Bangkok

Michael Jackson launched his "Dangerous" world tour, which includes stops across Asia and the Middle East, by playing it notably safe with the media. Jackson appeared in Bangkok yesterday for what was billed as a news conference. A crowd of 500 photographers and reporters showed up. But all that the world's media got from Jackson was eight words, a lip-sync performance and a wave. The singer made his appearance yesterday in a modified three-wheeled Thai taxi known as a tuk-tuk.

They have come to Germantown Academy from Bucks County and Bangkok, from Downingtown and Delaware. There are 11 new faces on the boys' and girls' swimming teams this season, including six transfer students. They have joined the Patriots for one reason - to swim for demanding coach Dick Shoulberg, who has produced nine Olympians in a career that began in 1957. Shoulberg, 56, has been at GA for 27 years. "I have a dream of going to the Olympics and breaking world records," said sophomore David Hartzell, who moved from Middletown, Del., to attend Germantown Academy.

OVER THE NEXT few days, we'll all get to know Jason Smith. He's the 36-year-old Levittown dirtbag who, police said, has confessed to killing Dr. Melissa Ketunuti. We'll learn where he was born and went to school. We'll get the rundown on his exterminating job. We'll find out what neighbors made of him, before they were sickened by news from police that he strangled Ketunuti on Monday, then set her body on fire. And we will hear his version of the events that allegedly provoked him to kill Ketunuti.

The buildings here are covered with moss and mold. Some of the older Victorian ones have bushes, even trees, growing from the cracks and gingerbread of their outer walls. The buses are powered by World War II American truck engines, with corroded, jury-rigged bodies on top. The car most commonly seen in town is a Mazda from the 1960s. Along the broken sidewalks and sleepy tea stalls, men sit idly on most days, smoking their cheroots and tying and retying their longyis - the floor- length sarong that almost all Burmese, men and women, favor.

Colbert hair takes one for the troops Mission Accomplished! Stephen Colbert, who brought his Comedy Central show to the troops in Iraq over the weekend, is kicking up a funny desert storm over there. He said we must "officially declare we won the Iraq war" because no one is talking about it anymore. During a show at Camp Victory, in western Iraq, Colbert, dressed in camo, submitted to Gen. Ray Odierno, top commander of U.S. forces, who, obeying a videotaped order from President Obama, shaved Colbert's head.

Gao Xianggui climbed the ladder of the rusty cargo ship in Bangkok and stepped on board into a throng of other Chinese people. It was March 1993, and the ship was called the Golden Venture. Nearly a hundred Chinese passengers boarded the ship in Bangkok. Another 200 would come aboard in Mombasa, Kenya. All were chattel being smuggled across two oceans and into the United States by gangsters known as "Snakeheads. " Each had scraped together tens of thousands of dollars to pay the Snakeheads for a trip that would end in disaster.

Like thousands of Romanian teens before her, Rosanna thought she was coming to Italy to work in a hotel for three months and earn some money for college. Instead, the tall, thin, dark-haired daughter of factory workers soon found herself in a seedy nightclub, ordered to dance in skimpy lingerie and have sex with drunk, groping men in tiny booths covered by scraps of curtains. It was the beginning of a hellish odyssey that led her from one group of exploiters to another, until one day she summoned the courage to contact police, and was rescued.

Mikey Fabulous was working the door. He had flown in from Bangkok to help out with the Bank's preview party last month and had decided to stick around until January. The native Philadelphia designer was wearing a shiny black jumpsuit made of PVC, the material equivalent of an oil slick. It was accented nicely by a new-wave pompadour and glittery gold boots with spike heels. On the other side of the door, a line was forming slowly. Many of its inhabitants were dressed in black, trying to outdo the night.

From the moment a guest walks through the door of Bangkok City, there's a sense that things are going to go right. This storefront Voorhees restaurant, which moved from its former location in the Woodcrest Center 10 months ago, is modestly appointed, yet every t is crossed, every i is dotted. Fresh pink carnations adorn the tables, which are covered in crisp white cloths. The walls are painted a soothing shade of forest green. And the recessed ceiling lighting and wall sconces bathe the room in a warm glow.

Kathryn "Brooke" Baxter, 32, formerly of New Hope, a student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, died Sunday in a bus accident in Tanzania. Ms. Baxter was in Africa for the summer as a volunteer for the Lwala Community Alliance in Kenya, working with pregnant women infected with HIV and malaria. She was commissioned as an Army lieutenant last summer, and had completed her first year of medical school on an Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship.