"We are now confronted with a state of war with Israel." --Mohammed Sobeih, Palestinian ambassador to the Arab League, in Cairo

"I've provided closure for so many hundreds of victims ...it's so frustrating for me not to be able to get closure." --John Walsh, host of America's Most Wanted, after the man suspected of murdering his six-year-old son Adam, died in prison

"Perot said he will hold his own debate with himself...That's the great thing about this country. Another country, if you see a guy with a bad haircut on the street corner screaming about a government conspiracy, you lock him up. Here you become a presidential candidate."--Jay Leno

"Having a woman onboard has reminded us of kind of a household arrangement." --Mir Commander Valery Korzun, bidding farewell to U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid

"I need some security." --Former President Najibullah of Afghanistan on shortwave radio to the U.N. just before rebels who had conquered the capital, Kabul, captured and executed him

"Bob Dole is now online ... He tried to answer back in Morse code." --Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect on the candidate's cyberskills

"The discovery...[puts] in their proper context professions of peaceful intentions by Sinn Fein's leaders and speculation about a new I.R.A. cease-fire." --British Prime Minister John Major, after police seized 10 tons of explosives in dawn r aids on I.R.A. depots

"If you disagree with voluntary euthanasia, then don't use it, but don't deny me the right to use it if I want to." --Cancer sufferer Bob Dent, 66, in a letter released the day he became the first person to commit legal suicide under the volu ntary-euthanasia law of Australia's Northern Territory

"These ones today, they're phony tramps. They're idealists but not tramps. The old ones liked tobacco; some also liked to drink a bit. They weren't after a healthy life." --Hector Woollands, 82, a former tramp who lives in Mar del Plata, Arge ntina, where 300 global vagabonds gathered last week for the first world conference on tramps

"I need some security." --Former President Najibullah of Afghanistan on shortwave radio to the United Nations just before rebels captured and executed him

OSAKA: Victims of Fashion

A peculiar kind of crime is cropping up in Japan, driven, say police, by sneaker envy. The victims are affluent teenagers able to afford the latest footwear fad: Nike's top-of-the-line Air Max athletic shoes. The frenzy for the funky shoes has sparked a slew of robberies, frauds and forgeries. Among the skulduggery in September alone: four Osaka teenagers were attacked by gangs who snatched the Air Maxes off their feet; the owner of a Kobe sporting-goods store was arrested after allegedly absconding wi th $64,000 in advance payments for Air Maxes; and a police raid on a Tokyo trading company netted 2,000 pieces of counterfeit Nike merchandise, including phony Air Maxes. Demand for the sneakers has soared since baseball star Ichiro Suzuki of Kobe's Orix BlueWave was seen sporting a pair. Rumors that an outlet has received a new shipment attract armies of would-be customers who line up at dawn to shell out as much as $320 a pair, more than double the manufacturer's recommended price. Many older Japanese a re appalled by the crimes--and the craze. Noted a TV commentator: "Teenage kids shouldn't be wearing $320 shoes!"

BEIJING: Cafe Society

Until recently, the capital's cuisine was anything but cosmopolitan; diners who tired of Chinese food had few options. Foreign food was not considered particularly tasty and was available only in expensive hotels that catered mainly to international re sidents and tourists. But now an alternative dining culture has sprouted. Dozens of cafes, bars and jazz clubs have opened in Beijing's Sanlitun district over the past 18 months. Bearing names like Jazz-Ya, Public Space and Cafe Cafe, they feature interna tional entertainment as well as menus. And locals make up an ever increasing proportion of the clientele. "Before, people left work and went home," remarks Chinese entrepreneur Liu Wei, 28, a regular at Public Space. "Now they go out and me et friends and learn Western tastes." The new willingness to experiment with knives, forks and foreign fare is made possible by growing prosperity. The trend, though, began with the introduction of American fast-food outlets. "Children who grow up on Big Macs will be more likely to accept other foreign ideas and eating habits," says Liu.

HELSINKI: Tales from the Waterbed

A heat wave is raging in Finland--and it has nothing to do with the weather. Speaker of the parliament Riitta Uosukainen, the second highest official in the country, has written a steamy--some say seamy--book called Fluttering Flame. Penned in the form of imaginary letters to real-life characters, the collection includes an earthy billet-doux from the Speaker to her husband, in which she fondly reminisces about their sex life, lingering blissfully on one particularly satisfying romp in the connubial wa terbed. "Thanks for a wonderful weekend," she purrs, "and for all the sweet loving and lovemaking." Some Finns were appalled by Uosukainen's frankness. "As the Speaker of parliament she ought to be more dignified," said bus d river Timo Gronlund. "I don't think her private thoughts are of any concern to the public." Not so. The first printing of 17,000 sold out in three days, and the publisher claims it has had to order extra paper to cope with the demand.

EPFACH: Good Behavior?

The murder of a seven-year-old girl by a convicted sex offender has provoked an agonized debate in Germany. The issue: how to serve justice while protecting children from repeat criminals with dangerous urges. Natalie Astner was walking to school in th is little Bavarian town when she was kidnapped, sexually abused and thrown into a river to drown. The man who confessed to the crime, Armin Schreiner, 27, had been arrested in 1992 and convicted of committing sexual offenses against two girls and a young woman. He was released from prison in July 1995 after serving just three years of a 41/2-year sentence. By law, he was given time off for good behavior. Had Schreiner served his full term, critics say, Natalie would still be alive. Politicians are now cal ling for changes in the punishment of sexual predators, who have a 50% rate of recidivism. Among the recommendations: longer prison sentences and elimination of early release. The most controversial measure under consideration would offer repeat offenders hormone injections to suppress sexual urges. Though "chemical castration" has been used successfully in Denmark, some German experts say it is not the answer. Sexual abuse is often an outlet for aggression against women and children, says crimi nologist Christian Pfeiffer. "This cannot be removed by chemical castration."

Alarm aroused by the Israeli-Palestinian fighting quickly devolved into a polarized quarrel over which party bore the greater blame

AL-WAFD, EGYPT: "God be with you, people of Palestine. Do not drop your weapons because they are your only chance of survival in the face of that moron who does not understand peaceful language and dialogue."

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, U.S.: "Until Arafat starts leading his people instead of using them, peace will remain elusive. He can start by learning the difference between civilized government and rock-throwing rioters."

HA'ARETZ, ISRAEL: "The violent Palestinian uprising ... expresses disappointment with the peace process, the closure [of the territories], unemployment, poverty and the constant involvement by Israel in the day-to-day lives of the Palestinians.&qu ot;

CORRIERE DELLA SERA, ITALY: "It's not only a new intifadeh ... it's also the tragic confirmation of the reversibility of a peace process that's held hostage by extremists."

CAMPAIGN MEMO: WHERE'S LIDDY?

Bob Dole says he's out to close the gender gap, yet his campaign is not using its greatest asset with working women: Liddy. Since her boffo show in San Diego, Elizabeth has gone under the national radar. She spends most of her time in places like Dover , Delaware, and Knoxville, Tennessee--not exactly major markets. She makes a fleeting appearance in one ad. The press is usually not allowed on her plane. What's more, she's rarely at her husband's side. And when she is, she almost never makes any remarks . The campaign says that Elizabeth will be seen more--this week she's on the Tonight Show--but the established routine will hold. Conventional wisdom says First Ladies don't impact elections. But it doesn't make sense for the campaign to turn its popular steel magnolia into a wallflower.

--Tamala M. Edwards

WHO SAYS THERE'S NO DIFFERENCE AMONG THE CANDIDATES?

Gore Vidal once said there's only one political party in America, "the Real Estate Party." But this year, besides Clinton, Dole and Perot, there are four party candidates for President who will appear on ballots in most states. In the interes t of voter education (and amusement), we preview the other candidates and their platforms.

HARRY BROWNE

Libertarian Party

The 63-year-old investment writer supports legalization of prostitution and drugs, including crack, along with elimination of the FBI, the CIA, the EPA and the IRS.

HOWARD PHILLIPS

U.S. Taxpayers Party

Phillips would eliminate all direct taxes on wage earners and businesses, do away with civil service and end U.S. participation in the U.N., NATO and the IMF.

JOHN HAGELIN

Natural Law Party

A follower of the Maharishi Yogi who has qualified for federal matching funds, Hagelin advocates transcendental meditation and "yogic flying" for all American voters.

RALPH NADER

Green Party

The consumer advocate is running the "un-campaign": he is not raising money or accepting contributions in his fight against the "duopoly" of the two-party system.

DIOGENES INDEX

"Outside the realm of politics ... with families and churches. That's where it belongs." --Robin Dole, 41, daughter of Bob Dole, contrasting her views with her father's on where abortion belongs in the political debate

STUMP WIT

"Yesterday that kid was given a full pardon by President Clinton." --David Letterman on a six-year-old boy who stirred controversy by kissing a girl in his class The Late Show, CBS Sept. 26, 1996

The CIA has informants at overseas hospitals who watch for foreign officials checking in for treatment. It employs a dozen doctors and psychiatrists to review videos of world leaders for signs of physical or mental ailments: weight changes, pale skin, unsteady gait, even wrinkles on ear-lobes (one indication of heart problems). For example, agency physicians privately concluded that the late French President Francois Mitterrand had cancer more than a decade before he made it public. But on July 3, on t he morning of the Russian presidential vote, the CIA received a call from Clinton aides: Why hasn't Boris Yeltsin been seen for four days? The CIA's response: Maybe a virus? Administration officials now tell TIME that they didn't learn how ill Yeltsin was during that absence until Sept. 20, when his doctor admitted on TV that the President had suffered a heart attack.

--By Douglas Waller

THE GOOD NEWS

--Talk about delayed gratification! Couples who can tough it out for 35 years will finally find themselves as happy as they were as newlyweds. Research indicates that five years after the knot is tied, MARITAL HAPPINESS starts to ebb. The downhill sli de starts to reverse decades later, when the responsibilities of work and parenthood ease up.

--Scientists have powerful evidence that a genetic mutation can confer resistance to the AIDS virus in 1 of 100 whites and can slow the progress of the disease in 1 of 7 patients who are already infected.

--Worried about the PILL? A huge international study has shown that regardless of how long a woman uses the birth-control pill, once she stops taking it, she has no increased risk of developing breast cancer later in life.

THE BAD NEWS

--SMOKING can stunt growth of the lungs. As few as five cigarettes a day may inhibit the ability of lungs to grow to normal size, a study of teenagers suggests. The effect appears to be more pronounced in girls than boys.

--Boosting the theory that environmental factors play a role in ALZHEIMER's disease, researchers report that men of Japanese descent living in Hawaii are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer's as those in Japan. Differences in diet, particularly at an early age when the brain is still developing, may be one reason.

--Employees who have CANCER are fired or laid off five times as often as other workers in the U.S., a survey finds. And if the cancer patients do hold on to their jobs, they are frequently stripped of important tasks.

Sources--GOOD NEWS: Social Psychology Quarterly; Science; Contraception. BAD NEWS: New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American Medical Association; Working Woman

generous zip codes, where residents made the most donations of more than $200 to presidential candidates in 1995

Source: Associated Press

		Donations
1	10021	$1,087,050
Upper East Side, New York City
2	37205	$583,598
Nashville, Tennessee
3	37215	$571,643
Nashville, Tennessee
4	10022	$458,075
East Side, New York City
5	20008	$357,725
Washington
6	90210	$334,600
Beverly Hills, California
7	10128	$304,100
Upper East Side, New York City
8	10028	$294,700
Upper East Side, New York City
9	75205	$274,432
Dallas
10	37027	$262,701
Brentwood, Tennessee

Will the next Asian war be fought over a few tiny islands? And might it be between the ethnic Chinese of Hong Kong, Taiwan and China on one side and their ancient enemy Japan on the other? The ownership of the potentially oil-rich islands (called Diaoy u by the Chinese and Senkaku by the Japanese) has ignited a grass-roots movement in capitalist Hong Kong, communist China, and among pro-unification forces in Taiwan. This territoriality has been matched by rightist indignation in Japan, which has not fou ght a war since 1945 but which sent its coast guard to the islands last week to turn away two groups of Chinese protesters intent on reaching the disputed specks. Last week the Chinese got their first martyr--a Hong Kong activist who drowned after leaping overboard to symbolically claim the waters for China. Beijing, which had encouraged the confrontation to tweak Tokyo, now worries about being swept up by the populist fervor.

A major ecological disaster is threatening a rugged stretch of Spain's northwestern coastline, and the people of La Coruna and the neighboring communities have no one to blame but themselves. A million-ton mountain of garbage, the area's accumulated ho usehold trash of more than two decades, is collapsing in a landslide that some locals say they had predicted for years. On Sept. 10, the advancing tide of trash swamped one of the villages from which it emanated, killing a resident. Now it threatens to po llute the sea that provides the livelihood of many people in the area.

The avalanche began when deep fissures appeared in the Bens municipal dump, where the 400,000 people of La Coruna and 16 smaller towns and villages have deposited the detritus of everyday life for more than two decades. Heavy rains or perhaps a seismic disturbance are being blamed for the instability. However, the top has always leaked streams of foul-smelling liquid--evidence, some say, that it had poor drainage and began to collapse on its own liquefying innards.

What officials now fear is that the rest of the mountain may come crashing down, burying everything in its path and stopping only when it reaches the Atlantic. Forecasts of the potential damage are dire. The suspected contaminants include countless bat teries, heavy metals and aerosol containers. "It would cause eight times the contamination created by the Aegean Sea," says La Coruna mayor Francisco Vazquez, referring to the Greek oil tanker that went aground in 1992, polluting shellfish-breed ing beds and killing sea birds in one of the worst environmental catastrophes ever to hit the Spanish coast.

Last week, despite efforts to build dikes and remove surface garbage, the fissures continued to expand at an unrelenting rate of 0.5 cm per hour. With the crisis showing no sign of abatement, Vazquez petitioned the Spanish government to declare his cit y a national disaster area.

Fissures in the garbage dump are expanding at a rate of 0.5 cm per hour

DR. CHRISTIAAN BARNARD, 73; Richmond, South Africa Former heart surgeon

On Dec. 3, 1967, Barnard took the heart of a 25-year-old woman, the victim of a road accident, and placed it in the chest of a 55-year-old man to perform the first heart transplant. The recipient died of pneumonia 18 days later, but at the time, Dr. Mi chael DeBakey, who consulted on Boris Yeltsin's surgery last week, declared it to be "a great achievement." Suffering from arthritis, Barnard retired in 1983. Since then he has written a number of novels. His latest book, The Donor, was just pub lished in England. Barnard spends a lot of time on a 32,000-acre ranch with his third wife, Karin, and their son, Armin. He was intrigued by DeBakey's visit but could not comment on Yeltsin's surgery, saying, "Right now I don't follow the news ... I' m a farmer with cattle and wild game to look after. I wish him luck."

NORMAN HUMMEL, 64; Columbia, New Jersey; mechanic

Hummel went the extra mile--400 of them, in fact--for Sandra and Emerito Hernandez, who were driving to Cleveland, Ohio, to seek treatment for their daughter Desiree, 6, who needs a heart and lung transplant. When their minivan's broken alternator coul dn't be fixed in time for their appointment--and they couldn't afford to rent a car--Hummel drove them to Cleveland himself. "Good people are scarce," says Sandra. "He's Superman."

NOEL IRWIN-HENTSCHEL, 44; Los Angeles; Noel Foundation

CEO of a firm that brings overseas visitors to the U.S., Irwin-Hentschel also shows America to the children of South Central L.A., many of whom have never left the economically depressed neighborhood. More than 100 teens have taken free 15-day cross-co untry bus tours operated by the Noel Foundation; 150 more have gone on shorter trips. "The difference in these kids after 15 days," says Irwin-Hentschel, "is remarkable."

28 YEARS AGO IN TIME

ISLAND NUPTIALS

J.F.K. Jr.'s wedding last week on a remote Georgia island wasn't the first Kennedy marriage to catch the public off guard: "From practically every capital and every level of society, the guests and members of the wedding came...to the mountainous island [of Skorpios] in the sunny Ionian Sea...Everything, from sugared almonds to the waiting yacht, was ready to celebrate the new life of Mr. and Mrs. Aristotle Onassis. Everything, that is, except what is known as 'the world,' which seemed unable to c omprehend or accept the match. Reaction in the U.S. and abroad ranged from dismay to a kind of shocked ribaldry. JACKIE, HOW COULD YOU? headlined [one paper]." --Oct. 25, 1968

Copyright 1996 Time Inc. All rights reserved.