JUNE 19, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 24

Milestones
BY PENNY CAMPBELL

NAMED. SJAHRIL SABIRIN, Indonesia's central bank governor, as a suspect in the Bank Bali scandal; in Jakarta. The affair involves the transfer of $80 million from Bank Bali to an account controlled by a senior official of the then-ruling Golkar party. The Attorney General's office has said that Sabirin failed to apply the principle of prudential banking in handling the transfer. Sabirin has resisted pressure by President Abdurrahman Wahid to resign pending the outcome of the investigation.

DIED. FREDERIC DARD, 78, prolific French pulp-fiction writer famed for his verbal flourishes; in Switzerland. His best-known novels were comedy thrillers written in a characteristic pun-laden style, featuring police commissioner San Antonio--also Dard's pen name. In a 60-year career he wrote 270 books, which sold more than 220 million copies.

DIED. LEONARD BASKIN, 77, award-winning American sculptor who helped create Washington's Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the University of Michigan Holocaust Memorial; in Northampton, Massachussets. A teacher and graphic artist as well as a sculptor, Baskin was known for his stark and somber monuments emphasizing the themes of mortality and human suffering.

DIED. AZIZ SIDDIQUI, 66, veteran Pakistani journalist and human-rights activist who rose to prominence as a leading critic of military dictator General Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s; in Lahore. Formerly editor of the Frontier Post and the Pakistan Times, he became joint director of the country's Human Rights Commission in 1990.

DIED. HOUSHANG GOLSHIRI, 57, one of Iran's best-known dissident authors, who fought for greater freedom of expression; in Tehran. Equally critical of the Shah and the Islamic hardliners who replaced him after the 1979 revolution, Golshiri was persecuted by both regimes. His novels were banned for their sexual and political content, though he continued to publish abroad and remained one of Iran's leading literary critics.

DIED. JEANNE HERSCH, 89, leading Swiss philosopher and follower of the German existentialist Karl Jaspers, whose work grappled with the nature of freedom; in Geneva. Her published works include The Right to be a Man, in which she analyzed the basis for human rights. A professor at the University of Geneva from 1962 to '77, she was also unesco's first director of philosophy.

ARRESTED. HUANG QI, 36, editor of a Chinese website that posted articles commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre; in Chengdu. According to human rights groups, Huang is accused of subverting state power and faces up to 10 years in jail. His arrest is a sign of Beijing's nervousness about the potential use of the Internet for the dissemination of information it considers subversive.

Time Capsule
Fourteen years after the worst radiation accident in history, President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine announced last week that the remaining working reactor of the CHERNOBYL nuclear power station will be closed by Dec. 15.
"The first warning came in Sweden... Technicians ... noticed disturbing signals blipping across their computer screens. Those signals revealed abnormally high levels of radiation, a sure sign of serious trouble... Somewhere, some mysterious source was spewing dangerous radiation into the atmosphere... For six hours as officials throughout Scandinavia insisted that something was dangerously amiss, the Soviets steadfastly maintained that nothing untoward had happened. Finally ... a newscaster on Moscow television read a statement... 'An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl power station... ' Thus began by far the gravest crisis in the troubled history of commercial atomic power."
--Time, May 12, 1986