By HANNAH BEECH

ARRESTED. VITO VITALE, 39, alleged Italian mob boss, on charges of Mafia association; near Palermo. Reputed to be a contract killer in the Sicilian Mafia, Vitale is purportedly second-in-command to legendary mobster Bernardo Provenzano. But unlike the shadowy Provenzano, who has eluded the police for some 30 years, Vitale was captured after his mistress unwittingly led investigators to him. The arrest capped an intensive six-year national campaign against organized crime, which has netted other high-profile mob bosses, including Salvatore Riina, head of the bloody Mafia clan that inspired the Godfather movies.

HONORED. HIKARU NAKAMURA, 10, as the youngest American chess master ever; by the U.S. Chess Federation's rating supplement. Hikaru's No. 1 title must have incited some sibling rivalry: the boy's older brother, Asuka, 12, was reigning child champion for six years until his kid brother's successful gambit upstaged him.

CHARGED. JOSEPH SAIDU MOMOH, former President of Sierra Leone, with treason; by a magistrate in the capital city of Freetown. Momoh is accused of advising a junta that overthrew the civilian government and installed a military regime last May. The West African rebels were ousted after ruling for nine months, and the disgraced ex-President tried unsuccessfully to escape capture by disguising himself as a woman.

CHARGED. CARLOS ANDRES PEREZ, 74, impeached Venezuelan President whose second term unraveled in 1993 after he was implicated in a $17 million misappropriation case, with illegal enrichment; in Caracas. Although Perez called the charges a political plot to derail his campaign for a Senate seat in December, judge Edith Cabello de Requena maintained that the amount of money the discredited politician and his girlfriend had spirited away in U.S. bank accounts far exceeded their reported income.

DIED. ALEX RITCHIE, 52, intrepid English adventurer who averted a mid-air disaster in 1997 by clambering atop the cabin of a hot-air balloon and fumbling around in the dark and cold to jettison its fuel tanks, of septicemia, following injuries sustained during a Morocco parachuting accident three months ago; in London. The daredevil engineer's bravery saved the life of British mogul Richard Branson, who was part of the foiled attempt to circumnavigate the globe by balloon.

DIED. NGUYEN CO THACH, 75, erudite Vietnamese diplomat, who tried to coax his country out of its isolationist shell in the 1980s; in Hanoi. Thach was purged from his post as Foreign Minister and ousted from the Politburo in 1991, reportedly to appease China--which accused Vietnam of favoring the West. But his legacy of rapprochement was validated in 1995 when Hanoi normalized relations with Washington.

DIED. IAN MACGREGOR, 85, uncapitulating industrialist and chairman of the British National Coal Board who contentiously resolved a bitter 1980s miner's strike by breaking the back of the National Union of Mineworkers; in Somerset, England. Employing union-busting techniques that he had practiced while working in the Wyoming coalfields, MacGregor encouraged miners to cross the picket lines and return to work. Although the native Scotsman earned the favor of Thatcherites, who aimed to free nationalized industries from union hands, working-class Britons had little but contempt for his job-slashing tactics.