He won a gold medal running the 400-meter hurdles in a record 47.82 sec. at the Munich Olympics in '72. But that didn't matter in the hallucinogenic country that Uganda became under Idi Amin. For three years John Akii-bua, 29, was forbidden to leave the country again to participate in international meets. When the ban was finally lifted last summer in a typically perverse Amin decision, Wife Joyce and Akii-bua's three children were forced to remain in Kampala as hostages against his return. When Amin finally fell, the family escaped to West Germany. In friendlier political climes, Akii-bua is preparing for the '80 Moscow Olympics, in which he will compete again for Uganda. So happy was one of the world's greatest trackmen to be free of politics that he lined up his family, down to youngest daughter Denise, 14 months, for a joyous group portrait on the blocks.

In 1969 Elizabeth Taylor's fifth husband wowed her with the gift of a rare and incredible gem: a $1.2 million, 69.42-carat diamond. Now that Richard Burton has gone his way and Taylor is married to John Warner, the apricot-size gem has, for Burton at least, become love's labor's cost. Taylor, taking advantage of changing markets as well as men, quietly sold the stone for nearly $3 million to New York City Jeweler Henry Lambert. Two bidders, neither of them American, are dealing with Lambert for the clear white, 58-facet stone. Both want the diamond as an investment; for them, unlike Burton, love is never having to say you were starry.

Alan Alda, the Hawkeye Pierce of TV's long-running M*A*S*H, may provoke 100 and some thromboses as a result of the latest Alda-written, Alda-acted movie, The Seduction of Joe Tynan. As a U.S. Senator from New York, Alda sets out to block the Supreme Court appointment of a flagrant racist. Well and good, and done with exceptional verity as a result of Alda's research on Capitol Hill. But Tynan gets sidetracked by some unexpected motions. Waylaid by Meryl Streep, as an activist lawyer, he ends up in bed with her, swilling beer and swapping cloakroom stories.

The four sons had not been at the house at the same time for 46 years, and it was a time for remembrance. Franklin, 64, John, 63, Elliott, 68, and James, 71, were together again at Campobello, the historic summer home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt off the New Brunswick coast. Sister Anna died 3 1/2 years ago, but the others had reconvened from distant places to tape an oral history of family life at what is now the Roosevelt Campobello Park. James, a business consultant, recalled that "when we were small and lived here, we didn't have any electricity and we didn't have any telephone." Franklin, a businessman and farmer, remembered that their mother liked to buy Wedgwood in the neighboring village. None, somehow, spoke at first of the overpowering father figure for whom the sun set at Campobello when he contracted polio and then rose again when he hobbled away--from it and them--to become the only four-term U.S. President.

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