WITH news and history breaking out all over the Middle East, TIME'S chief correspondent in the area, John Mecklin, an old hand at censorship and canceled flights that leave correspondents stranded during crises, stuck close to his Beirut headquarters and the cable office. He was on hand to meet the U.S. Marines when they landed in Lebanon. Out of hjs background of 80,000 miles of travel over the past 2 1/2 years, he was also able to contribute comprehensive and incisive commentary on all the week's events. Mecklin's current passport, two years old, already has 36 extra pages of visas.

In covering the Middle East's biggest stories, including six TIME covers, Mecklin has come to know well every Arab head of state except the Imam of Yemen and the Sheik of Kuwait. He was on close enough terms with Nasser to be chosen for the dictator's first interview, six hours long, after the Suez war. That friendship has since chilled. He was a good friend of the late Nuri Pasha of Iraq, who always greeted him with the shout: "Hey Look!" Saudi Arabia's King Saud once gave him a wristwatch--though, since TIME'S cover was far from unreserved praise, "I only got the airline-hostess model." King Hussein of Jordan once took Mecklin flying in his plane, with an unexpected thrill at the end when the young King was barely able to get a stuck nosewheel down.

With that background. Mecklin was well prepared to serve as the pivot man of the TIME task force that provided this week's coverage in depth of the crisis in the Middle East.

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DAY after Congress voted to make Alaska the 49th state, TIME also made a decision: open an Alaska bureau. Onto the masthead this week goes the new listing, ANCHORAGE, 18th TIME bureau in North America. To report Alaska's "stir and throb that reaches far beyond the cities, into the tundra, across the forbidding mountains and glaciers into the valleys" (TIME, June 9), Bill Smith. 28, a spring-legged, outdoor-loving correspondent in our Los Angeles bureau, moved up to Anchorage. From his base in Alaska's busiest city (pop. 35,000), Bachelor Smith will roam the new state, reporting Alaska's passage into the Union and the forward march on the newest U.S. frontier. After two days in Anchorage last week, Reporter Smith flew on to Juneau, looked forward to his new job as "a tremendously exciting experience."

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