Milestones

AWARDED. An $8.1 million settlement to SHUJI NAKAMURA, 50, engineer who helped Nichia Corp. develop the blue light-emitting diode (LED), a semiconductor device used in everything from cell phones to traffic lights; by Tokyo’s High Court; in Tokyo. Piqued by a $200 bonus for what Nichia claimed was merely a contribution to a team project, Nakamura sued his former employer in 2001, seeking a greater share of the profits from its LED patents and winning $194 million from a district judge. Although that decision was overturned, the $8 million payout, which Nakamura reluctantly accepted, marks the largest-ever award to a Japanese employee as compensation for an invention.

DIED. AMRISH PURI, 72, baritone-voiced Bollywood actor who reigned as India’s favorite movie villain for 30 years; in Bombay. Although he didn’t make his screen debut until age 40 with 1971’s Reshma Aur Shera, Puri enjoyed a prolific film career, acting in more than 200 movies. His success in foreign features such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gandhi brought him global recog-nition, while his role as devious gang leader Mogambo in 1987’s Mr. India made him a cult figure at home.

DIED. GENERAL SONG RENQIONG, 96, one of the “Eight Immortals” of the Chinese Communist Party, a group of powerful officials who set state policy in the 1980s; in Beijing. Song joined the party as a teenager and rose through the ranks to become a “remarkable proletarian revolutionary,” as state news agency Xinhua called him. Following his appointment as a general in the People’s Liberation Army in 1955, he served on the party’s Central Committee and was admitted to the Beijing politburo in 1982. His death makes Bo Yibo, father of current Commerce Minister Bo Xilai, the last living “Immortal.”

DIED. ZHAO ZIYANG, 85, former Chinese Communist Party leader ousted in 1989 for sympathizing with pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square; in Beijing. (See Appreciation)

CONVICTED. CHARLES GRANER, 36, U.S. Army reservist and reputed ringleader of a group of abusive guards at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison; on all five charges of assault, conspiracy, maltreat-ment of detainees, committing indecent acts, and dereliction of duty; in the first trial arising from the international scandal that broke with the release of photos showing U.S. soldiers gleefully torturing prisoners; in Fort Hood, Texas. The jury rejected the defense’s claims that Graner was just following orders, as well as suggestions that he was merely engaging in “gallows humor.”

PLEADED GUILTY. MARK THATCHER, 51, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to charges of helping finance a foiled coup attempt in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea; in Cape Town, South Africa. Thatcher admitted that he inadvertently provided mercenaries with money for a helicopter, but said he believed it would be used as an air ambulance for humanitarian purposes. As part of his plea bargain, Thatcher received a $506,000 fine and a four-year suspended prison sentence.

ACQUIRED. KOREA FIRST BANK, the country’s eighth-largest lender, by British bank Standard Chartered after a fierce bidding war with rival HSBC Holdings; for $3.3 billion; in Seoul. The deal represents the biggest-ever foreign investment in South Korea’s financial sector.

Numbers
22 months Length of time the U.S. spent hunting for weapons of mass destruction (wmd) in Iraq

0 Number of wmd found in Iraq as of January 2005 when the search was formally abandoned

1.66 million Number of U.S. jobs lost between 1989 and 2003 due to increasing imports from China, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute

199,000 Total of U.S. jobs generated by exports to China during the same period, according to the same study

3 months Period in which Ascension Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic, received no mail, because of a mix-up that routed post to the Paraguayan capital of Asuncin instead

361 Number of basic acupuncture points on the human body

92 Number of those points that China, Japan and South Korea disagree on, according to a study by the World Health Organization, prompting a drive to standardize the 2,000-year-old therapy

Fake Watch
This week, TIME Asia inaugurates a regular look into the murky world of intellectual property abuse. We start with the case of Professor Zheng Chengsi, one of China’s top experts on the issue. Last week, while outgoing U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans pressed the mainland to “forcefully confront” its piracy problem, a Chinese court awarded Zheng $6,826 in damages from publisher Beijing Scholar Digital Technology. The affront: publishing eight of Zheng’s textbooks online without permission, including seven on copyright infringement.