Milestones

ENDORSED. ANGELA MARKEL, 45, by the executive of Germany's scandal-hit conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) as candidate for party chairman; in Berlin. The unanimous choice of Merkel, who will become the first woman leader of a mainstream political party in Germany, represents a bid by the CDU to move on from the financing scandal that led to the resignation of party chairman Wolfgang Schauble and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Merkel was the first leading CDU politician to break ranks and criticize Kohl after the scandal broke, a stand that won her broad approval from party members. DIED. POLITA GRAU, 84, First Lady of Cuba when an uncle of hers was President in the 1930s; in Miami. Initially a supporter of the 1959 revolution, Grau turned against it and in the early 1960s was one of the main organizers of Operation Peter Pan, through which Cuban parents sent some 14,000 children to the U.S. rather than have them grow up under communism. In 1965 she was arrested on charges of conspiring with the CIA to kill President Fidel Castro and spent 14 years in jail. ARRESTED. SURASAK NANANUKUL, 56, chief economic adviser of the Thai opposition New Aspiration Party and former Deputy Finance Minister; in San Diego. Surasak was detained along with two businessmen by U.S. customs officers and charged with trying to buy $20 million of Iraqi oil to resell in Asia, in contravention of United Nations trade sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. ARRESTED. JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN, 56, Muslim cleric and onetime Black Panther formerly known as H. Rap Brown; on charges of aggravated battery and murder after he allegedly shot two sheriff's deputies, one of whom died from his wounds; in Alabama. The officers had been trying to serve Al-Amin with an arrest warrant. He was nabbed after a four-day nationwide manhunt and faces extradition to Georgia, where the shooting took place. ELECTED. ABDOULAYE WADE, 70, as President of Senegal, in a rare victory for democratic change in Africa; in Dakar. Wade defeated outgoing President Abdou Diouf, whose Socialist Party had been in power since Senegal won independence from France in 1960. Diouf's quick concession of defeat allayed fears of a continued power struggle and promised a peaceful political transition. PLEADED GUILTY. KNOCK YOKOYAMA, 68, former governor of Osaka, to criminal charges of sexually harassing a young female campaign worker in April 1999 during his re-election campaign; in Osaka. Yokoyama, who had previously denounced the allegations as a lie, resigned as governor last December after losing a civil suit he did not contest. The case has been seen as a victory for women in the fight against sexual harassment in male-dominated Japan. Time CapsuleJohn Paul II's trip last week was only the second visit by a Pope to the Holy Land. Like Pope Paul VI, who made the journey in 1964, John Paul had to take into consideration the sensibilities of all sides--Christians, Jews and Muslims. Pope Paul's extraordinary trip to the Holy Land ... among its other claims to historical notice, added a new dimension to the image of the modern papacy... By traveling in a jet aircraft he made it clear that a modern bishop of Rome need not be a prisoner of Italy. Yet the Holy Land trip was no unalloyed triumph... Paul managed to step on the acutely sensitive toes of Jordanians [and] Israelis ... alike... The Pope, who never once referred to Israel as a state, zealously praised the wartime efforts of Pius XII on behalf of the Jews... [He] faced more hurt feelings [in] Jordan. There, King Hussein's government had been offended by a papal speech seeming to imply that only Israel was the Holy Land. --TIME, Jan. 17, 1964