Passion: A teen-ager testified in Exeter, N.H.,...

Passion: A teen-ager testified in Exeter, N.H., that he killed his teacher’s husband because he loved the woman, but a friend testified that the teen told her he wasn’t sure of that emotion. William Flynn, 17, testified that he didn’t want to kill Gregory Smart but did so because Pamela Smart said she would otherwise end the affair. “Whatever she told you to do, you would do?” a defense lawyer asked Flynn. “Yes. I probably would do it.” “It was like you had no brain?” “I had a brain, but I was in love.” But Flynn’s friend Sara Thomas, 17, said she asked Flynn if he loved Pamela Smart: “He said he didn’t know, but the sex was great.”

* The Glacier: Ronald Reagan’s official biographer said the former President is “the most mysterious man I have ever confronted. It is impossible to understand him.” But writer Edmund Morris said he is not alone: “Everybody else who had ever known him, including his wife, is equally bewildered. . . . He’s slabby and he’s cold.”

* Seeing Red: Trouble is keeping in step with New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade. The Big Green March Saturday could see the first boycott by a mayor: David Dinkins said he may not take part because a gay organization was denied a place in line. And a bagpiper said he was fired for wanting to wear a sash highlighting an imprisoned Irish Republican Army member.

* Wanna Bet?: Playing the horses, banned as capitalist decadence in China since 1949, is back on track. Thousands of race-goers jammed a stadium in Xian recently for what one newspaper obliquely called “horse racing with prizes.” A race-track manager, trying valiantly to make a distinction between his nation and the decadent West, said: “In horse racing with prizes, entertainment comes first.”