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A NEW DAY: Clothes, cooking, coupling. That's the typical women's magazine in a nutshell. All that will be in Roz, too. But Roz is not a typical women's magazine.

Roz, which means "the Day," is the first major new publication for women in Afghanistan. And it's got heavyweight backing: the French version of Elle magazine and its big-bucks parent company, the Hachette Group.

"Afghan women have always been interested in fashion and clothing. Most of them wore makeup and nice clothes under their burqas, but if they were caught, they were beaten," editor in chief Lailoma Ahmadi tells the Associated Press. "Our aim in launching this magazine is to help educate women and teach them how to help each other."

The first 36-page issue went to press April 1; 1,500 copies were printed. Most were to be distributed free in Kabul. Future issues will cost about 15 cents.

The first cover is a color headshot of a young Afghan woman wearing a head scarf.

MADONNA'S WEEK IN REVIEW: Her neighbors in Tollard Royal, Wiltshire, England, are laughing hysterically over her efforts to become a tweed-wearing, wellie-shod, game-hunting Englishwoman. She spent $54,000 on two shotguns as part of her effort to find something in common besides a son with her husband, hunt-loving British director Guy Ritchie, Australia's Herald Sun says. Then she signed up for expensive, intensive shooting lessons, a venture at which she was not entirely successful. She even had the stocks adjusted to improve her shot. In the end, she blamed her gamekeeper, Tommy Speke, and sacked him. Speke refused to comment.

Then, Scotland's leading contemporary artist, Peter Howson, put his two nude portraits of Madonna on display in a gallery at Ayr, Scotland, Reuters says. Surprisingly, the woman who is not shy when it comes to public display of her body did not pose for them. But her spokeswoman is telling everyone who asks that Madonna would never stand in the way of artistic expression. No matter what you hear about her not being happy about Howson's expressions.

And, the sometime alleged actor didn't like the ending of a play she is supposed to star in in London's West End this spring. So Australian playwright David Williamson, considered the best in his country at what he does, retooled his work, the New York Post says, and even claims Madonna's suggestions made sense.

HAIR TODAY: Anyone who has watched TV after midnight has seen the infomercial for Nad's, a painful-looking hair-removal product for women developed by an Australian whose parents become all teary-eyed talking about what she has accomplished.

I'm sure men have watched transfixed, fervently wishing there was a Nad's just for them so they, too, could remove unwanted hair by spreading a gel all over their body and removing the hair with strips of linen.

(The key is supposed to be body heat acting with the gel so removal is painless. Right. The benefit is supposed to be that your skin is as smooth as a baby's behind and you don't have to do this for at least another three weeks. Right.)

Well, now there is Nad's for men. (The one apparent difference between the two is that the men's gel is blue and the women's is green.) The men's kit includes prep soap, removal gel, soothing balm, linen strips, a spatula and an orange stick. And an instruction book and CD-ROM.

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