Milestones

DISSOLVED. THAILAND'S PARLIAMENT, by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, at the request of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra; in order to call new elections; in Bangkok. While Thaksin's opponents have railed against his family's tax-free $1.9 billion windfall from the sale of Shin Corp., the telecom giant he founded, the Prime Minister still enjoys strong support among rural Thais. Elections for a new House of Representatives will take place on April 2.

NAMED. JOSEPH ZEN, 64, Catholic bishop of Hong Kong and outspoken democracy and human-rights activist; as cardinal, by Pope Benedict XVI; in Rome. Zen, whose role in mass pro-democracy marches helped to hasten the resignation of former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa last year, will be elevated on March 24 along with 14 other Catholic leaders. Zen's selection, which signals the Vatican's growing interest in the spiritual needs of China's millions of Catholics, was greeted by a Chinese government statement that "religious figures should not interfere with politics."

CAPTURED. YOUSSOUF FOFANA, 26, self-styled "brain of barbarians" and alleged leader of a Parisian gang accused of abducting and torturing to death Ilan Halimi, 23; in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Halimi, who was Jewish, was found Feb. 13 in the banlieue of Bagneux with extensive chemical burns, bruises and cuts; he died on the way to the hospital. More than a dozen people are in French custody and under questioning about their alleged roles in the crime, which a magistrate has deemed anti-Semitic. France has demanded Fofana's extradition.

SENTENCED. DAVID IRVING, 67, to three years in jail for denying the Holocaust; in Vienna, Austria. The controversial British historian was arrested last November on charges stemming from two speeches he gave in Austria in 1989, in which he called the gas chambers of Auschwitz a "fairytale" and claimed that Adolf Hitler had protected Europe's Jews. Irving, who was seized by Austrian police on his way to address a far-right student fraternity in Vienna, told the court that he had since changed his views and felt sorrow "for all the innocent people who died during the Second World War."

DIED. WILLIAM COWSILL, 58, teen heartthrob and lead singer of The Cowsills, the 1960s pop band that featured his mother and four siblings and inspired TV's The Partridge Family; after suffering from numerous ailments including emphysema; in Calgary, Canada. News of his death came on the day the family—famous for hits like Indian Lake and The Rain, The Park and Other Things—was holding a memorial service for his brother Barry, The Cowsill's bass player, who drowned in the flooding following Hurricane Katrina.

DIED. BRUCE HART, 68, original lyricist for PBS' Sesame Street who co-wrote the sweetly optimistic theme song to the Emmy Award-winning children's show ("Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?"); in New York City.

DIED. ARCHBISHOP PAUL MARCINKUS, 84, scrappy Chicago priest who rose to head of the Vatican Bank and retired after being connected to one of the biggest financial scandals in Italian history; in Sun City, Arizona. Following the looting of $1.3 billion from another Italian bank, in which the Vatican held a major share, Marcinkus faced charges as an accessory to the crime. Though the Holy See would not permit his arrest—and he and the Vatican maintained his innocence—it paid $250 million as a "goodwill settlement" of the case in 1984.

DIED. THEODORE DRAPER, 93, irascible historian known for his masterful plumbing of official documents, and talent at translating them into lively, accessible works that explored the abuse of power in U.S. politics; in Princeton, New Jersey. Among his best-known books: A Very Thin Line, a definitive study of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal.

Numbers
48% Proportion of South Korea's youth that would support North Korea if the U.S. attacked it without Seoul's consent, according to a recent poll
12% Proportion who said they would back the U.S.

50% Proportion of Americans who said they were able to finish at least half their daily tasks at work, down from 82% in 1994
16 hours Average time per week U.S. workers spent on computers last year, up from 9.5 hours a decade ago

72% Proportion of people in the Netherlands who use the Internet, the highest in a recent 17-country survey
5% Proportion in Pakistan who use the Internet, the lowest

700% Rise in E.U. imports of leather shoes from Vietnam in the year ending last March, prompting Brussels to propose antidumping duties
40,000 Number of jobs lost in the E.U.'s footwear sector since 2001