JULY 17, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 2

Milestones
BY PENNY CAMPBELL

AWARDED. To JUAN MIGUEL GONZALEZ, 31, father of Elian, the Carlos Manuel de Cespedes medal, one of Cuba's highest civilian honors, for fidelity to his country and stoicism during the seven-month battle to return his son to Cuba; in Havana. President Fidel Castro, who presented the award, praised Gonzalez for turning down bribes to defect to the U.S. Gonzalez has said that he was offered $2 million by anti-communist Cuban exiles in Miami to stay back with Elian.

AWARDED. The right to host the 2006 World Cup, to GERMANY, sparking criticism of the Northern hemisphere's near-monopoly on football's most prestigious tournament; in Zurich. The presumed favorite, South Africa, which would have been the first African nation to host the quadrennial event, lost by a single vote of the executive committee of FIFA, football's governing body.

DIED. GUSTAW HERLING-GRUNDZINSKI, 81, celebrated Polish writer, anti-communist activist and critic of the totalitarian Soviet system; in Naples. Imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp during the early part of World War II, he settled in Rome after the war and co-founded the émigré journal Kultura, an influential voice of the Polish anti-communist opposition. His best known work was his 1951 book A World Apart, based on his labor camp experiences.

DIED. LESLIE WHITELEY, 40, who won a $21.7 million jury verdict against two tobacco companies in March, of lung cancer; in Ventura, California. Whiteley's award against Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds was seen as a huge defeat for Big Tobacco: it was the first time cigarette makers were held responsible for the health problems of people who began smoking after 1969 when warnings started appearing on packets.

DIED. KEMAL SUNAL, 56, one of Turkey's most popular comic actors whose bumbling screen characters touched the hearts of moviegoers; in Istanbul. Sunal began acting on the stage in the 1960s and within a decade became one of his country's leading movie stars, appearing in a total of 82 films.

MARRIED. XANANA GUSMAO, 54, East Timorese independence leader, to Australian KIRSTY SWORD, 34; near Dili. The couple met in 1994 while Gusmão was in jail in Jakarta. A former aid worker and activist for East Timorese independence, Sword became Gusmão's secretary when he was transferred to house arrest in September last year.

CONFIRMED. YOSHIRO MORI, 62, reappointed Prime Minister of Japan by the Diet, or parliament, following elections last month that saw his ruling bloc's majority slashed; in Tokyo. Mori was widely seen as responsible for the poor showing by his Liberal Democrat Party, which won 233 of the 480 seats in the lower house, a loss of 38 seats.

Time Capsule
The tight grip that Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) held on the nation's presidency, broken last week by Vicente Fox Quesada, began in 1929 with the peaceful--by Mexican standards--victory of PASCUAL ORTIZ RUBIO.
"Under Mexican law the first five voters who appear at a polling booth on election morn are the legal guardians of that booth for the rest of the day. . . The count gave President-Elect Pascual Ortiz Rubio 13 times as many votes as all other candidates combined. Only 19 people were killed in the entire republic in polling arguments. [A U.S. embassy official] said, 'The recent Mexican election was the fairest ever held.' [Ortiz Rubio] entered the Army, [became] Captain in 1911, Brigadier General in 1920. . . He announced that he would no longer use the title 'General,' and much was made during the recent campaign of the fact that Mexico was electing a civilian president."
--Time, Dec 30, 1929

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