Milestones

RELEASED. TIN OO, 77, vice chairman of Burma's opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) and a key adviser to Noble Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi; from Kale Prison in Sagaing, northwest Burma. A Defense Minister in the mid-1970s before falling out with former dictator Ne Win, Tin Oo helped form the NLD in 1988. He was detained along with Suu Kyi and hundreds of other pro-democracy supporters after their convoy was attacked by government-backed thugs last May. Like Suu Kyi, he is now under house arrest in Rangoon.

DIED. MARCO PANTANI, 34, flamboyant winner of the 1998 Tour de France, whose racing career collapsed the following year when he failed to pass a test for performance-enhancing drugs; of an apparent drug overdose; in Rimini, Italy. The Italian, who last year checked himself into a clinic in Teolo that specializes in treating depression and drug addiction, wasn't popular with many of his fellow racers but was beloved by fans. Though he liked to refer to himself as il Pirata (the Pirate)—he wore a single gold earring and had a shaved head—fans affectionately called him Dumbo or Elefantino, for his big ears. A note found in his hotel room near his sprawled, half-naked corpse read, "No one has been able to understand me ... I've ended up alone."

DIED. JAN MINER, 86, versatile stage and film actress best known for her role as Madge the Manicurist in Palmolive commercials from 1966 to 1992; in Bethel, Connecticut. In the ads, the wise-cracking Madge would praise the gentleness of the dish detergent to a customer—who would invariably react in shock when informed that her hands were soaking in it.

DIED. JOSÉ LÓPEZ PORTILLO, 83, who as President of Mexico from 1976 to 1982 presided over a free-spending, corruption-ridden oil boom that took the nation to the brink of economic collapse, setting off a global debt crisis; in Mexico City. An affable personality who spent early mornings practicing javelin throws and late evenings poring over literature, he was Mexico's Secretary of Finance before being elected President for a term so unpopular that he had to move to Europe for a few years after he left office.

APPOINTED. DEL HARRIS, 66, former Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets coach; to lead China's national basketball team, the first foreigner chosen to do so; in Beijing. The Chinese squad, led by the U.S.-based National Basketball Association's All-Star Yao Ming, is expected to be a medal contender at this summer's Athens Olympics.

CONVICTED. BISHOP THOMAS O'BRIEN, 68, Roman Catholic bishop and former head of Arizona's largest diocese; of fleeing the scene of a fatal car accident after running into a drunken jaywalker; in Phoenix. O'Brien, whose windshield was cracked in the crash, said he thought he had hit a dog or a rock. The accident occurred two weeks after he signed an immunity agreement admitting he had allowed clergy accused of sexual abuse to continue working with minors.

15 years ago in TIME

He hosts a reality-TV show now, putting aspiring moguls through their paces on NBC's The Apprentice. When TIME put him on the cover in 1989, DONALD TRUMP was still trying to define his own reality:

"At 6 ft. 2 in., real estate tycoon Donald J. (for John) Trump does not really loom colossus-high above the horizon of New York and New Jersey. He has created no great work of art or ideas, and even as a maker or possessor of money he does not rank among the top ten, or even 50. Yet at 42 he has seized a large fistful of that contemporary coin known as celebrity. There has been artfully hyped talk about his having political ambitions, worrying about nuclear proliferation, even someday running for President. No matter how farfetched that may be, something about his combination of blue-eyed swagger and success has caught the public fancy and made him in many ways a symbol of an acquisitive and mercenary age. Gossip columnist Liz Smith summed it up when she wrote, 'Even if Trump is the truest, most flamboyant child of Mammon yet produced at this waning moment of the 20th century, I like his style.'" —TIME, Jan. 16, 1989

Numbers

55%-43% Margin by which Democratic front runner John Kerry leads U.S. President George W. Bush in the latest Gallup poll

53%-43% Margin by which Bill Clinton trailed the first President Bush at a comparable point in the 1992 primary race

96 Number of Indonesian domestic helpers who fell to their deaths from high-rises in Singapore between 1999 and mid-2003. The city-state's government has begun a program to teach maids how to clean windows and hang laundry safely

7% Estimated growth of Japan's economy (in annualized terms) during the fourth quarter of 2003, the highest since 1990

100 million Estimated mass in suns of a black hole that tore apart a star. U.S. and European scientists deduced the event by analyzing X rays from a distant galaxy

80% Portion of patients at Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Children who leave with infections they didn't have when they arrived

1 Ranking of the U.S. military command center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, on a list of the world's safest places in the British science magazine Focus. Other top 10 locations: Fort Knox; Air Force One; and a vault in a mountain near Salt Lake City, where the Mormon church stores genealogical records