TALK OF THE STREET

QUEZON CITY: Fear and Folly Filipinos are bemused by a series of police blunders that allowed a gang of bandits to escape. Fifteen gunmen drove up to a bank and opened fire with assault rifles, pistols and grenade launchers, killing three guards. The robbers emerged from the vault with $200,000 and greeted arriving police with a fusillade that wounded five people, including a policeman. The police pursued the fleeing robbers, but soon ran out of ammunition. A squad car broke down. Officers mistook a passing van for a getaway car and fired on it; inside was a police colonel, who sought refuge in a nearby supermarket. Said Jun Grajales, a university teacher: ``People now cower in fear when they see cops, whereas before they used to sigh in relief.'' The gunmen remain at large.

LONDON: Deadly Joyride An appeal by a British soldier convicted of murder while on active duty in Northern Ireland has sparked a fierce debate. Four years ago, Private Lee Clegg and other paratroopers fired on a car that had failed to stop at a West Belfast checkpoint. The driver, Martin Peake, 17, and a passenger, Karen Reilly, 18--joyriders, rather than I.R.A. terrorists -- were killed. In 1993 a judge convicted Clegg of murder on the grounds that he fired the bullet that killed Reilly after the car had passed the checkpoint and the soldiers were no longer in danger. The sentence: life in prison. Two weeks ago, Britain's appeal court reluctantly upheld the life term under the requirements of a law that it criticized as too unbending. The ruling intensified efforts to obtain Clegg's release. M.P.s, ex-servicemen and newspaper editors have rallied to his cause: more than a million people have signed petitions, while the government is considering how to patch existing legislation to deal with killings by the armed services.

TORONTO: Separation Anxieties Two years ago in Pakistan, Fatima Jamal gave birth to triplets. One of the babies, Faryal, was normal, but her sisters Hira and Nida were joined at the head. Early last week doctors at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children performed a 17-hour operation to separate the twins. At week's end Nida remained under heavy sedation and on a ventilator. Doctors feared cerebral swelling might cause brain damage. Hira, however, was awake and breathing on her own. ``It was like seeing a dream come true,'' marveled the father, Anwar Jamal.

JOHANNESBURG: Insect Invasion They hiss, bare their teeth and squirt a noxious black goop. The South African rainy season has brought an influx of so-called Parktown Prawns. Not really crustaceans, the brawny, pink, 10-cm- long king crickets are infesting the gardens of affluent suburbs in ever increasing numbers. Some residents insist they are pollution-induced mutants; others tell of ferocious guard dogs driven off by the bugs. One woman claimed her children were traumatized after encountering an insect in their bedroom, and demanded to sleep in the car. Experts say the insects are harmless--good news, since there is little likelihood of eradicating them. ``They get immune to the poisons,'' says exterminator Thys van Rensburg. ``But it is easy to see why people want to get rid of them. They're big, ugly and, heh-heh, very scary.''