SO LONG, NOBEL

Did Robert Gallo, of the National Cancer Institute, really isolate the AIDS virus in 1984, as he claims? Or did he culture a virus found by French researchers and then mislead the scientific community? A National Institutes of Health panel ruled last year that there were no ethical problems. Now a Health and Human Services report disagrees. It says Gallo didn't steal the virus. But a single sentence in his 1984 paper implying that no one could yet grow the French virus was ruled to be deliberately false and thus scientific misconduct. Gallo calls the report "incompetent."

COALS TO NEWCASTLE

What's dumber than hauling 85 tons of Antarctic ice halfway around the world to be showcased at Expo '92 in Seville? Hauling it back again. The Chileans are doing just that, thanks to environmentalists who railed against desecrating the frozen continent. Never mind that the theft left approximately 100 quadrillion tons of the stuff still intact; the ice is now in Valparaiso, soon to head south in an insulated container. Antarctica will be whole--and the atmosphere will have to absorb an extra load of pollution, the by-product of fuel burned in shipping the berg back home.