Milestones

HANNAH BEECHDIED. HECTOR ALEJANDRO GALINDO,93, streetwise Mexican director, whose frank depiction of the country's urban underbelly resounded through Mexico's burgeoning barrios; in Mexico City. Galindo skillfully portrayed the downtrodden masses in his 50-plus films, including Champion Without a Crown, a despondent tale of a street tough up against the Mafia, and Wetbacks, an indictment of American exploitation of illegal Mexican laborers.DIED. KRISHNASWAMY SUNDARJI,70, ambitious Indian army chief, whose long military career was haunted by his stewardship of the bloody 1984 raid on Sikhism's holiest shrine; in New Delhi. The storming of the Golden Temple, which left 500 people dead, was not Sundarji's only foray into controversy: in 1986 he provoked neighboring Pakistan by holding showy military exercises along the volatile border and later committed India to a peace-keeping quagmire in Sri Lanka.DIED. IRIS MURDOCH,79, luminous Anglo-Irish novelist, who infused her writing with macabre humor and metaphysical magic; in Oxford, England. Famously skeptical of editors, the Oxford University philosophy lecturer often disallowed even an innocuous comma change, but that didn't prevent the success of her 27 novels, including the farcical A Severed Head and the Booker Prize-winning The Sea, the Sea. RESIGNED. QORBANALI DORRI-NAJAFABADI, 54, conservative head of Iran's hard-line Information Ministry, after issuing a statement conceding that rogue ministry agents were behind the assassinations of five dissidents late last year; in Tehran. Although blame for the slayings has mostly been heaped on foreign elements, allies of reformist President Mohammad Khatami lobbied for Dorri-Najafabadi's departure. Hojatolislam Ali Younessi, a Justice Department official who led the investigation into the killings, has been nominated as his replacement.REMANDED IN CUSTODY. LEKA ZOGU,58, exiled King of Albania, by South African authorities, after he was charged earlier this month with storing a large arsenal of weapons in his home; in Johannesburg. Zogu was only three days old when his father, King Zog, was forced out of Albania by Benito Mussolini. Although a 1997 referendum quashed his royalist hopes, Zogu's dreams of ascending to power remain undimmed, and some suspect the arms cache was destined for embattled ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. GRANTED CITIZENSHIP. RUPERTA URRESTA HERNANDEZ,107, Mexican-born mother of 11 children, making her the oldest person to take the oath of U.S. citizenship; in San Antonio, Texas. Hernandez's rationale for changing citizenship after 84 years in the Lone Star State would make the Founding Fathers proud: she wants to vote in the next election.For 10 years SALMAN RUSHDIE has faced a death threat for his book The Satanic Verses. Although the Iranian government has distanced itself from the harsh decree, Islamic hard-liners insist that the order cannot be lifted.It was an absurdist nightmare, a story that all but defied the Western imagination. [Rushdie], born in Bombay but for many years resident in London, writes a long, sardonic novel, by turns philosophical and comic and fantastic... He explores the roots of his Muslim faith and retells some legends of the Prophet Muhammad in a whimsical and sometimes outrageous way... The book is praised by critics and wins a literary prize, but Muslims find some of the passages offensive... Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, 88, spiritual ruler of fundamentalist, revolutionary Iran, announces that the author must be killed for the sin of insulting Islam, the Prophet and the holy Koran.
--TIME, Feb. 27, 1989