An agonizing week for Ashe...Two blowouts in the islands...No last words from Laettner

Arrested
Tennis great Arthur Ashe, 49, and some 80 other protesters, for refusing to leave the median strip of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, where 1,000 people gathered on Sept. 9 to oppose the Bush Administration's treatment of Haitian refugees. Ashe was fined $50 and freed within hours. The next evening Ashe, who contracted the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion during a 1983 heart-bypass operation, suffered a minor heart attack. Doctors at New York Hospital determined that his condition was not related to AIDS and said he was resting comfortably. Twenty-four hours later the irrepressible Ashe wrote a column about his heart attack and the protest for Sunday's Washington Post.

Canceled
By Hurricane Iniki, a match between the U.S. and Japanese women's Olympic volleyball teams scheduled to take place at Blaisdell Arena in Honolulu last Friday. The U.S. squad had already been forced to nix a Sept. 8 match on Guam after Typhoon Omar devastated that island on Aug. 28. What's worse, proceeds from the Honolulu competition were intended to benefit Omar's victims.

Chosen
As the site of Vietnam's first surfing tournament, China Beach, the South China Sea's hot R and R spot for marines 25 years ago, the setting of a recent TV series by the same name, and the place where Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) ordered some of his men to "surf or fight" in Apocalypse Now. The waves were only two feet high when an International Surfing Association delegation visited the beach in August, but by tournament time in December, typhoon season should be whipping them up to 15 feet. Radical.

Late
For his deadline with GQ magazine, Christian Laettner, who agreed to keep a diary of Duke's voyage to a second straight NCAA basketball title for the men's fashion magazine but has not delivered the final entries. No money changed hands in the deal, but the rag mag's editors did have designer Nick Hilton make a suit for the foppish Timberwolf-to-be and photographed him in it for the cover of the November issue. Laettner still has the suit, and GQ intends neither to ask him to return it nor to put him on the cover. But, says editor in chief Art Cooper, "if it turns out he's the second coming of Larry Bird—which I sincerely doubt—and he leads Minnesota to the NBA championship, we've still got a great cover." Meantime look for Laettner, who was unavailable for comment, wearing dark-blue wool with chalk stripes at an airport near you.

Died
Frank McKinney Jr., 53, the pioneer of modern, bent-arm backstrokers, who won three medals at the 1956 and 1960 Olympics and went on to become chairman of an Indiana bank and president of its parent company; in a small-airplane crash near Indianapolis. McKinney, whose father was president of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1946 to '50, took the bronze medal in the 100-meter backstroke as a 17-year-old at the Melbourne Games. In Rome four years later he led the U.S. to gold and a world record in the 4 X 100 medley relay and got the silver in the 100 backstroke.

PHOTO

RON EDMONDS/AP

Ashe rallied for refugees.