testify about Communist infiltration of the industry; in San Francisco.

DIED. J. (for John) Willard Marriott, 84, chairman of the Marriott Corp., who parlayed a nine-stool Washington root-beer stand started in 1927 into a $4 billion worldwide lodging and food empire that includes 142 hotels, 1,500 restaurants and flight kitchens serving more than 150 airlines; in Wolfeboro, N.H.

DIED. Gale Sondergaard, 86, character actress of stage and screen who specialized in sleekly villainous roles, most memorably as the sinister Spider Woman in two movies (1944 and '46), and who won a supporting-actress Oscar for Anthony Adverse (1936); in Woodland Hills, Calif.