Who Defends America?; First Duffer; China Spindrome; Right Turn?; Bounced in Beijing; From France, With Love; Kick-Boxing Kids
Pentagon needs more brass, Clinton's Irish golf dream, the Mulan effect
From France, with love. French President Jacques Chirac wants to give the National Order of the Legion of Honor, his country's highest decoration, to all 1,800 surviving U.S military veterans who fought on French soil during World War I. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to help; this year will mark the 80th anniversary of the armistice. The VA knows the whereabouts of 900 of the 1,800 vets because they currently receive veterans' benefits. Soon, VA Secretary Togo West will send them all a letter urging them to declare themselves to the French Embassy in Washington, where their claims will be reviewed. To try to reach the rest, the Torch, a small U.S.-based WW I veterans publication, will publish West's letter and an application form.
Once awards get approved by the Grande Chancellerie de la Legion d'Honneur in Paris, French officials will travel throughout the United States to decorate the soldiers in person. With the average age of WW I vets being 98, the VA says it's giving the effort "high priority." The Legion of Honor is not awarded posthumously.
Kick-boxing kids. Mulan, the female warrior whose cunning and kick boxing helped save China from Mongol invaders dynasties ago, is doing more than just animate the Walt Disney Co.'s bottom line. Her screen adventure has generated a surge of interest among young girls in martial arts. "We've been getting lots of calls" since the movie opened June 19, says George Anderson, president of the Akron, Ohio-based USA Karate Federation. Anderson predicts a 20 to 30 percent increase in the number of young females taking tae kwon do, karate, or other disciplines. (About 2 million American kids--equal numbers of boys and girls--are in martial arts classes.) The Mulan-inspired boom promises to top the one that followed the 1984 hit movie The Karate Kid, and instructors believe the trend will last longer. Parental buy-in is there from the start, says Anderson; parents watch the film and emerge saying, "I want that for my daughter."
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"You ever wanted to put one of those in the Oval Office?" NBC correspondent Maria Shriver, to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, on being shown the cot that Thomas Edison kept in his laboratory for taking naps
"You can't exactly show it to your friends." Lenny Prussack, gift shop manager at the James Dean Memorial Gallery, suggesting why the thieves who stole James Dean's tombstone last week had dumped it on an Indiana country road
"I wouldn't like to see it become a trend." Debra Harder, network director for Adoptive Families of America, on learning that the Sally Jessy Raphael talk show had arranged for the adoption of two children
"No one needs to improve their sex life [so much as] to die for it." Diego Padro, the first Viagra user to sue Pfizer Inc., claiming the anti-impotency drug caused him to have a heart attack
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