Milestones

INAUGURATED. LUIZ INACIO LULA DA SILVA, 57, as the first left-wing President of Brazil in 40 years; in Brasilia. A former factory worker and fiery trade-union leader, "Lula" swept to power in October with 61% of the vote. He has pledged to reduce corruption, improve education and reduce economic misery. (Brazil currently has a 12% inflation rate and debts that account for nearly 61% of its gdp.) Since October, the President-elect has tried to caution the public against having overly high expectations, but a recent poll found that 80% of Brazilians are hopeful his administration will be "good to excellent."

SENTENCED. LI LAN, 47, peasant farmer, to one year in prison for "slander"; in Lanshan, Hunan province, China. Li led a drive to impeach a local police official after her pregnant daughter was killed in a battle between two village clans. She collected more than 1,000 signatures and thumbprints from people saying the police had not done enough to investigate. She was arrested in 2001 shortly after TIME wrote about her efforts.

BARRED. AZMI BISHARA, 46,Arab-Israeli political philosopher and member of the Knesset, from standing for re-election; in Jerusalem. Israel's attorney general accused Bishara and his party of opposing Israel's existence and backing terror groups. Bishara denies promoting Palestinian violence and is threatening to call a boycott of the Jan. 28 general elections if the Supreme Court doesn't lift the ban.

ARRESTED. MERANG ABANTE, alleged middle-ranking leader of the Abu Sayyaf Muslim extremist group; in Zamboanga. The Philippine government had offered an $18,500 bounty for Abante's capture. Abu Sayyaf has conducted a spree of kidnappings for ransom and is suspected of being behind a recent series of bombings in the southern Philippines.

KILLED. MARTHA MYERS, 57, WILLIAM KOEHN, 60 and KATHLEEN GARIETY, 53, U.S. doctor and administrators, respectively, who ran a Baptist mission hospital in a tiny town about 160 kilometers south of Yemen's capital, Sana; by a lone gunman described by Yemeni officials as an "Islamic extremist"; in Jibla, Yemen. A revered figure in the town, Myers and her staff treated some 40,000 patients a year.

DIED. MARY WESLEY, 90, acclaimed English novelist who wrote portraits of upper-middle-class British life during and before World War II; in Totnes, England. Born Mary Aline Mynors Farmar, Wesley was 72 years old when she scored commercial success with her second novel, The Camomile Lawn, which was made into a television show. "Sixty should be the time to start something new," she said, "not put your feet up." In her last two decades, Wesley wrote 10 novels, three children's books and a memoir of her life in Devon.

DIED. KAZIMIERZ DEJMEK, 78, Polish stage director and political dissident; in Warsaw. Born in what was then the Polish city of Kovle (now in Ukraine), Dejmek staged plays that strongly criticized the Communist government. His most famous work was a 1968 production of Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady (Forefathers), which led to mass student protests after it was shut down by the government.

Numbers
418 kilometers per hour was the top speed achieved by Shanghai's "magnetic levitation" train during its maiden run between the city and Pudong airport last week

29 centuries in test-match cricket places Australian captain Steve Warre on a par with Sir Donald Bradman as the most successful batsman in his country's history

$200 million is how much U.S. moviegoers spent to see Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in the epic's first two weeks in theaters

$42 was the total box-office take for Psychedelic Cop, Hong Kong's biggest flop of 2002

320 million Chinese citizens smoke, equivalent to the total number of smokers in all developed countries

19 journalists were killed in the line of duty in 2002, the lowest yearly total since 1985

$60 million is the maximum in fines that Hughes Electronics and Boeing Satellite Systems face for allegedly selling missile technology to China in violation of U.S. export law

Omen
To keep soccer hooligans from storming the pitch, Romanian club Steaua Nicolae Balcescu has proposed a plan to surround its home field with a heated moat filled with crocodiles