NOTEBOOK

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, DANIEL EISENBERG, LISA GRANATSTEIN, ANITA HAMILTON, NADYA LABI, LINA LOFARO AND ALAIN L. SANDERS

WINNERS & LOSERS MORE TALK, BUT STILL NO HEARINGS

[WINNERS]

OPRAH WINFREY Talk queen signs through 2000. She and her producers are happy, and Toni Morrison is ecstatic

CHRISTOPHE MEILI Fired Swiss guard who saved Holocaust victims' bank records gets special U.S. residency

BROCCOLI SPROUTS Potent anticarcinogens. But can you get them fried?

[& LOSERS]

KITTY KELLEY News hooks usually help sales, but the time may be too tender for a gossipy, tabloid-style scorching

THE CLINTONS Folks, remember: you're not losing a daughter, you're gaining bags and bags of dirty laundry

WILLIAM WELD Grilled nominees are Borked. Are the ungrilled Welded?

CAMPAIGN WALKUP

THE BUMPY ROAD TO 2000 Vice President Al Gore's national image is slipping. But that's the least of his worries. The presidential outlook in parts of his political base looks much worse.

TROUBLE AT HOME Percent of Southern voters who think local boy Al Gore would make a good president

YES 42% NO 45%

BLUE-COLLAR BLUES Among people earning $35,000 or less, Republican Governor George W. Bush wins

GORE 40% BUSH 49%

IS NEW HAMPSHIRE LIKE ITS NEIGHBORS? Northeastern Democrats would prefer former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley for nominee

GORE 23% BRADLEY 27%

From a telephone poll of 827 adult Americans taken for TIME/CNN on Sept. 10-11 by Yankelovich Partners Inc. Margin of error for subgroups +/- 5.5%-10.2%. "Not sures" omitted.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

INTO THE WOODS WE GO Outdoor lovers may soon tick Lyme disease off their list of worries. Two competing groups of researchers have developed a pair of similar vaccines against the deer tick-borne disease. Each team plans to seek fda approval.

LIFEBLOOD Children with sickle-cell anemia who are at high risk for stroke can benefit from a new treatment. Monthly blood transfusions reduce their rate of stroke by 90%.

FOR YOUR EYES Opening new avenues of research, scientists have identified a gene defect associated with age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss in people over 60.

Sources: Infectious Diseases Society of America; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; Science

THE BAD NEWS

NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT Doctors write as many as 12 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions yearly for colds, upper-respiratory-tract infections and bronchitis. The drugs do little or nothing to fight the viral illnesses.

AIDS stats Though new cases fell last year by 6% overall, the incidence of AIDS continued to rise among people infected heterosexually, increasing 11% among men and 7% among women. More than 235,000 Americans have AIDS.

LOW-BIRTH-WEIGHT BABIES Those with abnormalities suggestive of inner-brain white-matter injury have a much greater risk of suffering some childhood psychiatric disorders.

[Sources:] Journal of the American Medical Association; Centers for Disease Control; Archives of General Psychiatry

NUMBERS

34: Years Babe Ruth's home-run record stood before Roger Maris broke it in 1961

36: Years Maris' record has stood

39.4: Average hours of free time that adults have each week

15: Average hours spent watching television each week

2.8: Hours spent reading

79: Percentage of eighth-graders in Louisiana who passed the state math test in 1996

7: Percentage who passed the national math test the same year

11.9 million: Households in the U.S. in which people are afraid of not getting enough to eat

4.2 million: Households in which people do not get enough to eat

27: Percentage of food produced in the U.S. that is wasted at retail, restaurant and consumer levels

30: Percentage of Americans who are considered obese

Sources: Baseball Encyclopedia, U.S. Dept. of Education, Time for Life, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services

FLASHBACK

Roger Tamraz's remarks at the campaign-financing hearings recalled those of another witty, worldly witness who surprised Senators at the Watergate hearings, as shown in this excerpt from TIME's July 30, 1973, issue:

ANTHONY T. ULASEWICZ, 54, a former New York City policeman who later served as a private investigator for the White House, was the perfect witness for warm-weather TV viewing. A Runyonesque character, he described with deadpan humor his difficulties in "getting rid of all those cookies"--distributing the $220,000 that [personal presidential attorney Herbert] Kalmbach channeled to him... [B]y prearrangement, he left packets of $100 bills in office-building lobbies or airport luggage lockers. He was obliged to make so many phone calls from public booths that he finally took to wearing a bus driver's coin changer... At first, committee members treated Ulasewicz as a welcome bit of comic relief. "Who thought you up?'' asked Tennessee Senator Howard Baker. "I don't know," replied a startled Ulasewicz. "Maybe my parents."