MARCH 13, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 10

Milestones
By PENNY CAMPBELL

DIED. JEAN VALLETTE D'OSIA, 101, French Lieut.-General and resistance leader during World War II; in Annecy. Celebrated for his physical prowess, Vallette d'Osia famously leapt in handcuffs through a window of a moving train to escape from the Gestapo after being captured in the French Alps. He fled to North Africa but returned to liberate the city of Lyons.

DIED. ALFREDO DE LA TORRE MARQUEZ, 49, chief of police of a Mexican border town that is home to one of the country's largest drug cartels; in Tijuana. De la Torre was killed when armed gunmen sprayed his car with more than 100 bullets. Although state officials can't confirm that the killing was connected to the drug trade, it added to the wave of violence in Baja California state that has underscored the government's inability to tackle the cartels.

RESIGNED. PIERRE-CELESTIN RWIGEMA, Prime Minister of Rwanda, amid corruption allegations; in Kigali. Rwigema, who is facing several parliamentary investigations into alleged embezzlement and abuse of office, is the third senior Hutu politician to leave the predominantly Tutsi government in recent months.

FREED. ANDREI BABITSKY, 35, Russian journalist, whose disappearance for more than a month in Chechnya provoked international concern; in Moscow. A Radio Liberty correspondent known for his reporting of human rights abuses in Chechnya, Babitsky was arrested by Russian forces in mid-January and charged with collaborating with Chechen rebels. He was later handed over to a Chechen group in a purported prisoner exchange. Released in the neighboring republic of Dagestan, he was promptly re-arrested and charged with carrying a fake passport. He was returned to Moscow and freed only after the intervention of acting Russian President Vladimir Putin, but is still under investigation.

CONVICTED. TIHOMIR BLASKIC, 39, Croatian general who served during the Balkan conflict, of war crimes and crimes against humanity; by the United Nations war-crimes tribunal; in the Hague. The most senior figure to be tried by the U.N. body, Blaskic was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in the ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslims in the Lasva Valley in 1993. His conviction reinforces allegations that Croatia was directly involved in the conflict on the side of Bosnian Croat militias.

ELECTED. FRIEDRICH MERZ, 44, as parliamentary leader of the German opposition Christian Democrats; in Berlin. Merz replaces Wolfgang Schaüble, who resigned amid the party financing scandal that also sank former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The election marks the party's first effort to put in place a generation of younger politicians untainted by the Kohl era.

60-Second Symposium
Win Now, Sleep Later: With their campaigns in high gear, the U.S. presidential candidates have little time for decent slumber. Those acquainted with sleep deprivation offer some advice on how to keep going:

Richard Gelula, executive director, National Sleep Foundation. "[The candidates] should be very careful about their diet. They're going to want to script themselves well and stick to subjects they're familiar with because they're likely to make errors and have difficulty maintaining a continuity of thought."

Susan Butcher, four-time Iditarod champion. "I would stay away from coffee or tea or chocolate so I would get no artificial highs or lows. When you first start depleting your body of sleep, it really complains. My favorite thing to do was scoop up a handful of snow and throw it in my face."

Antonio Mora, news anchor, Good Morning America. "It's summed up in one word: nap. That's what allowed me to be able to survive and to get up in the morning in time to do everything that I needed to do. Caffeine does work for me. I'm one of the last Tab drinkers in America."