SENTENCED. BELA EWALD ALTHANS, 29, articulate, suave German neo-Nazi; to 3 1/2 years in prison; for inciting racial hatred, denigrating the state and defaming the dead by denying that the Holocaust took place; in Berlin. In the controversial 1992 documentary Profession: Neo-Nazi, about his life as a radical organizer, Althans described the Holocaust as a "giant hoax." In one scene he is shown telling visitors to Auschwitz, "We didn't kill [the Jews]. They all survived, and now they're taking money from Germany." Althans claimed his comments were taken out of context.

RESIGNED. JAMES MOLYNEAUX, 75, leader since 1979 of Northern Ireland's Ulster Unionist Party, the province's largest group in favor of remaining within Britain; in London. Though Molyneaux was at the forefront of the campaign against the reunification of British-ruled Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, some supporters accused him of being too willing to go along with the joint British-Irish peace plan. His power has waned since last March, when he was badly shaken by an improbable leadership challenge from a 21-year-old student.

AILING. TIMOTHY LEARY, 74, former Harvard psychologist who became a counterculture icon in the 1960s for urging the use of mind-altering drugs such as LSD to "turn on, tune in and drop out"; from prostate cancer, diagnosed last January; in Los Angeles. "When I found out I was terminally ill--and I know this can be misinterpreted--I was thrilled," he told the Los Angeles Times last week. "I was now entered into the real challenge of how to live an empowered life, a life of dignity."

DIED. MICHAEL VERMEULEN, 38, American editor of British GQ magazine, whose outrageous sense of humor and zest for food and drink fueled his journalistic drive; of a suspected drug overdose; in London. Born in a Chicago suburb, VerMeulen wrote and edited for a number of U.S. publications before moving to London in 1986 and joining GQ two years later. Appointed editor in 1992, he made the men's magazine the most successful of its kind in Britain. VerMeulen once told a reporter, "Our message to our readers is simple: Being a guy is lots of fun." In public and private, he seemed determined to live up to his dictate.

DIED. MICHAEL ENDE, 65, German novelist who enchanted millions of children around the world with such beguiling fantasies as The Neverending Story; of stomach cancer; in Stuttgart. The son of a surrealist painter, Ende began writing cabaret scripts in the 1950s. He wrote his first children's tales in the early 1960s--the award-winning Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver and Jim Button and the Wild 13, about a black child's discovery that he is really a prince. His most successful book was The Neverending Story, published in 1979; it described a lonely, chubby youngster who finds inner direction in his struggle to save a magical land from an evil called Nothing. The novel was translated into more than 30 languages, became an international best seller and spawned a 1984 hit movie and two sequels.

DIED. CARL GILES, 78, British cartoonist whose cantankerous fictional family, dominated by the tyrannical, umbrella-wielding Grandma, became a national institution; near Ipswich. Giles, whose panels appeared three times a week in the London Daily and Sunday Express for nearly half a century, was admired by his colleagues for his fine draftsmanship and acute--though never cruel--observation of daily life in British suburbia.