Jockstrip: The world as we know it

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

Domesticity maven Martha Stewart always seems to have just the right touch to create homemaker bliss so it's more than a little odd she's messed up in a scandal over dumping some 4,000 shares of ImClone stock right before the price fell like a bad angel food cake.

Newsweek Monday comes out with its top story, saying the mystery over what Stewart knew and when she knew it may hinge on her broker, Peter Bacanovic.

"He's the one that's either going to blow this thing wide open or put it to bed in terms of Martha Stewart," says Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the House Committee in the Newsweek cover story.

Senior Editor Marc Peyser suggests the social elite that hobnob with Stewart often pass out business tips -- somewhat like hors d'ouevers -- and don't even think it might be illegal insider information.

The magazine reports Bacanovic left Stewart a message about ImClone's stock dropping to below $60, the price at which she says they previously agreed to sell. "If Martha Stewart was tipped off, we always thought it was from her broker," a congressional investigator tells Newsweek. "If Bacanovic was tipped by Aliza, (daughter of Sam Waksal, ImClone chief executive officer and close friend of Stewart) he probably called his A-list clients. That's the way this jet-set crowd works."

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

The mystery of the horseshoe crab arises each June with the new moon as the prehistoric creatures climb out of the ocean, mate and then disappear, leaving hundreds of thousands of green eggs in the sand.

Misty Edgecomb, of the Bangor Daily News in Maine, reports this fact really is all scientists know about the horseshoe crab.

The lifespan of the crab, which date back 500 million years, why the lifecycle is tied to the moon and where they go for the rest of the year all are unknowns to researchers who also wonder if the numbers of crabs are declining.

Biologist Sue Schaller told the paper: "You've got an animal that predates dinosaurs by 200 million years and it hasn't changed much at all. It hasn't had to evolve."

Horseshoe crabs really are not crabs, the newspaper reports. They belong to the zoological class called chelicerates, which includes scorpions, spiders and mites. They are found by the hundreds of thousands each June along the East Coast -- Cape Cod and Delaware mainly -- and prefer to lay their eggs in shallow, sandy estuaries, the story said.

Schaller and colleagues are tagging the crabs to try to see if they return to the same area each year. So far, they are getting few repeat visitors and wonder where the crabs are going. The crabs are used for bait and for their blood as a medical research tool.

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

No runway walk, no crown, no scholarship and, of course, no girls in skimpy bathing suits. No surprise in Iran where Shiraz University in Tehran insists there "absolutely" is no plan to hold a contest to elect an "exemplary girl," what would be the Iranian version of Miss America.

The Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-ye Eslami says the university's deputy chancellor for student and cultural affairs, identified as Dr. Safavi, has announced: "There has not been and there is absolutely no contest in this university for electing an exemplary girl."

"We even did not have any discussion or proposal in this regard. Some social abnormalities should not be used for questioning (the integrity) of university and university students," he told the paper.

Safavi said people are trying to introduce an exemplary girl in an attempt to have "contests that were launched before the revolution in order to challenge hejab and the students' chastity and dignity."

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

The Canadians are pitching in to revive local health care in Chuvashia, the Russian news agency Tass reports.

A general practitioner's office opened in Karachury village in Chuvashia on Sunday and this family doc will have his hands full with 1,500 villagers as new patients.

The office is equipped with computers and modern medical instruments, Tass reports, and is the 18th opened in Chuvashia with help from the Canadian government and a loan of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

A key part of the Chuvash-Canadian project is opening 100 offices in Chuvashia this year and another 120 in the former Soviet republic by the end of 2003, Chuvashia President Nikolai Fyodorov said.