Actress Sofia Coppola, 27, daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola and the ingenue in his Godfather Part III, disclosed in July that she will tie the knot with video director Spike Jonze, 28, sometime next year.
Expecting
Actress Patricia Heaton, 40, who plays Ray Romano's no-nonsense wife on CBS's Everybody Loves Raymond, and her husband, British actor David Hunt, 44, wait to welcome their fourth child in February. The couple, who wed in 1990, have three sons, ages 5, 3 and 1.
In Court
In response to a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by the family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1996, Judge William O'Kelley ruled on July 22 in federal district court in Atlanta that the slain civil-rights leader's "I Have a Dream" speech is part of the public domain. Seeking unspecified damages, the King estate had claimed that a documentary series that CBS coproduced used the speech, which King had copyrighted in 1963 shortly after he delivered it, without permission.
Deaths
Celebrity interior designer Mark Hampton, 58, famed for his chi-chi redos of some of the country's most prominent residences (including White House rooms for First Ladies Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton), died of a heart attack on July 23 in Manhattan....
Sportscaster Don Dunphy, the fabled Voice of Boxing who called over 2,000 fights blow-by-blow on radio and television during his 50-year career, died on July 22 in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 90.
Ailing
Gymnast Sang Lan, 17, the Chinese national vault champion who was paralyzed from the chest down after fracturing two vertebrae in her neck on July 21 at the Goodwill Games in Uniondale, N.Y., underwent a seven-hour spinal stabilization operation on July 25. Although the surgery gave the athlete greater strength in her shoulders and biceps, doctors doubt that she will ever walk again....
King Hussein, the 62-year-old monarch of Jordan, told his people on July 28 that he is receiving chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Exit
Declaring an imminent end to his life as a "human piñata," Mike McCurry, 43, announced on July 23 that he will leave his post as President Clinton's press secretary and spokesman this fall.
Recuperating
Tennis legend Rod Laver, who turns 60 on Aug. 9, suffered a stroke on July 27 in L.A. and was a dmitted to a hospital there in critical condition, upgraded to serious the next day.
Law and Order
The L.A. County District Attorney's office on July 20 charged a man with stalking and making terrorist threats against NYPD Blue actress Andrea Thompson, 38. The suspect, Gianluigi Assennato, 34, an Italian citizen living in California, pleaded innocent to the accusations. He was held in jail on $1 million bail....
French authorities imposed a three-month suspended jail sentence and a $1,600 fine on actor Gérard Depardieu, 49, the cinematic and real-life bon vivant, for driving a motorcycle under the influence outside Paris in May.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
