Milestones

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Covering the world each week would be impossible without the translators, drivers, facilitators and guides whose local knowledge and companionship are indispensable to foreign correspondents working in dangerous places. Omar Hashim Kamal was one such treasure. Omar joined TIME's Baghdad bureau as a translator last April and immediately became one of the magazine's most vital assets, a man beloved by those of us who worked with him as much for his relentless conviviality as for his lightly worn erudition. On the morning of March 24, Omar, 48, was shot four times by unidentified assailants as he drove to work. He died later in the company of his family and members of TIME's staff, leaving behind his wife and their 4-year-old son. His death underscored the dangers faced by Iraqi employees of news organizations. At least six others have been killed in the line of duty in the past month.

Omar's gentility was an antidote to such violence. A trained computer engineer, he graduated with honors from Teesside University in England and served in a radar unit of the Iraqi army for six years before becoming a successful businessman. In his second career, as a translator for TIME, Omar chased stories as fearlessly as any seasoned journalist, helping our reporters expose the crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime and chronicle the trials of the occupation. He was at his most delighted guiding the uninitiated through Baghdad's old city, shopping for books and insisting that we stop to sip coffee and talk.
—By Romesh Ratnesar

DIED. CHOSUKE IKARIYA, 72, Japanese actor, comedian and prime-time-TV icon; in Tokyo. In the 1970s, Japan's overworked masses tuned into Ikariya's five-man comedy ensemble, the Drifters, with nearly religious devotion. Every Saturday night, as much as half the population watched Hachiji Dayo! Zenin Shugo! (It's Eight O'Clock! Everyone Gather 'Round!). In a country that took itself very seriously, Ikariya's show had few sacred cows, routinely poking fun at everyone from bumbling businessmen to preening celebs. Ikariya played the consummate straight man: stolid, good-natured, never too proud to enjoy a good chuckle at his own expense. In the 1980s, as Japan grew richer and more worldly, Ikariya's homespun charms lost their grip on the public imagination. But Ikariya left Japan with an important lesson: dignity doesn't have to come at the expense of humor.
—By Ilya Garger/Tokyo

DIED. PRINCESS JULIANA, 94, soft-spoken "People's Queen" of the Netherlands for 32 years, who recognized the independence of Indonesia, ending 346 years of colonial rule; in Baarn. Shy and unceremonious—she liked to ride her bicycle in a simple flowered frock and was known to pour tea herself for guests—Juliana helped guide the Netherlands through the social upheavals of the 1960s.

DIED. JOHNNY BRISTOL, 65, Motown-record singer, writer and producer (Ain't No Mountain High Enough) who worked with Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson; in Howell, Michigan. Bristol had more than 100 songwriting credits to his name, including Twenty-Five Miles, and he recorded a number of smooth bedroom anthems of his own, such as the 1976 hit Do It To My Mind.

SENTENCED. MIJAILO MIJAILOVIC, 25, for the fatal stabbing in a shopping mall of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh; to life in prison; in Stockholm. After confessing in January, Mijailovic told police that voices in his head, among them Jesus Christ's, commanded him to kill the popular politician, but a court ruled he was mentally fit to be sentenced. Insisting that the death was not politically motivated, he testified at his trial two months ago: "I saw Anna Lindh, then the voices came."

WON. ZAHA HADID, 53, avant-garde architect legendary for designs so extreme they rarely get off the drawing board; the prestigious $100,000 Pritzker Architecture Prize; in West Hollywood, California. Since the opening of the striking, Hadid-designed Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati, Ohio, last May, the Baghdad-born architect has received a number of commissions around the world. After winning the prize, Hadid remarked: "I suppose some will see [this] as a sign that I have gone from being a difficult person to [being] part of the Establishment."