Milestones Jun. 18, 2007

DIED

Her attackers arrived in the middle of the night as she lay sleeping next to her 20-month-old son. The gunmen who fatally shot Afghan journalist and radio-station owner Zakia Zaki seven times–sparing her son and other children–acted just days after a female newsreader at a TV station was shot and killed for reasons that remain unclear. One of the few female reporters to criticize the Taliban, Zaki ran the U.S.-funded Radio Peace, launched in 2001 after the fall of the Taliban. In response to Zaki’s murder, officials condemned the “terror,” and police began a massive hunt for the killers. Said a colleague: “She believed in freedom of expression.” She was 35.

He was a lot like his state of Wyoming–conservative and straight shooting. Ex-Marine Craig Thomas, above, went to Washington in 1989 after he won a special election to replace then U.S. Representative Dick Cheney, whom President George H.W. Bush had appointed Defense Secretary. A Senator since 1994, Thomas earned a reputation as a sensible, effective advocate on issues from public-land protection to the domestic production of energy and minerals. Thomas, who avoided Beltway infighting, watched himself win a third term last year from a hospital bed. After he was re-elected, he announced that he had leukemia. He was 74.

Champion foil fencer Janice-Lee Romary, top, told friends her claim to fame was her longevity. A few others: she competed in six consecutive Olympics–the first female athlete to do so–and at her last one, in 1968 in Mexico City, became the first woman to carry the flag for the U.S. during the opening ceremony. Romary, who finished fourth in 1952 and 1956, won 10 national championships. After retiring from competition, she served as commissioner of fencing for the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. She was 79.

Until he managed to fly 3 miles at 500 ft. for 25 min. in a hot-air balloon he had fashioned using propane tanks, safely maneuvering a balloon for long distances had been pretty much a fantasy. In the wake of that 1960 flight, aeronautics engineer Paul (Ed) Yost, the first to use the relatively cheap propane-burner system for heat, became the father of modern hot-air ballooning, now a popular global sport. Among the many firsts he achieved: a 1963 trip with a partner across the English Channel. He was 87.

At a time when movie stars flocked to photographers for an even more glamorous image, Wallace Seawell was a king. Putting subjects at ease with his gushing enthusiasm (“The aura of the person excites you,” he once said), Seawell, below, created shiny, highly stylized portraits, often for celebrity magazines, of Hollywood royalty like Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. He was 90.

SENTENCED

Citing “Overwhelming” evidence, a U.S. district judge wrapped up one of the Bush Administration’s most embarrassing episodes by giving I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, 2 1/2 years in prison for lying to federal investigators about his role in the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity. The sentence is longer than the minimum recommended by federal guidelines, and the judge said he sees no likely justification for an appeal. Libby, 56, the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since Iran-contra, could go to jail within two months.

INDICTED

To the glee of a Republican Party saddled with corruption scandals, a federal grand jury handed up a 16-count indictment of Louisiana Democratic Congressman William Jefferson, 60, known for promoting Third World trade. The investigation shifted into high drama in May 2006, when the FBI conducted an unprecedented raid of Jefferson’s congressional office and disclosed that it had earlier found $90,000 in cash in the freezer of his Washington home. The charges, which Jefferson denies, include money laundering, racketeering and soliciting more than $400,000 in bribes from a Kentucky-based technology company that sought business deals in Africa.