Notebook, Apr. 1, 1996

WINNERS & LOSERS TWOS IN THE NEWS

[WINNERS]

BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON Thoroughly contemporary: she reviews troops in Bosnia, he attends to Housekeeping

GEORGE WILL AND MARI MASENG Columnist doesn’t need to fret about ethics now that wife has quit Dole campaign

ROBIN WILLIAMS AND NATHAN LANE Heeding the G.O.P. call for family films, The Birdcage opens big and aims for $100 million

[& LOSERS]

MIKHAIL AND RAISA GORBACHEV He says he’s running for President of Russia; she announces that she’s against the decision

LUCIANO AND ADUA PAVAROTTI She was his wife, but will she still be his manager now that he’s leaving with the secretary?

LYLE AND ERIK MENENDEZ The proto-trial of the century is over, and the bloody brothers share a verdict: guilty

LOWELL, BEHOLD!

By November you may need an aerial camera shot to show the field of presidential candidates. In addition to Clinton and Dole, the possibilities include Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and now Lowell Weicker. Last week the onetime Connecticut Senator (as a moderate Republican) and Governor (as a third-party independent) told the Boston Globe he might decide whether to run by week’s end.

Political sources told TIME Weicker is thinking about tapping a wealthy running mate to finance at least part of the campaign. The man he has in mind is B.T. (“Tom”) Golisano, president and ceo of Paychex Inc., a payroll-servicing firm based in Rochester, New York. A Perot supporter in 1992, Golisano later helped found the New York Independence Fusion Party. In 1994 he ran as its candidate for Governor.

If a Weicker-Golisano deal is sealed, the pair will immediately start petition drives to get on state ballots. They are expected then to seek the nomination of Perot’s Reform Party, which is planning a convention around Labor Day. Perot has insisted repeatedly–if not always persuasively–that the candidate does not have to be him. Weicker appeals to some Reform Party leaders who think he could pull in voters who find Perot too prickly. A potential obstacle: Perot. Intermediaries arranged for the men to get acquainted with one another last January in Washington. The chemistry between them is said to be less than great.

“I’m thinking” was all Weicker would say last week. Golisano was also noncommittal, although he did offer that “this year certainly appears to be an excellent opportunity for a third-party candidate.”

DOLE TAX ERRORS PARTS 1 AND 2

For most people, a $30,000 error on their tax return would be a costly mishap. But not for Bob and Elizabeth Dole, who made two such mistakes in consecutive years. A recent unpublicized review of the couple’s taxes, conducted by Price Waterhouse, discovered that they improperly took a tax deduction of $28,000 in 1991 after selling a rental property in Washington (right). The next year Mrs. Dole contributed $30,000 to the American Red Cross, which the Doles apparently did not report or deduct. The result: the Doles have quietly written a check to the IRS for $10,027 to make up for the erroneous $28,000 write-off, and applied to the IRS for a $10,515 refund for the next year because of the newly found contribution. The neat symmetry, aides say, is a coincidence. “Once the errors were identified, [the Doles] demanded prompt corrections and, though not legally required, erred on the side of full disclosure and made public the amendments.”

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

–Red wine is not the only alcoholic drink that may protect against heart disease; MODERATE AMOUNTS OF BEER, liquor and white wine do too. Researchers suspect that it is the alcohol itself–regardless of how it’s made–that increases blood levels of HDL, the good cholesterol.

–An ALTERNATIVE TO ANTIBIOTICS? Certain bacteria and yeasts found in fermented milk, rotting litchis and other foods can combat common infections, including travelers’ diarrhea and vaginitis.

–Estrogen-replacement therapy may benefit an unlikely part of the body: teeth. POSTMENOPAUSAL WOMEN who have used the hormone are 24% less likely to lose their teeth than women who never took it. Estrogen guards against bone loss; it probably strengthens the jawbone too.

THE BAD NEWS

–Some jobs are to die for. Citing the strongest evidence yet, researchers find that people who have little control over their WORK LIFE (such as, say, a secretary or an assembly-line worker) have a whopping 70% higher risk of dying from heart disease than those who can decide what they will do and when.

–Two studies report a surprising downside to BEING SHORT: a greater risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. Men under 5 ft. 7 in. appear twice as likely as men over 5 ft. 11 in. to have seriously elevated blood pressure. Males under 5 ft. 5 in., meanwhile, bear double the risk of heart disease compared with moderate-size men.

–Just 50 minutes a month on a CAR PHONE can increase the likelihood of an accident fivefold, finds a preliminary study.

Sources–GOOD NEWS: British Medical Journal; Journal of the American Dental Association BAD NEWS: Journal of the American Public Health Association; American Heart Association conference; Accident Analysis and Prevention

AMONG THE LIVING

The 58,196 names in granite on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial include a number that do not belong to the dead. In Stolen Valor, his forthcoming book on fallacies about Vietnam veterans, B.G. Burkett lists 25 vets whose names were mistakenly and indelibly etched into stone. These survivors, says Burkett, are the wall’s “honor guard.” As one of them, Robert Lee Bedker, 49, of Seattle, puts it, “We were so close to being one of the actual victims. It really makes you feel humble.” Two other survivors:

EUGENE TONI, 46, Alexandria, Va. A sergeant in the 101st Airborne and leader of a sniper team, he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam on Oct. 9, 1970, and lost both legs below the knee. That is also the date the military believed he died. In 1990, during a visit to the memorial, Toni, who now works for naval procurement, was searching for the names of friends who had died in Vietnam. “I just flipped back to the Tonis, and the directory had my name. They had my rank and service right, except that I was alive. I showed my wife, and we didn’t believe it at first. But then we located my name on the wall too [on panel 7W, line 121]. We just stood there embracing.”

TIM HONSINGER, 48, Arlington, Texas On Sept. 11, 1966, Honsinger was manning a .50-cal. machine gun in an armored personnel carrier when it came under heavy enemy fire. An antitank rocket blew off most of Honsinger’s right arm, and military papers say he died that day. A police lieutenant, Honsinger finally visited the memorial three weeks ago and saw his name on panel 10E, line 86. “I had some people around [his name on the wall] that I knew. I’m glad I wasn’t killed over there, of course. But it gave me a hollow feeling.”

WHERE THEY ARE NOW

DEBI THOMAS, 29; CHICAGO, ILL. U.S. and World Skating Champion In the 1988 Winter Olympics, Debi Thomas was America’s favorite against the communist bloc’s darling, Katarina Witt. Katarina claimed the gold. Debi stumbled and received the bronze. Though she competed professionally for nearly four more years, Thomas has chosen to pursue life outside the rink. She graduated from Stanford and is now a third-year medical student at Northwestern, planning to specialize in surgery. She has been married and divorced, has done broadcasting work and gives occasional motivational speeches. While medicine will consume her foreseeable future (she was taking an exam last week), she does dream of a farewell season on ice. In fact, she’d like to host a TV skating special in an unlikely spot–Mexico–just to be different. “If I do this, it will probably be one of the biggest challenges of my whole life. That’s what makes it appealing. I tell people I’m too stupid to know what’s impossible. I had ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they came true.”

40 YEARS AGO IN TIME

THE BOY KING

Hussein shows who’s boss by firing the British commander in charge of the Arab Legion: “At the center of these clutching pressures was the slim, short, 20-year-old youngster who is King of Jordan. The British used to call Hussein (rhymes with Biscayne) ‘a nice little King.’…Last week he seemed sobered by his new sense of power, the next moment as youthfully impulsive as the Harrow schoolboy he once was. He spent one typical morning gravely conferring on affairs of state in his palace office, then suddenly ordered his private de Havilland plane made ready, zipped out to the airport in his Lincoln, screeched to a halt, jumped out and asked a saluting R.A.F. officer, ‘O.K. if I go to Jerusalem?’…Privately he admits that Israel is probably there to stay.” –April 2, 1956