Batouti Bashing
The New York Times
leads with an agreement between the White House and Congress on a
.38-percent across-the-board spending cut, a story fronted by the Washington Post and
reefered by the Los
Angeles Times and USA Today . The Wall Street Journal tops its "Worldwide" box with the arrests
of hundreds of alleged debtors in Pakistan by the new military junta, a story
fronted by no other paper. The Post and USAT lead with the
EgyptAir 990 investigation, a story fronted by the NYT and
LAT . The LAT leads with a decision by the United States,
Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to build a pipeline from the landlocked Caspian
Basin states to a port in Turkey. Russia had been lobbying to have the pipeline
cross Chechnya, and the West's demurral may cause friction at a meeting today
between President Clinton and Boris Yeltsin. The LAT story says the
pipeline will "tap rich oil fields in Central Asia," but a Journal
article on the deal says that no oil has yet been found; the pipeline is more
about political alliances than oil.
The Journal reports that the National Transportation Safety Board
will give Egyptian officials several days to convince it that the FBI should
not take over the EgyptAir 990 investigation. Although not much new evidence
surrounding the crash has come to light since yesterday, USAT , the
NYT , the LAT , and the Post run dispatches from Cairo
quoting relatives of the plane's suspected saboteur, co-pilot Gamil al-Batouti
( NYT spelling). (All five papers continue to spell the name
differently; see yesterday's "TP.") The Islamic
al-Batouti was faithful enough not to condone suicide, the relatives argue, but
not zealous enough to believe in extreme political causes. And while he had
never been promoted to captain, as he had wanted, he was still quite
wealthy--so much so that he held no life insurance.
The NYT chronicles Al Gore's journalism career. After brief stints
as a copy boy for the NYT in college and as an Army reporter in
Vietnam, Gore took a job at the the Tennessean --which was then a
popular stop-off for the idealistic sons of political figures (the sons of
Robert Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and John Sirica had worked there). But
Gore surprised the paper's staff of working-class scribblers by staying there
for five years. His biggest story involved teaming up with the local D.A. to
lure a councilman into taking a $300 bribe. The councilman was defeated at the
polls as a result, but he was acquitted in court. The acquittal disillusioned
the future vice president with the power of the pen, and he decided to change
careers. He entered law school and shortly thereafter ran for Congress when a
seat opened up. Today the councilman--who has since been re-elected--has a Gore
2000 sign in his window. "His qualifications [for the presidency] outweigh
anything that happened between us," he says.
The LAT highlights some unlikely beneficiaries of the Internet: the
homeless. In Los Angeles, about a half-dozen homeless shelters have computer
labs, which help residents learn everything from remedial math to job-searching
techniques. Free e-mail access has allowed the homeless to receive messages and
interact with potential employers in ways they could not before. But since
computer time in shelters in highly structured, most of the truly dedicated
homeless techies--the entrepreneurs--use the public library, where time is
virtually unlimited (and where, in large cities, up to 75 percent of users are
homeless). The homeless, it turns out, make money on the Web in much the same
way they do on the street--by finding value in things discarded by others. One
homeless man set up a site to sell bicycle parts that he bought cheap from a shop that
went out of business. Another made a few thousand dollars by selling obscure
videos; he simply found the videos elsewhere on the Web and sold them at a
markup. One man began by charging others $5 to teach them how to acquire free
e-mail accounts. Now he runs a Drudge-like tech industry gossip site, which has a mailing list
of 2,700. On the Web, "it doesn't show if you haven't showered for three days,"
says a former homeless woman who now runs a Seattle writing workshop.
USAT reports that Britain's busiest freeway, the M6, was terrorized
by a carload of five Austin Powers look-alikes wielding toy guns. The
velvet-clad pranksters were caught by a roadblock and given a warning by
police.
