TIME's Weekend Review

While every week may be the wrong week to be a politician, you would at least think the poor creatures would get some respite in the depths of August. Alas no, for it seems neither scandal, slander nor special prosecutors ever go on vacation. Not only ex-leaders of questionable democratic status (Krenz and De Klerk) drop down a rung, but also elected ones Bosnia's President Plavsic, for example, who never deserved to be facing down a stone-throwing mob. But such was a week in which not even being named Kennedy made you immune. And what of Mike, Al and Ron Brown's son, all allegedly caught somewhat red-handed this week? It was enough to make one think they'd taken too many diet pills or were they spanked as children?

Not that it was bad luck for every bureaucrat. Boris Yeltsin's Defense Council chief won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Mir, while Don Hodel cut a dashingly moderate figure as the new President of the Christian Coalition. And speaking of God, ask yourself this is He a smoker? Consider the evidence: on Monday, Florida squeezes $12.5 billion out of the tobacco industry and starts tearing down its cigarette billboards. By the end of the week the state is suffering a plague of mosquitoes so severe that parts of Disney World have to close early. Could it be the Almighty was angered by the fall of Marlboro Man?