Milestones

NAMED. Indra Nooyi, 50, chief financial officer of soft-drink giant PepsiCo; as the company’s chief executive, making her one of just 11 women to head FORTUNE 500 companies; in New York. The Indian-born, straight-talking Nooyi will succeed Steven Reinemund in October. With Nooyi at the helm, PepsiCo will be the largest U.S. company, by market value, to be led by a woman. “Being a woman, being foreign-born, you’ve got to be smarter than anyone else,” Nooyi said last week.

SENTENCED. Mel Gibson, 50, controversial movie star who was arrested last month after driving while intoxicated and showering the police officers who apprehended him with anti-Semitic epithets—for which he has since apologized; to three years of probation, $1,600 in fines and one year in a 12-step program for alcoholism; after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor count of drunk driving; in Malibu, California.

KILLED. Mitsuhiro Morita, 35, Japanese crab fisherman, after a Russian patrol boat opened fire on his vessel in disputed waters northeast of the Japanese island of Hokkaido; in the Sea of Okhotsk. Russian officials claimed the ship’s captain had illegally crossed into Russian territory, while Japan called the act “unacceptable” and demanded immediate compensation and the release of the vessel’s remaining crew, who are being held by Russian authorities. The shooting is rooted in a 150-year-old row over the strategic, resource-rich Kuril Islands, which are claimed by both countries.

DIED. Bruno Kirby, 57, high-pitched, piquant actor who infused his many supporting roles—often as best friend, often to Billy Crystal—with intensity and humor over his 35-year career; of leukemia; in Los Angeles. Kirby’s most notable performances included a turn as a humorless lieutenant in Good Morning, Vietnam, and, in When Harry Met Sally, as a journalist pal to Billy Crystal’s Harry who marries, then eggs his comrade to follow him into domestic bliss.

DIED. Rudi Stern, 69, artist who specialized in what he called “painting stories with light”; in Cadiz, Spain. In the 1960s he designed projections for concerts by classical musicians and rock acts like the Doors and for psychedelic fetes put on by LSD promoter Timothy Leary. He later revived a dormant medium by establishing the aptly named New York City gallery Let There Be Neon, creating installations for performance artist Laurie Anderson and emblazoning the façade of a 78-story Hong Kong building.

DIED. Miguel (Anga) Diaz, 45, considered the finest conga virtuoso of his generation, who energized genres from jazz to traditional Cuban standards with his battering five-drum technique; of a heart attack; in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, Spain. A player on the 1997 trilogy of albums of Cuban maestros that launched the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon, Diaz became a force on the British label World Circuit, which last year released his album Echu Mingua, an electrifying mélange of West African music, hip-hop and riffs on jazz classics.

DIED. Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, 75, charismatic Queen of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori, a royal position established in 1858 in response to Britain’s colonization of the South Pacific archipelago; in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand. Though her post was ceremonial, Te Ata, the sixth Maori ruler, worked to raise the profile of Maori abroad, attending the coronations of foreign sovereigns and meeting with world leaders like President Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II and Nelson Mandela.

DIED. Alfredo Stroessner, 93, canny and cruel dictator of Paraguay from 1954 to 1989 who brought relative stability and economic growth to the South American country—which had seen six Presidents toppled from 1948 to 1954—before being ousted in a 1989 coup and exiled; in Brasília. The macho general, who flashed his name in neon across the country and famously sheltered Nazis including Josef Mengele, solidified and maintained his control by rigging elections, torturing and murdering perceived enemies, and turning his country into a smuggling capital (the “price of peace,” he once said). By the 1980s, as his power waned, the U.S., a onetime supporter because of Stroessner’s anticommunist stance, labeled his regime a dictatorship.

Numbers
4.1 million Number of lithium-ion batteries recalled by Dell, the world’s largest PC maker, over fears they could cause laptop computers to burst into flames
$400 million Maximum estimated cost of the recall, which Dell will share with the batteries’ manufacturer, Sony Corp.

98,000 Number of Lebanese refugees who returned home last week, after a cease-fire agreement halted Israeli shelling of their neighborhoods
10% Estimated percentage of bombs dropped on Lebanon that did not detonate, leaving as many as 9,000 that are yet to explode

800 million Estimated number of undernourished people in the world
1 billion Estimated number of people who are overweight, due to increasingly sedentary lifestyles and changing eating habits

69% Percentage of South Koreans who are online, one of the highest rates of Internet use in the world
1 in 10 Number of South Koreans who say they have been victims of “cyberviolence,” including hate mail, death threats and sexual harassment

24% Percentage of Americans polled who could name two U.S. Supreme Court Justices
77% Percentage who could name two of Snow White’s seven dwarfs