OCTOBER 11, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 14

Milestones
By HANNAH BEECH

RE-ELECTED. HOSNI MUBARAK, 71, Egyptian President praised for lifting his nation out of its economic doldrums, to a fourth six-year term; in Cairo. Opposition groups are clamoring for a lifting of Egypt's 18-year-old state of emergency--in place since the assassination of Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat. The veteran leader, who was the only candidate, has promised a "major change" in the new government, but he did not elaborate as to whether reforms would include direct, multiparty elections or the freedom to form political groupings.

CLOSED. TIGER STADIUM, 87, Detroit's beloved double-deck ballpark, which Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Al Kaline called home and where Lou Gehrig in 1939 ended his streak of 2,130 consecutive games. With the closure of the beer-soaked, outdoor stadium, only two historic baseball shrines remain: Boston's Fenway Park and Chicago's Wrigley Field.

DIED. GUSTAVO LEIGH GUZMÀN, 79, Chilean ex-air-force commander who ordered his troops to bomb Salvador Allende's presidential palace in 1973, ushering in General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte's repressive 17-year rule; in Santiago. Although Leigh was considered the toughest member of the four-man junta, he parted ways with Pinochet in 1978, when he criticized the dictator for dallying on returning the nation to democracy and civilian rule.

DIED. DMITRY LIKHACHYOV, 92, crusading Russian cultural historian who was dubbed the nation's conscience for defending its rich literary heritage; in St. Petersburg. Likhachyov, who spent four years in the Soviet gulag, maintained that all art, even that from czarist Russia, should be protected as part of the nation's cultural history. His defense of such classic writers as Alexander Pushkin helped protect their texts from being mutilated by Soviet-era counterfeiters who wanted to imbue their works with socialist messages.

SENTENCED TO DEATH. MASATO YOKOYAMA, 35, member of Japan's doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, for spraying nerve gas in a 1995 Tokyo subway attack that killed 12 people; at the Tokyo District Court. Yokoyama's verdict was the first death sentence handed out in the case. Fellow cult member Ikuo Hayashi received life imprisonment, while alleged mastermind Shoko Asahara is still on trial. The disgraced cult attempted to enhance its battered image last week by closing its branches, halting recruiting and changing its name--but stopped short of apologizing for the lethal gas attack.

AWARDED. To GUNTER GRASS, 71, audacious German novelist whose portrayal of the Holocaust era forced the nation to begin facing up to its wartime past, the Nobel Prize for Literature, by the Swedish Academy; in Stockholm. The judges credited Grass's first book, The Tin Drum, with revitalizing German literature "after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." He is the first German author to receive the award since Heinrich Böll in 1972.