STEPPING DOWN. As president of Toyota Motors, FUJIO CHO, 68, who has served as president since 1999; in Toyota City, Japan. Under Cho, Toyota dramatically expanded its overseas operations and led the industry in innovations like hybrid cars, while posting extraordinary growth in sales, profits and market share. He will be replaced in June by Katsuaki Watanabe, 62, a 40-year company veteran with expertise in parts procurement and cost-cutting.
RESIGNED. EASON JORDAN, 44, CNN's chief news executive; amid a furor over his apparent suggestion last month that coalition forces in Iraq had deliberately killed journalists; in Atlanta. He later backtracked, saying he was referring to journalists "shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy."
TRIAL ANNOUNCED. For two of Saddam Hussein's top associates, ALI HASSAN AL-MAJID and BARZAN AL-TIKRITI; in Baghdad. Al-Majid, Hussein's cousin, and al-Tikriti, his half-brother, are the first of 12 senior Hussein allies in American custody to face trial. Al-Majid was implicated in poison-gas attacks against Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s, for which he was nicknamed "Chemical Ali," and al-Tikriti is alleged to have overseen the 1982 razing of a village north of Baghdad. The trials will be broadcast live worldwide this spring from Baghdad.
CONVICTED. LYNNE STEWART, 65, veteran civil rights lawyer and defender of accused terrorists and Mob turncoats, of providing material support to terrorists, perjury and defrauding the U.S. govern-ment; in New York City. For more than 10 years, Stewart was defense counsel for Egyp-tian cleric and convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Prosecutors argued that Stewart acted as a conduit through which Sheik Rahman communicated with his followers. Stewart claimed the gov-ernment's videotaping of her conversations with her client violated attorney-client privilege.
APOLOGIZED. TONY BLAIR, Brit-ish Prime Minister, to 11 people wrongly convicted and jailed for IRA bombings that occurred in 1974; in a televised statement from his office at the House of Commons; in London. Known as the "Guildford Four" and the "Maguire Seven," the 11 men and women spent up to 17 years in prison before the final group was exonerated in 1991.
FELLED. MARIE ANTOINETTE'S OAK, 321, tree that shaded the infamously imperious French Queen; in Versailles, France. Antoinette saved it from the chop during landscaping in 1776. The oak survived centuries of war and storms, but finally was toppled last week, 18 months after succumbing to dehydration in a heat wave.
DIED. ARTHUR MILLER, 89, legenday playwright; in Roxbury, Conn. (See Essay)
Performance Of The Week
AIDS patients in China's Henan province received an unexpected guest during Lunar New Year: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao. Wen shook hands with HIV-positive villagers, hugged children orphaned by the disease, and urged the local government to do more. A third of the province's residents are HIV-positive; most contracted the virus while giving blood at tainted blood banks in the 1990s. For years, China downplayed its AIDS problem. No longer: Wen is the most senior official to visit Henan's AIDS sufferers.
Numbers
1,300 Number of security guards and police guarding a stadium in Saitama during last week's North Korea-Japan soccer match, which was won by Japan 2-1
1,000 Number of seats left empty between the North Korean and Japanese fans to create a "buffer zone"
40 Number of people wounded in a Madrid bombing last week by the Basque terrorist group ETA. Since 1968, attacks by ETA have claimed more than 800 lives
$617 billion Total U.S. trade deficit in 2004, an all-time high
$162 billion U.S. trade deficit with China in 2004, an all-time high with a single country
100,000 Estimated number of Koreans who play a new online computer game, World of Warcraft, during peak hours. The subscription-based game has sold more than 700,000 copies worldwide