Milestones

4 minute read
Harriet Barovick, Theunis Bates, Tim Kindseth, Elisabeth Salemme, Carolyn Sayre and Ishaan Tharoor

SENTENCED. Jeffrey Skilling, 52, vilified former CEO of Enron who was convicted in May for his role in engineering one of the biggest frauds in corporate history; to 24 years and four months in prison, the longest term yet for an Enron defendant; in Houston. At his hearing Skilling, whose arrogance and lack of remorse fueled outrage over the scandal, told the judge, “I am innocent of every one of these charges.”

DIED. Sandy West, 47, pioneering rock drummer whose muscular riffs propelled the punk-metal sound of the Runaways, the all-girl band she co-founded in 1975 with Joan Jett; of lung cancer; in San Dimas, California. Although dismissed as a novelty act in the all-male world of rock, the Runaways influenced female-led punk bands from X-Ray Spex to the Go-Gos with raw, thumping anthems like Cherry Bomb, Born to be Bad and Is It Day or Night.

DIED. Leonid Hambro, 86, brilliant concert pianist with a superhuman memory; in New York City. He dazzled with a 1952 performance at New York City’s Town Hall, for which he had to learn complex works in less than a day. But the Julliard alum found broadest appeal as the straight man to funnyman-pianist Victor Borge, with whom he performed for 10 years, starting in 1961.

DIED. Choi Kyu Hah, 87, former Prime Minister of South Korea who served briefly as the country’s 10th President following the 1979 assassination of Park Chung Hee; in Seoul. After replacing the dictatorial Park, Choi, a former professor and long-serving bureaucrat, released opposition leaders from prison and promised elections and a new constitution. But his moderate reforms were cut short after a cabal of generals seized power later that year, leaving Choi President in name only. He resigned in 1980 in the wake of the Kwangju massacre, in which over 200 pro-democracy activists were killed.

DIED. Eric Newby, 86, venerated, genial British travel writer who infused his accounts of trips to remote locales—which often proved disastrous—with wit and humanity; in Surrey, England. His signature work, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, detailed his long, illness-ridden ascent of Afghanistan’s 6,000-m peak Mir Samir.

DIED. Ghulam Ishaq Khan, 91, strong-willed President of Pakistan who dismissed two democratically elected governments; in Peshawar. Khan, who served as Finance Minister and chairman of the Senate, replaced General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq as President after Zia’s death in a plane crash in 1988. In 1990 he removed Pakistan’s first female Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, and in 1993 dispatched her successor, Nawaz Sharif, over allegations of corruption and mismanagement. A Supreme Court ruling to restore Sharif to his position threw the country into turmoil, prompting an intervention by Pakistan’s powerful military, which forced Khan to resign.

DIED. Henry Fok Ying-tung, 83, low-key Hong Kong tycoon who was one of the Chinese leadership’s most trusted advisers; in Beijing. During the Korean War, Fok defied a U.S. embargo and dispatched aid to China. In ensuing years, Beijing showered him with business contracts and official honors. Fok, an aide told reporters, was “a true patriot.”

Numbers
1,508 Average number of condoms sold per day by South Korea’s Family Mart convenience stores
1,930 Average daily number of condoms they sold in the week following North Korea’s Oct. 9 nuclear test, prompting speculation that stress from the test led to a rise in sexual activity among South Koreans

150 Rating on Singapore’s Pollution Standards Index on Oct. 7, the highest level recorded this year, as soot and haze from Indonesia’s seasonal brush fires spread across Southeast Asia
100 Score above which the Singapore government says it is “unhealthy” to be outside

$50 million Amount earned by late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain last year, making him the world’s highest-paid dead celebrity according to Forbes magazine
5 Number of years Elvis Presley— No. 2 in this year’s list with $42 million—held the top spot

$5 million Amount to be paid to the winner of the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, created by a Sudanese-born tycoon to honor African leaders for corruption-free rule. The prize eclipses the Nobel ($1.4 million) as the world’s richest
$148 billion Estimated annual cost of corruption in Africa—25% of the continent’s GDP—including lost tax revenue and deterred investment

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