HIGH STAKES With their armies facing off, Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf and India's Atal Bihari Vajpayee have put their cards on the table. Though tensions were cooling at week's end, key questions remain: How much does Musharraf have left to give and how much will Vajpayee take?
Noted
"No one, for any reason, can kill in the name of God."
POPE JOHN PAUL II,
in a New Year's sermon in the Vatican, marking the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Peace
Prime Number
80 percent of the 300 or so victims of a horrific fireworks blaze in Lima, Peru may be unidentifiable, according to estimates by officials
Omen
To mark the introduction of the new European currency, prostitutes in both Rome and Berlin say they will round down their prices for sex paid in euros
Winners
BILL GATES
Nerd overlord's Microsoft is the best performing Dow Jones stock of 2001. Which is like being the best general in the Taliban
BEE GEES
Disco kings are honored by Queen and named Commanders of the Order of the British Empire. Their first edict: declare war on Abba
GEORGE HARRISON
Ex-ex-Beatle may be up for first posthumous knighthood. Maybe it's us, but England's knights are a less and less impressive fighting force
Losers
MIKE TYSON
Iron Mike goes "crazy" in Cuba and gets in a fight with journalists. As all brave reporters would, they react by running like scared rabbits
'N SYNC
Boy band to be Jedi in next Star Wars film, only to get blown up in seconds. And just like that, George Lucas makes up for Phantom Menace
ADOLF HITLER
Evil dictator deposed as world's most hated man by bin Laden. Not to worry, he still holds a slight lead on world's most hated facial hair
Rodent Roast
Crappuccino, Anyone?
By KAY JOHNSON/Hanoi
Don't like the sound of weasel coffee? Before you answer, consider the alternative name for Trung Nguyen Cafés signature blend: Weasel Poop Coffee. After all, the thriving Vietnamese brew traces its origin to rodent droppings.
Coffee mogul Dang Le Nguyen Vu, 31, owes much of the success of his 400-outlet-strong Trung Nguyen franchise to reviving Ca Phe Chon. According to legend, the chon (weasel) would eat the choicest coffee beans, then digest the outer shells, leaving the innards to, um, emerge in long strings. Farmers collected the beans and roasted them—presumably after a thorough washing—to make a rich brew. While Vietnam isn't alone in making such coffee (Indonesia has beans predigested by civets), Vu has brought Ca Phe Chon back in a more sanitary incarnation. He processes the beans in enzymes that he says approximates a weasel stomach. True or not, Vietnamese love it.
Vu will take Weasel Coffee global, with Trung Nguyen cafés scheduled to open this year in Singapore and Japan. "Weasel Coffee will be one of our main marketing strategies," Vu says. "We want to keep the legend alive." Just so long as he doesn't use live weasels.
31 Years Ago In Time
With their armies mobilized and cross-border tensions running high, INDIA and PAKISTAN find themselves in an uncomfortably familiar position. The two nuclear rivals most recently fought a war in 1971, when hostilities erupted over what would become Bangladesh.
"The first warning that a serious clash had occurred came in an announcement over Radio Pakistan. India, it had said, 'has launched an all-out offensive against East Pakistan without a formal declaration of war.' That charge proved to be false; it was not a full-fledged war—yet. On the other hand, it was certainly not a trifling skirmish, as Indian spokesmen at first euphemistically described it.
For months, border battles had broken out almost daily between troops of the two nations. The conflict that finally erupted last week along the 1,300-mile (2,100-km) frontier was plainly big enough to raise the specter of a major conflagration on the subcontinent. The presence of Indian troops on Pakistan's soil escalated the dispute to the point where full-scale war could erupt at any moment ... India's power is far superior to Pakistan ('s). Its forces (980,000) outnumber Pakistan's (392,000) by more than 2 to 1; its air and naval capacity is also rated superior. If India were to fight Pakistan alone, there is little doubt which would win."
Milestones
By KATE DRAKE
MARRIED. ERIC CLAPTON, 56, British rock-'n'-roll legend, to American graphic artist Melia McEnery, 25, the mother of their six-month-old daughter, Julie Rose; in Ripley, southern England. It was a surprise ceremony for the guests, who thought they were attending the child's baptism. This is the guitarist's second marriage: he divorced Patti Boyd, whom he had "stolen" from George Harrison, in 1988.
DIED. JULIA PHILLIPS, 57, Oscar-winning producer of The Sting and Taxi Driver and author of the New York Times bestseller You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again; in Los Angeles (see Eulogy).
DIED. TAKAHASHI ASAHINA, 93, musical director of the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra; in Kobe. Asahina received Japan's prestigious Order of Culture in 1994, becoming only the second classical musician to be given the government award.
DIED. GUIDO DI TELLA, 71, former Foreign Minister of Argentina who mended relations with Britain after the 1982 Falkland Islands war; in Buenos Aires. Serving from 1991-99, Di Tella possessed a diplomatic savvy that culminated in the 1998 visit to England by Carlos Menem, the first by an Argentinian President after the war.
DIED. EILEEN HECKART, 82, recipient of an Oscar, two Emmys and a special lifetime achievement Tony; in Norwalk, Connecticut. Best known for her eccentric character roles, Heckart first won recognition on Broadway in 1953 for her portrayal of middle-aged Rosemary Sydney in the love story Picnic.
DIED. ALFRED "FREDDY" HENRY HEINEKEN, 78, third-generation owner of the Heineken beer empire responsible for building the brand into the world's third-largest brewer; in Noordwijk, Netherlands. Obsessed with advertising and marketing, Heineken designed the green bottle and logo that transformed the Dutch tipple into a global brand.
Eulogy
By JEFFREY RESSNER/Los Angeles
With her spiky hairdo, her even-spikier attitude and a plume of cigarette smoke following in her wake, it was impossible not to notice JULIA PHILLIPS whenever she walked into a room. When Phillips died from cancer last week at the age of 57, Hollywood lost one of its most scorned pariahs as well as one of the few outrageous personalities left in an increasingly corporate, risk-adverse industry. A film producer who made history as the first woman ever to win a best picture Oscar (for The Sting in 1973), she became downright infamous after her 1991 autobiography, You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, mercilessly blasted the biggest names in showbiz. A typically scathing tidbit: describing how Warren Beatty had asked if she and her pre-teen daughter would join him in a threesome, Phillips allegedly replied, "Warren, we're both too mature for you." Lunch in this town just got a little less spiky.