Milestones

BANNED. Lou Ye, 41, controversial Chinese director; from filming on the mainland for five years, by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television; in Beijing. Lou reportedly failed to seek approval from government censors for his film Summer Palace—set in the days leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, a topic Beijing considers taboo—before screening it at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Lou called the ban “ridiculous” and said it would not stop him from working.

CHARGED. Takafumi Horie, 33, founder and former CEO of Livedoor, one of Japan’s largest Internet companies; with violating securities law, by a Tokyo district court; in Tokyo. Horie, whose arrest in January sparked a stock swoon that wiped out 80% of his company’s market value, pleaded not guilty to allegations that he and other top executives falsified accounts and spread false information to boost share prices. An estimated 2,000 spectators lined up at the courthouse to see the tycoon, whose case has been widely covered in Japan.

ARRESTED. Seventeen suspected neo-Nazi extremists; for allegedly planning a series of terrorist attacks on national institutions; in the Flanders region of Belgium. According to police, most of the detainees are soldiers believed to belong to a faction of the far-right Flemish group Blood and Honour. Raids on army barracks and homes found weapons including a homemade bomb, rifles and land-mine detonators. The federal prosecutor’s office described the suspects as people “who clearly express themselves through racism, xenophobia, Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism.”

SENTENCED. Abdul Aziz, 31, Dwi Widiarto, 34, and Mohammad Cholili, 29, to eight to 18 years in prison for their roles in the October 2005 suicide bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which killed 20 people and injured over 100; in Denpasar. Aziz reportedly harbored Jemaah Islamiah plotter Nurdin Mohammed Top and designed websites for the terror organization, while Widiarto helped film the bombers’ farewell tapes. Both received eight-year sentences. Cholili, a former mobile-phone vendor who assembled circuitry for the bombs, was sentenced to 18 years in jail.

DIED. Willi Ninja, 45, lithe, athletic club dancer who, as the star of the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning popularized vogue dancers, a then-obscure subculture of New York City drag ballrooms; of AIDS-related heart failure; in New York City. The charismatic, self-described “butch-queen,” born William Leake, later taught the martial arts-inspired movements in Europe, worked as a runway model for designers like Jean Paul Gaultier and taught fashionistas like Naomi Campbell how to strut with flair.

DIED. Nellie Connally, 87, former First Lady of Texas and the last surviving passenger of the limousine in which former U.S. President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on Nov. 22, 1963; in Austin, Texas. Moments after Connally turned toward the backseat and said, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” the gunfire ensued. Though she originally intended her recollections to remain private, the widow of former Governor John Connally later told the A.P., “It’s the image of yellow roses and red roses and blood all over the car … all over us. I’ll never forget it. It was so quick and so short, so potent.”

Numbers
7 million Number of global subscribers to the online role-playing game World of Warcraft, each of whom pay about $14 a month
$1 billion World of Warcraft’s estimated annual subscription revenue, making it one of the most successful computer games in history

163 Page number from the hardback book A Million Little Pieces by James Frey that consumers must submit, with a receipt dated Jan. 26 or earlier, to get a $23.95 refund
$2.35 million Restitution—in refunds, legal fees and charitable gifts—Frey, who made up portions of his best-selling memoir, and his publisher Random House will pay

10% Percentage of young South Asian Britons in a recent poll who say they condone honor killings—the murder of women accused by their families of adultery or other offenses
13 Average number of honor killings in Britain each year

$250,000 Cost of a fully implantable artificial heart approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in people with severe congestive heart failure
5.2 Average number of months that the first 12 recipients survived with the device