Milestones

DIED. ROBERT STACK, 84, actor; in Los Angeles. Though best remembered as TV's Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, Stack was most impressive in seminal films by Ernst Lubitsch (To Be or Not to Be), Budd Boetticher (The Bullfighter and the Lady) and William Wellman (The High and the Mighty). His rugged looks and sermonizing voice made him a natural lead, but beneath this facade lay an edgy undertone of obsessiveness. Stack later appeared in Airplane! and, as host of Unsolved Mysteries, brought his sermon-on-the-mount voice to semi-plausible stories of missing persons and unquiet ghosts.

DIED. MARK MCCORMACK, 72, founder of the International Management Group and the world's most powerful sports agent; in New York City. McCormack invented the concept of sports marketing and his Cleveland-based company has represented Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and Jackie Stewart. Once called the most powerful man in sport, McCormack also authored several management books, including the best seller What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School.

DIED. DAVE DEBUSSCHERE, 62, one of the early titans of the National Basketball Association, the youngest coach in its history and last commissioner of the defunct American Basketball Association; in New York City. DeBusschere, who was more than two meters tall, started his career with the Detroit Pistons in 1962 and was made player-coach for the team two years later, at the age of 24. In 1968, DeBusschere was traded to the New York Knicks, with whom he won the NBA championships in 1970 and 1973. As the Knicks' executive vice president, DeBusschere drafted the legendary Patrick Ewing in 1985. NBA Commissioner David Stern said, "Our game has lost an icon."

DIED. NOEL REDDING, 57, bass guitarist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience from 1966 to 1969, of natural causes; in Clonakilty, Ireland. Redding, along with drummer Mitch Mitchell, accompanied Jimi Hendrix on some of the most radical songs of the 1960s, including Purple Haze and Foxey Lady. In 1974, Redding signed away future royalties for a one-off payment, losing out as Hendrix records continued to sell well over the next quarter-century. At the time of his death, Redding's lawyers were working on an action against the company that oversees the Hendrix estate to recover $5 million in lost royalties.

RESIGNED. SAEB ERAKAT, 48, Palestinian negotiation minister, from the Palestinian Cabinet. Erakat, who has led the Palestinian side in negotiations with Israel for almost a decade, tendered his resignation to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas after being left off a negotiating team scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss the U.S.-backed road map to peace.

APPOINTED. BARONESS AMOS, 49, as Britain's International Development Secretary; in London. Amos, the first black woman to serve in the British Cabinet, will replace Clare Short, who resigned after opposing Prime Minister Tony Blair's Iraq policies.

IDENTIFIED. HIPPOCAMPUS DENISE, the world's smallest sea horse; in the Flores Sea off Indonesia. Just 16 millimeters in length, the tiny fish was earlier mistaken for a youngling of other types of sea horse. The species is named for photographer Denise Tackett, whose images first alerted scientists to the discovery.

Numbers

3 million people, at least, have starved, been killed or died of disease since 1998 in the Congo's ongoing civil war

$580 million is the value of missiles exported by North Korea to Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates in 2001, claim U.S. military sources

81 miners were killed in an explosion at a coal mine in the Chinese province of Anhui

75 people died in two suicide bomb attacks in Chechnya

14 Cuban diplomats were expelled from the U.S. for "unacceptable activities," including spying

357 out of 6,809 "living" languages are each spoken by fewer than 50 people

$2 million is how much nbc wants advertisers to pay for a 30-second spot during the finale of Friends in May 2004

15,000 is how many corpses are believed to be buried in a mass grave recently discovered southwest of Baghdad

Omen

The Mainichi Shimbun reports that a senior member of Japan's Pana-wave Laboratory cult is now suggesting the world will end on about May 22—not last Thursday, as the group had originally asserted

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