Milestones

HILARY ROXESENTENCED. JOHNNY CHUNG,43, stigmatized political fund-raiser, to five years of probation and 3,000 hours of community service, for funneling nearly $30,000 in illegal contributions to Democratic campaigns during the 1996 U.S. presidential election; in Los Angeles. The Taiwan-born U.S. citizen who pleaded guilty in March said that straw donors he later reimbursed served as the conduits for his deposits. The Democratic National Committee accused Chung of victimizing the party, but Judge Manuel Real scolded the committee's officers for their implausible ignorance.INDICTED. DINKO SAKIC,76, commander of Croatia's most infamous World War II concentration camp, on charges of crimes against humanity based primarily on the testimonies of 46 witnesses; in Zagreb, Croatia. More than 2,000 people died while Sakic commanded the Jasenovac camp, known as the Auschwitz of the Balkans, though he claimed natural scourges, such as a typhus epidemic, were the cause. At war's end, Sakic fled to Argentina, where he remained until his extradition six months ago.DIED. WILLIAM GADDIS,75, one of America's greatest unsung and unread novelists, whose four tomes earned him two National Book Awards and comparisons to James Joyce and Herman Melville; in East Hampton, New York. Though his first work, The Recognitions, was hammered by critics, it secured him an underground following, and by the time JR was published 20 years later, the author, known for his impeccable attire and radical eschewal of dialogue punctuation, turned critics' heads.DIED. LEW GRADE,91, wheeling and dealing British entertainment tycoon, famous for signature cigars and classic one-liners; in London. The Ukrainian emigre skipped into the show biz world, initially as a dancer--Fred Astaire was among the judges in 1926 who named him world solo Charleston champion--before helping to launch Associated Television as a challenge to the British Broadcasting Corp. in 1955. Knighted in 1969, he flourished as a producer of TV serials like The Saint and movies like On Golden Pond, but also foundered beneath costly flops like 1980's Raise the Titanic.DIED. WILLIAM DENSON,85, vanquishing chief U.S. prosecutor of Nazi war criminals, who helped try nefarious characters like the so-called Bitch of Buchenwald, Ilse Koch, malicious wife of the camp's commandant; in Lawrence, New York. From 1945 to 1947, in a Dachau, Germany court, the West Point grad went after 177 Nazis from four concentration camps, losing only four cases. He later represented the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in the case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed for passing atomic secrets to the Russians.DISCOVERED. BONE AND IVORY TABLETS,5,200 years old, which, in their recording of linen and oil deliveries during the southern Egyptian reign of King Scorpion I, may be the oldest writings ever discovered; in Abydos, Egypt. A team led by Gunter Dreyer, head of the German Archaeological Institute, unearthed 300 small hieroglyphics-inscribed pieces, challenging the reigning notion that Mesopotamia's Sumerians were the first scribes.CLEARED. ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER,50, prolific musical producer, of charges that he swiped the haunting theme of Phantom of the Opera from Baltimore folk singer Ray Repp; in New York. After hearing pieces of the two melodies on a courtroom piano, the federal jury spent just two hours deliberating the suit, which Repp filed in 1990. Webber maintained that Phantom was derived from his own tune Close Any Door.As missiles blasted Baghdad last week, the U.S. conflict with Iraq seemed right back where it started nearly eight years ago, when President George Bush ordered American forces to launch Operation Desert Storm.Just before 1 a.m. [on Jan. 17] in the Middle East, pool reporters at U.S. air bases in Saudi Arabia heard and felt the ground-shaking thunder of wave after wave of jets taking off. The planes headed north toward Kuwait and Iraq. . . The outside world got the news from Western television correspondents at the Al Rasheed Hotel in downtown Baghdad, who told of hearing air-raid sirens and seeing tracer bullets and antiaircraft bursts lighting up the black skies. . . Two hours [after bombing began] the President went on TV. . . Said Bush: 'We are determined to knock out Saddam Hussein's nuclear-bomb potential. We will also destroy his chemical-weapons facilities.'--TIME, Jan. 28, 1991