Starting Time

Person of the Week
A LIBRARY CARD OPENS WORLDS From the Brooklyn Public Library, audacious busboy Abraham Abdallah cybertapped into bank and brokerage accounts of Oprah Winfrey, George Lucas and others, stealing untold amounts. Police said Abdallah accumulated 20,000 fake credit cards.

Winners
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
To celebrate her golden jubilee, the monarch will be given a $1.4 million tricked-out Bentley capable of going 250 km/h. Go granny, go!
COURTNEY WALSH
Keep the cucumber sandwiches coming. The West Indies cricketer is the first bowler to take 500 wickets in Test history
JACK KEROUAC
Beat this. The wire-service paper roll on which On the Road was written is expected to fetch more than $1 million at auction

Losers
ALAN GREENSPAN
The god of the greenback cuts interest rates, but the U.S. stock market faints anyway. What do they want? Free loans from Japan?
JOSE BOVE
McSledgehammer? The anti-globalization Frenchman loses his appeal against a three-month jail sentence for wrecking a McDonald’s
RICHARD LI
After eight years in the limelight, the telecom wunderkind admits he never graduated from Stanford. Is he really Li Ka-shing’s son?

Noted
“He said he is a big fan of Israel.”
ARIEL SHARON, Israeli Prime Minister, describing Michael Jackson’s admiration after meeting the pop star (and Uri Geller) in New York

Prime Number
70% of people living with HIV/AIDS reside in Africa, a continent with only 20% of the world’s population

Omen
The Custard Factory, a British art gallery, shocks with a show displaying, well, nothing at all. The empty walls are titled “Exhibition to Be Constructed in Your Head”

Reel Nasty
How About Bill Clinton in American Pie II?
Britain’s ruling labour party, gearing up for a possible general election in may, has produced a campaign video based on the 1976 horror flick The Omen. The short, Economic Disaster II, depicts Tory leader William Hague as the offspring of an Antichrist played by Margaret Thacher. The tagline: “They forgot one thingthere was a son.” Elections are looming elsewhereand the world’s film archives are filled with potential spoof material.
JAPAN
Throw Mori from the Train
Nobody likes himbut he’s damned hard to get rid of.
ITALY
For a Few Billion Lira More
In this spaghetti western, Berlusconi goes toe-to-toe with Rutelli. Where’s Clint Eastwood when you need him?
FIJI
The Indians in the Cupboard
That’s where George Speight and friends want thembut the voters may disagree.
SINGAPORE
The Truman Show II: Another Day in Paradise
The population gets suspicious when klieg lights fall from the sky killing the entire oppositionbut no one does a thing about it.

What Lies Beneath?
PACKING HEAT. It’s time for serious sidelong glances. An Internet site is selling a line of undies called THUNDERWEAR for those who like their firearms up close and personal. Just tuck your gun into the secret pocket. (You can choose from various pocket sizes depending on whether you’re slinging a .44 magnum or a mere “Saturday-night special.”) In China, meanwhile, inventor Zhao Xin attempted suicide because of the failure of CHASTITY UNDERWEAR, which guarantees fidelity through a built-in combination lock. Zhao never got a patent approved, and perhaps it’s just as well. Honey, I forgot the combination!

Milestones
By PENNY CAMPBELL

DIED. JOHN PHILLIPS, 65, singer-songwriter who founded ’60s folk-rock band the Mamas and the Papas and wrote its biggest hits, including California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday; in Los Angeles. Formed in 1965, the group had six Top 10 hits in three years. Phillips, right, who died of heart failure, had overcome years of drug and alcohol abuse.
DIED. DAVID MCTAGGART, 69, who co-founded the environmental pressure group Greenpeace and built it into a worldwide movement, killed in a car crash; in Castiglione del Lago, Italy.
DIED. WILLIAM HANNA, 90, animation pioneer whose 50-year partnership with Joseph Barbera produced such well-loved cartoons as Tom and Jerry, Yogi Bear and The Flintstones and won the pair seven Oscars; in Hollywood.
DIED. GORDON BROWN, 53, Scottish rugby forward who won 30 caps and played in some of the British Lions’ most memorable tours, of cancer; in Ayr, Scotland.
CONVICTED. YITZHAK MORDECHAI, 55, former Israeli Defense Minister and ex-general, of sexual assault in a case hailed by activists as a breakthrough in the fight against sexual harassment; in Jerusalem.
RESIGNED. CHOI SUN-JUNG, 55, as South Korea’s Health Minister, to take responsibility for a multibillion-dollar deficit in the country’s national medical insurance system that has brought it to the verge of collapse; in Seoul.

Eulogy
By DONALD MACINTYRE

Nation builder, visionary, Uber-industrialist, human bulldozer: Hyundai founder CHUNG JU YUNG wore all these hats and more. When the son of a peasant from a North Korean village died last week at the age of 85, South Korea lost one of its 20th-century giants. If Korea’s leap from war-battered basket case to industrial powerhouse was miraculous, Chung was chief miracle maker. He started out selling rice as a runaway teenager, set up his own construction company, then piled into everything from supertankers to microchips. His energy and drive were Olympian, his chutzpah legendary: he once sold a ship before Hyundai even had a shipyard. But like other chaebol chieftains, he fueled his empire with cheap debt and political favors, and Korea’s economic crash in 1997 discredited the formula. By then Chung was dreaming of driving his bulldozers north. Taking one last audacious turn in the driver’s seat, he poured millions into North Korea, hoping his money could bridge the peninsula’s divisions. Chung once said he wanted to live to be 150. He may have lived too long. Today his empire is in tatters, his heirs are squabbling and his flagship construction company is choked with debt. But last week, many Koreans were saddened by the passing of a larger-than-life figure humbled, Lear-like, by time and circumstance.