DIED. KU SANG, 85, one of Korea's most revered poets, who was hounded by authoritarian regimes on both sides of the divided peninsula; in Seoul. Ku's family moved to the north from Seoul when he was a boy, but after the communist takeover, officials deemed his writing "ideologically flawed," and he was forced to flee southward in 1947. In the early '50s, he was imprisoned for eight months by the South Korean regime for criticizing its abuses of power.
DIED. BRENDA FASSIE, 39, South Africa's first globally renowned black pop star; from an asthma-induced heart attack; in Johannesburg. Called the Madonna of the Townships, the diminutive diva was known as much for her hot temper, lesbian affairs and drug abuse as for her music—a pulsating blend of hip-hop, reggae and African rhymes known as kwaito that emerged from South Africa's benighted shantytowns in the 1990s.
DIED. WILLIAM STUART BROWN, 52, former Australian diplomat and English teacher sentenced to 13 years in prison for obscene acts with minors; by hanging himself in a jail cell; in Karangasem, Bali. Brown, who was convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy, received an unusually long sentence amid a campaign by Bali to shed its image as a pedophile's paradise.
GUILTY. Plea entered by JAMES J. SMITH, 60, a retired agent of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, to charges of lying about an affair he had with a Chinese-American woman suspected of being a double agent; in Los Angeles. Smith, a married counterintelligence official who focused on China, will probably avoid prison time. In exchange, he admitted to the affair with Katrina Leung—a married businesswoman and bureau informant—that lasted nearly two decades.
ARRESTED. ISAMU KANEKO, 33, software developer charged with creating a widely distributed Japanese-language file-sharing program similar to Kazaa; in Kyoto. An outspoken opponent of Japan's Draconian copyright laws, Kaneko is the first creator of peer-to-peer programs arrested there. He is charged with writing Winny, an application that allowed computer users to anonymously swap content, such as movies and video games.
MARRIED. Australian MARY DONALDSON, 32; to Denmark's CROWN PRINCE FREDERIK, 35; in Copenhagen. The couple, who met in a bar during the 2002 Sydney Olympics, was wed in a lavish royal ceremony. The onetime real estate agent is now in line to be Queen.
ASSASSINATED. AKHMAD KADYROV, 52, Chechnya's controversial pro-Moscow President; from injuries sustained in a bombing; in Grozny. A volatile leader, he was once a fearsome jihadi mufti, or interpreter of Shari'a law, who fought for Chechnyan independence. But in 1999 Kadyrov switched sides, saying the movement was getting too religiously radical. The murdered President once said, "There have been so many attempts on my life that I have lost count."
AWARDED. To SOUTH AFRICA, the 2010 soccer World Cup final, the first nation on the African continent to host the world's most popular sporting event; in Zurich. Four years ago, the country narrowly—and controversially—lost out to Germany in bidding for the 2006 competition.