YEAR IN REVIEW 1999: BIOGRAPHY

Abubakar, Abdulsalam On June 9, 1998, following the sudden death of Nigerian military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha the previous day, Maj. Gen. Abdulsalam Abubakar, Nigeria's defense chief of staff, was sworn in as the country's head of state. Although Abubakar had never before held public office, his appointment by Nigeria's ruling military junta was not unexpected. A high-ranking career soldier from the country's northern region, Abubakar fit the profile of former rulers of Nigeria, which for 28 of its 38 years of independence had been controlled by military regimes. Abubakar was born June 13, 1942, in Minna in north-central Nigeria and went to secondary school in the neighbouring town of Bida. In 1963 he attended the Kaduna Technical Institute. He served in the air force and then joined the army in 1975 but received his formal training in the United States. Rising steadily through the ranks of the Nigerian army, he commanded Nigeria's contingent of the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon in 1981. By the late 1980s he had become a senior officer, and in 1993 he was named defense chief of staff by Abacha. As the new head of state, Abubakar inherited a host of long-standing problems, including ethnic and regional strife, political corruption, widespread poverty, and mismanagement of the country's oil industry. In his first address to the nation in June, he stated that "all hands must be on deck to move this nation forward," but he provided no detailed plan of action. By July, Abubakar had announced that he would follow a program that would restore the country to democracy. He had freed a number of political prisoners and announced the dissolution of the political parties and structures set up by Abacha. Abubakar also addressed economic issues, promised to assemble a Cabinet that would represent Nigeria's ethnic diversity, and outlined a plan for multiparty elections, setting May 29, 1999, as the swearing-in date for a new civilian president. By October, Abubakar had succeeded in convincing the European Union and the United States of his commitment to a transition to civilian rule--a step that was crucial for the restoration of much-needed aid for Nigeria's crippled economy. Support from Nigerians was more difficult to obtain; promises of democracy made by previous military rulers had often been broken. Abubakar's standing with his countrymen, however, improved substantially when Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, returned home on October 14 after a four-year exile. The fact that Soyinka, a highly regarded advocate of democracy and a fierce critic of Nigeria's military governments, would return was viewed as a major vote of confidence for Abubakar. ELIZABETH LASKEY Adamkus, Valdas V. In 1997 Valdas Adamkus retired from his post at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) after nearly 30 years--the longest tenure of any senior executive at the agency--with the expressed intention of working on his golf game. Soon afterward, however, it seemed that golf would have to wait, because in February 1998 the unassuming 71-year-old career bureaucrat, a citizen of the United States for the past half century, became a European head of state. A month earlier after a closely contested election, he had won a five-year term as president of his native country, Lithuania, where he had only recently regained citizenship. His candidacy had generated considerable controversy; opponents painted him as an interloping American-made carpetbagger, whereas supporters viewed him as a prodigal son, long an exile in a foreign land, completing his odyssey back home. His absence during the Soviet era may have helped Adamkus gain his victory. "I don't carry any political baggage," he declared. "I don't represent any old systems." His winning margin during the election, decided by a runoff, was less than 1%, only a few thousand votes, but it was enough to defeat Arturas Paulauskas, who was backed by the popular outgoing president, Algirdas Brazauskas, a former communist. As president, Adamkus announced his intention to give up his U.S. passport but not his ties to the West. In fact, he worked to strengthen those bonds by continuing in force the two main objectives of Lithuanian foreign policy: eventual membership in NATO, in order to improve national security, and in the European Union, to improve the economy. All the while, Adamkus was careful not to alienate his nation from Russia and its Baltic neighbours; he met with Polish and Ukrainian leaders in May and with the other presidents of Eastern and Central Europe in June. Adamkus was born with the surname Adamkavecius in Kaunas, Lith., on Nov. 3, 1926. During World War II he fought with Lithuanian insurrectionists against Soviet rule, published an underground newspaper during the Nazi occupation, and then resumed the fight against the returning Soviet army before fleeing in 1944 to Germany, where he attended the University of Munich. In 1949 he immigrated with his family to the United States, settling in a Lithuanian-American community in Chicago, where in 1960 he graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering. Adamkus was active in migr politics in the 1950s and 1960s, promoting Lithuanian independence and cultural heritage and achieving high positions in such organizations as the liberal Santara-Sviesa ("Accord-Light"), the Lithuanian Community in America, and the American Lithuanian Council. Adamkus began his career with the EPA upon its inception in 1970, and in 1971 he was picked to be the deputy regional administrator of Region V, in the Midwest. Ten years later he was appointed to the position of regional administrator. Adamkus distinguished himself by improving the water quality of the Great Lakes with a model program that gained international repute, by crafting groundbreaking agreements with Native American tribes, and by refusing to participate in an EPA cover-up regarding the unlawful emission of chemical toxins. Most far-reaching perhaps was his work in helping to address and solve environmental protection issues in Eastern Europe by supplying consultation and infrastructure. TOM MICHAEL Badu, Erykah By 1998, just one year after the release of her phenomenally successful debut album, Baduizm, singer-songwriter Erykah Badu had become one of the fastest-rising American recording artists. The phrasing and emotive qualities of her smooth, jazz-inflected vocals were sometimes reminiscent of the style of Billie Holiday, an artist to whom she was often compared. Badu's follow-up album, Erykah Badu Live, debuted at the top spot on the pop charts. The combined sales of the two albums exceeded three million copies, and both efforts were certified as platinum. She then went on to capture two NAACP Image Awards, four Soul Train Awards, an American Music Award, and two Grammys. Badu was born Erica Wright, the eldest of three children, c. 1971 in Dallas, Texas. Of her adopted stage name, Badu explained, "I spell with a 'y' because it stands for origin and 'kah' is [ancient Egyptian] meaning 'inner light that shines and cannot be contaminated.' . . . Badu . . . means 'to manifest' in Arabic." Never formally trained in music, Badu majored in dance and theatre at Grambling (La.) State University after graduating from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. She dropped out of Grambling in 1993 to pursue a singing career and formed the group Erykah Free with her cousin, while also working as a waitress and a drama teacher to support herself. In 1995, while opening for singer D'Angelo, Badu was singled out of the band by Kedar Massenburg, who was just starting his own record company. He offered her a solo contract, which she accepted because she felt that she would receive more individual attention at a smaller label. In January 1997 "On & On," Badu's first single, was released and quickly became a hit. The next month Baduizm, for which she wrote all but one of the songs, was released, and the album solidified her popularity. Distinguished by her elaborate Afrocentric attire, in particular her signature head wraps, or geles, Badu lit a candle and incense onstage to focus herself before beginning each performance. With a sound built upon the roots of her heritage, she cited among her early influences Miles Davis, Al Jarreau, Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye. A spiritual person whose lyrics concentrated on the more positive aspects of life, Badu said, "I never get tired of writing inspirational words." She spoke of the need for artists to have a plan and said of her own, "I'll start as a singer, so I can be individually recognized . . . then I'll go on to acting, because everyone wants to see a recording star on film. Then after film, I'll direct . . . write movies and have my own corporation . . . and ultimately a whole arts foundation." It was clear that Badu was well on her way. ANTHONY L. GREEN Barad, Jill E. On Jan. 1, 1998, Jill Barad celebrated her first anniversary as chairman and CEO of Mattel, the world's largest toy manufacturer. In January 1997, after 16 years with the company, Barad joined the small number of female executives who head major U.S. businesses. During her tenure at Mattel she experienced everything ranging from the company's near bankruptcy in the 1980s to its transformation into a thriving, $4.8 billion operation, whose brands included Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, Fisher-Price, Tyco Toys, and Cabbage Patch Kids. Barad's path took several turns on her way to the top of the El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel. Born Jill Elikann on May 23, 1951, in New York City, she received (1973) her B.A. from Queens College in New York City. Following graduation she worked as an assistant to the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis and landed a nonspeaking role in his 1974 film Crazy Joe. After deciding not to pursue an acting career, she worked for Coty Cosmetics as a cosmetician-trainer. Even at this early job, her innovative nature shone through--when she realized that Coty's products were not being placed well in the stores she visited, she designed a wall display that the company would use for the next two decades. She married Thomas Barad in 1979 and left the workforce shortly thereafter when she became pregnant with their first child. By 1981 she felt corporate America beckoning her back, and she began her career with Mattel as a product manager. Her first assignment was an ill-fated rubbery product called A Bad Case of Worms, but she gained recognition for her initiative in promoting the product. In 1982 Barad was put in charge of the Barbie line. Launched in 1959, by the early 1980s Barbie was experiencing unspectacular sales. Barad brought new life into the line, overseeing the expansion of the Barbie collection by packaging different versions of the doll, each with its own accessories, so that children would want to own more than one. The results were astounding--annual sales of the Barbie brand grew from $200 million in 1982 to $1.9 billion in 1997. By 1998 the average girl in the U.S. owned nine Barbies, and the brand amounted to some 40% of Mattel's sales. Barad's successes brought her a series of promotions. She was named president and chief operating officer of Mattel in 1992, and by 1997 she was primed to take over as CEO. Barad planned to put Barbie, as well as other Mattel toys, in the hands of even more children around the world. In early 1998 she announced plans to pursue the international market aggressively. In December, amid reports of disappointing earnings, Barad announced that Mattel would acquire The Learning Company, an educational software maker. SANDRA LANGENECKERT Berners-Lee, Tim As the World Wide Web grew in social and economic significance in 1998, heated debate ensued on such related issues as censorship, monopolization, and privacy rights, and the industry looked increasingly toward hypertext pioneer Tim Berners-Lee for a vision of the electronic future. As the Web's creator, he saw it grow into an interactive, dynamic global medium where ideas were exchanged, goods and services were purchased, and virtual communities were born at a previously unimaginable pace. In 1998 the unassuming innovator was also the recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant and the Eduard Rhein Foundation prize for technology. Born on June 8, 1955, in London to two computer scientists, Berners-Lee became fascinated with computers at an early age. He built toy computers from cardboard and later constructed his first working computer from a television set and a variety of spare parts. He graduated with an honours degree in physics from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1976 and worked for several technology firms in England before being hired in 1980 as a software developer for CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva. It was there that he struggled with the problem of integrating and exchanging information held on different computers in often widely scattered places. His solution, a program he dubbed "Enquire," incorporated the use of hypertext, a system that links documents from different sources, forming an electronic path that users follow to obtain related information. Although he quickly envisioned its potential, it was not until 1989 that he was able to gain support to develop the system. By the end of that year, Berners-Lee had developed software to edit and view documents and the protocol to transfer them. In 1990 his system, the World Wide Web, was made available to the CERN community. It was released to the public on the Internet in the summer of 1991. With its ability to transfer text, sound, images, and even video in a simple, straightforward manner, the World Wide Web grew from a resource used by researchers to exchange information to an international communications medium, commercial tool, and social phenomenon used by millions of people. Already a multibillion-dollar industry in 1998, the Web was expected to continue its exponential growth over the next several years. Although Berners-Lee could have parlayed his invention into incredible wealth--and he did receive many lucrative commercial offers--he instead became (1994) the director of the newly formed World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Computer Science. As the W3C director, he worked with quiet diligence to improve the Web's technological capabilities and help set the design standards for more than 275 member organizations and companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, and Netscape. As the Web continued to grow, Berners-Lee remained an advocate for its easy, inexpensive, and unrestricted use as a communications tool into the next millennium. CHRISTOPHER CALL Bin Laden, Osama When bombs ripped through American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7, 1998, the United States was quick to suspect that Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden was the orchestrator of the explosions. Since 1996 he had been described by the U.S. State Department as "one of the most significant financial sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today." There was no doubt that bin Laden had advocated terrorist activities and had a significant number of followers; he issued a call to arms in February 1998 that stated: "We--with God's help--call on every Muslim who believes in God and wishes to be rewarded to comply with God's order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it." Though he was accused by U.S. intelligence sources of having masterminded a number of terrorist attacks--notably deadly 1995 and 1996 bombings in Saudi Arabia that were aimed at U.S. military personnel--proof of his role in any of the incidents remained, like bin Laden himself, elusive. Osama bin Mohammad bin Laden was born c. 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As the son of a self-made construction billionaire, he inherited a large fortune. The same year that he graduated (1979) from King Abdul Aziz University in Jiddah, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and bin Laden, a devout Muslim, traveled there to aid the mujahideen in their jihad (holy war) against the Soviets. He recruited many of the so-called Arab Afghans--volunteer resistance fighters from the Persian Gulf nations--to aid the U.S.-backed mujahideen fighters. Drawing from his personal wealth and funds raised from other wealthy Muslims, he also financed training camps. By 1991 bin Laden's hatred of the United States had crystallized; he viewed the U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War as armed infidels and denounced the House of Saud for allowing the troops into the country. In 1991 the Saudi government expelled bin Laden (he was deprived of his citizenship in 1994), and he fled to The Sudan, where he operated several businesses and also, reportedly, a number of clandestine terrorist training camps. The Sudan forced bin Laden to leave in mid-1996, and he returned to Afghanistan, where he allegedly established at least two training facilities, including one that the U.S. termed a "terrorist university." Several weeks after the embassy bombings, the U.S. fired missiles at bin Laden's "terrorist university" in Afghanistan and at a Sudan pharmaceutical plant thought to be manufacturing nerve gas on bin Laden's orders. He continued to deny his involvement in terrorist activities. The U.S. charged bin Laden with inciting violence against American citizens and requested his deportation to the U.S. to face trial. By year's end, however, Afghanistan's ruling Islamic militia, the Taliban, had said that bin Laden was a guest in their country and that he would be prosecuted in Afghanistan only if the U.S. could supply convincing evidence of his involvement in terrorist acts. ELIZABETH LASKEY Bourne, Matthew In October 1998 Broadway audiences finally got the chance to see British choreographer Matthew Bourne's controversial restaging of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake and judge for themselves what the critical buzz was all about. For more than 100 years, the swans in the ballet had been portrayed by ethereal young women in romantic white costumes. For his updated reinterpretation of the classic, however, which placed the prince in a dysfunctional family that reminded many audience members of current British royalty, Bourne looked not only to the power of Tchaikovsky's music but also to nature for his inspiration. Seeing swans as large, aggressive, and powerful creatures with wings shaped like male dancers' muscular arms, he had his swans danced by bare-chested men clad only in knee-length shorts made with layers of shredded silk that resembled feathers. Adventures in Motion Pictures (AMP), the London-based dance company that Bourne cofounded in 1987 and served as artistic director, premiered the ballet in late 1995 and a year later reopened it in London's West End. It won the 1996 Laurence Olivier Award for the best new dance production and was presented to sold-out audiences in Los Angeles in 1997 before opening on Broadway. Radical reinterpretation of classic ballet was not new to Bourne. In 1992 he set the Christmas Eve scene of The Nutcracker in a Victorian orphanage reminiscent of a workhouse in a Charles Dickens novel, and Highland Fling, his 1994 version of La Sylphide, took place in a housing project in modern-day Glasgow, Scot. His follow-up to Swan Lake, in 1997, was another new look for an old story, this time the ballet Cinderella. Bourne's staging was set in World War II London during the Blitz, and the prince was portrayed as a fighter pilot. Born on Jan. 13, 1960, in Hackney, London, Bourne entered the world of dance relatively late. Although he had been a fan of musical films and theatre since childhood (when he created his own versions of shows he had seen), he began studies at London's Laban Centre at age 20 and did not begin dance classes until he was 22. Bourne received a bachelor's degree in dance theatre in 1985 and then toured for two years with Transitions, the centre's dance company. His number of dance appearances diminished as he took on more and more choreographic work--for television, theatre, and other dance companies as well as for AMP--but he still performed such roles as the Private Secretary (his production's counterpart to the villainous Rothbart) in Swan Lake. Bourne, having choreographed the London revival of Oliver! in 1994, was slated to do the same for that musical's North American performances in 1999. BARBARA WHITNEY Brown, Gordon When Tony Blair became the U.K.'s prime minister on May 2, 1997, he appointed his long-standing friend and ally Gordon Brown chancellor of the Exchequer. Brown swiftly established himself as the Cabinet's second most important member, both by taking control of almost all policies concerned with the U.K.'s domestic economy and by sustaining close, personal links to Blair that no other Cabinet minister could match. In October 1998, as chairman of the Group of Seven's subgroup of finance ministers, Brown extended his influence and played a key role in helping to establish new international mechanisms to stabilize world financial markets. Born in Glasgow, Scot., on Feb. 20, 1951, Brown was the son of a Labour Party-supporting Church of Scotland minister. At the age of 16, Brown was the youngest person since World War II to win a scholarship to the University of Edinburgh, where he immersed himself in student politics. He was also an enthusiastic rugby player until he lost the sight in one eye, the delayed result of an accident in a school rugby game. In 1974 Brown helped organize the campaign to elect Robin Cook to Parliament. By the time the two men entered the Cabinet together 23 years later (with Cook as foreign secretary), they had become rivals. Their hostility dated from the ill-fated 1979 campaign for limited self-government for Scotland, when they fought on opposite sides--Brown supporting a "yes" vote in that year's referendum, and Cook opting for a "no" vote. In 1998, after a successful vote on devolution, Brown campaigned against the extreme Scottish Nationalists. Brown entered Parliament in 1983 as MP for Dunfermline East, an industrial constituency near Glasgow. He became friends with Tony Blair, another new MP, and the two soon found themselves at the forefront of the campaign to modernize Labour's political philosophy, replacing the dream of state socialism with a more pragmatic, market-friendly strategy. Brown, two years older than Blair, was widely regarded as the senior half of the partnership and the one more likely eventually to become party leader. By the time then-Labour leader John Smith died in 1994, however, Blair had overtaken Brown as the favoured candidate of party activists and the wider public. Brown reluctantly agreed to step aside and allow Blair to run as the "modernizer" candidate. After Blair won, he reappointed Brown Labour's shadow chancellor (a post that Smith had first given him two years earlier). Labour's landslide victory in the 1997 general election propelled Brown into the treasury, where he immediately made his mark by ceding the power to set interest rates to the Bank of England. Brown set out to establish a reputation for prudent economic management. He disappointed many Labour supporters by largely retaining for the first two years the strict public-spending policies he inherited from the Conservatives, but by July 1998 he had drawn up new plans that allowed for significantly more spending on health, education, and overseas aid, starting in 1999. PETER KELLNER Cameron, James It was full speed ahead for James Cameron in 1998 as the Canadian filmmaker defied critics and logistics by building a Titanic that refused to sink. His screen adaptation of the doomed ocean liner's 1912 maiden voyage sailed into the record books, grossing more than $1.5 billion worldwide and tying Ben-Hur (1959) for most Academy Awards won (11). Skillfully blending special effects with a fictional love story between a penniless artist (played by American actor Leonardo DiCaprio) and an unhappily engaged first-class passenger (British actress Kate Winslet), Titanic stood atop the American charts for an unprecedented 15 weeks, earning well over $500 million in North America to become the highest-grossing movie in U.S. history. Bringing the luxury liner to the big screen, however, proved anything but smooth sailing. Written, directed, and co-produced by Cameron, Titanic experienced production delays and budget overruns--at a cost of $200 million, it became the most expensive movie ever made--as detailed sets and a model of the ship's exterior, 90% to scale, were built. As rumours circulated of Cameron's legendary perfectionism and demanding direction, many predicted disaster. Instead, Cameron and Titanic glided into cinematic history. After collecting Oscars for best picture and best director, it seemed only fitting when he declared himself "king of the world." Born on Aug. 16, 1954, in Kapuskasing, Ont., Cameron studied art as a child and later provided the drawings that figured prominently in Titanic. In 1971 his family moved to California. After studying physics at California State University at Fullerton, Cameron worked at a series of jobs, including machinist and truck driver, before a viewing of Star Wars (1977) inspired him to try his hand at moviemaking. In 1980 he was hired as a production designer, and the following year he made his directorial debut with Piranha II: The Spawning. A flop at the box office, the movie encouraged Cameron to write his own material. The result was Terminator (1984), an action thriller about a robot hit man that made actor Arnold Schwarzenegger a star and established Cameron as a bankable filmmaker. A series of high-tech and big-budget pictures followed, including Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989), both of which received an Oscar for best visual effects, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and True Lies (1994). In 1992 Cameron formed his own production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, and the following year he cofounded Digital Domain, a state-of-the-art effects company. Although his films met with success at the box office, many complained that they lacked substance, relying too heavily on visual effects. With Titanic Cameron demonstrated his ability not only to tell a story but, as was the case in 1998, to be the story. AMY TIKKANEN Charest, Jean In March 1998 charismatic Canadian politician Jean Charest abandoned the federal government and the Progressive Conservative Party (PCP) to assume the leadership of the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP). His move into provincial politics was made in an effort to wrest political control of Quebec from the separatist Parti Qubcois (PQ), headed by Lucien Bouchard, prior to a referendum on Quebec independence. Although Charest's popularity in Quebec had been expected to propel the QLP to a victory in the November 30 provincial election, his party won only 48 seats in the Quebec National Assembly, compared with 75 seats for the PQ. The QLP gained a slight majority (44%) over the PQ (43%) in the popular vote, however, an outcome that would delay the referendum on independence. John James Charest was born June 24, 1958, in Sherbrooke, Que., and grew up speaking both English and French. He earned a law degree from the University of Sherbrooke and was called to the Quebec bar in 1980. He practiced criminal law in Sherbrooke before entering politics. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1984 and represented the riding of Sherbrooke for 14 years. His rise in federal politics was meteoric. The same year that he was elected to the Commons, Charest was named assistant deputy speaker. In 1986 he made Canadian history when he assumed the portfolio of minister of state for youth--he became the youngest MP to be named to the Cabinet. He was appointed minister of state for fitness and amateur sport in 1988 and deputy leader of the government in 1989. In 1990, however, his career suffered a setback. He was cited for interfering with the judicial process after he telephoned a judge about a case. Although forced to resign from the Cabinet, Charest did not remain a backbencher for long. In 1991 he returned to the Cabinet as minister of the environment and a member of the Priorities and Planning Committee. When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney retired in 1993, Charest made an unsuccessful bid for leadership of the PCP. Thereafter, he served in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Kim Campbell as deputy prime minister until the 1993 election, which swept the PCP from power; Charest was one of only two PCP candidates to be elected to Parliament. After succeeding Kim Campbell as PCP leader in December 1993, he worked to rebuild the party and achieved some success. In the 1997 general election, the PCP won 20 seats in the House of Commons. Charest rose to national prominence as chairman of the parliamentary Special Committee to Study the Proposed Companion Resolution to the Meech Lake Accord 1990, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have given Quebec special status. After the 1993 election he campaigned vigorously in Quebec against separation and was credited with helping to defeat the proposition in the October 1995 vote. DIANE LOIS WAY Chow Yun-Fat After having conquered the Asian film world, Chinese actor Chow Yun-Fat set his sights on the U.S. in 1998, making his Hollywood debut in The Replacement Killers. Starring opposite American actress Mira Sorvino, Chow played a professional assassin who refuses to complete an assignment and thus becomes a target himself. The role--that of a suave, sullen killer with a conscience--was reminiscent of ones that had made the veteran actor a screen legend to millions of Asian moviegoers. The Replacement Killers earned praise as a sophisticated, well-choreographed thriller, and critics lauded Chow's understated performance. Moreover, the movie's success at the box office seemed to indicate that Western audiences were warming to the idea of an Asian leading man in mainstream films. Chow was born on May 18, 1955, on Lamma Island, Hong Kong. After dropping out of high school at age 17 and holding a number of menial jobs, he began taking acting lessons. Eventually he earned a contract to perform on television, and by the mid-1970s he was a soap-opera star. His success on television landed him movie roles. His first acclaimed film was The Story of Woo Viet (1981), in which he played a Vietnamese refugee struggling to reach the U.S. He won a Golden Horse Award (the Taiwanese equivalent of an Academy Award) for best actor for his work in Hong Kong, 1941 (1984), a poignant war drama. In 1986 Chow teamed up with noted action-film director John Woo in A Better Tomorrow. The movie made Chow a box-office superstar in Asia and launched a series of Chow-Woo pairings that included A Better Tomorrow II (1987), The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1990), and Hard Boiled (1992). Chow also made several popular action films with director Ringo Lam, including City on Fire (1987), Wild Search (1989), and Full Contact (1992). After Woo and other notable figures in the Asian film world went to work in Hollywood in the 1990s, Chow decided to follow in their footsteps. He made his last Chinese film, Peace Hotel, in 1995 and moved to the U.S. that year. Determined to be successful, he was careful about the transition. Rather than rushing into a project, he spent two years studying English, honing his acting skills, and waiting for the right script to come along. His patience paid off. After the release of The Replacement Killers, Chow was flooded with movie offers. By year's end he had begun filming a police drama and was working on a remake of the 1946 classic Anna and the King of Siam. TOM MICHAEL Clinton, Bill On Dec. 19, 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives approved two of the four articles of impeachment against U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton. The president was charged with two counts of perjury and one count each of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The tally of 228-206 for the first article, with only 5 Republicans voting no, reflected the partisan nature of the action. Although Republicans would hold a 55-45 edge in the Senate trial convening in January 1999, conviction required approval by a two-thirds majority, and it seemed unlikely that Clinton would be removed from office. The drive toward impeachment grew out of testimony the president had given in January in a deposition in a lawsuit charging him with sexual harassment. The suit had been brought against him by Paula Corbin Jones, a state employee when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. (The case was later dismissed, but in November Clinton agreed to an $850,000 payment to Jones.) In the deposition the president testified that he had not had sexual relations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr (q.v.), who had been investigating the president and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the Whitewater land deal and other matters, expanded his probe to investigate the Lewinsky affair. Thus began an inquiry that consumed the attention of the media and of politicians throughout the year. Starr eventually subpoenaed Clinton, who on August 17 testified before a grand jury and admitted to an "inappropriate" relationship with Lewinsky. On September 9 Starr submitted his report to the House, and the Judiciary Committee approved the four articles of impeachment on December 11-12. With the vote of the full House, Clinton became the second president in U.S. history, the other being Andrew Johnson in 1868, to have had articles of impeachment brought against him. Despite Clinton's perilous political position during the year, he retained a high approval rating among voters and remained active in both domestic and foreign affairs. In budget negotiations with Republicans, for example, the president was successful in winning additional spending for education and farm aid as well as additional U.S. contributions to the International Monetary Fund. He failed, however, to secure legislative approval for a number of other programs. Among foreign trips were a meeting at the end of June with Chinese Pres. Jiang Zemin in Beijing, a visit to many countries in Africa (see Spotlight: Clinton's Trip to Africa), and meetings in the Middle East with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in December, the latter an attempt to shore up agreements that the president had earlier helped the two sides reach at talks in the U.S. The president played a low-key role in the November congressional elections, but Mrs. Clinton was successful in a number of personal appearances on behalf of Democratic candidates. William Jefferson Blythe IV (he later took the name of his stepfather) was born on Aug. 19, 1946, in Hope, Ark. He received a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and was a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford. Both he and his wife gained law degrees from Yale University. After teaching, practicing law, and holding elective office in Arkansas, including five terms as governor, he won the U.S. presidency in 1992 and was reelected in 1996. ROBERT RAUCH Close, Chuck In February 1998 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective of some 120 portraits, most of them large-scale, by American artist Chuck Close. The exhibit, which moved to Chicago in June and Washington, D.C., in October and was scheduled to finish in Seattle, Wash., in 1999, documented the evolution of Close's style and highly inventive techniques. Visually, his body of work was diverse--his earliest work consisted of meticulously detailed hyperrealistic studies in gray, whereas his later works were colourful gridded abstractions. Yet all his work was remarkably similar in some respects; his subject was always the human face, he painted only from photographs he took of his friends and family, and his fascination with the process of creating a work of art was always evident. Charles Thomas Close was born on July 5, 1940, in Monroe, Wash. When he was 14, an exhibition of Jackson Pollock's abstract paintings helped influence him to become a painter. Close studied at the University of Washington School of Art (B.A., 1962) and at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., 1963; M.F.A., 1964). In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to study in Vienna. Close taught (1965-67) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he gradually rejected the elements of Abstract Expressionism that had initially characterized his work. Close's first solo exhibition in 1970 was a series of enormous black-and-white portraits painstakingly transformed from small photographs to colossal paintings. He reproduced and magnified both the mechanical shortcomings of the photograph--blurriness and distortion--and the flaws of the human face: bloodshot eyes, broken capillaries, and enlarged pores. To make his paintings, Close superimposed a grid on a photograph and then transferred a proportional grid to his gigantic canvases. He then applied acrylic paint with an airbrush and scraped off the excess with a razor blade to duplicate the exact shadings of each grid in the photo. During the 1970s and '80s, Close began using colour and experimenting with a variety of media and techniques. Using only red, yellow, and blue, he simulated the printing process, applying only one layer of colour at a time. He developed one of his most innovative techniques for his "fingerprint series," in which he inked his thumb and forefinger and pressed them to the canvas to achieve a subtle range of grays. Viewed up close, the whorled patterns of his fingerprints could be easily seen; from a distance the method was unidentifiable. In 1988 a spinal blood clot left Close almost completely paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. A brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm, however, allowed him to continue working. In the 1990s the minute detail of his earlier paintings was replaced by a grid of tiles daubed with elliptical and ovoid shapes. Viewed up close, each tile was in itself an abstract painting; when seen from a distance, the vividly multihued tiles became a dynamic deconstruction of the human face. Close was called a photo-realist, a minimalist, and an Abstract Expressionist, but such labels were probably premature, as the 1998 retrospective clearly proved that his style was still evolving. ELIZABETH LASKEY Dhlie, Bjrn Norwegian cross-country skiing legend Bjrn Dhlie rocketed into the record books in 1998 by shattering the previous marks for gold medals and total medals won by an individual in Winter Olympics competition. With victories at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, in the 10-km race, 50-km race, and 4 10-km relay, he established himself as one of the greatest Nordic skiers of all time. "The Rocketman," as his adoring fans referred to Dhlie, also claimed a silver medal in the 15-km race, which increased his impressive inventory to 8 gold medals and 12 overall. Born on June 19, 1967, in Rholt, Nor., Dhlie was involved in several sports while growing up and did not focus on competitive Nordic skiing until his mid-teens. Despite his rather late entry into the sport, he rapidly ascended to the top of the World Cup circuit. Hailing from a country with a long history of success in cross-country ski racing, Dhlie proved able to maintain the ferocity and mastery of his Norwegian predecessors, gaining 35 career World Cup victories, including 5 overall World Cup titles, and 14 world championship gold medals. His achievements in the Winter Olympics included three gold medals and one silver at the 1992 Games in Albertville, France, and two gold and two silver at Lillehammer, Nor., in 1994, in addition to the four medals at Nagano. His dominance in international competition led some in the cross-country world to confer upon him the moniker "King Bjrn." Dhlie achieved superstar status in Norway, where he was featured in a top-selling autobiography, a line of sportswear, and a popular television show, "Men on Adventure," on which he traveled to exotic locations around the world and engaged in two favourite pastimes--hunting and cooking. There was even speculation that a new Oslo airport would be named in his honour. After his dramatic finish in the 50-km race at Nagano, in which he overtook the leader with eight kilometres (five miles) to go and then collapsed face-first in the snow at the finish line, Dhlie stated, "Right now I feel I have finished my ski career. I've no motivation." One month later, however, he had apparently found motivation in the opportunity to share in the record for mos