PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

HERE THEY COME...AGAIN

Josie and the Pussycats, tune up your guitars! In a year of reunions by such aging former stadium fillers as the Sex Pistols, Kiss and the Who, it's only right that the Monkees, the one band to start in TV and then go to the recording studio, should be back. Sure enough, Justus, the very first album written, performed and produced entirely by the Monkees, will be out in October. Why would a bunch of fiftysomethings go back to the studio when they're getting six-figure royalties from their early work? "I don't know," says MIKE NESMITH, who had declined to join previous reunions. "I called MICKY [DOLENZ], PETER [TORK] and DAVID [JONES] and said, 'You guys feel like playing?'" They did, and, says Nesmith, after deciding "we sound pretty good," they cut an album. He doesn't think the band will tour, but they might make a movie.

SEEN & HEARD

Kerri Strug's torn ligament at the Olympics may be the cloud with the fattest silver lining ever. The gutsy gymnast isn't letting her pint-size voice stop her from hitting the big time. Instead of touring with the rest of her team, she's working on two books, a TV-movie deal, a cameo on Beverly Hills, 90210, a tour with the Ice Capades, and maybe even a gymnastics exhibition. Oh, and college.

Things aren't going so swimmingly for Strug's sister in pharyngeal disadvantage, Kathy Ireland. Authorities busted a sweatshop in New York, where workers were locked in and the sprinkler system was broken. The clothes made there for K Mart bore Ireland's label. "I will not, and K Mart will not, tolerate unscrupulous practices in the manufacture of my products," said the swimsuit model.

SISTER-IN-LAW KNOWS BEST

It's the oldest spousal joke in the book: if he's weird, he must be from your side of the family. But in the Unabomber case it was eerily prescient. It was in fact DAVID KACZYNSKI's wife LINDA PATRIK who first jokingly suggested that his brother Ted might be the Unabomber. In an interview the no longer media-shy Kaczynski family gave 60 Minutes' MIKE WALLACE and LESLEY STAHL, Patrik says the more she read about the Unabomber, the more she wanted David to look at his manifesto. "My motive was primarily to put Linda's mind at ease," says Kaczynski. "Because I believed...if I read the first page, I would be able to say to myself and Linda very clearly, 'This is not Ted.'" He couldn't say it.

MACHEL, MA BELLE

He's single, he's charming, he has a great job, and he understands the meaning of commitment. NELSON MANDELA just needed to find the right woman. Now he admits he has. South Africa's Sunday Independent reports that the President, 78, and GRACA MACHEL, 50, widow of Samora Machel, former President of Mozambique, are going public with their long-rumored relationship. Machel, recipient of the Africa Prize for Leadership, knows something of commitment herself, but the two have decided not to wed. "I belong to Mozambique," she told Reuters. "I will always be the wife of Samora Machel." Instead she'll spend two weeks each month with Mandela. So far, no word from Winnie.