Milestones

HANNAH BEECHAILING. JEAN-PIERRE CHEVENEMENT,59, outspoken French Interior Minister and veteran left-wing politician, after an allergic reaction to a pre-surgery anesthesia put him in a coma for eight days; at a Paris military hospital. His condition has sparked a fiery debate over how doctors could let such an accident occur. In the meantime, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin appointed Jean-Jack Queyranne as interim Interior Minister charged with finessing hot-button topics like immigration, crime and Corsican separatism.NAMED. KIM IL CHOL,65, veteran North Korean naval commander, as Defense Minister, by newly proclaimed President Kim Jong Il; in Pyongyang. A graduate of an academy for orphans of revolutionaries, Kim is a product of North Korean orthodoxy. Analysts believe he participated in North Korea's 1968 seizure of the U.S. intelligence ship Pueblo. Eighty-two surviving crew members were eventually released after 11 months in captivity.CAPTURED. LICIO GELLI,79, fugitive Italian financier who steered the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, one of Italy's largest private banks, by French and Italian police; in Cannes, France. Gelli, a grandmaster of a secretive Masonic lodge dedicated to taking over the country by infiltrating the mass media, military, business and politics, was to have started a 12-year prison sentence for bank fraud when he escaped from his heavily guarded villa last May.FREED. DONALD LEE CARY,64, retired American oil executive, after more than five months as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia; near Medina, Colombia. Rebels count on ransom revenue to finance their nearly four-decade-long campaign against the central government, burdening Colombia with the highest kidnapping rate in the world. In the first seven months of this year, 1,088 people were abducted.BROKEN.ByMARK McGWIRE,34, brawny baseball slugger, the venerable single-season home-run record set 37 years ago by New York Yankee Roger Maris; at a home game in St. Louis. The Cardinal first baseman swatted his 62nd homer after just 145 games, 17 fewer than Maris required to hit his 61st.SENTENCED. GHULAM AKBAR KHAN,25, Shi'a Muslim youth, to death for taking the Prophet Muhammad's name in vain, making him the first Pakistani Muslim to be sentenced to death for blasphemy; in eastern Punjab, Pakistan. Although two Christians and a pair of Afghans have been similarly sentenced under the controversial 1985 law, none has actually been executed. A Catholic bishop committed suicide in May in protest against the death sentence being meted out to a fellow Pakistani Christian.WON. FRED TUTTLE,79, folksy ex-dairy farmer, the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Vermont. Tuttle's wrinkled visage starred in a 1996 satirical film about, well, a retired dairy farmer who runs for the U.S. Senate with a catchy platform (FRED: Friendly, Renewable, Extraterrestrial, Dinky). This time around, with a self-declared budget of around $16, a natty pair of overalls and a well-developed sense of life imitating art, the fourth-generation Vermonter triumphed over millionaire Jack McMullen--a transplanted Boston businessman.Now that the Starr report on Bill Clinton is before the U.S. Congress, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde may play the role of , who presided over the Nixon impeachment proceedings.'You not only have to be fair--you have to give the appearance of fairness,' Chairman Peter Rodino said of his job, and it often seemed to be an impossible task during the long and wearisome months as he led his unwieldy 38-member Judiciary Committee down the path toward impeachment articles. But last week, as the committee inched toward its bipartisan vote of 27-11 against the President, the silver-haired chairman with the husky voice was praised for his fairness by House [Republican] Leader John Rhodes as well as by House Democratic Leader Thomas P. ('Tip') O'Neill Jr. Said O'Neill of Rodino: 'It's magnificent how he has risen to the challenge.'--TIME, Augest. 5, 1974