Person of the Week

Person of the Week
THE SUM OF ALL FEARSIt's springtime and there's trouble in Kashmir, which means eternal rivals India and Pakistan are at it again. Indian PM Atal Behari Vajpayee talked tough, claiming the time had come for "a decisive battle," but later backed off. How far will be too far?

Noted
"No, he wouldn't have to wear blackface. He's such an extraordinary actor, I think he could pull it off. He would just have to get a deep tan."
SEAN "P. DIDDY" COMBS,
hip-hop star, on why actor Brad Pitt would be a good choice to play him in a movie about his life

Prime Number
3 million would be the minimum number of deaths in a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, say scientists at Princeton University

Omen
Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been banned from accepting pizza deliveries they did not order themselves because the boxes might contain bombs

Winners
DAVID BLAINE
Street magician sits on pole for 35 hours, then falls 30 meters onto cardboard, wowing his audience with the magic that is gravity
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Band to resume long, strange trip with reunion—inspiring Deadheads who have been hacky-sacking outside empty venues for years
AYUMI HAMASAKI
J-Popster is top female at MTV Japan awards. Her win ensures everyone will remember the name "Ayumi"—at least for the next 10 minutes
Losers
ROY KEANE
Irish captain kicked out of World Cup for divisiveness. Sipping champagne during flight home on private jet, he does deep soul searching
GLAY
J-Rockers' Beijing concert reportedly canceled because of Korean refugee crisis. Glay threatens to tepidly trash hotel room, dye hair in protest
SILVIO BERLUSCONI
Italian PM criticized when assistant suggests censoring a political play. As he's not a porn star running for office, Italians pay no notice

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Silver Lining
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Scientists are pretty sure that an asteroid or comet ended the 135-million-year reign of the dinosaurs. A huge chunk of space debris slammed into the earth 65 million years ago, blasting a pall of dust into the air. With the sun blocked, temperatures plunged and light-starved plants at the bottom of the food chain died. Bad news for the dinos, good news for the rodent-like beasts that suddenly had breathing room to begin evolving into us.

But new evidence from ancient lake beds in the Northeast U.S. suggests that the dinosaurs got their big break in the same way our ancestors did, through a cataclysm that killed off competing species. Scientists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and their colleagues have found iridium, a mineral plentiful in asteroids, in sediment about 200 million years old. Fossilized footprints show that the dinosaurs evolved very rapidly at that time, from the size of dogs to that of dragons.And fossils of fern spores suggest that these opportunistic plants also had a sudden ecological opening for colonization.

Is the evidence definitive? Not yet. But it does hint that nature has a powerful sense of poetic justice.

Goodbye, Pikachu—Hello, Domo-kun!
By LEV GROSSMAN

Product Domo-kun
How It Started A Japanese spokes-toon took on a life of its own
Judgment Who could resist that face?

He hatched from an egg, he lives with a rabbit and he can't seem to close his mouth—say konichiwa to Domo-kun! He began life as an innocent, bumbling monster in a series of ads for a Japanese TV network, but Domo-kun has transcended those humble origins to become a cult icon in Japan and America. What's the appeal? With his vicious fangs and sad button eyes, Domo-kun is tough, yet vulnerable. Kind of like Harrison Ford, if Harrison Ford were a small, feral Teletubby. Domo-kun dolls are growing in popular-ity in Japan and there have been several Domo-kun sightings in the U.S. You can catch the creature's TV spots online at drew.corrupt.net/domo.html.

Rock and Roll, Coochy-Coo
Electronic Heroin for Girls
By BRYAN WALSH

It's understandable that Chinese leaders might be a bit wary of massive, uncontrolled mobs of young people. A phenomenon called the Red Guards will do that to you. Maybe that's the real reason why jittery authorities canceled two recent mainland concerts by the mega-popular boy band F4, a quartet of very pretty Taiwanese lads. Their bubblegum music notwithstanding, recent F4 appearances in China have resembled early Beatles films, with out-of-control crowds and packs of swooning teenage girls. The final straw came at a planned concert at a Shanghai mall, when 10,000 fans—10 times the number promoters were expecting—went crazy with anticipation and blocked exits, spurring fears of a Chinese Altamont, albeit one featuring Hello Kitty instead of Hell's Angels. The mall show was called off, as was a May 26 concert at Shanghai's Hongkou Football Stadium, leaving F4's China fans afraid the band had gone the way of Falun Gong on the mainland. Officials say the band isn't banned, but the same doesn't go for their even more popular Taiwanese TV series Meteor Garden, in which the F4 boys play spoiled rich kids who drive BMWs, chase girls and engage in other non-socialist behavior. The Beijing Youth Daily complained that the series gave teen viewers "unrealistic ideas about relations between people and society"—which, one might think, is pretty much the point of television. Nevertheless, the government banned what parents were calling "electronic heroin" after six episodes. That hasn't stopped thousands of mainland fans from watching the show on the Internet or on pirated VCDs. It's just as well. When it comes to insanely passionate young people, China has learned that it's best just to let them have their way.

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Milestones
By SARA RAJAN

DIED. WALTER LORD, 84, narrative historian and author of popular historical accounts such as A Night to Remember (on the Titanic) and Day of Infamy (Pearl Harbor); in New York City. For A Night to Remember—which was made into a 1958 Hollywood movie—Lord tracked down 60 survivors of the disaster. He also served as a consultant for the 1998 blockbuster film Titanic.
DIED. STEPHEN JAY GOULD, 60, paleontologist whose theory of evolution challenged that of Charles Darwin's, of cancer; in New York City. Gould, who famously called human evolution "a fortuitous cosmic afterthought," authored The Mismeasure of Man and The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.
DIED. CHANG CHANG, 35, the world's oldest captive giant panda, of multiple organ failure; in Jinan, China. Chang Chang's body will be preserved and put on display in the northwestern province of Gansu.
DIED. NIKI DE SAINT PHALLE, 71, French pop artist and creator of the Nanas sculptures; in San Diego. Saint Phalle's other important works include Hon, a 28-m-long, 6-m-high figure of a woman that houses music rooms, an aquarium and a cinema—accessed through the installation's vagina.
DIED. SAM SNEAD, 89, golfing legend whose career spanned five decades; in Hot Springs, Virginia. With seven major championships and 81 PGA Tour victories, Snead was considered one of the sport's greatest players. He had won every major golf title except for the U.S. Open, of which he was runner-up four times.
CHARGED. SAM BITH, 69, former Khmer Rouge general, with the 1994 kidnapping and murder of three backpackers—Australian David Wilson, Briton Mark Slater and Frenchman Jean-Michel Braquet; in Phnom Penh.

Eulogy
By STEPHEN PINKER

Stephen Jay Gould reinvented science writing. Before him we had the flowery exaltation of nature ("Far in the empty sky a solitary esophagus slept upon motionless wing," in Mark Twain's parody) and skin-deep attempts to bring science to the masses. Gould's essays were something else: witty, respectful of readers' intelligence, always finding a principle in a grain of sand and a law in a wildflower. That they were also a velvet glove for Gould's iron convictions drove many scientists crazy, but we all admired his explanatory gifts. My favorite essay was about Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. "DiMaggio activated the greatest and most unattainable dream of all humanity," Gould wrote, "the hope and chimera of all sages and shamans: he cheated death, at least for a while." Gould at his best—profundity with a light touch, made all the more poignant because in 1982 he survived cancer. Gould cheated death, at least for a while—and he enriched our appreciation of life.