Talk of the Streets

LATUR: What the locals call "horror tourists" are pouring in to see the destruction caused by the recent earthquake in India's Maharashtra state that killed an estimated 28,000 people. Officials estimate that 1 million sightseers have invaded the devastated areas, disrupting relief work and creating horrific traffic snarls. Chief Minister Sharad Pawar said an injured woman bled to death because it took an ambulance three hours to cover 3 km, on roads clogged with people and vehicles, to the nearest mobile hospital. "We are sick of the tourists," said Vidyagar Karandikar, a senior government administrator.

MILAN: Milanese magistrates have given Italian taxpayers cause to cheer: by pressuring detainees in the country's widespread corruption scandal to yield their ill-gotten gains, they have recovered $63 million so far, most of it from Swiss bank accounts. This amount is clearly just the beginning. Duilio Poggiolini, a former Health Ministry official, for example, is accused of having taken $125 million in gold and silver ingots, gold rubles from the Czarist era, Krugerrands, diamonds and ancient Roman coins. Poggiolini is in jail in Naples; under questioning, his wife referred to the stash as "the savings of a lifetime."

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haitians are openly skeptical about the ability of U.N. forces to deal with the ruthless gunmen who oppose the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which is scheduled for Oct. 30. As 26 Americans and five Canadians, the first of 1,600 U.N. troops and police, arrived in the capital, Haitian hard-liners, led by the police chief, Lieut. Colonel Joseph Michel Francois, have launched a campaign to sabotage the international effort. More than 100 Aristide supporters have been killed by thugs since July 3. Said one Haitian: "Those blue berets look like powder puffs to me."

STOKE-ON-TRENT: People were stunned in this industrial town after a report compiled by two senior doctors acting for the local health authority said many cancer patients had died because their radiation dosages had been miscalculated. In 1982 the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary bought a computer programmed to determine precise dosages for cancer treatment. But it arrived minus an instruction manual. Senior physicist Margaret Grieveson assumed that a "correction factor" needed to adjust the dosages had not been programmed in. Unfortunately, it had. The result: in the years from 1982 to 1991, 1,045 patients received insufficient radiation. Four hundred and one died; 91 who are still alive have experienced a recurrence of cancer. "I believe some patients did die unnecessarily," said Dr. Thelma Bates, one of the report's authors.

AUCH: Judging by the traffic on a new telephone hotline for farmers facing financial and emotional distress, there are a lot of them. The hotline was set up in southwestern France, where many farmers are in danger of losing their land; operators fielded calls from 12 desperate people the first day. Said a spokesman for the line's sponsor, the Catholic charity Secours Catholique: "A whole way of life is disappearing." Farmers have the second highest rate of suicide of any occupation in France, so the hotline could be a lifeline.