Huang Jury
Today's news attention is primarily divided between NATO's decision at its
meetings to expand and the opening of congressional hearings into 1996 campaign
fundraising irregularities. The Washington Post and the New York Times
lead with NATO's decision to grant membership to former Warsaw Pact members
Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. USA Today and
the Los
Angeles Times lead with the hearings.
The general account of the NATO decision is clear: France doesn't like being
dictated to by the U.S. on the particular choice of the added countries, and
Russia doesn't like the idea of expansion, period. There is, however, one
little bump in the reporting road regarding other NATO business. The WP
sums up discussions among alliance members concerning what to do about the
failure to bring accused Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic to justice
this way: "They refused to propose any changes in the mandate of the NATO-led
peacekeeping force to hunt down Karadzic and others who are wanted to stand
trial at the Hague war crimes tribunal." Does that mean, the reader naturally
wonders, that the NATO peacekeepers are allowed to hunt war criminals in Bosnia
or not? Fortunately, the NYT makes it clear: they are not.
The papers generally agree that committee chairman Republican Sen. Fred
Thompson struck a dramatic note when he opened the proceedings by saying that
intelligence agencies have concluded China tried to influence the 1996
presidential campaign, as well as congressional and state elections, and that
Democratic Sen. John Glenn was just as dramatic when he announced that the key
figure in the probe, Democratic fundraiser John Huang, was willing to testify
if he is given limited immunity from prosecution. NYT columnist Maureen
Dowd takes the minority position that the Democrats carried the day, thanks to
Glenn's smooth presentation and to the Republicans' jagged one, which, Dowd
writes, consisted "mostly of arrows pointing to John Huang's name," and "a
Byzantine theory linking Mr. Huang and the Lippo Group, his employers, to the
16th-century House of Fugger in Augsburg, the Rothschilds and the election of
Emperor Charles V of the Hapsburgs."
The NYT reports that Clinton administration officials reviewing the
proposed tobacco industry settlement have concluded it puts too great a
restriction on the FDA's power to regulate nicotine, and thus that this deal is
not likely to receive President Clinton's support.
USAT , the WP , the LAT and the NYT all run front
page stories about 24 previously healthy women in their forties who have used
the combination of two diet drugs known as Fen-Phen and who have now turned up
with two very rare kinds of heart damage. The drug combination was never
approved by the FDA and is believed to be prescribed about 18 million times a
month. The FDA's immediate reaction: send out a warning letter to thousands of
doctors.
The WP and LAT report on their front pages that a Census
Bureau task force has proposed a modification in the racial categories it will
use in the year 2000. Currently, respondents can choose from among "American
Indian," "Alaskan Native," "Asian or Pacific Islander," "black," or "white,"
and also from the ethnic categories of "Hispanic origin" and "not of Hispanic
origin." The change would be to allow people to check more than one race block.
This adjustment might, notes the Post , significantly affect affirmative
action hiring goals or the boundaries of congressional districts. The paper
goes on to report that "civil rights groups were generally pleased with the
proposal, particularly because many feared the alternative--adding a separate
'mixed race' category--would dilute their numbers."
