COVER

Asia Reaches Olympian Heights (Cover Story)

From swimming to shooting, field hockey to fighting, Asia's superstar athletes are defying gravity in Athens

Bouncing Back (Cover Story)

Shedding their fears of failure and shame, Japan's athletes are rediscovering the joy of victory

ASIA

Turning Up the Heat

A growing U.S. focus on North Korea's human-rights record will complicate the six-nation talks

King's Gambit

How chess maestro Bobby Fischer turned fugitive and ended up in a Japanese detention cell

The Unlikely Alliance (Essay)

On the centenary of Deng's birth, memories of his bond with a U.S. President

GLOBAL ADVISER

Tech Watch (TIME Global Adviser)

The Myth of Megapixels

Amuse-Bouche (TIME Global Adviser)

London's Nyonya is the latest example of fusion Power

BRIEFING

Capital Punishment (Notebook)

Maoist rebels blockade Kathmandu in the latest tactic of their long-running insurrection

Muzzling the Rumor Mill (Notebook)

Thai regulators target market analysts, who they blame for the stock market's tumble

Milestones (Notebook)

LIFE Photographer Carl Mydans

Verbatim (Notebook)

Quotes of the week

Letters (Notebook)

In Search of Paradise

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

Hong Kong's Golden Boy

Before he died, Martin Booth wrote a moving memoir of his colorful childhood in the 1950s British colony