Starting Time

Person of the Week
WAR AND PEACE He came to the Middle East to whip up Arab support for another shot at Iraq's Saddam Hussein, only to see the spotlight stolen by the struggle between Israel and Palestine. If U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney wants to expand the war on terrorism, he may have to act the peacemaker first

Noted
"Thank God for everything, my son will go to heaven."
TAHSEEN DIYAK,
father of Palestinian suicide bomber Rafat Abu Diyak, who blew himself up on a bus in Israel last week, killing seven Israelis

Prime Number
70 percent is by how much Russia's death rate exceeds its birthrate. Since 1991 the population has declined 500,000 each year

Omen
Court-wary restaurants in the United Kingdom are forcing customers who request rare meat to sign a disclaimer in case they get E. coli or salmonella poisoning

Winners
BEN KINGSLEY
British actor has Oscar nomination, gets knighthood. Of course, we will always know him as Yoda, from The Empire Strikes Back
DAVID HASSELHOFF
Baywatcher's early series, Knight Rider, set to become a movie. Slight change: talking car Kitt will be amphibious and stuffed into a red thong
TOM PETTY
Heartbreaker inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Whenever enshrinements of geriatric rockers are announced, we think: who cares?
Losers
TOMMY SUHARTO
Former strongman's son goes on trial in Indonesia for murdering a judge. One can only pity the jurist who gets to hear this case
PETER BUCK
R.E.M. star charged for drunkenness on a plane. This will actually increase his likelihood of making the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
STEVEN SEAGAL
Butt-kicking Buddhist sued for $60 million by a former partner. Unfairly, not a penny of that will go to people who sat through Under Siege 2

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Milestones
By KATE DRAKE

DIED. VAN TIEN DUNG, 84, general who led North Vietnamese forces in the 55-day-long 1975 Ho Chi Minh Campaign to capture the city of Saigon from U.S.-backed South Vietnamese troops; in Hanoi. Born a peasant, he rose through Communist Party ranks to become commander-in-chief of the army. Dung penned his controversial memoirs Our Great Spring Victory in 1976.
DIED. ROSETTA LENOIRE, 90, affable grandma on the American TV sitcom Family Matters and goddaughter of dancing legend Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, with whom she started in showbiz; in Teaneck, New Jersey. LeNoire, who founded the Amas Repertory Theatre that is dedicated to developing new musicals and talent, won a National Medal of Arts in 1999.
DIED. MAUDE FARRIS-LUSE, 115, the world's oldest person according to the Guinness Book of World Records; in Coldwater, Michigan. Luse reportedly credited an intake of boiled dandelion greens and fried fish as the reason for her long life.
DIED. RUDOLF HELL, 100, inventor of the first machine that electronically dissolved text into a stream of dots to be reassembled at the receiving end, on which fax machines and scanners are based; in Berlin. Last year the city of Kiel commemorated his achievements by renaming the Siemenswall Rd., which leads to his former plant, the Dr.-Hell-Strasse.
DIED. HERMAN TALMADGE, 88, former U.S. senator and governor of Georgia who predicted that "blood will run in Atlanta's streets" after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in 1954; in Hampton, Georgia. Talmadge gradually reversed his opposition to the ruling, and was named Man of the Year by Morris Brown College, a predominantly black institution, in 1975. Talmadge later served on the Watergate investigative committee, only to be ousted from the Senate for misusing campaign funds.
KILLED. ISAIAS DUARTE CANCINO 63, archbishop of Colombia, who was an inspiration to citizens mired in a brutal 38-year war between leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups that has killed 40,000 in the last decade, by two gunmen outside a church; in Cali. Working from the birthplace of Colombia's most powerful cocaine cartels, Cancino was outspoken in his fights against violence, drugs and poverty.
CONVICTED. MARJORIE KNOLLER, 46, on five charges, including second-degree murder and manslaughter, for not stopping her two, 54-kg Presa Canario dogs from attacking and killing 33-year-old Diane Whipple outside the victim's San Francisco home; in Los Angeles. Knoller's husband, Robert Noel, was also found guilty on lesser charges. The couple were taking care of the two dogs for a prison inmate who ran a breeding ring of attack dogs.

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A Testy Taiwan Tightens the Leash
By BRYAN WALSH

Taiwan's free-wheeling media are unaccustomed to police raids on news offices following publication of information embarrassing to the government. That's only supposed to happen in the large communist state across the straits. So Taiwanese journalists were surprised last week when police swept through the offices and printing plant of Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai's Next magazine. Some 160,000 copies of the flamboyant weekly were seized before they could reach newsstands. Authorities threatened to bring charges against a Next reporter for leaking national secrets.

What caused the crackdown was Next's report of the existence of two hidden slush funds, totalling $100 million, set up by former President Lee Teng-hui and continued by his successor Chen Shui-ban. Next alleged politicians used the money to buy better international relations, employing long-denied "dollar diplomacy" to ensure other nations resisted mainland efforts to isolate Taiwan. Damning documents leaked to the magazine also disclosed that the country's National Security Bureau (NSB) extensively shared intelligence with the U.S. and Japan—a fact that neither wanted broadcast to prickly Beijing.

Next is only the messenger. Government officials are ultimately intent on muzzling who they believe is the report's Deep Throat: former NSB chief cashier Col. Liu Kuan-chun, who has been accused of absconding in 2000 with over $5 million in bureau funds and a number of confidential files. Authorities fear that Liu, believed to be in the U.S., has revealed to Next only a tiny portion of what he knows.

The government seems determined to keep it that way. But Jimmy Lai, whose publications are as sensational as they are crusading, won't be easily silenced. "The raid didn't make me either angry or annoyed," he told Time. "I just thought about how to get our magazine onto the newsstands." Using a second printing house kept secret from the authorities, Lai put out an updated edition the next day, with added coverage of the police raid. When it comes to media repression, it looks like Taiwan could learn a trick or two from the mainland.

With reporting by Joyce Huang/Taipei

The Sands of Seoul
By DONALD MACINTYRE Seoul

Koreans call it "the gate-crasher of spring." Every year, huge storms of fine yellow sand, churned up by winds in the Gobi Desert, swirl across northeastern China and descend on the peninsula, obscuring visibility and dusting everything in yellow. Last week's storm—2002's first—was Korea's worst in at least 40 years. Dust concentrations were 20 times normal in parts of Seoul. Worse still, some scientists now fear the crud clouds are picking up toxins, such as cadmium and arsenic, as they cross China's northeastern industrial belt. The pollutant payload is small but "very, very bad for your health," says an environmental studies professor. The problem stems from spreading desertification across huge swathes of China. Says Goh Kun, the mayor of Seoul: "We need radical and aggressive measures to stop the yellow sand." Korea has rarely faced a more insidious invader.

Putting a Permanent Lid on Pol Pot
By ROBERT HORN When Pol Pot died peacefully in his sleep in the Cambodian jungle in 1998, survivors of his genocidal rule rued that the infamous Khmer Rouge leader never stood trial for his crimes. It turns out that some form of jungle justice may have been meted out to Brother Number One after all. Thailand's Army Commander in Chief General Surayud Chulanont claimed last week he had evidence Pol Pot had actually been poisoned. According to Surayud, intelligence and autopsy reports suggest there were traces of toxic chemicals in Pol Pot's internal organs. His remains were never subjected to a formal autopsy—Khmer Rouge guerrillas cremated Pol Pot's body shortly after he expired. But, to establish conclusively that the corpse was in fact the man responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians, Thai army officers took hair, finger nail and other samples from the body before it was cast onto a burning heap of tires and old furniture. "Those who poisoned Pol Pot were close to him," Surayud said. "They thought he was useless and would cause trouble." Still hiding in the jungle nearly 20 years after being forced from power, it wasn't likely the deposed despot would ever give up his dream of ruling again. Not long after he died, the last remnants of his Khmer Rouge signed a peace deal with the government in Phnom Penh, ending a quarter century of civil war. If this is justice, it's poetic—Pol Pot as the Khmer Rouge's final victim.