HONG KONG: Savage Reprisal A journalist's moment of triumph abruptly turned into pure horror in the crown colony last Wednesday. Minutes after holding a news conference to publicize the launch of his new Chinese-language tabloid, Surprise Weekly, Leung Tin-wai was attacked in his office by two knife-wielding assailants who slashed both his thumbs, then sliced off his left forearm and fled. Suspicion for the vicious maiming fell on the region's ruthless population of gangsters. The attackers, it is speculated, may have been wreaking revenge on Leung for articles he had prepared on organized crime. At week's end surgeons had reattached Leung's forearm, but with no suspects in custody, anxiety was running high in the journalistic community. "We fight with the pen, not the sword," said a colleague at Surprise Weekly. "In a cutthroat business, how can you counter such savagery?"

BEIJING: No Ifs, No Butts Nearly a third of the world's cigarettes are smoked in China, and bureaucrats know it will take another cultural revolution to curb the national habit. So the ban on public smoking that went into effect in the nation's capital last Wednesday was supported by a heavy-handed propaganda effort. Health workers in street-side booths dramatized the lethal effects of cigarettes by injecting mice with nicotine-infused fluid while onlookers watched the tiny creatures thrash, shudder--then die. Newspapers, radio and television bombarded the public with how-to-quit tips. Among them: chewing gum, acupuncture treatment and self-control. no smoking signs went up on the walls of hospitals, schools, theaters, museums, libraries, shopping malls, trains and buses. More than 80,000 antismoking proselytizers armed with leaflets, banners and cassette players fanned out across the city. Though no one fostered any illusions that the ban would deter smokers from lighting up in private, abstainers were pleased with the public results. "It's about time we curbed the bad habit," said accountant Yu Jie. "At least we nonsmokers should be protected from passive smoking."

MIAMI: Disheartening Swamp Search When ValuJet Flight 592 dove from the sky on May 11, the DC-9 and all 110 people on board disintegrated with few traces in Florida's Everglades swamp. Last week searchers toiled dawn to dusk in 12-hour shifts to retrieve human remains and plane fragments in what federal officials say is the most hostile environment for a recovery and crash investigation they have ever seen. Before plunging through razor-sharp saw grass into the sticky 3-m-deep ooze, searchers had to seal themselves into biological-hazard suits that protected them from airplane chemicals and bacteria from decomposing bodies. The suits were so hot and cloying that workers were able to endure only 30 minutes at a stretch. Unable to see below the surface, searchers had to probe the muck with their hands and feet. And any object they encountered was likely to set emotions churning: a mangled body part, a scrap of clothing, photographs. By week's end their labors had yielded important clues to the cause of the disaster: soot-stained airplane debris, suggesting that a fire may have taken place on board, a theory bolstered by the discovery in a flight manifest that the jet's cargo included 50 or 60 oxygen generators, which, if not emptied, could have been highly combustible.

HEBBURN: Blackboard Jungle How do you balance a troubled youngster's right to be educated with a teacher's need to be protected from violent pupils? That's the quandary faced by administrators at the Hebburn (England) Comprehensive School in a case watched by teachers and parents throughout Britain. Last July, Graham Cram, 12, was expelled after teacher Roy Brady accused the boy of kicking him. But an appeals panel overturned the expulsion on hearing Cram's account: the boy said that after being pushed down by a fellow student, he had kicked reflexively as Brady tried to help him to his feet. Last week, however, when Cram showed up to resume his schooling, teachers claimed that Cram had a long history of disruptive behavior--though other adults who know him have described him as pleasant and courteous--and threatened to strike rather than allow him in their classrooms. In the end a compromise was reached: Cram will be taught in isolation from his peers by the head teacher, the deputy head and a special-needs teacher. Nobody was really satisfied, least of all Cram. "I don't like being on my own," he said. "It's boring."