Milestones

COLLAPSED. APOSTLE NO. 4, a 45-m-tall rock formation that, along with eight adjacent outcrops, was part of the 12 Apostles, one of Australia's most famous natural landmarks; after thousands of years of erosion; off the southern coast of Victoria. In reality, there were never more than nine limestone stacks; they were given their current title in 1922 in hopes of drawing more tourists than they had attracted under their previous name, the Sow and Piglets. According to one witness, the rock "shuddered, then fractured and collapsed straight down on itself" before falling into the Indian Ocean.

EVICTED. 6,500 HMONG REFUGEES, as part of a Thai government plan to force them to return to their native Laos; from their villages in Phetchabun province in Thailand. The Hmong, more than 300,000 of whom fled neighboring Laos when the Communists came to power in 1975, are seen as illegal immigrants by Thai authorities, who suspect them of drug trafficking. The Hmong refugees spent 36 hours without shelter, leading to the death of a 2-month-old girl; doctors say they have been instructed to stop providing medical care to the Hmong, and vendors claim to have been told to refuse to sell them food.

ARRESTED. CARY MA, 41, CEO of Moulin Global Eyecare, the world's third largest eyewear producer; on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud; in Hong Kong. Ma transformed the small eyeglasses shop founded by his father—one of four others also arrested—into a global empire that became a model for ambitious Chinese businesses trying to break into the U.S. and Europe. Creditors forced the company into liquidation last month following the unexpected resignation in April of its auditors over financial irregularities and the suspension of trading of its shares. The five have since been released on bail.

DIED. ERNEST LEHMAN, 89, protean Hollywood screenwriter; in Los Angeles. Though he specialized in adapting popular stage works such as West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Hello, Dolly! for movies in the 1960s, he achieved his greatest glory a decade earlier with the Burt Lancaster-Tony Curtis film Sweet Smell of Success and Alfred Hitchcock's smartest, snazziest caper, North by Northwest. Lehman never won an Oscar, but he became the first screenwriter ever awarded an honorary one.

DIED. JAMES STOCKDALE, 81, candid, self-deprecating U.S. Navy Vice Admiral who earned the Medal of Honor for his rare courage in Vietnam, and who later ran for Vice President beside Ross Perot; in Coronado, California. After leading the first U.S. air strike into North Vietnam in 1964, he was captured and imprisoned the following year at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," where he was brutalized repeatedly over seven-and-a-half years and held in solitary confinement for four. Stockdale inspired fellow POWs, including the future Senator John McCain, with his motto "Unity Over Self" and his remarkable defiance—he disfigured his face to ensure he would not be used in a propaganda film—which according to his citation led the North Vietnamese to reduce their use of torture, deeming it ineffective.

DIED. CHRISTOPHER FRY, 97, wry British playwright of the 1940s and '50s who, along with T.S. Eliot, was responsible for a brief, mid-century revival of verse drama; in Chichester, England. His plays—most notably The Lady's Not for Burning, a comedy about a suspected witch and an ex-soldier—created roles for the era's greatest actors, including Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Richard Burton. Fry reached his biggest audience, however, as a script doctor who did a rewrite for the epic 1959 film Ben-Hur.

Numbers
$50 BILLION Amount the leaders of the G-8 nations have pledged in annual aid to Africa per year, double the previous annual total
$3 BILLION Amount the G-8 leaders have pledged to help build an independent Palestinian state

$100 BILLION Estimated trade surplus China could generate with the U.S. in 2005, according to Chinese state press

3,192 Number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2004, according to the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center
28,433 Number of people wounded, kidnapped or killed as a result of attacks last year

37,000 KM/H Speed of the collision between NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft and the comet Tempel 1—the climax of a six-month, $333 million mission to study the comet's composition
$300 MILLION Damages sought by Russian astrologer Marina Bai, who claimed that the celestial crash "ruins the natural balance of forces in the universe" and skews her horoscope predictions