DOWN upon the United Nations military headquarters in Katanga screamed a Katangese fighter plane, its guns blazing. As correspondents and troops alike ran for cover to escape the strafing, TIME'S Africa Correspondent Lee Griggs leaped for the nearest foxhole and saw too late that it was already occupied. He landed squarely on top of the U.N.'s chief officer in Katanga, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien. Later, a Congolese colonel, who had watched the scene from his own foxhole, cracked: "That was the best shot of the war."

Correspondent Griggs was TIME'S chief front-line reporter last week as events in hot and cold wars dominated the world's news. Around the world, in less physical danger but with no less urgency, TIME staffers worked to bring truth out of the confusing and complicated course of contemporary history.

At the United Nations, a force which included Washington Bureau Chief John Steele, Chicago TIME Chief Murray Gart and Correspondents Fred Gruin, Bert Meyers and Bill Smith covered the U.N. crisis. From correspondents in Bonn, Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, Belgrade, Vienna, Cracow, Leopoldville and Ndola came reports of reaction to the situation. At the TIME & LIFE Building, Associate Editor Edward Hughes pulled together all of the facts surrounding the U.N.'s hours of trial for the cover story, edited by Henry Grunwald. For Writer Hughes, 40, onetime TIME correspondent in Africa and Germany, the international tensions of recent weeks have provided a world tour by typewriter. As well as writing this week's cover story on U.N. Assembly President Mongi Slim, he wrote the cover stories on south Viet nam's President Ngo Dinh Diem (Aug. 4), East Germany's Puppet Ruler Walter Ulbricht (Aug. 25) and Nikita Khrushchev (Sept. 8).

While Ed Hughes's story covered the center of the week's cold-and hot-war news, other TIME staffers were preparing significant special reports on key elements of the international story. Among them: THE NATION'S study of the U.S.'s awakening to the need for civil defense preparations; THE NATION'S definitive report on the military and political decisions during World War II that led to the partitioning of Germany; THE WORLD'S report from South Viet Nam on the renewed jungle warfare in South Viet Nam, which may signal a new Communist drive in all of Southeast Asia.

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