Milestones

By Melissa August; Jeninne Lee-St. John; Peter Bailey; Harriet Barovick; Barbara Kiviat

ELECTED. VIKTOR YUSHCHENKO, 50, opposition leader; as President of Ukraine; with 52% of the vote, compared with 44% for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Western election monitors alleged widespread fraud in the Nov. 21 runoff--which was won by Yanukovych--and the Supreme Court nullified the results. Before resigning his post last week, Yanukovych vowed he would make a court challenge, but the revote has been praised as fair by Ukrainian and international leaders.

OUSTED. FRANKLIN RAINES, 55, as chairman and CEO of mortgage-finance giant Fannie Mae; days after the Securities and Exchange Commission found the company had violated accounting rules; in Washington. A former Clinton Administration official, Raines faces a possible fight over his severance benefits, which include a lifetime pension of more than $1.3 million a year.

DIED. REGGIE WHITE, 43, retired star NFL defensive end; possibly the result of sleep apnea and a disease that affected his lungs, according to a preliminary autopsy report; in Huntersville, N.C. During 15 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, Green Bay Packers and Carolina Panthers, the "Minister of Defense" pummeled rival quarterbacks with 198 career sacks (a record broken by Bruce Smith in 2003), was named to the Pro Bowl 13 straight times and helped lead the Packers to two consecutive Super Bowls.

DIED. JACK NEWFIELD, 66, award-winning author and investigative reporter for New York City's pioneering alternative weekly the Village Voice and other publications; of kidney cancer; in New York City. A crusader for victims of nursing-home neglect and lead poisoning, he helped bring about the conviction of numerous city political leaders for corruption and exposed abuses of power in his annual "10 Worst" lists of judges and landlords.

DIED. JERRY ORBACH, 69, versatile Broadway song-and-dance man who became a TV fixture as the sardonic, street-smart New York homicide detective Lennie Briscoe on NBC's Law & Order; of prostate cancer; in New York City. The son of a vaudevillian father and a radio-singer mother, Orbach played the narrator El Gallo in the original cast of the sweetly allegorical (and enormously long-running) off-Broadway musical fable The Fantasticks. Although he went on to star in several hits on Broadway (Promises, Promises; 42nd Street; Chicago) and at the box office (Dirty Dancing; Prince of the City), the Tony Award winner found a comfortable home as the replacement for Paul Sorvino in the third season of Law & Order. The evening after his death, Broadway dimmed its marquees at curtain time in his honor.

DIED. SUSAN SONTAG, 71, writer, critic and outspoken public intellectual; of leukemia; in New York City (see page 72).

DIED. JANE MUSKIE, 77, widow of Edmund Muskie, whose 1972 presidential campaign derailed after he appeared to cry in defending her against a newspaper editorial; in Bethesda, Md. At a news conference, Muskie choked up when he called the editor of the conservative Manchester, N.H., Union Leader a "gutless coward" for reprinting charges that his wife liked to smoke and tell dirty jokes.

DIED. RENATA TEBALDI, 82, Italian soprano whose rich, lyrically expressive tones prompted the demanding maestro Arturo Toscanini to call hers "the voice of an angel"; at her home in San Marino, a republic surrounded by central Italy. Adored from Milan's La Scala to New York's Metropolitan Opera, she once drew so many curtain calls at the Met that she finally had to appear onstage with her coat.

DIED. JULIUS AXELROD, 92, Nobel-prizewinning neuroscientist whose research helped steer the study and treatment of mental states into the field of brain chemistry; in Rockville, Md. Early in his career, Axelrod helped identify the pain reliever acetaminophen (Tylenol is a popular brand) before moving on to his signature work, which led to the development of the class of antidepressants that includes Prozac and Zoloft.

DIED. ARTIE SHAW, 94, suave, inventive clarinetist and bandleader of the '30s and '40s whose hit recording of Cole Porter's Begin the Beguine and subsequent work helped define the Big Band era; in Newbury Park, Calif. Though not as popular as his rival, Big Band giant Benny Goodman, Shaw was more adventurous, rejecting formulas to experiment with instrumentation and arrangements. Between frequent retirements, he recorded with his eponymous Big Band, the Gramercy Five and other groups, producing such hits as Frenesi, Star Dust and Summit Ridge Drive. A sometimes irascible perfectionist who had eight wives (including Lana Turner and Ava Gardner), he had little patience for the music business, which he quit for good in 1954.