--- description: Milestones title: Milestones image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [World](/section/world/) # Milestones (12 May 2003) by [Sara Rajan](/author/sara-rajan/) May 12, 2003 4:00 AM CUT by [Sara Rajan](/author/sara-rajan/) May 12, 2003 4:00 AM CUT **Died. Walter Sisulu,** 90, South African political activist, chief strategist of the African National Congress (ANC) and longtime jail mate of Nelson Mandela; in Johannesburg. Sisulu, son of a black domestic worker and a white railwayman, was a founding member of the ANC’s armed wing. In 1963 a group of antigovernment activists were tried for planning acts of sabotage and antiapartheid revolution, for which Sisulu and Mandela were sentenced to life imprisonment. Sisulu spent the next 25 years incarcerated on the infamous Robben Island. “He has not been honored the way some of us have been… nevertheless, he stood head and shoulders above all of us,” said Mandela. **Irrecoverable. Part of the Watergate sound archive;** 18-and-a-half minutes of a tape recording of a June 20, 1972 conversation between then U.S. President Richard Nixon and his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman about the Watergate break-in; in Washington, D.C. Technical efforts to recover the lost segment of the tape, believed to have been erased by Nixon, by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration have been abandoned, although the tape will be preserved in a climate-controlled vault. **Appointed. L. Paul Bremer III,** 61, veteran U.S. diplomat and State Department counter-terrorism expert; as the top U.S. civilian official in Iraq; in Washington, D.C. Bremer, who will try to cobble together a new government for Iraq, outranks Jay Garner, the Pentagon-appointed administrator. Announcing his appointment, President George W. Bush described Bremer as a “can-do” person. **Charged. Ratu Jope Seniloli**, Vice President of Fiji; with treason and sedition for his involvement in the May 2000 nationalist coup that toppled the South Pacific nation’s democratic government; in Suva, Fiji. George Speight, the rebel leader whose gunmen stormed Fiji’s Parliament and held it for 56 days, had appointed Seniloli President of his illegal government. Seniloli is the highest-ranking government official to face charges related to the coup. **Killed. Sam (Mosquito) Bockarie,** 40, West African warlord, former hairdresser and champion disco dancer; in a shootout with Liberian soldiers; near the Ivory Coast-Liberia border. A native of Sierra Leone, Bockarie was one of the most feared guerrilla fighters to emerge from the overlapping civil uprisings in West Africa. In March, a U.N.-backed special court investigating atrocities in Sierra Leone indicted Bockarie for crimes against humanity. In a 1999 interview with a wire service, he admitted, “I cannot tell how many people I have killed.” **Died. Suzy Parker,** 70, sultry, auburn-maned model who became one of the most memorable visages of the 1950s; in Montecito, California. Parker, a forerunner of the modern-day supermodel, was the highest-paid model of the ’50s, earning nearly $100,000 a year. Parker described herself as nothing more than “an animated clothes hanger,” and appeared in several Hollywood films, including Funny Face. **Died. Greg Davis,** 54, peripatetic, daredevil photojournalist for many international publications, including TIME; of liver cancer; in Tokyo. The Californian first went to Asia with the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, and he settled afterward in Japan. He covered subjects in Russia, Central Asia and almost all of the Far East, with a special passion for North Korea and Vietnam. **Numbers** **$1 billion** was reportedly taken from Iraq’s central bank by Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay on the eve of the war in Iraq **28 percent** of children in non-Chinese Asian countries suffer from malnutrition, according to UNICEF **500** students from SARS-infected Asian regions have been barred from attending summer programs at the University of California, Berkeley **$500 million** is the minimum amount North Korea earns yearly from illegal drug trafficking, says the U.S. military **$5,734** was snatched by two thieves in Singapore, who blinded a businessman with curry powder before stealing his cash **1 million** songs were sold by Apple’s iTunes Music Store in its first week of operations, making it the world’s largest online-music company **$1.20** was the retail price Chinese pop star Liu Huan set for his new album, to prevent piracy. But soon after its release, bootlegs went on sale for 84 **Omen** Birds in urban environments are increasingly being threatened with extinction because males of many species cannot sing their mating calls loud enough for females to hear them over noise from vehicular traffic Milestones ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6894243/milestones-467/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6894243/milestones-467/"},"headline":"Milestones (12 May 2003)","datePublished":"2003-05-12T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T07:20:20.812Z","description":"Milestones","url":"https://time.com/archive/6894243/milestones-467/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Sara Rajan","url":"https://time.com/author/sara-rajan/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6894243/milestones-467/","name":"Milestones (12 May 2003)"}}]}] ```