VERBATIM
"I think Americans in general are bad cooks and don't know how to eat."
BORIS YELTSIN, Russia's portly President, offering qualified praise to a book of recipes by Barbara Bush during her husband's recent visit to Moscow
"I would leave this team together until it dies."
TONI KUKOC, Chicago Bulls guard-forward, on speculation that the six-time NBA champions may lose coach Phil Jackson or star players Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen
"It's a good sound."
BAJRAM HILA, woodcutter in northern Albania, on the roar of NATO planes overhead, threatening to launch an air-strike into neighboring Kosovo
"We usually name our fossils, [but this] just seems too weird."
TIMOTHY TOKARYK, paleontologist, recalling the moment when he found a 7-kg glob that has just been confirmed as a piece of dung from a meat-eating dinosaur

[WINNERS]

ORSON WELLES
Late cine-pioneer is honored as movie mavens name his Citizen Kane the best U.S. film ever

QUEEN MOTHER
Meet Britain's oldest-ever royal. At 97 years 314 days, she topped Queen Victoria's granddaughter

ABDULSALAM ABUBAKAR
Free at last. Nigerian military ruler confounds the skeptics by releasing 14 dissidents

[& LOSERS]

RYUTARO HASHIMOTO
Poll shows support for Japan's leader falling below 30%. But with no real challengers, he'll stay put

ENGLISH FOOTBALL FANS
Soccer's worst rowdies mar World Cup. Their violent antics may cost England the 2006 games

PATRICIA SMITH
Boston Globe columnist is canned for inventing quotes. We're not making that up

THE NUMBERS

128 secs: The interval between each note of a blue whale's song. The cetaceans sing for eight days, with missed notes lasting exactly 256 seconds.

336: The number of inmates of Venezuelan jails killed by prison guards or other prisoners in 1997. During the same year 1,438 were injured.

2.5 million: The number of North Koreans who have died in the past three years from famine.

170: The number of billionaires living in the U.S., compared with 13 in 1982.

30 tons: The amount of garbage collected from the slopes of Mount Everest and treated by the mountain's reprocessing plant in 1997.

7.7 billion: The peak that world population will reach in 2040, according to latest estimates. The total is projected to fall to 3.6 billion by 2150, less than two-thirds of today's population.

40: The number of languages into which Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time has been translated. One copy of the book has been sold for every 750 men, women and children on earth.

15: The number of fundamental desires and values to which human motivations can be reduced, according to researchers at Ohio State University. They range from food through sex and citizenship to social contact.

Sources: New Scientist; Human Rights Watch; Reuters; The Economist; Le Monde; World Population Projections; The Times; Psychological Assessment