Snowman

Researchers from the Ukrainian capital Kiev say they have come to within about 35 yards of a creature they believe to be an abominable snowman in the rugged Pamir Mountains. The news agency Tass reported Wednesday that the group led by Igor Tatsl sighted the creature, called a Yeti, last year in the Gissar range in Soviet Central Asia near the Afghanistan border. The group is preparing for another trip, and hopes to make closer contact, Tass said.

The Snowman has been a little grumpy lately, and his mood might not improve too soon. It's the start of the college baseball season, meaning Long Beach State baseball Coach Dave "Snowman" Snow is busy pushing himself--and his team. Snow is working against the clock with another almost totally new group, trying to form it into a cohesive unit. The job must be done on the run and against one of the nation's toughest schedules.

Greg Novak set out to build a "different" snowman on the farm of his parents, Leroy and Lorraine. The idea snowballed. When he was done, his creation was 26 feet high, topped by a three-foot hat made of wire mesh and canvas. "I guess I'm still a kid at heart, but I'm too big to build little snowmen," said Novak, 32. He piled the snow high with construction equipment and shaped it with a machete and a shovel. Novak cut and painted plywood for the snowman's eyes and his eight-foot-wide smile.

It's a bit like, well, a postcard: In the midst of another virtually rain-free winter, shirt-sleeved Angelenos bask in the singular warmth of a January Santa Ana. Meanwhile, somewhere in the frozen reaches east of the Colorado River, the recipients of that card squat by the miserable fire in their snow-shrouded home, gaze at the palm trees on the card and give themselves over to the emotion that has launched a million westward migrants--weather envy.

When you have a subject as complex as the betrayal of one's country, the single thing a film must make clear is why this act of treason came to be. "The Falcon and the Snowman" (selected theaters) is the true story of two young Palos Verdes buddies in the early '70s who capriciously fell into the business of selling U.S. spy satellite codes to the Soviets.

If you love Christmas specials, you should get your VCR ready for this weekend's yuletide shows, including such classics as "Frosty the Snowman" and new specials like "Soul Train Christmas Starfest." LeAnn Rimes and Faith Hill guest on "Christmas Time With Eddy Arnold," tonight at 5 and 7 on TNN. A reprise of the animated holiday musical "The Story of Santa Claus" airs tonight at 8 on CBS. CBS dusts off the animated musical classic "Frosty the Snowman," Friday at 8 p.m.

There's a snowball fight going on in Laguna Niguel. It started on Rancho Grande six nights ago when someone, some anonymous neighbor who has yet to make his or her identity known, rang the doorbells of 14 homes and disappeared into the darkness, leaving only a brown paper bag, a picture of a snowman and a list of instructions: Put the snowman in your upstairs bedroom window to show that you have already been "hit."

Superstitious Tibetan villagers living near Mt. Everest have not spotted a Yeti, or "abominable snowman," for generations, but Chinese officials believe they have tangled with two in the last 30 years. "In 1979, two of my colleagues managed to grab one of them just across the way," trade official Guo Shenbao said in Zhangmu, a bustling town on the Tibet-Nepal border. And during the early 1950s, an army frontier guard mistook one for a prostitute and tried to arrest it, Guo said.

On the eve of being sworn in for his second term in office, President Reagan built a snowman with his grandchildren Saturday, had a private lunch with California friends and spent the evening at a gala, being feted by Frank Sinatra and a star-studded cast.

Sir Edmund Hillary, the mountain-climbing New Zealand beekeeper who became a mid-20th century hero as the first person to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, has died. He was 88. Hillary, who made his historic climb to the top of the world's highest peak with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, died today at a hospital in Auckland City, New Zealand, according to Prime Minister Helen Clark. A statement from the Auckland District Health Board said he died of a heart attack.