ILL. Paul Tsongas, 42, earnest, fiscally moderate Democratic Senator from Massachusetts; with lymph-node cancer; in Boston. Tsongas said that because of his ailment he would not seek a second term in November. Tsongas upset liberals in 1979 by endorsing a federal bailout for Chrysler. Said he: "What I've done is show you can be a liberal Democrat and still care about economics, that profit is not a dirty word."

HOSPITALIZED. Frank Church, 59, four-term Democratic Senator (1957-80) from Idaho who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and ran for the presidential nomination in 1976; for a biopsy of a tumor in his pancreas and clearance of a bile duct; at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Church overcame testicular cancer while at Stanford Law School in the 1940s.

DECISION REVERSED. For Christine Craft, 39, a former Kansas City TV anchorwoman who charged that in 1981 station KMBC, then owned by Metromedia, demoted her because of unhappiness with her appearance; by a federal jury that awarded her $325,000 in damages; in Joplin, Mo. Another federal jury voted Craft $500,000 in damages, but a judge threw that award out. Metromedia plans to appeal.

DECISION REVERSED. For Kristi, 17; Michael, 14; and Dawn Meadows, 13, children of the late Karen Silkwood (eponymous heroine Of the movie Silkwood), alleged victim of radiation at the Kerr-McGee nuclear plant near Crescent, Okla.; by a 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court affirmation of a $10 million award won in a 1979 negligence suit against her employer, but overturned by a federal appeals court. Kerr-McGee plans to challenge the award.

DIED. Ray Kroc, 81, founder of golden-arched McDonald's Corp. (1982 sales: $7.8 billion) and owner of baseball's San Diego Padres; of heart failure; in San Diego. Kroc, a milkshake-machine salesman, bought franchise rights to a California burger stand called McDonald's and in 1955 launched a fast-food empire that now numbers 7,000 restaurants worldwide.

DIED. Souvanna Phouma, 82, courtly former Prime Minister of Laos, whose neutralist regime was toppled by the Communist Pathet Lao in 1975; in Vientiane. Nephew of the last Laotian King under French colonial rule. Prince Souvanna became the independent nation's Prime Minister in 1956; he later failed to stem the Pathet Lao, led by his half brother Prince Souphanouvong.

DIED. Brooks Atkinson, 89, magisterial New York Times drama critic and Pulitzer-prizewinning foreign correspondent; of pneumonia; in Huntsville, Ala. From 1925 to 1960. Atkinson lent a cool, impartial presence to Broadway, interrupting his career to cover World War II and the postwar Soviet Union. After leaving the critic's chair, he wrote nearly a dozen books on the theater, travel and nature.