Back from the fighting to check in at his command post at Bong Son, Army Colonel Hal Moore, commander of the 1st Air Cavalry's famed 3rd Brigade (TIME, Feb. 11), found the post company waiting with a big cake and a roaring chorus of Happy Birthday. Recollecting that he'd turned 44 that day, Colonel Moore broke out a bottle of Jim Beam bourbon and warmly toasted 1) the President of the U.S., 2) victory in South Viet Nam, and 3) "the loyal, brave and great infantry soldier who has to run around tired, stinking dirty, with wet feet, under enemy fire. God bless him."

Is God dead? Of course not, preached Evangelist Billy Graham, 47, to the Atlanta Press Club. As a matter of fact, said the reverend, "I can tell you that God is alive because I talked to Him this morning."

Singer Harry Belafonte told the guest of honor: "We're going to miss you, baby." And Sargent Shriver, 50, is going to miss his baby too. Having left the Peace Corps to devote full time to the domestic war on poverty, he said goodbye on the corps' fifth anniversary at a "Shriver a Go-Go Party." As 1,500 corpsmen and friends jammed into the ballroom of Washington's Sheraton-Park Hotel, Shriver assured everyone that things would still be jumping under new Director Jack Hood Vaughn. "Jack's a fighter," said Sarge.

Even though he looks militant enough in the dress blues of the Fruit of Islam, the Black Muslims' Special Forces, Boxer Cassius Clay, 24, is a peaceful sort--as he loudly announced to the U.S. Selective Service when it reclassified him 1-A. "I don't have no quarrel with those Viet Congs," blared the Greatest. So the Illinois Boxing Commission canceled his March 29 title bout with Ernie Terrell in Chicago. Louisville didn't want him either, nor did Pittsburgh or Bangor, Me. At last the desperate Muslim-backed promoters looked outside the country, only to be turned down in Montreal and its suburb of Verdun. "We'll hold the fight on a raft in the St. Lawrence River," wailed Promoter Robert Arum. Or maybe in a Saigon gym?

"Keep yourself morally clean," Mormon Dianna Lynn Batts, 37-23-37, instructed the teen-agers in Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City. And, continued the modestly frocked Miss U.S.A., when someone offers you a cigarette or a drink, just turn it down: "People will respect you for it." Alas, the advice came too late for Britain's Lesley Langley, 37-24-37, the girl who beat Dianna for the Miss World title last fall. She had already posed for a six-page spread in Cavalier, sunbathing and sipping champagne without so much as her winner's banner on. No shots of her smoking, though, thank goodness.

The last time they went to the Eternal City, he was Antony and she was Cleopatra and the shocks from that courtship broke every seismograph in the empire. Now Elizabeth Taylor, 34, and Richard Burton, 40, are about to relive the tale in Elizabethan style. In Rome they will begin shooting The Taming of the Shrew, which will give Richard an opportunity to utter Petruchio's immortal line: "Why, there's a wench!"

All the ladies oohed and clucked as the lad turned on the charm for the New York Legislative Women's Club at a tea in Albany's executive mansion. And when it was time for Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller Jr., 21 months, to go back upstairs to the nursery, he waved in his father's best campaigning style. Still, he hasn't yet learned the line that Daddy likes to use for goodbyes: "Thanks a thousand for coming."

Daddy had warned her about cats like that. Clyde's daughter, Harriet Beatty, 32, was just opening her lion-taming act at the Hamid-Morton Police Circus in Kansas City, Mo., when Leo, a surly 240-lb. two-year-old, rushed her, chomped down on her right arm and dragged her around until she loosened his grip by firing six blank pistol shots in his face. After the lacerations were patched up, Harriet still displayed that old family spirit by insisting: "Lion training is fascinating."

They've danced in Acapulco, exchanged smiles at the Sugar Bowl, held hands at the New Orleans Mardi Gras and churned up a lot of heartwarming rumors. The dates with Lynda Bird Johnson, 21, have also churned up oceans of free publicity for Actor George Hamilton, 26. Were the girl's parents put out about that? Beams Lady Bird: "Lynda is going through a sparkling time and I couldn't be happier."

Violinist Isaac Stern, 45, bowed solemnly to the audience, tucked the fiddle under his chin, and began a vibrant performance of Schubert's Ave Maria. Suddenly, he vibrated a few perfectly awful noises, fudging the notes with the middle finger of his left hand. Stern's audience was the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, which was hearing an $85,000 damage suit brought by his old friend, Violinist Eric Rosenblith, who claims that an attendant at a car-rental agency in Allentown, Pa., slammed a door on his fingers, thereby impairing his ability to perform. After the rental agency heard Stern's atonal testimony on how Eric sounds now, it winced and settled out of court for $35,000.

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