Milestones

BORN. To OUARDA TOUIRAT, 32, the first woman to conceive naturally and give birth after a transplant of her own frozen ovarian tissue, and her husband, MALIK; a daughter, TAMARA; in Brussels. In 1997, Touirat was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Doctors proposed the experimental technique to preserve her chances of having a child naturally. Her ovarian tissue, which holds immature eggs, was frozen in liquid nitrogen, then thawed and reimplanted after Touirat successfully completed chemotherapy and was declared cancer-free.

FREED. GLORIA TREVI, 36, irreverent pop-music superstar nicknamed “Mexico’s Madonna”; following her acquittal on charges of kidnapping, rape and corruption of minors; after spending nearly five years in prison; in Chihuahua, Mexico. Prosecutors alleged that Trevi, her former manager and two backup singers lured young girls into their entourage and sexually abused them, but the judge ruled there was not enough evidence to support the charges.

BARRED. YUSUF ISLAM, 56, the British singer formerly known as Cat Stevens, whose string of hits in the 1960s and ’70s included Peace Train, Wild World and Morning Has Broken; from the U.S.; after his flight from London to Washington was diverted to Bangor, Maine, when U.S. officials discovered he was on the no-fly list for having suspected ties to terrorists. He returned to London, saying, “The whole thing is totally ridiculous,” and vowed to challenge the ban.

DIED. FRANCOISE SAGAN, 69, French author who at 19 wrote the best-selling 1954 novel Bonjour Tristesse, about seduction and infidelity among the idle rich; in Honfleur, France. Born Françoise Quoirez, she took her pen name from a character in Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. Though she never matched the success of her first book, Sagan went on to write 30 novels, as well as short stories and plays .

DIED. EDDIE ADAMS, 71, photojournalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1968 image of a Viet Cong captive shot at point-blank range by a South Vietnamese police chief on a Saigon street during the Vietnam War; in New York City. As a teenager in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, he charged $20 to shoot weddings and went on to cover 13 wars for such news outlets as the Associated Press, Life magazine and Parade. He also took moving, often black-and-white portraits of world leaders, activists and entertainers, but he was forever haunted by his iconic Vietnam photo, which he said he couldn’t lay eyes on for two years. He also faced occasional scoldings from people who wondered why he didn’t try to stop the killing.

DIED. SKEETER DAVIS, 72, one of America’s first big-selling female country crossover acts, who hit the pop charts in 1963 with the ballad The End of the World and was a regular on the Grand Ole Opry radio show for 45 years; in Nashville, Tennessee.

DIED. MARVIN MITCHELSON, 76, divorce lawyer whose advocacy of the right to alimony without marriage (“palimony”) earned him a famous client list; in Beverly Hills, California . In 1976, he won a landmark lawsuit against actor Lee Marvin, whose lover, Michele Triola Marvin, had abandoned her nightclub singing career to be his companion. Mitchelson also represented such celebrities as Joan Collins and Sonny Bono, but later drew criticism for shoddy work, and served more than two years in prison for tax fraud.

DIED. RUSS MEYER, 82, soft-core-porn director whose work set the tone for late 20th century pop culture at its most cheerfully leering; in Los Angeles. Always a picture taker and picture maker, he was an Army cameraman who shot World War II footage; the photographer of several early Playboy centerfolds; and a soft-core Spielberg whose first feature, the nudie comedy The Immoral Mr. Teas, grossed $1 million on a $24,000 budget. In the ’60s he shifted to melodramas (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!), to which he later added color and an insane pace, creating the nutty masterpiece Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with tyro scripter Roger Ebert. Hard-core-porn chic eventually made his genial farces irrelevant as erotic provocations, but priceless as expressions of a true movie original.

DIED. NIGEL NICOLSON, 87, British biographer, publisher and ex- M.P. who preserved the literary legacy of the Bloomsbury group, notably that of Virginia Woolf; in Sissinghurst, England. His best-known work, Portrait of a Marriage — based on a memoir by his mother, novelist Vita Sackville-West, found after she died in 1962 — chronicles his parents’ devoted, if unconventional union.

DIED. EDWARD LARRABEE BARNES, 89, architect whose functional houses and skyscrapers represented a humane approach to the sleek Modernist style; in Cupertino, California. A proponent of simplicity in design, he once said that most architectural ideas could be expressed on the back of an envelope.