AUGUST 14, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 6

Milestones
BY ARYN BAKER

RESIGNED. KIMITAKA KUZE, 71, after 27 days as Japan's top financial regulator, under allegations he accepted $5.3 million in perks and fees from a major bank, a construction company and a religious organization; in Tokyo. The most recent blow to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's already shaky government, Kuze's departure caused the yen to take a tumble.

SENTENCED TO DEATH. CHENG KEJIE, 66, former Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress; in Beijing. The most senior Chinese official ever to receive a death sentence for corruption, he was charged with accepting $4.9 million in bribes while heading the government of Guangxi province.

DIED. ABRAHAM HAIS, 81, American physicist and science historian; in Copenhagen. He moved to the U.S. at the invitation of J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, to help strengthen Princeton University's physics department. Hais' biography of Albert Einstein won the 1983 American Book Award.

DIED. WILLIAM MAXWELL, 91, former fiction editor of The New Yorker and award-winning author; in New York City. During his 40 years at the magazine, Maxwell edited such literary greats as J.D. Salinger, Vladimir Nabokov and John Updike, who said, "They don't make too many Bill Maxwells. A good editor is one who encourages a writer to write his best, and that was Bill."

DIED. RENE FAVAROLO, 77, acclaimed Argentine doctor and pioneer in heart-bypass surgery; in Buenos Aires. Favarolo became a public figure in 1967 after successfully using a leg vein to bypass a seriously congested heart and save the life of a patient. The technique had been attempted before, but Favarolo's operation was the first to be written up in a scientific journal, paving the way for others.

DIED. ALI SARDAR JAFRI, 86, regarded as India's greatest Urdu nationalist poet; in Bombay. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, on his fence-mending bus trip to Lahore last year, presented former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with a book of Jafri's poetry. Said Vajpayee: "Throughout his life, Jafri used his intellectual abilities to campaign against imperialism, oppression and class discrimination."

MARRIED. GORDON BROWN, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 49, and SARAH MACAULAY, 36, director of a public relations firm; in Edinburgh. The couple began dating in 1994 when Macaulay's firm organized Labour Party events. Many despaired of Brown's ever finding a mate, convinced that he was already wedded to ambition and politics.