TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93TT1881> <title> June 14, 1993: News Digest </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 Jun. 14, 1993 The Pill That Changes Everything </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> THE WEEK, Page 11 NEWS DIGEST </hdr> <body> MAY 30-JUNE 5 NATION While President Bill Clinton's decision to withdraw law professor Lani Guinier's nomination as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights mollified moderates, it infuriated the professional civil rights establishment and made the President appear weak and incompetent. After a meeting with Guinier in the Oval Office, Clinton admitted, mortifyingly, "At the time of the nomination, I had not read her writings. In retrospect, I wish I had." The President and First Lady have been friends of Guinier's for 20 years. While claiming that he could not defend Guinier's positions, Clinton also insisted that many of them were distorted in the press. "This has nothing to do with the political center," the President said, when asked if dumping her was part of a general, recent move to the political right. "This has to do with my center." At a dinner that evening, Clinton said of Guinier, "I love her...If she called me and told me she needed $5,000, I'd take it out of my account and give it to her, no questions asked." Clinton had started the week uncertainly, braving shouts of "Draft dodger!" and "Shut up, coward!" at his ceremonial Memorial Day visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The President, who knelt to make a rubbing of the name of a boyhood friend, James Herbert Jeffries, also received some applause. Clinton chose the conservative Democratic city of Milwaukee as the setting for his announcement that he was willing to cut both taxes and spending in his budget plan. He asked that education and job training be spared, but appeared ready to sacrifice part of his proposed energy tax. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen later said it might be reduced by as much as a third. Clinton also delayed a push to increase the minimum wage. Compounding Clinton's troubles, Democrat Bob Krueger, the appointed occupant of Bentsen's Senate seat, lost the Texas Senate race to Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. The defeat reduced the President's Democratic majority in the Senate to 56. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin warned that the academic quality of new recruits sank slightly in the first half of this year: only 94% had high school diplomas, vs. 97% in 1991. Aspin said he would spend more money on recruiting. Aspin caused the government to spend some money himself when he and a woman friend enjoyed four days in Venice at the Danieli, one of Europe's most expensive hotels. Aspin and his companion paid for their accommodations, but those of Aspin's 31-person retinue, some of whom also stayed at the Danieli, were picked up by taxpayers. The Supreme Court ruled that a verdict must be voided if the judge fails to properly instruct the jury that it has to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That was a relief to civil libertarians in light of the court's previous rulings that other irregularities, such as coerced confessions, can be deemed "harmless errors," which would not automatically taint a conviction. A mysterious illness that took the lives of 11 people, most of whom lived on or near the large Navajo reservation straddling the borders of three Western states, has confounded epidemiologists attempting to determine its cause. The disease starts with flulike symptoms and rapidly causes suffocation. "I went to get a haircut today," said the editor of a local Navajo newspaper, "and somebody was saying maybe it's the end of the world." WORLD Scarcely more than a week after he seized power and abolished the nation's Congress and Supreme Court, Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano Elias has become ex-President and expatriate. The military, which originally supported his coup, backed away in the face of the suspension of U.S. aid and the threat of trade sanctions. The world's newest international tunnel was unveiled triumphantly by Mexican police. More than a quarter-mile long, 5 ft. high and 4 ft. wide, it was intended for use in smuggling drugs between Tijuana and the outskirts of San Diego. The tunnel was discovered during a search for the murderer of the Roman Catholic Cardinal killed in what was thought to be a drug-war crossfire. Bosnian Serbs lobbed mortar shells into a crowd watching a soccer match in Sarajevo, killing at least 15 people. Serbs also attacked Goradze, one of the U.N.'s "safe areas" for Muslims. In Yugoslavia, hard-line Serbs forced the ouster of President Dobrica Cosic. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council voted to send as many as 10,000 additional troops to protect safe havens in Bosnia and authorized the U.S. and its allies to use air power to protect U.N. troops. German police have arrested four suspects in the fire bombing of a house in Solingen that killed five Turks, three of them children. The suspects, ranging in age from 16 to 23, were reportedly involved with neo-Nazi extremists. Despite the arrests, thousands of demonstrators continued to protest the fire bombing and demand citizenship rights for Germany's 1.8 million Turkish residents. Chancellor Helmut Kohl dismissed the episode as an isolated one, but President Richard von Weizsacker, who spoke at a memorial service for the Turks, said it was part of a "climate generated by the extreme right." Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia attempted to avert a political crisis there with his announcement that he would form a government that included both the ruling Cambodian People's Party and the royalist FUNCINPEC opposition party. But he changed his mind, apparently after his son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, the FUNCINPEC leader, questioned the plan. FUNCINPEC won a plurality in last week's U.N.-supervised election, but the People's Party charged irregularities and threatened violence unless a new vote is held in five provinces. In unprecedented high-level talks in New York City, the U.S. attempted to persuade North Korea to reconsider its decision to drop out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. believes that North Korea is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons and fears that it might use them itself or sell them to others. Black and white leaders in South Africa have provisionally set next April 27 as the date for elections in which all black adults will for the first time have the right to vote. The elections will virtually guarantee that some 350 years of white-minority domination will end. Perhaps in part as a good-faith gesture to protect the agreement, the country's Supreme Court reduced Winnie Mandela's sentence for a kidnapping conviction from five years in jail to a fine; imprisoning the estranged wife of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela could have created political tension and even provoked violence. Nobel prizewinning novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn will end 20 years of exile in the U.S. to return to his native Russia within "a matter of months," according to his wife. BUSINESS After three months of stasis, unemployment fell in May to 6.9%, yielding the country's highest employment rate since the beginning of the recession three years ago. That represented new jobs for 857,000 more people, the biggest monthly increase since 1984. The major contributor to the improvement was a jump in construction jobs. This good news was somewhat offset by a report that the country's index of leading economic indicators rose a disappointing one-tenth of 1% in April, suggesting that no boom is in the offing. The 11 indicators, which include data on consumer expectations and plant and equipment orders, had dropped dramatically the month before. Worldwide, the recession continues. Unemployment in Western Europe is expected to rise to a postwar high next year, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD predicted an unemployment figure of 11.4% this year and 11.9% in 1994. In a deal whose major negotiations took only two weeks, MCI Communications Corp., the entrepreneurial David to AT&T's Goliath in America's long-distance wars, sold 20% of its stock to the huge British Telecommunications PLC for roughly $4.3 billion and instantly acquired access to AT&T-like capital and global reach. Another big international transaction, signed with a subsidiary of the Dutch-owned company PolyGram, should make the Irish rock band U2 $170 million richer six albums from now. The size of the contract is reputed to be second only to Michael Jackson's with Sony. R.H. Macy & Co., exploiting the current faddishness of anything interactive, unveiled plans to create what amounts to its own private home-shopping channel, "TV Macy's," by next year. In partnership with Cablevision Systems Corp., the department-store chain hopes, rather optimistically, to reach 20 million subscribers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Another partner is Don Hewitt, the septuagenarian executive producer of 60 Minutes. SCIENCE Kids, don't try this at home: Penn State University scientists have created thin layers of diamond by the unlikely technique of cooking carbon-rich plastic, mixed with potassium and sodium and blasted with a beam of ultrasound, at low temperature in a regular home oven. The result is a low-grade but authentic form of diamond. If the quality can be improved, plastic-derived diamond could provide a cheap, strong coating for everything from airplane windows to drilling tools. It has been confirmed that the bones of an antelope discovered in a Vietnamese forest last year belong to a new species. It's the first new species in the family that includes cows, deer and antelope to be found in at least half a century. The bones were reasonably fresh, implying that the creature is not extinct--although no Westerner has yet seen one alive. By Sidney Urquhart, Michael D. Lemonick, David Van Biema, Christopher John Farley, Tom Curry, Michael Quinn, Deborah L. Wells HEALTH REPORT THE GOOD NEWS Radical mastectomy was once standard treatment for even localized breast cancer, but a new study shows that lumpectomy, a procedure in which only the cancerous lump is removed, can be nearly as effective when combined with radiation. The Food and Drug Administration has struck a blow for the tobacco-addicted. It will ban almost all over-the-counter stop-smoking aids; they don't work. A cure for influenza has always been elusive to researchers: the virus's outer coat undergoes frequent mutation, so a vaccine can attack only one strain. But newly synthesized enzymes designed by computer may be able to kill a wide variety of flu viruses. THE BAD NEWS A major placebo-controlled study has definitively shown for the first time that anabolic steroids, often taken by athletes and fitness buffs to improve strength and endurance, can cause temporary mental problems, including mood swings and violent impulses. A newborn girl's chance of suffering from breast cancer sometime in her life is higher than previously reckoned: it's 1 in 8. The new estimate is based on more sophisticated statistical analysis. A study in Kenya has shown that HIV-positive women who are pregnant or taking oral contraceptives are likelier than average to infect their sexual partners, maybe because of changes in the cervix. SOURCES: Journal of the American Medical Association; Journal of the National Cancer Institute; the New England Journal of Medicine; Nature DEJA GERGEN "The President's record, what he stands for and his vision for what he wants to do, have not been getting through to the American public. This reorganization is an attempt to make the entire White House more professional in getting those messages across."--THEN WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR DAVID GERGEN, SPEAKING OF PRESIDENT GERALD FORD, JULY 1976 Winners & Losers WINNERS VANNA WHITE Supreme Court lets her sue over a Wheel parody ad WINNIE MANDELA No jail time for her kidnapping conviction JULIE KRONE First female jockey to win a Triple Crown race LOSERS JANET MALCOLM Jury says the New Yorker writer fabricated quotes LANI GUINIER Justice nominee withdrawn by old friend JORGE ANTONIO SERRANO ELIAS Guatemalan President's power grab ends in exile The 10 Most Important Jobs Bill Clinton Has Not Yet Filled 1 SUPREME COURT JUSTICE 2 AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN 3 AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL 4 ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION 5 ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, CRIMINAL DIVISION 6 ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, TAX DIVISION 7 SECRETARY OF THE ARMY 8 SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE 9 CHAIRMAN OF THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION 10 AIDS CZAR The Vanishing Strike The United Mine Workers expanded its four-week old strike against coal producers last week, bringing to 9,200 the number of miners who have stopped work--a far cry from the 1950 walkout when 370,000 striking U.M.W. members crippled the nation's industries. As the chart below indicates, few strikes of any kind occur anymore. Informed Sources See Dick. See Dick Run for Senator. WASHINGTON--Former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, long considered a potential presidential candidate, may toss his hat in the ring for the Senate in 1994 as a warm-up. Sources say he's considering a campaign for the seat of Wyoming Republican Malcolm Wallop, who may leave the Senate to run for Governor. For the record, Cheney, who served in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1989, says, "I haven't made any decisions" on a Senate try but confirms that "I'm interested in the 1996 race" for the presidency. Rackets, Gambling, Nuclear Extortion... PARIS--French intelligence sources are worried about reports that the Russian mob (now enjoying a postcommunist boom) has made a deal with its Italian counterpart. The secret pact, the reports say, calls for the Italian Mafia to funnel drugs to the Russians in exchange for sophisticated armaments, perhaps even nuclear weapons. The arms, stolen or purchased from no-longer-Soviet arsenals in the southern Muslim republics, would then be resold to dangerous elements in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya. Police! Stop or I'll Curse! LOS ANGELES--What's worse, TV cops who sing or TV cops who swear? America will get to decide that question this fall when producer Steven Bochco, who created Cop Rock (as well as Hill Street Blues), premieres his NYPD Blue on ABC. Bochco negotiated an unusual agreement with ABC over the crude vernacular he could use on the show. According to that confidential document, among the 30 or so prime-time words acceptable to ABC are such bizarre semi-obscenities as mother jumper and humphead, as well as a vulgar term for feces and a vulgar term for female genitalia. Does Bill Clinton Know Who His Friends Are? WASHINGTON--Roger Johnson, CEO of Western Digital Corp., was touted by Democrats as a Clinton-supporting Republican during the presidential campaign. This Tuesday Johnson gets his reward as Senate hearings start on his nomination to head the General Services Administration, a policy-setting agency with a $10 billion annual budget. But evidence from campaign documents shows Johnson's political-action committee donated $78,900 to Bush and other Republicans while giving just $429 to candidate Clinton. </body> </article> </text>