TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93TT1791> <title> May 31, 1993: News Digest </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 May 31, 1993 Dr. Death: Dr. Jack Kevorkian </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> THE WEEK, Page 15 NEWS DIGEST MAY 16-22 </hdr> <body> NATION As his budget proposal headed to a House vote, Bill Clinton fended off assaults in Congress from his own party. Fearing an antitax backlash among voters, moderate and conservative House Democrats demanded more spending cuts, in particular caps on Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs. Clinton tried to put down the revolt at a meeting with the House Democratic caucus and the party congressional leadership. "If you'll go out on a limb," he told them, "I'll go out with you." But a more dangerous mutiny began in the Senate, where a bipartisan group led by Democrat David Boren of Oklahoma agreed on a plan to cap entitlements and kill Clinton's proposed energy tax. On a trip through the West to drum up support for his economic plan, Clinton asked people to trust that before his first term is over he would "try to deliver on the middle-class tax cut." The White House was taken aback by charges of cronyism after the abrupt dismissal of its seven-member travel staff, which arranges travel for government officials and receives payment from news organizations for the same service. Accusing the longtime staffers of "gross mismanagement," the Administration insisted its action was not a response to complaints by Hollywood producer Harry Thomason, an intimate of the Clintons who has friends in the charter-airplane business. Facing an uproar when a cousin of the President was named to head an interim operation, while an Arkansas travel agency--whose owner contributed to the Clinton campaign--was chosen to handle travel arrangements, the White House relented and temporarily put the operation in the hands of the American Express travel office. It was a misbegotten week for the Clintons, travel arrangements-wise: Air Force One sat at Los Angeles International Airport for nearly an hour, idling and tying up two runways, while Cristophe, a Beverly Hills stylist whose going rate is $200 a head, gave President Clinton an on-board haircut. The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether it's unconstitutional to exclude potential jurors on the basis of gender. While it drafts tougher safety regulations for hazardous-waste incinerators, the Clinton Administration announced a de facto 18-month moratorium on the licensing of new facilities. There's more evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to kill George Bush during the former President's victory lap through Kuwait last month. An Iraqi being held in Kuwait told FBI investigators he led an assassination team at the behest of Baghdad. In Dade County, Florida, where Spanish is the first language for half the population, the county commission repealed a 1980 ordinance banning the use of languages other than English in official government business. In a court settlement, the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the nation's largest Klan group, agreed to surrender its name, its 11,000-name mailing list and all its assets. "We're in effect taking over everything," said Morris Dees, whose anti-Klan Southern Poverty Law Center brought the case. The Knights were found guilty of violating the civil rights of blacks who were attacked by a Klan-led mob during a 1987 march in Georgia. Boys who won't affirm a "duty to God" can be denied admission to the Boy Scouts, a federal appeals court ruled, because the Scouts are a "private organization" and not a "public accommodation" of the type barred by law from discriminating. WORLD A year ago, Danish voters narrowly rejected the Maastricht treaty, which would glue much of Europe into a political and economic unit. Now the Danes have voted in favor of the pact, thanks to major concessions: Denmark won't have to use a European currency or join in a common defense policy. The vote was greeted with riots--almost unheard of in Denmark--by Danish anarchists. Britain is now the only one of the 12 signatories of the Maastricht treaty not to have ratified it. Two days after the Danish referendum, however, the House of Commons gave Prime Minister John Major a victory by voting in favor of the treaty, and final approval is expected by fall. Major said he would fight to keep Britain from surrendering too much control of its own affairs but added that "I cannot do it by standing on the sidelines of Europe throwing stones at all my partners." After their countrymen's inevitable, overwhelming rejection of the Vance-Owen peace plan, Bosnian Serb leaders proclaimed the plan dead and scoffed at international outrage. "If they bomb me," military commander Ratko Mladic said, "I'll bomb London." The allies proposed a plan in which the U.S. would use air power to back up European and probably Russian troops protecting predominantly Muslim safe havens around certain Bosnian cities. Still, the Serbs are unlikely to give up the territory they have already seized in the intractable conflict. And it's doubtful that the existing cease-fire agreements between Muslims, Serbs and Croats will last long. As expected, Norway vows to hunt minke whales in defiance of International Whaling Commission rules. Norwegian whalers may kill nearly 300 whales this year. Jacques Attali, a former special adviser to French President Francois Mitterrand, recently criticized for his spendthrift ways as president of the European Bank for Reconstruction, now has been accused of plagiarizing from interviews conducted with Mitterrand by author Elie Wiesel. Attali claims he did similar interviews but used the Wiesel material because it was better. The book's title is Verbatim. The U.S. will recognize Angola's formerly Marxist government after years of supporting the rebel group UNITA. Despite the government's victory in U.N.-certified elections last year, UNITA is fighting on. BUSINESS Envisioning a future of programming and data services sent to homes via an electronic superhighway, the prospectively competitive cable and telephone industries have been warily sniffing at each other for years. Last week two companies combined forces at last. A regional phone company, U S West, agreed to pay $2.5 billion to buy more than 25% of Time Warner's movie-studio and cable-TV assets. Reduced fears of inflation pushed stock prices to record levels for two successive days, with the Dow Jones industrial average hitting a high of 3523.28. But the consumer confidence index dropped this month to the lowest level since October. Imports from China and Japan helped send the U.S. trade deficit to $10.21 billion in March--up from $7.9 billion the month before and the highest level in four years. General Motors filed a criminal complaint in Germany against Jose Ignacio Lopez de Arriortua, the former head of its global purchasing operations. The company says that when he left to join Volkswagen in March, he took confidential GM documents. SCIENCE Man-made chemicals are destroying the ozone layer, but so are natural ones. The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption spewed ozone-unfriendly chlorine compounds into the air; researchers believe that these were partly responsible for the record-breaking ozone hole that opened up over Antarctica last year. Cannabis--marijuana--is described in ancient Middle Eastern writings as a common medication. Now scientists in Israel have exhumed the body of a woman who died in childbirth 1,600 years ago, and found a burned material they identified as pot. It was evidently used to ease the pain of a difficult labor. It has long been presumed that either Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern humans or they died out before Homo sapiens showed up. But new, extremely accurate radioactive dating of bones dug up in Israel shows both Neanderthals and people like us lived in the same place at the same time--raising the interesting question of whether Neanderthals were victims of species cleansing. By Sidney Urquhart, Richard Lacayo, Michael D. Lemonick, Christopher John Farley, Ginia Bellafante, Tom Curry and Michael Quinn The Sacred And The Profane "I wanted the movie blessed by a medicine man. That's just the way I am."--STEVEN SEAGAL, EXPLAINING TO TIME WHY RELIGIOUS RITES WERE CONDUCTED BEFORE HE STARTED FILMING HIS DIRECTORIAL DEBUT, ON DEADLY GROUND Health Report THE GOOD NEWS The antiwrinkle cream Retin-A may have an important side effect: it reverses a condition that sometimes leads to cervical cancer, and it can erase the moles that are precursors of the lethal skin cancer melanoma. Two new studies say vitamin E decreases the risk of heart disease in men and women who take daily doses of 100 international units. A cell-growth chemical has been shown to preserve the brain cells lost to Parkinson's disease--in rats. If it works in humans, it could lead to a new treatment. Vegetable fats, implicated in breast cancer in research on animals, don't seem to have an effect in humans. And a new drug, Taxotere, appears to shrink breast tumors. THE BAD NEWS Even legally permissible levels of air pollution can lead to heart and lung disease. The culprits are tiny particles created in the burning of such carbon-based fuels as gasoline, oil, coal and wood. People who survived polio in the 1940s and '50s are suddenly experiencing new weakness and even paralysis. A possible explanation is that some nerves have worked harder to compensate for those destroyed in the original disease and are wearing out early. As many as 1,000 Canadians, most of them hemophiliacs, may have got blood transfusions tainted with the AIDS virus in the 1980s, according to a Canadian government report. Many remain unaware of the contamination. SOURCES: New England Journal of Medicine; Nature; Science; Journal of the National Cancer Institute Informed Sources World War III in Miniature U.S. intelligence sources say the three main factions involved in the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina have hired nearly 20,000 foreign mercenaries since 1991--including some Americans. The marauding Bosnian Serbs have hired technical experts from Romania and Greece as well as fighting Russian cossacks; the Croat forces have recruited Canadian and American soldiers of fortune; and the Muslim forces have brought in mercenaries, not surprisingly, from Islamic countries--Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. The Pyongyang-Jerusalem Connection According to Israeli sources, Israel and impoverished, still communist North Korea have discussed the possibility of an arrangement whereby, in exchange for economic aid, the North Koreans would agree not to transfer long-range-missile technology to Iran. However, the sources say, American officials, pursuing their own strategy to bring the North Korean nuclear-weapons program under control, have restrained the Israelis. Still, Jerusalem is continuing talks with a view toward a three-way U.S.-Israeli-Korean deal. Billy Joel Is a Bit Like Mantovani Conductor and screen composer John Williams (Star Wars, Jurassic Park) is leaving the Boston Pops at the end of this year, and the orchestra is looking for a new leader--preferably someone with star power, a marquee name. Among the people still in the running for the Pops job, according to rumor: Top 40-esque entertainers Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Quincy Jones and Marvin Hamlisch. There are also more conventional candidates up for the post, including conductors Erich Kunzel of the Cincinnati Pops and John Mauceri of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. The 10 Most Powerful People In Washington 1. Bill Clinton, PRESIDENT Slings and arrows, but still on top 2. Hillary Clinton, OFFICIALLY JOBLESS No 1's No. 1 3. Alan Greenspan, FED CHAIRMAN Without low interest rates, Clinton is nothing 4. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan Nearly everything goes to Finance 5. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Swing vote on abortion, other issues 6. Lloyd Bentsen, TREASURY SECRETARY Elder; provides budget credibility 7. Warren Christopher, SEC'Y OF STATE Clinton's favorite lawyer; fading? 8. Donna Shalala, SEC'Y OF HHS She will implement the health plan 9. Bob Dole, SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER Master spoiler and happiest man in town 10. Senator Sam Nunn With friends like these... Bill Clinton's Daily J.F.K. Calendar 7 FRI Press conference with the Danish Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission: "Thirty-one years ago, President Kennedy made a statement that I believe holds as true today as it did then. He said, `We see in Europe a partner with whom we could deal on the basis of full equality.' " 12 WED New York City: "When President Kennedy took office, younger than I was when I took office, over 70% of the American people fundamentally believed that their leaders would tell them the truth." 14 FRI Press conference: "Mr. McLarty, Mr. Rubin, Ms. Rasco and Mr. Lake, to name four, and I are, I think, older than our counterparts were when President Kennedy was President." 17 MON Los Alamos, New Mexico: "President Kennedy stood on this very spot just over 30 years ago and saluted the great patriots at Los Alamos." Winners & Losers WINNERS JOHN MAJOR Agony ends as Maastricht treaty passes Commons CONNIE CHUNG The second woman to occupy a network anchor chair BARRY DILLER Home shopping genius? Earnings at his QVC network double LOSERS OLIVER STONE No Twin Peaks as ratings for his Wild Palms disappoint JEFF TORBORG With record like 1962, un-amazing Mets fire manager LITTLE ROCK COUNTRY CLUB Hubbell, McLarty, two other Clintonites resign ...You Love Me, We're A Happy Senate Committee "You may not know who Barney is, Senator Feinstein, but I'll sing the Barney song to you one of these days."--SENATOR PAUL SIMON TO SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN AT THE SENATE HEARING ON TV VIOLENCE </body> </article> </text>