Engaged
Irish pop singer Sinéad O'Connor, 34, plans to marry Nick Sommerlad, 27, a British journalist she met through a friend a few months ago. No date has been set. O'Connor has a son, Jake, 13, from her marriage to drummer John Reynolds, and a daughter, Roisin, 5, from a relationship with Irish Times writer John Waters.
Married
Rocker Tom Petty, 50, and his longtime girlfriend, Dana York, 37, wed June 3 in Las Vegas. It is the second marriage for both.
Births
Olympic gold medalists Ekaterina Gordeeva, 30, and Ilia Kulik, 24, welcomed their first child, daughter Elizaveta, on June 15 in L.A. Gordeeva has a daughter, Daria, 8, with her late husband and ice skating partner, Sergei Grinkov, who died during a 1995 practice session.
Packing Up
Julia Child, 88, is moving into a retirement community in Montecito, Calif., in November. The beloved chef and author donated her five-bedroom Cambridge, Mass., house, where she has cooked for more than 40 years, to her alma mater, Smith College.
Recuperating
Doobie Brothers drummer Mike Hossack, 54, sustained multiple fractures on June 22 after a head-on collision with a car while riding his motorcycle to Lake Tahoe, Calif., where the band was set to play. At press time he was listed in serious condition at a Roseville, Calif., hospital.
Legal Matters
Twenty-two years after he vanished while walking to school in New York City, Etan Patz was declared legally dead on June 19. The ruling cleared the way for his parents to file a wrongful death suit against the convicted child molester they believe killed him. In 1979 the disappearance of the 6-year-old fueled a nationwide movement to find missing children....
Former Dallas Cowboy Michael Irvin, 35, was indicted June 21 on drug possession charges by a Denton County, Texas, grand jury. Irvin, who retired a year ago, was arrested in August 2000, when police found him at a Dallas-area apartment with cocaine, marijuana and other drugs. Irvin plans to plead innocent to the charges.
Deaths
Yvonne Dionne, 67, born to fame on May 28, 1934, as one-fifth of the first set of quintuplets to survive more than a few days, died of cancer on June 23 in Montreal. Two of her sisters survive....
Joseph Picone, who with his partner Charles Evans founded the Evan-Picone women's clothing line, died June 22 of heart complications in Manhattan. He was 83.
Update
New Yorker Lori Berenson, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on June 20 after a Peruvian civilian court convicted her of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. Berenson, who received a life term from a military court in 1996, will be credited with the five years time already served. She denounced her conviction as "unjust."
Sequel
Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, both 18, were released from a British children's unit after serving eight years for torturing and killing James Bulger, 2, in 1993 (PEOPLE, March 12, 2001). The teenagers will get new identities.
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