News Digest

By Richard Lacayo, Michael D. Lemonick, Christopher John Farley, Michael Quinn, Erik Meers, Alexandra Lange

NATION

President Bill Clinton's fortunes improved last week. A number of his legislative initiatives made some progress through Congress, and he finally named his candidate for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Byron White. A quick Senate confirmation was expected for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington and a pioneering feminist lawyer. Ginsburg was praised by both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, though some women's groups were nervously reviewing her position that the Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling was the right decision but based on the wrong grounds. Only two days before the President named Ginsburg, his aides told the press that he was almost certain to nominate Appeals Court Judge Stephen Breyer. Clinton's personal chemistry with the candidates -- he was cool to Breyer after they met but responded well to Ginsburg -- seemed to weigh heavily in his decision. Although Breyer told the Administration about the problem weeks before, his fate was sealed by news reports that he had neglected to pay Social Security taxes for a domestic servant.

The President's budget plan cleared another hurdle when Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee struck a deal on new tax increases and spending cuts. They eliminated Clinton's $72 billion tax on all forms of energy, substituting a 4.3 cents-per-gal. motor-fuels tax that will raise just $24 billion over the next five years and tacked on a 2.8% increase in the capital-gains tax for the affluent. With the First Lady's very discreet acquiescence, the Senators also cut an extra $19 billion from Medicare beyond the $49 billion already sought by Clinton. Now the bill moves to likely passage in the full Senate.

After Democrats and moderate Republicans joined forces to end a Republican filibuster, the Senate voted 60 to 38 to pass White House legislation to reform campaign spending in House and Senate races. Though Democrats agreed to strip the bill of most provisions for public financing of congressional races, the Senate version would limit contributions by corporate and other political action committees, bar lobbyists from making contributions to lawmakers whom they lobby and establish voluntary ceilings on campaign spending. The House considers a similar bill next month.

Democrats and Republicans on committees in both houses gave strong support to a less generous version of Clinton's national service plan, under which students could do volunteer work in law enforcement, social services and environmental protection in return for help in repaying their college loans.

Hoping to take advantage of his forward momentum last week, the President held two news conferences. At the first, he pointed to his success in getting a budget agreement through both houses of Congress, denied that he had changed course in Bosnia and, somewhat implausibly, took credit for the creation of 755,000 new jobs since he took office. "This is the most decisive presidency you've had in a very long time on all the big issues that matter," he said. The question-and-answer sessions represented a wary revival of Clinton's on- again, off-again truce with the media, which had reached a new low early in the week after Clinton introduced his Supreme Court nominee. When ABC correspondent Brit Hume asked about "a certain zigzag quality" in White House decision making, the President said peevishly, "How you could ask a question like that after the statement she just made is beyond me," then cut off further questions. Clinton mended fences by joking with Hume and other reporters at his later news conferences.

After a man in Tacoma, Washington, said he found a syringe in a can of Diet Pepsi, more than 50 similar tampering incidents were reported around the country. Noting that the reports involved cans filled at different times in different plants, company officials said it was "almost incomprehensible" that so many could have been tampered with. By week's end 13 people had been arrested on charges of making false claims, at least three others had admitted that their stories were invented -- and authorities remained unconvinced that any of the reports were authentic.

The Supreme Court tied another knot in its tangled doctrine on church-state relations with a 5-to-4 ruling that permits public school districts to provide sign-language interpreters for deaf students in religious schools.

WORLD

It started with an assault on Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers in Mogadishu and escalated into a bombing campaign against the attack's instigator, Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid. Finally, U.N. troops stormed Aidid's stronghold, forcing him to flee, and to remain separated from most of his supporters. Five U.N. troops and over 100 Somali militia were killed; 46 peacekeepers and more than 100 Somalis were wounded.

Serb, Croat and Muslim Bosnian leaders agreed to a cease-fire, despite the failures of the three that have preceded it during the past 15 months. At peace talks in Geneva, the Presidents of adjoining Serbia and Croatia suggested splitting Bosnia into three regions, each ethnically homogeneous. The idea was rejected by Bosnian President and Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic. Lord Owen, the British mediator and co-author of an earlier, much more complicated gerrymandering peace plan, said the new idea might not be the fairest or the best but that "the Muslim government would be well advised to look very closely at these proposals and to negotiate."

Russia and Ukraine have been arguing for more than a year over what to do about the powerful 350-ship Black Sea fleet of the former Soviet navy. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukraine President Leonid Kravchuk reached a solution: they will split the fleet down the middle. The fleet's port in Sevastopol, Ukraine, will be shared as well. Russia also agreed officially to guarantee Ukraine's security, a condition Kravchuk has insisted on before giving up his 1,900-warhead nuclear arsenal.

Civil war was averted in Cambodia when seven provinces that had tried to secede reversed course. The rebels' leader, Prince Norodom Chakrapong, a Deputy Premier in the pro-Vietnamese government and the son of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the head of state, had declared the provinces independent to protest the governing party's loss in last month's elections to a party headed by Chakrapong's brother. But Chakrapong decided to go along with a plan for both parties to share power in an interim government.

Japanese legislators have approved a motion of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa; they say he has failed to attack political corruption as he promised to do. It is only the second such resolution since the 1950s. Miyazawa has dissolved the parliament, and must call new elections within 40 days.

Canada's ruling Progressive Conservative Party has chosen Kim Campbell as its leader to replace Brian Mulroney, who is stepping down. Campbell will be the first woman Prime Minister in Canadian history. Turkey also got its first woman Prime Minister last week when economist Tansu Ciller was named to that office.

The U.N. is getting tough with Haiti. The Security Council gave the Caribbean nation's military junta just one week to allow democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to return from exile to the office from which it ousted him in 1991. If the army fails to reinstate Aristide, Haiti will face severe international sanctions, including a freeze on its overseas assets and an embargo of oil and weapons shipments. A proposal for a naval blockade, however, failed.

Nigeria's transformation to a democracy after 10 years of military rule seemed too good to be true, and in the end it was. A government-appointed commission has set aside the results of national elections in the face of legal challenges over alleged voting irregularities. The challenges come mostly from close allies of General Ibrahim Babangida, the military despot who was supposed to yield power later in the summer.

Its never robust economy in free fall since the breakup of its sponsor, the U.S.S.R., Cuba says it will cut its military forces to save money.

BUSINESS

When Apple Computer co-founder Steven Jobs burned out 10 years ago, the Silicon Valley company brought in marketing maven John Sculley. Now it is Sculley who has apparently flamed out. He has stepped down as CEO, but will stay on as chairman to focus on new business opportunities. His decision came a week after Apple warned Wall Street that a price war had seriously peeled its profits. Sculley had grown aloof, spending considerable time in Washington.

According to Financial World magazine's annual list of the best-paid figures on Wall Street, investor and fund manager George Soros earned $650 million last year. That beat out Michael Milken's record of $550 million, set in 1987.

SCIENCE

President Clinton has decided to go ahead with NASA's space station, but in a "reduced-cost, scaled-down" version. The low-budget station would hold four astronauts and go into operation shortly after the turn of the century, at a total cost of $18 billion -- $8 billion less than the previous design.

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago -- it threw megatons of dust into the air, blocking out the sun and putting the planet in a temporary deep freeze -- may have had company. French scientists have found rocky debris in the Pacific that's about the same age but probably came from a different object than the one that landed off Mexico's Yucatan coast. The implication is that an asteroid shower, rather than just a single asteroid, struck the earth.