Starting Time

Person of the Week
UNDER THE LIGHTS With the first phase of the war on terror going well, President George W. Bush is now insisting that Saddam Hussein allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq. If Saddam remains defiant, the fragile U.S.-led coalition could either splinter or be headed to Baghdad

Noted
“Someone has got to do the things no one else wants to do.”
JOHNNY (“MIKE”) SPANN,
the first American to be killed on the ground in Afghanistan, on why he joined the CIA, according to his father

Prime Number
$100 million is the estimated amount of cash and military aid that Osama bin Laden has given the Taliban since 1996, say U.S. intelligence reports

Omen
A recent study found the nickel content in two of the new euro coins going into circulation in January may cause skin irritation or eczema in 10% of the population

Winners
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Monarch goes to The Full Monty and receives Jennifer Lopez. The throne hasn’t seen that much booty since the days of Sir Francis Drake
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
The Terminator gets a California ski run named after him. Modeled after his career, it’s a steep downward slope ending in a bottomless abyss
“MR. McCHINA”
U.K. entrepreneur beats McDonalds and is allowed to sell Chinese fast food as McChina. McGizzard Happy Meals come with a cheap toy
Losers
FABIEN BARTHEZ
Sieve-like French goaltender may get butter brand named after him. The money will be handy when Man U subs him with Posh Spice
SANTA CLAUS
St. Nick banned from a Maryland Christmas tree lighting. It’s been a bad year for men with long beards from desolate regions of the world
MARGARET THATCHER
Iron Lady sees Blair’s approval rating rise above her Falklands War numbers. Of course, she had to smite the military juggernaut that is Argentina

Here’s One Country That Believes in Miracles
Enron Corp., Your New CEO Has Been Located

The news out of the democratic people’s republic of korea hasn’t been great for, oh, five decades or so. And lately it’s only getting grimmer amid drought, floods, widespread human misery and the ever-removed antics of Dear Leader Kim Jong Il. But Pyongyang’s propaganda machinenow on the Net!bravely soldiers on, reporting five or six major news events every day. (Recent samples: “Many Goat Farms Appear,” “Rare Squid,” “Reception Given at Russian Consulate General.”) Now comes a ray of hopeno, make that a beacon of an incontrovertibly glorious future! In August, Kim visited a coal-mining machinery factory at Ranam, in the country’s north, and found that production was 12% above target. (Which isn’t bad considering that lots of factories in North Korea are idle because there are no spare parts.) Last month, a full-fledged Ranam campaign erupted with Kim praising the workers’ heroic feat, predicting that it would vigorously beat the drum of revolution, and then unveiling what was described as a “grandiose plan” to develop North Korea into a superpower. According to the official press, North Koreans are so inspired by Ranam’s factory that they are planning “uninterrupted miracles and feats in all fields.” It sounds a lot like Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, in which Chinese peasants made steel in their backyards and claimed to grow supersized cabbages; that campaign led to economic collapse and mass starvation. How times have changed: the big miracle most Koreans hope for these days is a chance to escape across the borderto prospering China.

ID’ing A Corpse? Call in The DNA
President GEORGE W. BUSH has said he wants Osama bin Laden dead or alive, but there’s one problem with getting him dead: how to positively identify a tall, bearded corpse as the real evildoer. fbi lab experts stand ready to run dna tests on the remains. But they don’t have a sample of dna known to have come from bin Laden. The solution? Officials say they will seek tissue samples from his immediate relatives, most of whom, including his mother, are living in Saudi Arabia. Matching what’s known as mitochondrial dna to that of his mother would provide the most definitive identification because bin Laden is thought to be the only child of his mother and the bin Laden family patriarch, who had many wives. The chief stumbling block may be the willingness of the Saudi regime to allow the dna hunt. Are the special forces equipped with mouth swabs?

Milestones
By ERIN KILLIAN

DIED. ROBERT TOOLS, 59, the world’s first recipient of a fully self-contained artificial heart, which kept him alive for 151 days; in Louisville, Kentucky. Doctors had given Tools, a former telephone-company worker, only a month to live before the AbioCor device was implanted at the beginning of July. His death, from internal bleeding and organ failure, was not related to the mechanical heart.
DIED. GEORGE HARRISON, 58, the Beatles’ quiet and wry lead guitarist, of cancer; in Los Angeles. A proponent of Eastern culture, the youngest Beatle wrote some of the group’s most lyrical songs (Something, While My Guitar Gently Weeps) and in 1970 topped the charts with his solo My Sweet Lord.
DIED. JOHN KNOWLES, 75, author of the best-selling 1959 novel A Separate Peace about students at a New England boarding school during World War II; in Wilton Manors, Florida. The book was required reading in American high schools for decades.
APPOINTED. KENNETH FEINBERG, 56, an attorney and former aide to Senator Edward Kennedy, as manager of the compensation fund for victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and their families; in Washington, D.C. Feinberg oversaw similar restitution for Agent Orange victims after the Vietnam War.
APPOINTED. ROGER MILLA, 48, a Cameroon soccer legend, as the U.N.’s first African ambassador to spearhead its aids program; in Geneva. Milla, named the African player of the century by British magazine Africa Soccer, will travel around the continent next year to educate the public about the epidemic.
ARRESTED. HUTOMO MANDALA PUTRA, 39, better known as Tommy Suharto; in Jakarta. The youngest son of Indonesia’s ex-President, Tommy had been on the run for a year following a corruption conviction.

Eulogy
By NORMAN PEARLSTINE, Editor-in-Chief, Time Inc.

In a “mission statement” printed in its inaugural edition in December 1975, ASIAWEEK magazine promised to “see the world from an Asian perspective, to be Asia’s voice in the world.” Through Asia’s remarkable years of growth, Asiaweek told of the transformation of a continent before succumbing to Asia’s current big story: economic hard times. (Owner Time Inc., publisher of TIME, said it couldn’t sustain the magazine in a “brutal” ad market.) In its early days, it was often a quirky read: one cover story said the world should forget about saving the endangered tiger. But Asiaweek took on politicians and business barons and became a “must read” in much of Southeast Asia. In its final year, under the editorship of Dorinda Elliott, the magazine jazzed up its look and refocused its content on the business and economic changes sweeping the region. With the magazine’s demise last week, Asia is left with one less vibrant journalistic voice.