By HANNAH BEECH

RETIRED. JACKIE JOYNER-KERSEE, 36, formidable athlete; after a special meet held in her honor; near her hometown of East St. Louis, Missouri. During her illustrious track-and-field career, Joyner-Kersee won three Olympic golds and set several heptathlon world records.

PAROLED. JOSE ROBERTO MORENO CANJURA, LUIS COLINDRES ALEMAN and DANIEL CANALES, El Salvadoran former national guardsmen convicted of the 1980 murders of three American nuns and a lay worker, after serving 17 years of their 30-year sentences; from prisons in El Salvador. The three were part of a military death squad that kidnapped, raped and killed the four Americans reportedly because of their empathy toward the country's leftist guerrillas. The trio became eligible for parole under a new law that aims to thin overcrowded jails.

AILING. KING HUSSEIN, 62, charismatic monarch of Jordan, from lymphoma; at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Hussein, who is the Middle East's longest-serving leader, survived an earlier battle against cancer several years ago.

AWARDED. BOB PERRY, 46, terrifically terrible writer, top prize of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, for the worst opening sentence to an imaginary work of fiction; in San Francisco. Perry's entry begins: "The corpse exuded the irresistible aroma of a piquant, ancho chili glaze enticingly enhanced with a hint of fresh cilantro as it lay before him, coyly garnished by a garland of variegated radicchio and caramelized onions." The contest, entering its 17th year, honors the 19th-century author Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who coined the classic opening: "It was a dark and stormy night."

ELECTED. JAMIL MAHUAD, 48, reformist mayor of Quito, as President of Ecuador, a post he will assume on Aug. 10. The Harvard-educated politician just squeaked past banana tycoon Alvaro Noboa, who challenged the result. But observers from the Organization of American States deemed the polls fair.

CHARGED. THOMAS ROBERT GARFIELD GILMOUR, 23, Irish salesman, with the murders of three Catholic brothers in a fire-bomb attack two weeks ago, in a tragic flare-up of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland; in Belfast. Gilmour, who has no criminal record, denied any complicity in the deaths of the Quinn boys, which reportedly occurred after the escalation of a standoff between Protestant marchers and police who were blocking a planned parade through an overwhelmingly Catholic neighborhood.

DEATH ANNOUNCED. Of MIROSLAV HOLUB, 74, insightful Czech poet, who combined a scientist's eye for detail with a humanist's feel for emotion; on July 14 in Prague. An immunologist by profession, Holub criticized poets who produced esoteric verse: "Because reality is so complicated, I think that in poetry clarity of expression is essential."

DIED. ALAN SHEPARD, 74, steely U.S. astronaut, who in 1961 launched himself into history as the first American in space; near Monterey, California. The ex-naval pilot followed up his landmark suborbital flight with a lunar jaunt 10 years later, becoming the fifth person to walk on the moon--and the first to drive golf balls (with a makeshift club) across its landscape.