OCTOBER 4, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 13

Milestones
By STEPHEN SHORT

APPOINTED. HU JINTAO, 56, loyal protege of Chinese President Jiang Zemin, as vice-chairman of the country's Central Military Commission; in Beijing. A hydraulic engineer with no military background, Hu was prominent in the quashing of anti-Beijing demonstrations in Tibet in 1989. Despite being a relative unknown, he is expected by many analysts to succeed Jiang as China's top leader when the President's term ends in 2002.

DIED. GEORGE C. SCOTT, 71, commanding and prickly actor, of an aortic aneurysm; in Ventura County, California. Scott is best known for his iconic title role in Patton, for which he won--but refused to accept--a 1970 Oscar as best actor. Other standouts in a prolific career include a definitive Willy Loman in a Broadway production of Death of a Salesman and the trigger-happy General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.

DIED. RAISA GORBACHEV, 67, glamorous wife of former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev, of leukemia; in Munster, Germany. Born into a railworker's family, she studied philosophy at Moscow University before marrying the future leader of the U.S.S.R. in 1954. As her husband's star rose, she eschewed the traditional reticence of Soviet leaders' wives and stepped forward as a formidable partner. Russians who resented her extravagance still followed her every utterance like soap-opera addicts.

DIED. MOMCILO DJUJIC, 30, popular and determined foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, during a militia ambush; in Dili, capital of East Timor. Thoenes joined the "pink paper" in 1996 as a correspondent in Kazakhstan, following stints in Russia with the Moscow Times and U.S. News and World Report. In 1997 he moved to Indonesia, where he would later report on the downfall of President Suharto. In a tribute, his editors wrote: "Among colleagues ... there is a sense of devastation and disbelief that he is gone."

DIED. RI JONG OK, 83, veteran revolutionary who helped North Korea's late Great Leader Kim Il Sung build a communist state after the Korean Peninsula was divided in 1945; from undisclosed causes. A senior member of North Korea's Communist Party, he served as Premier for six years and Vice President from 1984 to 1998. Analysts believe his influence had been on the wane since 1994, when Kim Jong Il succeeded his father.

ACQUITTED. GIULIO ANDREOTTI, 80, seven-time Italian Prime Minister, of conspiracy to murder; in Peruga, Italy. Andreotti was cleared of ordering the 1979 killing of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who produced a scandal sheet based on information from intelligence contacts. Prosecutors charged that the Mafia organized the hit as a favor to Andreotti just as Pecorelli was about to publish information damaging to him.