Milestones

By By Melissa August, Peter Bailey and Julie Rawe

RE-ELECTED. CHEN SHUI-BIAN, 53, President of Taiwan; by a razor-thin margin, just one day after he was shot in the abdomen while riding in a motorcade. The opposition Nationalist Party, which until the shooting had been narrowly favored to win, called for the election to be annulled and suggested that the assassination attempt may have been a final-hour campaign tactic.

RELEASED. CAPTAIN JAMES YEE, 35, Chinese-American Muslim chaplain accused of mishandling classified documents at Guantanamo Bay. Citing national security concerns that would arise from the disclosure of evidence if the case proceeded, the Army dropped all charges against him, and will allow him to return to his previous duty at Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash.

ARRESTED. CHARLES MCCOY, JR., 28, suspect in the 24 high-way shootings that have plagued Ohio motorists for months and left one woman dead; after a tip led authorities to a motel where he was staying; in Las Vegas. An arrest warrant charged McCoy with felonious assault in a shooting on an occupied house, but he is expected to face more serious charges, possibly including murder, when he's returned to Ohio.

DIED. JOHN (J.J.) JACKSON, 62, who, with a vast knowledge of music and sense of humor as one of the first MTV VJs, helped usher in the music-video era; of an apparent heart attack; in Los Angeles. During the late 1960s, he worked as a DJ in Boston and emceed for Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and the Who.

DIED. GENE ALLISON, 69, passionate singer of the gospel-inspired 1957 rhythm-and-blues ballad You Can Make It if You Try, which set the tone for '60s soul music and was recorded by the Rolling Stones on their '64 debut album; of kidney and liver failure; in Nashville, Tenn.

DIED. GENEVIEVE, 83, Parisian chanteuse best known as the Tonight show regular who would bat her eyes at host Jack Paar while struggling with the English language; in Los Angeles. Before making her Tonight debut in 1957, on its second show, she ran a tiny nightclub in Paris where she cooked, served, sang and was spotted by an agent who invited her to America.

DIED. MERCEDES MCCAMBRIDGE, 87, film, stage and television actress who won an Oscar for her 1949 screen debut, as a Southern Governor's hard-boiled secretary and lover, in All the King's Men; in San Diego. Her voice later became indelible when she mouthed the profanities for Linda Blair's possessed Regan in The Exorcist.

DIED. WILLIAM PICKERING, 93, former head of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who oversaw the first launch of a U.S. spacecraft into orbit; in La Canada Flintridge, Calif. The quiet giant of the U.S. space program from 1954 to 1976, during the height of its space race with the Soviet Union, Pickering emigrated from New Zealand to study electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology.

DIED. SIDNEY JAMES, 97, founding editor of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, who spent 40 years reporting, writing, editing and managing at Time Inc.; in Alameda, Calif. He started as a stringer for TIME in his native St. Louis, Mo., and later worked for TIME and LIFE in cities across the U.S. In 1954 he took the helm at Time Inc.'s new magazine devoted to sports, which was viewed by many as a risky endeavor but became a profit-making venture after 10 years.