SOME 600 of the world's top businessmen and economists met last October in San Francisco to negotiate a marriage: the union of Western capitalism with the economies of the world's underprivileged nations. Occasion: the International Industrial Development Conference, sponsored by TIME-LIFE International and Stanford Research Institute. This week a report on the meeting is out: Private Investment: the Key to International Industrial Development, published by McGraw-Hill, edited by TIME Contributing Editor James Daniel. It contains challenging appraisals of the tasks and opportunities of capitalism.

WHEN Medicine Editor Gilbert Cant made a tour of Air Force bases for his story on space medicine (TIME, May 26), he grew fascinated with weightlessness, the uncanny state in which man must learn to live as he hurtles through outer space. Within the earth's atmosphere, it can be produced for brief intervals in a jet plane. To experience it, Cant took a 3 1/2-hour pre-jet-flight physical, sat through four hours of indoctrination, spent an hour in the altitude chamber breathing oxygen under pressure, finally tried out an ejection seat (it hurled him 15 ft. into the air). After that he put on a flying suit, g suit and the rest of the gear to find out How to Go Weightless. See MEDICINE.

SO optimistic are Alaskans on statehood, now that the House of Representatives has voted them toward membership in the Union, that they have a flag already prepared (see cut). The stars are neatly arranged, seven up, seven down. Only trouble: nobody is sure what a 49-star flag will look like officially--provided the bill passes the Senate. The U.S. Code does not stipulate the arrangement of stars, only that one shall be added for each new state, effective the Fourth of July following admission to the Union. In the congressional hopper are proposals, drawings and samples of 49-star flags. Suggestions: five rows of five and four rows of six; 49 stars in a wheel; 49 stars spelling out U.S.A. The 49th star is still waiting. For the story of what it may represent, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Land of Beauty & Swat.

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