VERBATIM

"Some of us have been asking: Is it right that an average climber can order an ascent of Everest out of a catalog?" --Mark Bryant, editor of the U.S. magazine Outside, after a storm killed eight climbers on Mount Everest

"In about 200 years the white people have whittled us down to where we are today: a scattered, demoralized, cringing part of Australian society." --Charles Perkins, former head of Australia's Aboriginal Affairs Department

"I will fight to the bitter end, even if you crucify me...I am reminded of Jesus Christ on the way to Golgotha, how he walked through the streets and people spat at him." --Mikhail Gorbachev, before a hostile audience of voters, reaffirming his candidacy for the Russian presidency despite overwhelming lack of support

"The young say they hate uniforms, but there they all are in jeans... It's like China in the days of Mao." --Pierre Cardin, French designer

IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Though Hindu nationalist Atal Behari Vajpayee is India's new Prime Minister, his tenure is, well, tenuous; a vote of confidence is pending

FROM THE WORLD'S HEADLINES

Onlookers winced as another U.S.-CHINA TRADE SPAT broke out over Beijing's failure to protect intellectual property rights and stop software piracy

CHINA DAILY, CHINA: "The differences between China and the U.S. in the area of [intellectual property rights] can only be resolved through consultation on an equal footing rather than through displaying power politics by exerting pressure and threatening sanctions."

DIE ZEIT, GERMANY: "Strife on all fronts. The American elephant is once again stomping on the delicate china of economic diplomacy."

EASTERN EXPRESS, HONG KONG: "No Hong Kong-based investor can be expected to sink [money] into setting up a textile factory across the border when he knows that the threat of U.S. sanctions will descend...every summer, and that if a trade war does break out..., he will lose his livelihood."

WASHINGTON POST, U.S.: "China will...find its new global place best by respecting the rules of the world system it seeks to join."

CORRIDOR OF DEVASTATION: The tornado whirled across the Bangladeshi plains north of Dhaka last week, taking only 20 min. to obliterate 60 villages along its 16-km path. The death toll may mount to 1,000, and close to 35,000 people were injured. In a tragic irony, inhabitants of this relatively affluent region had built their homes with metal roofs, instead of the bamboo and straw used by their poorer countrymen. Those luxurious roofs are blamed for making the tornado one of the most devastating ever to strike the country. Ripped and hurled by 400-km/h winds, the sharp-edged sheets of metal gored people and livestock and smashed down buildings. At week's end, however, many of the 100,000 survivors left homeless had no alternative but to salvage metal scraps from the wreckage to build new homes.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

The pimple and wrinkle fighter Retin-A may alleviate another skin woe: STRETCH MARKS. When rubbed on daily for six months, the cream shrank the marks 14% in length and 8% in width; with a placebo, they grew. The scarlike lesions tested were relatively new ones, all with still smooth skin.

Worried about HIV? The U.S. government has approved an AIDS TEST for home use. The Confide HIV Testing Service enables people to draw their own blood with a finger prick, send the sample to a lab and get the test result by phone.

An experimental test that looks for DNA damage in skin and blood cells may lead to the early detection of ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. Today a definitive diagnosis requires a brain autopsy.

THE BAD NEWS

Electromagnetic fields from CELLULAR PHONES can cause pacemakers to slow down, speed up or stop altogether. The effect, which appears to last only as long as the phone is on, usually occurs when the antenna is placed close to the pacemaker--for example, when the phone is inserted into a breast pocket.

MAMMOGRAMS may be less accurate for women on estrogen than for those who aren't. The hormone increases the density of breast tissue, which can make X rays difficult to read.

Yes, you can be too thin. The risk of a hip fracture more than doubles for women, especially those thin to begin with, who lose 10% or more of their weight after age 50.

Sources--GOOD NEWS: Journal of the American Medical Association; U.S. Food and Drug Administration; Proceedings of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences BAD NEWS: North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology; Journal of the [U.S.] National Cancer Institute; Journal of the American Medical Association

15 YEARS AGO IN TIME

A Pardonable Crime?

Pleading for his release from prison last week on Italy's RAI state television, Mehmet Ali Agca dismissed his attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II as a "desperate act to pass into history," but the courts may not easily forgive him: "The most vigorously gregarious of Popes rides slowly through a sea of tourists and pilgrims. It is a rite of sweet human communion... But just there, floating from the left of the frame into the proceedings of history...moves a disembodied hand and its tense instrument, a blue-black pistol. It is poised there forever. And then it explodes at the Pope's white robe...[T]he man who shot Pope John Paul II last week carried terrorism into a new territory of outrage...Nearly everyone repeated the question the wounded Pope himself had asked: 'Why did they do it?'" --May 25, 1981

--By Janice M. Horowitz, Nadya Labi and Megan Rutherford