ROME: A Verdict, but No Closure

"There is no justice!" wailed one woman, with anguish felt throughout Italy after a court ordered the release of former Nazi SS officer Erich Priebke. A three-judge Italian military tribunal convicted Priebke, 83, of taking part in the massacre of 335 civilians outside German-occupied Rome in 1944, but ruled that because he did not act with premeditation or cruelty, a 30-year statute of limitations precluded punishment. As it turned out, Priebke was anything but free. Protesters stormed the courthouse, blocking his exit for eight hours. Then Italian authorities rearrested him pending review of a warrant from Germany, which also wants to try him for his role in the massacre. No matter what the outcome of the German case, Priebke will not be free to go home. Argentina, where he lived from 1948 until his extradition last year, has barred his return on the ground that it might cause social unrest.

TEMBISA: Electric-Shock Stampede

In the bad old days of apartheid, blacks considered riding South Africa's state-owned railway without paying fare a legitimate form of protest. Despite the nation's transformation to full democracy, the fare cheating has continued unabated, and when railway officials launched a harsh crackdown, tragedy resulted. During the morning rush hour in this black township near Johannesburg last Wednesday, guards began prodding fare beaters back with electric-shock batons as would-be riders surged toward the tracks. In the ensuing crush, 16 people were killed. As word of the disaster spread, angry residents stormed the station, hurling rocks and torching a ticket office before being dispersed by police. As investigators tried to pinpoint what went wrong, Metrorail official Honey Mateya defended the use of shock batons as an alternative to guns. The intention, he said, was "to make the railways more commuter friendly." Tembisa residents were hardly appeased. A witness, Roger Phophi, said this was not the first time the security staff had resorted to strong-arm tactics: "Tragedy was inevitable sooner or later."

KEW: Fumes of a Bloom

Botanists and ordinary green-thumb gardeners mobbed London's Royal Botanic Gardens last week for a rare glimpse and whiff of the world's largest--and smelliest--bloom. The titan arum plant flowers every four years or so in the jungles of its native Indonesia, but more than 30 years have elapsed since one blossomed in Britain. A record 6,000 visitors a day turned out to witness last week's bloom--2 m high, 1 m across--of a six-year-old titan arum and catch its aroma, likened by botanist Peter Boyce to the odor of "dead crab on the beach with a sweet edge of burning sugar mixed with a sour smell of urine and ammonia." Most visitors, though, had no stinking luck. Reason: the plant Indonesians call the corpse flower released its unique odors in two evening bursts, and when the greenhouse doors were opened to visitors the mornings after, drafts dispersed much of what remained. By week's end the great bloom had begun to wilt, and plant lovers were already calculating the next British flowering--expected sometime after the turn of the century. They hope that one will be something to sniff at.

OMER: Rousting Bedouin Homesteaders

Most of Israel's Bedouins have given up the nomadic life; their struggle now is to retain a permanent home of their own. The Tarabin Assaneh tribespeople, all Israeli citizens, were evicted by the government from other campsites in the Negev desert in 1952 and again in 1962 before settling on the periphery of this Jewish community. But a court recently ruled they had no legal claim to the land, and last week bulldozers showed up near their current outpost to begin expanding a complex of homes. Angry tribe members defended their turf with axes, metal rods and stones, brawling with police who, expecting trouble, had arrived with the construction team. Eight Bedouins and two dozen officers were injured; 40 tribesmen were arrested. Salman Assaneh, 35, a member of the aggrieved tribe, saw the police response to a legitimate protest as excessive. "In return for our loyalty to the state of Israel and the shedding of the blood of our sons who joined the Israeli army," he complained, "we are treated like secondhand shoes." Despite the Bedouins' truculence, many Jewish residents of Omer were sympathetic. Said Haya Noah: "A government agency came and decided that villas would be built on this land without finding a solution for these people." A court hearing is set for this week to resolve the dispute.

VERBATIM

"I've become a symbol of everything that was ever wrong in South Africa--of betrayal, false beliefs, of complete and utter culpability."
--South African novelist Mark Behr, admitting to the Truth Commission that he spied for the apartheid regime during his youth

"The same as there are mad cows, there are mad legislators."
--Roberta Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister, attacking approval by the U.S. Congress of the Helms-Burton law

"It's the most welfare-friendly sport...Some pigs go fast, some go slow. They go in their own time and run to the music. Pig racing is completely aboveboard."
--Walter Shortt, organizer of a 100-m pig steeplechase in Northern Ireland, responding in the Irish Times to anxious animal-welfare groups

"There is nothing wrong with Bob Dole's campaign that a good economic plan, a good Veep choice, a good convention speech, and $74 million won't cure."
--John Buckley, communications chief for the U.S. presidential candidate, in the New Yorker magazine