Milestones

• Share

PERMANENT CEASE-FIRE DECLARED. By Basque terrorist group ETA; in a video communiqué sent to a Basque TV station in Spain. Founded in 1959, ETA has killed more than 850 people and kidnapped or injured hundreds of others in its independence campaign for the Basque region of Spain. After the March 2004 Islamic-terrorist attack in Madrid, support for its violent methods ebbed away. ETA previously announced an "indefinite" cease-fire in 1998, but resumed its attacks after peace talks broke down.

FREED. NORMAN KEMBER, 74, British peace activist; along with Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32; after being held by Iraqi kidnappers for 118 days; in Baghdad. The Christian peace campaigners were rescued in an operation led by Britain's SAS, but their captors—who had threatened to kill them unless all Iraqi prisoners were released—had already fled. Fears for the group grew when a fourth hostage, American Tom Fox, 54, was found murdered in early March.

RESIGNED. SONIA GANDHI, 59, leader of India's Congress Party; from her seat in Parliament, following allegations that she violated conflict-of-interest rules by holding a position with a government advisory board; in New Delhi. The move, which quickly neutralized criticism from her opponents, cost Gandhi little power: she remains head of her party and its ruling coalition. At a press conference announcing her decision, Gandhi said stepping down from her elected post was "the right thing to do."

EXTRADITION AGREED. CHARLES TAYLOR, 58, former Liberian President; from Nigeria. Taylor was forced into exile in 2003 as part of a deal to end Liberia's civil war but is said to have breached the terms by meddling in Liberian politics. A war-crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone accuses him of fueling a civil war in that country. Liberia's President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has said she will send Taylor to Sierra Leone.

PLEADED GUILTY. SUN WOO LEE, YEONGHO KANG and YOUNG WOO LEE, executives at South Korea's Samsung Electronics; to their role in fixing prices for DRAM electronic chips; in San Francisco. The U.S. Justice Department charges that from 1999 to 2002 Samsung and three other companies colluded to set artificially high prices for the chips, used in computers and mobile phones. The three were sentenced to prison terms of up to eight months and will pay fines of $250,000 each. The ongoing investigation has resulted in more than $731 million in criminal fines so far.

DIED. BERNARD LACOSTE, 74, who presided for 40 years over the Lacoste apparel company and made its crocodile logo a much-imitated global brand; in Paris. After taking over the sportswear maker—founded by his tennis-champ father René Lacoste, who created the signature polo shirt in the 1920s—the younger Lacoste licensed its logo to manufacturers across the globe and increased sales volume from 300,000 items per year in the mid-1960s to 50 million last year.

DIED. JADE SNOW WONG, 84, author and ceramicist whose 1950 memoir of her immigrant childhood, Fifth Chinese Daughter, painted a vivid picture of San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 20th century; in San Francisco. Wong wrote the book in her mid-20s after abandoning plans to become a social worker, opting instead to pursue her talent for pottery, which she later described as a means of making herself "free of Chinese culture's relentless subjugation of women."

DIED. ADDWAITYA, around 250 years old, giant tortoise thought to have been the world's oldest living creature; in a zoo in Calcutta. One of four Aldabra tortoises brought from the Seychelles to India by British sailors in the 1700s, Addwaitya (Bengali for "the one and only") first belonged to Robert Clive, whose East India Company helped establish colonial rule in India. Clive died in 1774, but Addwaitya stayed on in the garden of his estate, only moving to the zoo 100 years later.

Numbers
5% Tax proposed by China's Ministry of Finance on disposable wooden chopsticks, under a timber-conservation law that takes effect April 1
25 million Number of full-grown poplar and birch trees felled in China in order to produce 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year

33% Proportion of French citizens who described themselves as "a bit racist" or "somewhat racist" in a recent poll
32% Proportion of French people who said they would notify police if they witnessed racist behavior, down from 50% the year before

30 million Bags lost by airlines globally in 2005—a record high—of which 250,000 were never returned to their owners
$2.5 billion Amount airlines spent returning lost luggage to owners last year, up from $1.6 billion in 2004

2.1 million Number of people in urgent need of food and water aid in Somalia, which has been afflicted by a severe drought since last year