LUBANG: Return of the Lost Fighter For nearly three decades after the end of World War II, Japanese lieutenant Hiroo Onoda stuck to his guns in the jungles of this Philippine island, refusing to believe Japan had been defeated until his former commanding officer arrived in 1974 and personally ordered him to surrender. Last week Lubang islanders turned out by the hundreds to welcome Onoda, now 74, back for a visit. This time the world's most stubborn warrior was in the Philippines on a mission of friendship at the invitation of the provincial government. Even Candido Tria, 81, a farmer wounded by Onoda 32 years ago when he unwittingly passed too close to the soldier's hideout, accepted a hug from Onoda. "I have no more bitterness," said Tria. "What else can I do with what happened long ago?" But the families of some of Onoda's other alleged victims--who blame him for the postwar deaths of 30 islanders and the injuries of 25 others--found it harder to forgive. They demanded compensation from the man they termed a "criminal assassin." Countered Onoda: "As long as [soldiers] follow orders and don't violate international law, then they have no responsibility." He did make a peace offering of sorts, however: a $10,000 donation to a local scholarship fund.

SINGAPORE: Accounting for Bothersome Discounts Real estate can be an emotional topic in a nation where land is scarce, property prices are stratospheric, and most people live in painfully cramped apartments. So resentment ran high when it was disclosed that a developer had sold four luxury condominiums at bargain prices to Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his wife, and Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, their son. Though neither Lee Sr. nor Lee Jr. committed any impropriety--they had not asked for preferential treatment and were not aware at the time of the purchases that they were paying reduced prices--both volunteered to make charitable contributions in amounts equivalent to the discounts they had received. And last week Lee Sr. made an unusual address to Parliament explaining the situation. "Sellers want customers who are celebrities," he said. "I did [the developer] a favor more than any favor he can give me." Lee said that because of his status he also received discounts from his car dealer, his shoemaker and his tailor. "Let's grow up," he chided his critics for their naivete. They were hardly mollified. "The perception is that they got a good bargain because of who they are--and this is considered unfair," said former Trade and Industry Minister Suppiah Dhanabalan.

BUDAPEST: Baby Bank Hungary is faced with a heart-rending paradox: couples overwhelmed by poverty are abandoning and killing their newborns, while other couples struggling with infertility are desperately seeking babies to adopt. Now a hospital has come up with a plan to save unwanted children and place them in loving homes. Agost Schoepf-Merei Hospital has cut red tape, allowing women who give birth at the hospital to leave their newborns behind. Alternatively, parents can anonymously drop off unwanted infants in an incubator installed in the hospital's entrance. In either case, the staff will care for the babies while arranging for adoption. During the first 10 days of the program, the incubator remained empty, but six unwanted babies born at the hospital were handed over, and the switchboard jangled with calls from hundreds of couples eager to adopt them.

LONDON: Piltdown Hoaxer Identified Ever since Piltdown Man--once hailed as the "missing link" between man and primate--was debunked as a hoax in the early 1950s, a mystery has remained: Who was the joker who placed human skull fragments with an ape's jaw--stained to look old--in the gravel pit in southern England where they were discovered in 1912? Last week British paleontologist Brian Gardiner announced that he and Natural History Museum researcher Andrew Currant had identified the culprit: Martin A.C. Hinton, a now deceased curator of zoology at the museum. The proof? Stained bones found in a trunk marked with Hinton's initials in the museum attic were practice forgeries, Gardiner says, for the Piltdown hoax. So why did Hinton do it? According to Gardiner, he set out to dupe a colleague, Arthur Smith Woodward, with whom he had had a falling-out. Smith Woodward proceeded to stake his reputation on the authenticity of the Piltdown Man. Says Gardiner with a chuckle: "It just shows that if you want to believe something, you do."

43 YEARS AGO IN TIME

Screen Sensations

Critics and movie stars converged on Cannes in May to celebrate the best in film and a healthy industry. In the early days of television, cinema feared for its survival and countered with gimmicks like 3-D: "Quite by accident, as it walked around in a daze of depression, Hollywood had tripped over a firing cord and shot off a telling reply to television. 'Third-Dementia,' the newest entertainment craze, was luring crowds back to the movies...Out the window went twelve days of production on [Paramount's] Sangaree, a costume epic starring Fernando Lamas, and the whole thing was shot again in 3-D, with Technicolor. 'Whaddya mean they won't wear glasses?' demanded Producer Bill Thomas. 'They'll wear toilet seats around their necksif you give 'em what they want to see!'" --June 8, 1953