Trickier Treaty
The New York
Times leads with a U.S. proposal to alter the 1972 Antiballistic
Missile Treaty. President Clinton sent a letter to Russian President Boris
Yeltsin in January proposing changes that would allow the U.S. to implement a
limited missile defense system, but negotiations have been underway for only
several weeks. The Los
Angeles Times , which fronts the story, leads with the 7.0-magnitude
earthquake that shook the Mojave Desert at 2:46 a.m. Saturday. The WP and NYT
run the story inside. The Washington Post , which runs the treaty as its non-local
lead, pastes across its front a new study on Internet use that christens the
D.C. area the nation's largest web of Internet users.
Concern over growing missile threats in North Korea, Iran, and Iraq led the
Clinton administration to suggest changes to the groundbreaking ABM treaty. The
Cold War-era pact prevents the U.S. and Russia from installing antimissile
defense systems, for fear that they would provoke a race to develop
defense-eluding missiles. Clinton is now itching to help Russia finish a
missile-tracking radar in Siberia. In return, the U.S. seeks Russia's blessing
to tinker with the treaty enough to allow installation of its fledgling missile
defense system. The LAT defines the problem most succinctly: "Under the
ABM treaty, Washington may not deploy such a system." So far Russians have
objected to the proposal, saying that reported nuclear threats from upstart
nations are greatly exaggerated. The WP front-pager credits the
NYT early edition with breaking the story.
The Hector Mine earthquake, named for a mineral mine near the epicenter, was
three times more powerful than the 6.7-magnitude quake that killed 57 people in
L.A. in 1994. However, the impact was minimal because of its remoteness: An
Amtrak train was knocked off its rails, and about 250,000 homes lost power,
though almost all was restored by the afternoon, the LAT reports. The
quake shook people out of bed in three states, from L.A. to Las Vegas to
Phoenix. In spots the NYT and WP come off sounding unavoidably
like Dick Clark. The NYT describes the quake's "shake-and-roll" and
quotes an Amtrak passenger who sensed "rocking and rolling." The WP says
Southern California "rattled and shook."
The WP runs the first of two articles explaining how soft campaign
contributions, which are not supposed to be used for federal elections, are
raised by House party committees concerned exclusively with federal elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has grown much more quickly
than its Republican counterpart in its ability to raise funds for House
elections. Since 1996 House Democrats have blown the roof off the amount of
money they beg from wealthy contributors and have begun more aggressively
courting donors disgruntled with Republican leadership. By June 30, Democrats
had successfully wooed 21 six-figure donors of soft money, 50 percent more than
Republicans. (The National Republican Congressional Committee has raised more
this year overall, $27 million to $17 million.)
"Credibility, transparency and accountability in running state affairs" top
the agenda of Pakistan's new military government, according to an army
statement quoted on the NYT front page. The WP runs an upbeat
piece on Pakistan deep in its A-section. Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf, by all
accounts a political neophyte, is expected to avoid international tension while
he figures out, as supreme commander, how to dig his country out of corruption
and feudal backwardness. A front-page LAT news analysis is less rosy
because it sets its sights on long-term prospects for Pakistani democracy,
rather than on allaying immediate international worries.
The NYT explains in its National Report that people shoot themselves
more than they shoot each other. In 1997, 17,566 people committed suicide with
guns and 13,522 died in homicides. About 60 percent of suicides are committed
with firearms. Surgeon General David Satcher has made suicide prevention a top
priority, and later this month a Senate health subcommittee, the chairman of
which lost his father to a self-inflicted wound, will hold hearings into the
issue.
The WP lead celebrates news that a cluster of local technology
companies and hordes of well-educated and well-paid information junkies has put
the D.C. area on top of a new nationwide study on Internet access. Sixty
percent of area adults are online, followed by the San Francisco area with 56.1
percent. Residents of Austin, Seattle, and Salt Lake City can also boast (if
they'd like) that more than 50 percent of their adults are Internet-savvy.
Hector Mine is the world's first cyberquake, according to the LAT .
Within five minutes, sensors sent data to an Internet site measuring
the temblor's strength. By 11 a.m., 9,000 local residents filed eyewitness
reports online. Much of the data came from a network of hundreds of
seismographic stations called Tri-Net.
In the NYT Book Review, David Brooks of the Weekly Standard
wades into the approaching deluge of George W. Bush biographies. The piece,
which also looks at former President George Bush's life in letters, discusses
the Texas governor's executive qualities: "When the National Journal
recently asked him how he made decisions, he replied, 'I'm a decisive
person...I'll read. I won't read treatises. I'll read summaries.' " Of course,
generally speaking, there is one briefing that stands out as an authoritative
resource for decision-makers in high-stakes international conflicts and
domestic policy squabbles. Ahem.
