Milestones

HIRED. NICK LEESON, 38, former expatriate banker in Singapore who brought about the collapse of the U.K.’s Barings Bank in 1995; as commercial manager of soccer club Galway United; in Galway, Ireland. Leeson, whose autobiography Rogue Trader became a best seller and was made into a movie starring Ewan McGregor, has been in demand as a speechmaker since his release from prison in 1999. The Galway appointment is his first new job in a decade.

RETIRING. LANCE ARMSTRONG, 33, six-time Tour de France winner; after this year’s Tour ends in July. Armstrong, who overcame testicular cancer, told reporters covering the Tour de Georgia, probably his last U.S. event, that he missed his three children and his younger, fitter body, saying: “It’s not an old man’s race.”

CHARGED. GIUSEPPE (PIPPO) CALO, 73, FLAVIO CARBONI, MANUELA KLEINSZIG and ERNESTO DIOTALLEVI, with the 1982 murder of Banco Ambrosio chief Roberto Calvi; in Rome. Calvi, known as “God’s banker” because of his close ties with the Vatican, traveled to London when his bank was near collapse and was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London, his pockets stuffed with bricks, rocks, a false passport and several thousand dollars in cash. A London coroner originally ruled the death a suicide, but in 2003, Italian prosecutors issued a report concluding that Calvi had been murdered by the Mafia.

PLEADED GUILTY. ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI, 36, self-described al-Qaeda conspirator and the only person in the U.S. charged in connection with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; after U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema declared him fit to stand trial, the culmination of more than three years of legal maneuvering that included a 2002 attempt by Moussaoui to plead guilty, which he later retracted; in Alexandria, Virginia. Moussaoui, who faces the death penalty, vowed to fight execution.

CONVICTED. HASAN AKBAR, 34, U.S. Army sergeant; of premeditated murder and attempted murder in a grenade and rifle attack that killed two military officers and wounded 14 other men in Kuwait in March 2003, as his division was preparing to move into Iraq; by a military judge in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Prosecutors say Akbar, who faces the death penalty, told investigators his middle-of-the-night attack was motivated by fears that U.S. soldiers would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq.

REVERSED. TYPE 1 DIABETES in an unnamed 27-year-old woman; by transplanting insulin-making cells from her mother’s pancreas; in Kyoto, Japan. Although the use of pancreatic cells from organs of dead donors has been successful since 2000, this is the first time doctors have operated using living cells. The breakthrough could prove crucial in countries such as Japan, in which organ donation is uncommon.

DIED. VU KY, 84, former personal secretary and confidante of 24 years to Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh; in Hanoi. Born to civil servant parents, Ky joined anti-French revolutionary movements as a student in Hanoi, and joined Ho after the August Revolution of 1945, in which Ho declared Vietnam’s independence from France. Ky was said to have witnessed Ho writing his will and testament and was trusted to keep the documents from 1965 until the leader’s death four years later.

Numbers
10,000 Number of passengers on All Nippon Airways and Japan Air Lines who have canceled flights to China because of anti-Japanese demonstrations

$81 BILLION Sum the U.S. Congress approved to fund military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq in its fifth such emergency spending bill since 9/11
$300 BILLION Estimated total Congress has allocated for combat and reconstruction in these two countries

500,000 Number of Cambodians facing food shortages following a four-month drought. More than 150,000 of them are now receiving rations from the United Nations World Food Programme

6 Number of elephants in Seoul that ran wild for five hours after escaping from a children’s zoo. One woman was injured and a restaurant destroyed

Fake Watch
Heir to a U.S. steel fortune, and a Columbia University business school grad, RANDOLPH HOBSON GUTHRIE III (right) moved to Shanghai in 1995 and lived it up on a $120,000 annual trust-fund allowance. In 2003, he began earning a reported $25,000 a month selling DVDs online to customers around the world. Turns out those movies were piratedand Guthrie has become the poster boy for China’s antipiracy campaign. Last week, a Shanghai court sentenced the 38-year-old to 30 months in prison. (Two local accomplices and another American were also jailed.) Still, Guthrie plainly likes China: his lawyer says his client is “really more upset” that he will be deported after completing the jail term.