Milestones

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FILED FOR DIVORCE. Whitney Houston, 43, pop diva; from her husband, former New Edition singer Bobby Brown, 37; after a rocky 14-year marriage during which Brown did numerous stints in jail and Houston twice entered rehab for substance abuse; in Orange County, California. The couple, whose tumultuous relationship was on display in last year's reality-TV show Being Bobby Brown, have a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, 13.

UNDER INVESTIGATION. Mohammad Asif, 23, and Shoaib Akhtar, 31, star bowlers for Pakistan's scandal-plagued national cricket team; after testing positive for the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone during India's Champions Trophy tournament; in Lahore. Both players, who await results from a second test and are set to face a doping tribunal next week, have denied knowingly taking any illegal substance. If the results are confirmed, it will mark the first time that international cricket players have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

DIED. Thet Win Aung, 34, Burmese activist sentenced to 59 years in jail in 1998 for organizing protests demanding education reform; of unconfirmed causes; in Mandalay. While officials for Burma's military dictatorship said that Thet Win Aung had died of heart failure, human-rights groups alleged that his health had deteriorated as a result of torture and neglect, and demanded an independent investigation into his death.

DIED. Jeff Getty, 49, AIDS patient and activist who agitated for experimental medical treatments; of cardiac arrest; in Joshua Tree, California. In 1995, after a two-year fight for approval, Getty received bone-marrow cells from a baboon—the first animal-to-human bone-marrow transplant—to boost his immune system. Though his body rejected the cells and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration later banned such transplants, he used his visibility to fight on, successfully getting more doctors to perform organ transplants on AIDS patients, whose prognoses were often deemed too bleak to justify such surgery.

DIED. Wang Guangmei, 85, elegant, outspoken former First Lady of China who was jailed during the Cultural Revolution; in Beijing. After a falling-out with Mao Zedong, Wang's husband, President Liu Shaoqi, was labeled the country's "No. 1 Capitalist Roader," while the sophisticated, well-educated Wang was accused of being an American spy by the jealous Jiang Qing, Mao's wife. Publicly humiliated by the Red Guards and imprisoned in 1967, Wang was freed in 1979 to find herself a widow—Liu had died in prison 10 years earlier. Rehabilitated in 1980, she remained a faithful Party member and later founded a charity to aid impoverished mothers. "The country led by our Communist Party," she said of her work, "cannot let families be this destitute."

DIED. Marc Hodler, 87, courtly Swiss lawyer who rocked the insular International Olympic Committee in 1998 by telling reporters that I.O.C. members had solicited bribes from cities vying to host the Games—prompting sweeping reforms in the organization; in Bern, Switzerland. The I.O.C. elder statesman said he was motivated by his concern for the "honor of the Olympics."

Numbers
2,726 days Amount of time it took the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index to rise from 11,000 points to 12,000, a new record it hit last week
24 days Amount of time it took the index to go from 10,000 to 11,000 during the Internet bubble in March 1999

8,844 m Estimated height of Mt. Everest, the world's tallest mountain
3.7 m Estimated distance Everest has shrunk since 1975, according to Chinese geologists who said last week that the Himalayas have "peaked" and will perhaps grow smaller due to the effects of gravity on Asia's continental crust

118 Atomic number of the newest element on the periodic table. The number refers to the quantity of protons in the nucleus of the element—the heaviest ever detected
.001 sec. Length of time that the element existed, according to Russian and U.S. scientists who said last week that they had created it in a particle accelerator

7.6 cm Size of two tears casino mogul Steve Wynn made in Pablo Picasso's Le Rêve when he accidentally elbowed the canvas
$139 million Price for which Wynn had agreed to sell Le Rêve to a Connecticut collector, which would have been the most ever paid for a painting. Wynn now plans to keep the piece after it is restored