LAS VEGAS: The limp from that nasty knee injury has nearly vanished, so Bill Clinton is doing what any golf-starved President would: Hitting the links with a vengeance. One day after spending several hours at the exclusive Hillcrest country club in Los Angeles, Clinton was getting back into the swing again here yesterday with Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan, another golf zealot with a really good day job.

``He's gotten back on the links with a certain enthusiasm,'' said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. ``The President is always anxious to fulfill his potential as a golfer.'' Clinton is playing golf so much in part because his doctors are encouraging physical activity.

OJ faces music

SANTA MONICA: OJ Simpson was ordered to surrender a $ 40,000-dollars car and a piano despite his insistence that he owns neither. He said the piano was a gift to his mother, who plays it every morning when she is at his home, and the car was a birthday present from his mother and sisters for him to drive his youngest children to school.

Yesterday, superior court judge David Perez agreed with a lawyer for Fred Goldman, who claimed Simpson is trying to circumvent the law to avoid paying a $ 19-million judgment awarded in a wrongful death lawsuit.

``This is part and parcel of this whole charade, your honor,'' said attorney Gary Caris, referring to the birthday party at which Simpson was given the vehicle.

Beetlemania

TOKYO: Collector Shoji Teraoka probably wouldn't even have bothered to look three years ago. But now, the object of his dreams was almost within reach -- a big, black beetle that once would have sold for 300,000 yen (US $ 3,000). ``I've always wanted one of those,'' he said while he contemplated the bug, marked down to a mere 80,000 yen ($ 800) at a Ritzy Department store.

``Words just can't describe it,'' he said. Possibly no other country in the world is as crazy about beetles as Japan, where the bugs of summer long have held a special place in the hearts of children and poets alike. Japan, it seems, is experiencing an unprecedented bug glut.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.