Milestones

HANNAH BEECHDIED. HENRI D'ORLEANS,90, democracy-minded pretender to the French throne and direct descendant of Louis-Philippe, the last King of France; at his modest home in Cherisy, France. As a sovereign without a crown, the Count of Paris lobbied hard to return France to an enlightened monarchy, but no more than one-fifth of the French populace ever agreed with his royalist ambitions. He is succeeded by his eldest son, Henri.DIED. KAMAL EDDIN HUSSEIN,78, Egyptian army officer who helped end the nation's monarchy; in Cairo. Hussein joined Gamal Abdel Nasser, who spearheaded Egypt's 1952 revolution and later became President, in overthrowing King Farouk in 1952. But Hussein chafed in his role as Vice President, lashing out at two superiors, Nasser and successor Anwar Sadat, for harboring authoritarian streaks and running incompetent governments.APPEAL REJECTED.ForILICH RAMIREZ SANCHEZ,49, notorious cold-war terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, who is serving a life sentence for the 1975 murders of two French counterespionage agents and their Lebanese informant, by France's highest court; in Paris. The Venezuelan-born Ramirez, who is believed to be responsible for the 1976 Palestinian hijacking of an Air France jet and the 1975 hostage-taking of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna, was nabbed in 1994 by French agents, who whisked him from Sudan to France in a sack.EXECUTED. EDUARDO AGBAYANI,Filipino child rapist, by lethal injection, making him only the second person subjected to capital punishment since the predominantly Roman Catholic nation reintroduced the death penalty in 1994; in Manila. Although President Joseph Estrada made a frantic attempt to halt the execution at the last minute, Agbayani, who was convicted of raping his teenaged daughter, was dead by the time Estrada's call reached the death chamber.RESIGNED. RICHARD BUTLER,dogged chief United Nations weapons inspector, after two turbulent years of attempting to eliminate Iraq's suspected arsenal; in New York. Both China and Russia have denounced attempts by the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) to disarm Iraq, and, in a further blow to UNSCOM investigators, Baghdad banned their inspectors from entering the country in December 1998. Butler will take up a post as diplomat-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.AILING. STEPHEN KING,51, American author of spine-tingling horror novels, after he was struck by an out-of-control van; in North Lovell, Maine. The reclusive writer's accident, which physicians predict will take a year's worth of rehabilitation to overcome, drew comparisons from diehard fans to his 1990 best-seller Misery, in which a novelist is abducted by a crazed acolyte after a car crash. King, however, is recovering in a hospital, not at a remote madwoman's house.