TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93TT0316> <title> Oct. 04, 1993: The Week:News Digest </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1993 Oct. 04, 1993 On The Trail Of Terror </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> THE WEEK, Page 17 NEWS DIGEST:SEPTEMBER 19-27 </hdr> <body> NATION Health Care: Taking It Public President Clinton made a passionate appeal to a joint session of Congress last week as he laid the groundwork for rebuilding the nation's health-care system and guaranteeing coverage for every American. The President finessed the financing details but did say his plan would be funded in part by increased cigarette taxes and a surtax paid by self-insuring companies. Days earlier, Senator Daniel Moynihan, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, had labeled the Administration's hope of financing the plan mainly by means of Medicare and Medicaid cuts "a fantasy." Death on the Rails Amtrak's coast-to-coast Sunset Limited derailed last week while crossing a damaged bridge near Mobile, Alabama. The accident sent the engine and several cars hurtling into the Bayou Canot, trapping passengers in the water and an ensuing fire. Forty-seven died--nearly equaling all the other deaths in Amtrak's 23-year history. The apparent cause: a barge struck the bridge minutes before the train came across. Gephardt on NAFTA: No Go Though he agreed to keep quiet two weeks ago when a trio of former Presidents declared their support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt was loud and clear last week when he announced his intention to vote against the pact. But NAFTA got a boost when a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the White House could submit the pact to Congress without an environmental-impact statement, which might have taken a year to prepare. Shali on Bosnia: Go At his Senate confirmation hearings last week, General John Shalikashvili, nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave strong support for sending 50,000 American troops to help enforce a hypothetical Bosnian peace agreement--a mission he estimated would cost $4 billion in the first year. The next day, Senate Armed Services chairman and chronic Clinton second-guesser Sam Nunn was skeptical, saying the Administration needed to establish specifically "what our goals are" in Bosnia and "how we get out if the parties begin fighting again." A Military in Contempt? U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr., sitting in Los Angeles, wants to know why the Navy's ban on homosexuals is still in place eight months after he declared it unconstitutional. He has instructed Defense Secretary Les Aspin, along with the Secretary of the Navy and the commanding officer of a Bay Area naval air station, to explain themselves in a court hearing this week or be held in contempt. Another Tailhook Pilot Flies In heterocentric litigation, meanwhile, the Navy withdrew all charges against a pilot in one of the 120 sexual-harassment cases stemming from the infamous Tailhook Association convention two years ago. Prosecutors abandoned the case against Lieut. Cole Cowden after determining there wasn't sufficient evidence to go to court. The Navy has now dropped half of the Tailhook cases. More Mister Moms According to a report by the Population Reference Bureau, 1 in 5 preschoolers now has a father as primary care giver, up from the 15% figure that was constant from 1965 until the late 1980s. One reason is that more fathers are working part time. The Return of John Demjanjuk Freed by Israel's highest court, retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk flew back to the U.S. seven years after his deportation. Angry groups, many including Holocaust survivors who still believe he is the death-camp guard "Ivan the Terrible," protested outside the Demjanjuk home in Cleveland. "He's not going to have a day of inner peace within himself," vowed demonstration leader Rabbi Avi Weiss. WORLD Whose Russia Is It, Anyway? After 18 months of stalemate with his parliamentary opposition over economic reform and political power, Russian President Boris Yeltsin threw the game board into the air last week, dissolving parliament and calling for June presidential elections--and December elections for a new parliament. An anti-Yeltsin majority refused to disband and named as acting President Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, a onetime Yeltsin supporter who is now an implacable antagonist. When the army, the Interior Ministry and the Clinton Administration pledged support for Yeltsin, at least 100 lawmakers barricaded themselves in the White House, Russia's parliament building--the same place where Yeltsin stood firm two years ago in the face of an attempted coup by hard-liners. With hundreds of riot police ringing the building, Yeltsin confidently predicted that the holdouts were "on their last gasp." Georgia Civil War Rebels in the former Soviet Georgia have begun firing on civilian airliners as they enter and leave Sukhumi, capital of the breakaway Abkhazia region on the Black Sea. Two were shot out of the sky. A third was destroyed on an airport runway as refugees tried to board. Total deaths: 126 civilians. At week's end, the rebels had reached the city's center as civilians fled by sea. Plus Ca Change in Poland In the old days they were known as Communists, but the party that won Poland's parliamentary elections with more than 20% of the vote now goes by the more politically correct label "Democratic Left Alliance." The voters, fed up with the hardships of economic reform, gave second place to the formerly pro-Communist Polish Peasant Party, with 15%. The Alliance says it will continue the free-market reforms, but with "a human face." South Africa's Walls Fall In a move that gave blacks their first say in the nation's government, the South African Parliament approved the creation of a transitional executive council, to be composed of representatives from nearly all black and white parties, which will oversee the government until the first ever universal vote next April. That prompted African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, speaking at the U.N. one day later, to call for the lifting of all remaining economic sanctions against his country. Copter Downed in Somalia Three American soldiers died and two were injured when gunmen shot down a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter patrolling Mogadishu. It was the first successful attempt to bring down a helicopter since the multinational mission in Somalia began 10 months ago. Knesset Okays Peace Pact After three days of debate that was emotional even by the standards of Israeli politics, the parliament approved the Israel-P.L.O. peace accord by the comfortable spread of 61 to 50. That was made possible by eight abstentions--including three opposition members who openly defied their own hard-line Likud Party, which is against the agreement. BUSINESS Passionate for Paramount First came Viacom, owner of MTV and Nickelodeon, with an $8 billion offer for Paramount Communications. Then Hollywood executive turned home-shopping mogul Barry Diller offered Paramount stockholders $2 billion more. At week's end, Viacom was seeking a federal court order to block Diller and his partner, ubiquitous cable-TV mogul John Malone, from going forward with their deal. Taking Over Travelers In last week's other merger in the making, the financial-services company Primerica agreed to acquire a venerable insurance firm, the Travelers Corp., for $4.2 billion. The new giant, to be called the Travelers, will offer stock brokerage and consumer loans as well as insurance. Slow Growth Gets Slower With the U.S. economy wobbling, and Japan and Germany both in recession, the International Monetary Fund estimated that 1993 world economic growth will be just 1.1%--way down from its May estimate of 1.7%. SCIENCE Making Food Safer The government would have broader powers to remove dangerous pesticides from the marketplace under a law proposed by the EPA, the FDA and the Agriculture Department. In place of the current cost-benefit decision making, which emphasizes economic harm to food producers, the focus would shift to toxins' health perils for consumers. Cosmic Mystery Solved? Astronomers have found the first direct evidence of machos, or massive compact halo objects. A macho is a large planet or a small dim star, one of trillions that may be orbiting at the fringes of the Milky Way. What the astronomers actually noticed was the temporary brightening of a star in a nearby galaxy, apparently caused by a macho passing in front of it. MEDIA & THE ARTS N.E.A. Gets a B'way Trouper It took just one hour for a star-struck Senate committee to approve the nomination of actress Jane Alexander as the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Tony Award winner promised to listen to "the voices of those who are disturbed by art and the voices of the creative community." A Treasure Repatriated After more than two decades of diplomatic and legal wrangling over the acquisition of the 2,500-year-old antiquities, New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed that it would return to the Turkish government the "Lydian Hoard," a fabulous collection of gold and silver objects that probably belonged to King Croesus, the metaphor-inspiring richest man of his time. Many had been stolen from tombs in Turkey shortly before the museum acquired them in the 1960s. Prize on the Run Author Salman Rushdie, under an Iranian Islamic death threat since 1989 for his "blasphemous" novel The Satanic Verses, received Britain's grandest literary award. Rushdie's 1981 novel, Midnight's Children, took the 25th anniversary "Booker of Booker" prize as the best of all previous winners. -- By Christopher John Farley, Michael D. Lemonick, Erik Meers, Michael Quinn, Alain Sanders, Sophfronia Scott Gregory, Sidney Urquhart DISPATCHES BEATING SWORDS INTO BILLY CLUBS By LARA MARLOWE, in Amman On the chest pocket of his navy-blue uniform, Captain Amer Mohamed Abdel-Kader still wears the paratrooper's wings he earned by skydiving out of Jordanian army planes as a member of the Badr Brigade of the Palestine Liberation Army, the military wing of the P.L.O. Under the terms of the peace agreement signed by Israel and the P.L.O., Captain Abdel-Kader is one of hundreds of Palestinian soldiers training in Jordan and Egypt for police duty in soon-to-be-autonomous Jericho and the Gaza Strip. Lectures on courtroom law and fingerprinting may seem banal for men who until last month dreamed of military victory against Israel, but Abdel-Kader is ebullient. ``Going to Palestine," he says, "is more exciting than jumping out of a plane for the first time." Though the policemen still wear shoulder patches embroidered PALESTINE LIBERATION ARMY, their days of furtive desert bivouacs are over. The grounds of Amman's Royal Police Academy, where the men are training, are landscaped with hollyhocks and palm trees. And there is no target practice. "We don't know what weapons we'll have in Jericho," says Lieut. Colonel Mohamed Youssef Al Sadi, commander of a 20-man unit drawn from the Badr Brigade, which is expected to patrol Jericho. "We have forgotten our Kalashnikovs." They have been trained, however, to handle American M-16s. Whether the Israelis will allow the men of the P.L.O. to carry them is still undecided. As part of the police- application process, hotheaded ideologues are screened out. By design, the trainees in this unit are longtime residents of Jordan who have wives and children but are in their late 20s and early 30s, too young to have fought in the Arab-Israeli wars. ("It is impossible that they are on any Israeli blacklist," says an instructor.) "We're going to Jericho as policemen, not as soldiers," Al Sadi reminds his men. "Being a policeman is much harder. The policeman has to help everyone--no matter what his nationality--and forget about his own identity and feelings." With Israeli and Palestinian extremists opposing the autonomy agreement, the police cadets' riot-control training may prove more useful than courses in directing traffic. And so far, recruits have not been instructed on dealings with Israeli settlers and security forces. Al Sadi brushes aside the possibility of politically charged, violent confrontation. "We can solve things through dialogue," he insists. "Our job is to protect people and prevent crime." Most of all, the members of the Badr Brigade--they have kept their unit's name--are eager to project a new image of Palestinians. Not hijackers. Not dust-caked guerrillas staging night raids across the Israeli border. Just ordinary cops with polished boots and well-pressed uniforms, assisting in the splendidly routine business of maintaining law and order among their own people. HEALTH REPORT THE GOOD NEWS -- Injections of vitamin K are the routine treatment for newborns who suffer from a disease that can lead to potentially fatal episodes of spontaneous internal bleeding. Although some research suggested that the treatment could increase the risk of childhood cancer, parents can now relax: a definitive new study says there's no such risk. -- An experimental treatment for rheumatoid arthritis--oral doses of collagen extracted from chicken cartilage--can reduce and even eliminate swelling and joint pain, with no major side effects. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissues_in this case, collagen-rich cartilage. Doctors theorize that the collagen treatments desensitize immune cells and stop the attacks. THE BAD NEWS -- Women who smoke appear to be twice as likely to get lung cancer as their male counterparts, according to a new report. The reason is a mystery. -- More than 99.5% of heart-attack victims who don't respond to aggressive treatment on the scene won't respond after being rushed to the hospital either. The U.S. spends about $1 billion a year on such doomed patients. -- The laparoscope--a flexible tube that lets doctors examine internal organs and even perform surgery through small, quick-healing incisions--has driven down the cost of gallbladder surgery. But total spending on the operation is up because many more are now performed - too many, according to public health experts, who say doctors should prescribe the procedure more prudently. WHO SAYS GAYS CAN'T SWITCH? Author Anne Rice has been troubled by rumors--which Warner Bros. denies--that the forthcoming film of her Interview with the Vampire will fudge the protagonist's bisexuality. The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes are just two films in which homosexual relationships in the novel were straightened out for the screen. Other cases in point: SERENADE (1956). James M. Cain's baroque novel featured an opera singer consumed by an obsessive relationship with a gay impresario. In the movie Mario Lanza is consumed by...Joan Fontaine. SOME KIND OF HERO (1982). Richard Pryor as a returned Vietnam POW. But MIA from the movie: a sexual encounter between Pryor's character and a fellow prisoner. THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE (1993). In the book a deformed man is befriended by--and has sex with--a troubled boy. In Mel Gibson's movie? No way. COLLABORATOR? MOI? "The movie industry in the United States is like a war machine."--FRENCH ACTOR GERARD DEPARDIEU ON THE NEED TO PROTECT HIS NATION'S FILM AND TV INDUSTRIES FROM AMERICAN DOMINATION THE 10 MOST GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED SENATORIAL RECIPIENTS OF HEALTH INDUSTRY PAC MONEY SINCE 1983 1 DANIEL COATS (R-IN) $452,868 2 TOM DASCHLE (D-SD) $428,425 3 ROBERT DOLE (R-KS) $427,440 4 D. DURENBERGER (R-MN) $410,635 5 BOB PACKWOOD (R-OR) $395,352 6 KIT BOND (R-MO) $374,913 7 CHUCK GRASSLEY (R-IA) $373,388 8 MAX BAUCUS (D-MT) $367,915 9 BYRON DORGAN (D-ND) $364,546 10 ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA) $363,629 Source: Common Cause Supreme Courtship The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term facing questions of women's rights and gender discrimination--the very realm in which new Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made her mark. Cases to watch: ABORTION (NOW v. Scheidler) The Question: May abortion clinics use federal racketeering laws to stop harassment and blockades by pro-life activists? Prediction: The court, and Ginsburg, will say yes. SEXUAL HARASSMENT (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc.) The Question: Must a complainant prove that vulgar and sexually suggestive conduct by a boss is "psychologically damaging" or merely "offensive to a reasonable person"? Prediction: The court, and Ginsburg, will opt for the latter, more liberal, standard. Watch: Clarence Thomas' vote. GENDER DISCRIMINATION (J.E.B. v. T.B.) The Question: Should state attorneys be permitted to use peremptory challenges to eliminate either all the men or all the women from a jury? Prediction: The court, and Ginsburg, will say no. Winners & Losers WINNERS STEVEN BOCHCO Vindicated TV auteur's NYPD Blue fared well--where it aired BORIS YELTSIN Russian President still in control after the political dust settles MEAT LOAF The '70s shlock rocker scores big as his new album improbably debuts at No. 3 LOSERS IMELDA MARCOS Convicted of corruption in Manila, facing an 18-year sentence PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA Residue of Tiananmen helps kill Chinese bid for 2000 Olympics TERRY McDONELL On Esquire's 60th anniversary, the editor is booted as ads drop Speaking Of Health-Care Reform "We've made a lot of progress on, you know, pasta and things like that--but tofu has been hard for us." -- HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, ON THE EFFORT TO IMPROVE THE PRESIDENT'S EATING HABITS Informed Sources Hair Today, Lawsuit Tomorrow Washington--BARBARA BUSH has got herself into a tangle with hairdressers Yves and Nancy Graux. During the Bush Administration they agreed to do hair and occasional makeup for the First Lady in exchange for a nominal fee_and the promise of free publicity. Not wanting the image of cosmetic fussiness connected to the nation's Yankee grandmother, however, the White House skipped the publicity. The Grauxes, who can't get the Bushes to pay up, are expected to file suit any day. Moscow's Mixed Signals Damascus--Syrian President HAFEZ ASSAD is watching events in Moscow closely. According to a Syrian insider, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and would-be President Alexander Rutskoi sent conflicting signals to a Syrian delegation that visited Russia to discuss the Middle East not long before last week's crisis in Moscow. "Rutskoi talked like the old communist leaders," says the insider. "He told the Syrians to `stand up to imperialist aggression' and promised `the Russians will back you.' But Yeltsin's people told the Syrians to do what the Americans told them." Don't R.S.V.P. to Tailhook '93 Just Yet Washington--Navy flyers will want to reconsider attending the TAILHOOK ASSOCIATION CONVENTION set to begin Oct. 10 in San Diego. Navy brass sent a memo to active-duty and reserve flyers telling them that after years of cooperation, the Navy has "terminated all support, direct or indirect, for the Tailhook Association." Meanwhile, Navy Secretary John Dalton has quietly summoned to D.C. some two dozen officers who attended Tailhook to give them a chance to explain their conduct before their court cases go forward. New Ideas In Leisure Wear "The Governor did not want to wear it...he just put it on to be polite." -- AIDE TO FLORIDA GOVERNOR LAWTON CHILES, ON WHY CHILES WORE A BULLET-PROOF VEST WHILE TOURING THE SITE IN MIAMI WHERE A GERMAN TOURIST WAS MURDERED </body> </article> </text>