Milestones

By Ann Marie Bonardi, Val Castronovo, Matthew Cooper, Daren Fonda, Unmesh Kher, Benjamin Nugent, Michele Orecklin, Victoria Rainert and Josh Tyrangiel

ACQUITTED. EDWIN EDWARDS, 73, former Democratic Governor of Louisiana; of corruption charges that arose from his involvement in the liquidation of an insurance firm; in Baton Rouge. Edwards, known for his way with women and dice, has been the focus of at least two dozen state and federal investigations since his days in Congress in the 1960s. He still faces as much as $4.5 million in fines and 250 years in prison from a May conviction for taking payoffs to issue riverboat casino licenses. He has appealed.

ARRESTED. JOHN HARRIS, 54, brother of Willie Fulgear, the man hailed for recovering 52 of 55 stolen Oscars near a Dumpster a week before this year's ceremony; on charges of receiving stolen property and being an accessory to grand theft; in Los Angeles. Police said the statuettes "were in Harris' residence at some point after they were stolen." Fulgear has not been named a suspect; the investigation is ongoing.

DIED. LESLIE KISH, 90, statistician who formulated, among other things, the "margin of error," an assessment of the accuracy of opinion polls; in Ann Arbor, Mich. Kish used his new population sampling techniques in 1948 to predict a narrow Truman victory over Dewey--when almost everyone had forecast a Dewey landslide.

DIED. SIRIMAVO BANDARANAIKE, 84, the first woman elected to lead a nation; in Sri Lanka. Bandaranaike, who first became Sri Lankan Prime Minister 40 years ago, served two more separate terms during her turbulent and somewhat patchy political career, resigning from her last post in August. She may have been the first national leader to address the world as "a woman and a mother," but she could be ruthless: her hamhanded suppression of a Marxist insurrection in 1971 resulted in 20,000 casualties. Bandaranaike had a heart attack in a car on her way home from voting in the elections won by the party led by her daughter, President Chandrika Kumaratunga.