Starting Time

Person of the Week
BIRTH OF A NATION It took years of struggle in the jungle and many more as a political prisoner in Indonesia, but East Timor’s favorite son finally reached the presidency after an overwhelming victory at the polls. Now Xanana Gusmão faces his most difficult task: building a country from scratch

Noted
“I’m not saying it’s safe for humans. I’m not saying it’s unsafe for humans. All I’m saying is that it makes hermaphrodites of frogs.”
TYRONE B. HAYES,
a University of California researcher, on a study’s conclusion that male frogs exposed to a common weed killer develop multiple sex organs

Prime Number
35.6 trillion is how many mathematical operations per second a new Japanese computer can perform, outpacing the 20 fastest American computers combined

Omen
Police in Holland are installing security cameras to protect their roadside speed cameras after vandals and irate drivers started destroying them

Winners
JERRY SEINFELD
Comic sells documentary rights to his tour for megabucks. Meanwhile, Michael Richards is pumped over his planned Iowa State Fair gig
‘N SYNC
Boy band beats lawsuit filed by puppetmakers who claimed singers had misappropriated identity of artificial, sawdust-filled characters
CLINT EASTWOOD
Aging actor named to California Parks Commission. First order of business: cut him in half so tourists can count the rings
Losers
ZHU RONGJI
Chinese Premier red-faced over economic forum snafus. To-do list for next Boao summit: fewer boring heads of state, more beer bongs
MARLON BRANDO
Godfather hit with big palimony suit by his maid. Who else is a guy who lives on his own private South Pacific island going to fool around with?
HELEN CLARK
Kiwi PM nailed for passing off others’ artwork as her own. It turns out this unknown artist has also been running New Zealand all along

Upward Ho!
Lining Up for Everest
Last june, erik weihenmayer, right, became the first blind climber to reach Mount Everest’s icy 8,850-m peak, and on his way he carved a hint of approachability in the mountain’s otherwise treacherous face. Now there’s a veritable buffet line of hopeful summiteers, from amputees to an all-women team to the descendants of the first climbers to reach the peak. It’s no easy trek: though a record 182 people made it to the top last year, 90% of Everest climbers fail.
By SORA SONG

PETER HILLARY AND TASHI TENZING
Son of Sir Edmund Hillary and grandson of Tenzing Norgay

The descendants of the pair first to summit Everest, in 1953, hope to do the same next month. Hillary and Tenzingboth have reached the top beforewill climb separately and meet at the peak

CAL HANNA
Oldest, at 72

The Chicago businessman took up climbing at 58 and has made three attempts at Everest. He’ll try again this springand says this time will be his last

CGARY GULLER
First with one arm

With funding from a Texas advocacy group for the disabled, Guller, whose arm was amputated after a 1986 climbing accident, will attempt to summit Everest in spring 2003. Last year he turned back at 7,620 m

VED HOMMER
First double amputee

Hommer ascended 6,193-m Mount McKinley in 1999 and last year climbed 914 m. short of Everest’s peak. Now he’s training for a new try next spring. The first person to summit with an artificial leg was Tom Whittaker in 1998

Our Modern World
Bye Bye Birdies
By BRYAN WALSH

Pigeons don’t rank very high in the avian pecking order. In most places they are thought of only as statue-soiling, vermin-carrying rats with wings. But India’s eastern state of Orissa holds the urban nuisances in greater esteem. Since the end of World War II, the Orissa police department has employed some 600 trained pigeons as official messengers. Capable of ferrying vital letters at up to 80 km/h to remote police outposts, the stalwart birds proved more reliable than the region’s hopelessly erratic telephone network, especially during cyclone season when high winds frequently downed lines. But, as successful as the pigeon program has proved, it’s soon to be phased out in favor of e-mail. Carrier pigeons “have no place in this advanced age,” sniffs K.M. Deo, one of Orissa’s inspectors general of police. Besides being considerably messy, the birds have to be fed, housed and trained not to overfly important local politiciansall of which cost a cash-strapped government $114,500 a year. Nevertheless, some of their less-advanced attributes will surely be missed: pigeons rarely crash, can’t forward annoying knock-knock jokes, don’t spam you with unwanted junk mail and never carry viruses. Well, not usually.

– Reported by Saritha Rai/Bangalore

Milestones
By NEIL GOUGH

DIED. BYRON R. WHITE, 84, retired Supreme Court justice and early football star; in Denver. An inductee to the College Football Hall of Fame, White was appointed to the court in 1962 by John F. Kennedy, served 31 years and was known for his conservative and often dissenting opinions, ruling on landmark decisions such as Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade.
DIED. ROBERT URICH, 55, Emmy Award-winning actor best known for his starring roles in the television detective sagas Vega$ and Spenser: For Hire, of synovial cell sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that attacks the body’s joints; in Thousand Oaks, California.
DIED. RUTH FERTEL, 75, self-made success and founder of the international chain Ruth’s Chris Steak House; in New Orleans. Fertel got her start in 1965 when she mortgaged her house to purchase a local Louisiana restaurant called Chris Steak House, advertised in a newspaper classified ad by then owner Chris Matulich.
DIED. THOR HEYERDAHL, 87, Norwegian explorer whose transoceanic expeditions on primitive rafts earned him worldwide acclaim; in Colla Micheri, Italy. Kon-Tiki, Heyerdahl’s 1948 account of his 7,000-km Pacific voyage on a balsa wood raft, was translated into 66 languages, and his contribution to theories of intercontinental migration remains influential today.
ARRESTED. ROBERT BLAKE, 68, former child actor and star of television’s Baretta, for the May 2001 murder of his wife, Bonny Bakley, who was killed minutes after the couple had finished dinner at Blake’s favorite Italian restaurant; in Los Angeles.
BORN. To actor JOHNNY DEPP and his wife, French actress and singer VANESSA PARADIS, a son, Jack; in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
CHARGED. ALBERTO FUJIMORI, former President of Peru, with using government funds to recruit congressmen to his party; in Lima, Peru. This is the fourth in a series of criminal charges against Fujimori, who has lived in self-imposed exile in his parents’ native Japan since November 2000.
SENTENCED. FATHUR ROHMAN AL-GHOZI, 31, Indonesian national arrested in Manila in January for ties to terrorist groups and a failed bomb plot in Singapore, to 10 to 12 years in prison for the illegal possession of explosives; in General Santos City, Philippines.
SENTENCED. THOMAS CRANDALL, 47, Roman Catholic priest, to four years and three months in prison by order of a federal justice for dealing drugs from his Florida rectory and New Orleans condominium; in Pensacola, Florida.
SENTENCED. LIU YONG, 31, former legislator in the northeastern Chinese industrial hub of Shenyang, to death by order of a provincial court; in Tieling. Liu was convicted for property damage, bribery, illegal business, possession of guns and obstruction of justice in a corruption scandal.