Today's Story Line:

indonesia's biggest vote-getter in the general election, Megawati Sukarnoputri, was outmaneuvered in parliament yesterday. So, this fledgling democracy now has a new president who wasn't a key contender in the popular vote. Does this mean the nation is headed for a period of instability?

"Little cable cars take you half way to the stars...." Tony Bennett was singing about San Francisco. But it could be Machu Picchu's new theme song. A controversial plan would whisk tourists to the Incan ruins, but at what cost to the ancient city's environmental integrity?

- David Clark Scott, World editor

REPORTERS ON THE JOB *BLOWN INTERVIEW: The Monitor's Cameron Barr was interviewing protesters in the streets of Jakarta yesterday about the presidential election results. He was talking to a young man, a manual laborer with two children who told Cameron he joined the protest after he'd heard Megawati Sukarnoputri had lost. "He was articulate, thoughtful, and genuinely upset," says Cameron. "Definitely someone I would like to quote in the story." But just as Cameron was about to get his name, a car bomb exploded about 30 yards away. Everyone dove for cover. A local hospital later said 18 people were injured. Cameron was unhurt. But his interviewee had disappeared into the crowd. "Trying to find a guy in a red shirt among a sea of red-shirted Megawati supporters was impossible," Cameron says.

PRESS CLIPPING *CLOSET PIE EATERS: Millions of British men are secretly scarfing pork pies, according to a survey published in London's Independent newspaper. Knowing that their wives will disapprove, men buy large pies on the way home, eat them all at once, and throw away the wrappers so there is no incriminating evidence. "Pork pies have become the forbidden fruit of the '90s," says Jacqueline O'Neill of Tesco, a British supermarket chain. "No one admits to eating them," she says, but Tesco sells 400,000 pork pies a week.

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(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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