Milestones

APPOINTED. WONG KAR-WAI, 47, Hong Kong director known for his exquisitely stylish and sentimental films; as jury president for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival in May; in Cannes. Wong, who won the festival's Best Director award in 1997 for Happy Together, is the first Chinese filmmaker to head the high-powered panel that chooses the winners at the glitzy global film festival.

HALTED. The global trade in STURGEON CAVIAR; by the secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); in Geneva. CITES, which sets annual limits for caviar-exporting countries, has refused to announce quotas for 2006, effectively prohibiting the trade. Sturgeon populations in the Caspian sea region, which produces most of the world's caviar, are believed to have fallen 90% in the past 30 years. Two previous bans, in 2001 and 2002, failed to reverse the decline.

DIED. SHEIKH MAKTOUM BIN RASHID AL- MAKTOUM, 62, pragmatic, business-minded Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and emir of Dubai who oversaw his city-state's transformation from a minor trading post to a gleaming, modern metropolis; of a suspected heart attack; in Australia. Active in foreign affairs, he was also an avid thoroughbred fan. With brothers Mohammed—who succeeds him as emir—and Hamdan, he founded Godolphin, one of horse racing's most winning stables.

DIED. LOU RAWLS, 72, Grammy Award-winning American singer who performed doo-wop with high-school pal Sam Cooke before recording a long list of soulful tunes for broader audiences in genres from jazz to gospel; in Los Angeles. Making more than 50 albums over 40 years, the man whom Frank Sinatra said had the "silkiest chops in the singing game" topped the charts with R&B tunes (Love is a Hurtin' Thing), pre-rap monologues (Tobacco Road), and, during the height of the 1970s disco craze, the rich, sophisticated "Philadelphia sound," typified on his million-plus selling signature, You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine.

DIED. YAO WENYUAN, 74, the last surviving member of China's Gang of Four, the ring of radical Maoists—led by Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing—who directed the jailings, beatings and purges of legions of moderates and other perceived enemies during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s; in a location undisclosed by Chinese officials. Arrested a month after Mao's death, Yao spent 20 years in jail before being released in 1996.

DIED. URBANO LAZZARO, 81, Italian Communist resistance fighter credited with arresting Mussolini as the Fascist dictator tried to flee Italy in the final days of World War II; in Vercelli, Italy. As the Nazis retreated in April 1945, Lazzaro spotted Mussolini disguised as a German soldier in a convoy that he and fellow partisan fighters had stopped on a road near the village of Dongo. Mussolini was executed the next day.

DIED. SHIRO AZUMA, 93, Japanese World War II veteran who was one of the few ex-soldiers to admit to having participated in the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which as many as 300,000 Chinese were killed; in Kyoto. In his diary, published in 1987 as My Nanking Platoon, Azuma graphically described rapes and beheadings. "We were taught that we were a superior race," he told CNN in 1998. "But the Chinese were not. So we held nothing but contempt for them."

Numbers
63 Number of journalists killed last year, including 24 in Iraq and seven in the Philippines, for the highest global death toll since 1995

3300 Year that Japan's population will cease to exist if the current fertility rate—1.29 children per Japanese woman—holds steady

$103 billion Market capitalization of Korea's Samsung Electronics as of last week, making it one of only four Asian companies valued at more than $100 billion

9.1 million Number of digits in the longest prime number ever discovered, announced last week by U.S. researchers
9 years Time it took to complete the calculation, which required 700 computers

$150,000 Asking price for six-year-old We, a two-headed albino rat snake owned by the World Aquarium in St. Louis, Missouri. The aquarium, which bought the snake for $15,000 in 1999, offered it to bidders at ReptileAuction.com

Fakewatch
Borrowing brand names would seem to be as Chinese as green tea. But if you're a Chinese coffee chain, don't try to pass yourself off as Starbucks. Last week, in a case that should give hope to foreign brands in China, the U.S. java giant won a copyright infringement suit against Shanghai-based Xingbake for appropriating its name (Xingbake is Mandarin for Starbucks) and its signature green-and-white logo. Starbucks, which has 300 outlets in China, had registered the Chinese trademark to the name Xingbake in 1998. The impostor was ordered to pay $62,000 in damages, and must come up with a new name. Staryuan coffee, anyone?