Passages

Births

Grammy-winning R&B singer Toni Braxton, 35, and her husband, musician Keri Lewis, 30, welcomed their first child, a 5-lb. 12-oz. boy, Denim Cole Braxton Lewis, on Dec. 2 in Atlanta….

Actress Jennifer Grey (Bounce), 41, and her husband, actor-screenwriter Clark Gregg (What Lies Beneath), 39, had their first baby, Stella, on Dec. 3 in L.A….

Actress Cathy Moriarty (Cop Land), 41, and her financier husband, Joseph Gentile, 39, had their third child, Annabella Rose, on Nov. 15 in West Islip, N.Y. The tot joins 1-year-old twins Catherine and Joseph.

Sued

On Nov. 30 Leonard Taylor, a former bodyguard of actor Mark Wahlberg, 30, filed a $2 million lawsuit against the Planet of the Apes star in Manhattan supreme court. Taylor alleges that Wahlberg beat and bit him outside a New York City nightclub on Nov. 16. Calls to the actor’s representatives were not returned.

Recuperating

Country musician Charlie Daniels, 65, whose 1979 hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” brought him mainstream fame, had successful prostate cancer surgery on Nov. 20 in Nashville.

Deaths

On Nov. 29, nearly five months after becoming the world’s first recipient of a self-contained artificial heart, Robert Tools, 59, died of multiple organ failure in a Louisville, Ky., hospital. Since his operation, five other people have received the device….

Acclaimed novelist John Knowles, 75, whose 1960 story of adolescent angst at a New England boarding school, A Separate Peace, became required high school reading, died of undisclosed causes at a Fort Lauderdale nursing home on Nov. 29….

British actress Rachel Gurney, 81, best known as the elegant Lady Marjorie Bellamy on the popular 1970s PBS series Upstairs, Downstairs, died recently of undisclosed causes.

Settled

On Nov. 29 in L.A., Vanilla Sky star Tom Cruise, 39, dropped a $100 million lawsuit against Bold magazine’s Michael Davis, after the publisher retracted his claim that he had an X-rated video showing Cruise engaged in homosexual acts. According to the stipulation, “Tom Cruise does not appear on the videotape…and has never had a homosexual affair….”

Update

On Nov. 29 in London, Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell, 43, was ordered to stand trial on charges of stealing hundreds of items belonging to the late princess, Prince Charles and Prince William (PEOPLE, Sept. 3, 2001). Burrell maintains that all the items, which include letters and records, were given to him by Diana….

Baywatch alum Yasmine Bleeth, 33, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine and driving while impaired on Nov. 30 in Detroit (PEOPLE, Oct. 8, 2001). As part of a plea agreement, the actress, who was arrested on Sept. 12, will serve two years probation, including regular drug tests….

On Dec. 3 the Concord, N.H., attorney general’s office announced that James Parker, 17, one of two teens charged with the January killing of married Dartmouth College professors Susanne and Half Zantop (PEOPLE, March 5, 2001), has agreed to plead guilty as an accomplice to one of the murders. If the plea agreement is accepted, an original charge of first-degree murder would be dropped.