At Rome's Cinecitta film complex, craftsmen are putting the finishing touches on an 18-ft., 550-lb. plaster statue of a male nude who could be a cousin of Michelangelo's David. From the neck up it is David--David Niven, that is. Niven has never seen the colossus, which is intended for his aptly titled film The Statue. His features were copied from photos. But he has learned that it deviates in one significant way from the prototype. "The statue has a fig leaf," the actor notes. "And quite a large one too!"

The old axiom holds that there are no atheists in foxholes, and according to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman-designate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same is true of headquarters and even the Pentagon. Defending the service academies' compulsory chapel attendance requirement before a U.S. district court, Moorer testified: "I don't think you will find a total atheist who has reached the peak of leadership in the armed forces."

Eying a luscious brunette on one of his antismoking commercials for the American Cancer Society, Actor Tony Curtis smirks and says "I quit--cigarettes, that is." Tobacco, that is. Upon arrival in London last week, he was arrested and convicted on charges of possessing marijuana. The fine was only $120, but back in the U.S., touchy television stations--and all three major networks--announced that they have quit on Tony and his ads.

For sale: Patricia and Julie. Not the daughters. The yachts. As a household economy measure, President Nixon is disposing of the two often-renamed luxury cruisers, 92 and 64 feet respectively, which have served five presidential families over an eventful and at times turbulent period of 25 years.

After considering petitions from many noted literati and intellectuals, including the venerated Jean-Paul Sartre, Bolivian President Alfredo Ovando Candia has announced that the case of Regis Debray "is being re-examined." The French revolutionary is serving 30 years in military prison for his part in Che Guevara's abortive 1966-67 guerrilla campaigns. Should he be freed, Debray, 30, may have a job waiting for him--a safer one. La Paz's "Popular University" of Tupaj Katari is offering him a professorship in Marxist philosophy.

Doves, si! Pigeons, no! Like many another antiwar, pro-environment oracle, Poet Ezra Pound finds himself bitterly torn between those two cousins of the Columbidae family. In his translation from an Italian poem, the poet pounds the swarms of pigeons in the city of Venice that are, he says, "besmirching crowned heads, defiling brows and memorials . . . mocking the monuments which overshadow us." Besides, he complains, he abhors their habit of dumping "corrosive superfluities suddenly on the heads of pedestrians."

Among Greece's great shipping families, intermarriage is something of a tradition like the champagne launching, a notable exception, of course, being Aristotle Onassis' second marriage to John Kennedy's widow. Now rumor has it that Jackie, as clan matriarch, has come to the U.S. to implore her stepdaughter Christina Onassis, 19, not to break up her romance with shipping heir Petros Goulandris.

Macalester College in St. Paul is no Berkeley, but a handful of radicals felt that they had to protest something on Earth Day. They picked a dovish political science professor, Hubert Humphrey. After listening to a bombardment of obscenities from 50 antiwar protesters, H.H.H. objected to the language, suggested that their tongues needed a bath in Lifebuoy. Pacified, the pacifists wound up touring the Humphrey house and inspecting his memorabilia.

The hero is an American painter who takes up antisubmarine duties in Cuba during World War II. The novel, Islands in the Stream, should have a start on this fall's bestseller list. It was written by that old man of the sea Ernest Hemingway. After months of poring over the 20-year-old manuscript, Papa's widow Mary asserts that it is "as good as anything he has ever written."

Never exactly famed for munificence, Salvador Dali has offered to give six of his paintings to the French National Railroads for poster art. It seems that Dali has always been a real (or surreal) railroad buff and regards his home station in the small city of Perpignan as something of a shrine.

In the U.S. to promote his autobiography One Life, South Africa's peripatetic surgeon Christiaan Barnard made light of his role as the jet set's darling. "To be honest, I enjoy my popularity," said Barnard. "But I remind myself of all the people who contribute to a single success in a field like heart surgery. It's like an orchestra--one man takes all the bows."

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