From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Funny things can happen to stories on their way to publication, as TIME's correspondents know all too well. Almost every one of our journalists has coped with a special roadblock or snafu that has turned an already challenging assignment into something that requires the patience of Job or the derring-do of Indiana Jones.

Computers can play tricks, for example. One winter's evening in 1986, then Moscow bureau chief James Jackson, now in Bonn, completed a 2,500-word story on his portable computer and decided to run a spelling-check program to catch typos. He had not used the program in some time and could not remember the computer code name that activated it. Guessing, he ran a program mysteriously titled AB; when nothing seemed to happen, he ran it again. Jackson was then horrified to see his entire report reorganized into an alphabetical list of single words, from Akhromeyev to Zelenogorsk. It took three hours to reconstruct the story, after which Jackson vengefully purged the AB program.

At least Jackson eventually got his story to our New York City headquarters. Some barriers to newsgathering, though, are insurmountable. Not long ago, photographer Robert Nickelsberg inadvertently photographed the wife of a powerful Bombay businessman at a swimming pool while he was taking pictures for a story on the Indian middle class. Incensed that his wife had been snapped in her swimsuit, the man attacked Nickelsberg, twisting the camera straps around the photographer's neck. For 45 minutes, Nickelsberg and the assailant wrangled over the film's fate. Finally, after the man threatened to commit acts more terrible than any Nickelsberg had seen in places like the war zones of Afghanistan, our photographer agreed to give up nine rolls of exposed film. The man said the rolls would be taken to Paris and processed to remove only the sensitive frames. But when picture editor Barbara Nagelsmith called the Paris contact, a voice at the other end of the line denied any knowledge of the film and was especially concerned over the mention of a woman at a piscine, the French word for swimming pool. The term also happens to be slang for a branch of the French national intelligence agency.

We are not optimistic that our pictures will ever turn up.