NOTEBOOK

By KATHLEEN ADAMS; MELISSA AUGUST; CHARLOTTE FALTERMAYER; JANICE M. HOROWITZ; LINA LOFARO; BELINDA LUSCOMBE; JEFFERY C. RUBIN; ALAIN L. SANDERS

VERBATIM

"I trust in the hard way, for little has come to me except in the hard way." --Senator Bob Dole

"You get big storms at any time at extremes of altitude, but this one, it sounds like it was a real humdinger." --Mountaineer Greg Mortimer, of the blizzard that killed eight people on Mount Everest

"I heard the roar of winds and saw something like a fireball on the northwestern side of the sky. I jumped into an irrigation canal and escaped the demon's path." --A farmer in Bangladesh, of the tornado that leveled 60 villages and may have killed as many as 1,000 people

"The thing that would stop me...is being burned at the stake. I don't like burning to death." --Dr. Jack Kevorkian

"The whole thing about models, and I hate using this term, but we are genetic freaks." --Model Linda Evangelista

WINNERS & LOSERS THE RESIGNATION

[WINNERS]

BOB DOLE Makeover from Beltway Insider to Outsider-on-the-Inside-Track revitalizes his campaign

MARK HELPRIN Novelist helps the Senator write the most moving speech of the season so far

SENATOR TRENT LOTT The majority whip is likely to beat out fellow Mississippian Thad Cochran to succeed Dole

[& LOSERS]

NEWT GINGRICH The growing unpopularity of his 1994 revolution is a factor in Dole's self-imposed exile

SENATOR THOMAS DASCHLE The minority leader hoped to make trouble for the G.O.P. nominee--but now Dole's gone

SHEILA BURKE Future employment for Dole's powerful chief of staff may depend on November win--a big if

CLINTON: LOST IN CYBERSPACE

The alarm went out: the President was missing on the World Wide Web. Until about a month ago, the White House home page had a nifty feature allowing netizens to search an archive of the President's Saturday radio addresses. It was simple: type in a keyword--say "Medicare"--and the index would produce a list of all his speeches addressing that issue, even playing an audio segment of the speech cued to the subject. The easy-to-use index was a valuable resource. Maybe too valuable. Concerned that it might be used by political enemies for "opposition research," jittery Administration officials yanked the index and the audio in mid-April. Impassioned fans of the home page noticed the absence and E-mailed the White House, leading to the return of the features last week. Says Frank Reeder, director of the White House Office of Administration: "Occasionally we lapse into human frailty and make mistakes. When we do, we fix them."

RISKY BUSINESS

Fishing tops the list of most dangerous jobs. Predictably, most are killed in boating mishaps. Similarly, most loggers are killed when struck by trees. But most surprising is taxi drivers. Their greatest job risk: murder.

Number of fatal job-related injuries per 10,000 in 1994

Fishers 13.1 Loggers 13.0 Airplane pilots 12.6 Structural-metal workers 9.8 Taxicab drivers 4.7 Construction workers 3.3 Farmworkers 3.1 Roofers 2.9 Truck drivers 2.7 Fire fighters 2.2 Police 1.4 National average 0.5

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

--The pimple and wrinkle fighter Retin-A may alleviate another skin woe: STRETCH MARKS. When rubbed on daily for six months, the cream shrank the marks by 14% in length and 8% in width; with a placebo, they grew. The scarlike lesions tested were relatively new ones, all with still smooth skin.

--Worried about HIV? The FDA approved an AIDS test for home use. The Confide HIV Testing Service enables people to draw their own blood with a finger prick, send it to a lab and get the test result by phone. It will be available nationwide by 1997.

--An experimental test that looks for DNA damage in skin and blood cells may lead to the early detection of ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE. Today a definitive diagnosis requires a brain autopsy.

THE BAD NEWS

--Electromagnetic fields from CELLULAR PHONES can cause pacemakers to slow down, speed up or stop altogether. The effect, which appears to last only as long as the phone is on, usually occurs when the antenna is placed close to the pacemaker--for example, when the phone is inserted into a breast pocket.

--MAMMOGRAMS may be less accurate for women on estrogen than for those who aren't. The hormone increases the density of breast tissue, which can make X rays difficult to read.

--Yes, you can be TOO THIN. The risk of a hip fracture more than doubles for women, especially those thin to begin with, who lose 10% or more of their weight after age 50.

Sources--GOOD NEWS: Journal of the American Medical Association; Food and Drug Administration; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences BAD NEWS: North American Society of Pacing and Electrophysiology; Journal of the National Cancer Institute;Journal of the American Medical Association

LOCAL HEROES

AMY PARKER REID, 26; KERNERSVILLE, N.C.; nurse Reid, five months pregnant, came upon an accident on her way to work. She scrambled in darkness down an embankment to a wrecked car and found Michael Orr, bleeding heavily, pinned inside. As 5-ft.1-in., 126-lb. Reid struggled to free the 250-lb. Orr, the car burst into flame. She got him out and pulled him up the dew-slicked slope just as paramedics arrived. "If she hadn't been there that morning," says Orr, "I wouldn't be here today."

TANIA MEDINA, 50; MIAMI; refugee-program director Medina arrived in the U.S. alone as a refugee when she was 15, and has spent 35 years helping those who followed. While still at school, she did volunteer work at the local Roman Catholic emergency center, and now she heads one of the church's refugee programs in that area. She's an expert in the processing and settlement of unaccompanied minors. "Refugee children are all the same--timid and afraid," Medina says. "They really need love."

19 YEARS AGO IN TIME

An Unexpected Result

Next week's showdown in Israel between Labor's Shimon Peres and Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu is reminiscent of an earlier contest: "[Menachem] Begin's Likud (Unity) coalition last week became the dominant bloc in Israel's parliament, replacing a shattered, scandal-ridden Labor alignment...Begin asked for Labor's help in forming a unity government, but a disappointed Shimon Peres, who replaced former Premier Yitzhak Rabin in mid-campaign...said no [because] 'the Likud offers no alternative for peace.' [Likud's hard line] worries Washington, which was unprepared for Begin's victory...[W]hen National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was alerted to an early projection that Labor was out, he could hardly believe it. 'No, no,' he said. 'That's wrong.'" --May 30, 1977

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRED SILVERMAN, 58; LOS ANGELES; independent television producer As networks announce their fall lineups, the man who was once the supreme programmer deals with a smaller universe. In the 1970s Silverman was head of programming at CBS and ABC, racking up hits like M*A*S*H, Rhoda, Maude, Happy Days and Welcome Back Kotter. In 1978 he was hired by NBC, which hoped he could lift it out of seemingly perpetual third place. Beset by writers' and actors' strikes, Silverman saw his victories come to a halt. In 1981 NBC replaced him with Grant Tinker. A bruised Silverman nevertheless became a producer, developing shows like In the Heat of the Night and Matlock. Comparing TV fare then and now, he says, "I think that the most distinguished series programming has been in the hour form, with shows like NYPD Blue, ER, Murder One, ensemble pieces. I just don't think that TV comedy has progressed. If anything, it's taken several steps backward."

--By Kathleen Adams, Melissa August, Charlotte Faltermayer, Janice M. Horowitz, Lina Lofaro, Belinda Luscombe, Jeffery C. Rubin, Alain L. Sanders