112 Dead
The Los
Angeles Times leads with news that global stock markets strongly
rebounded on Friday from a dramatic dip earlier in the week, sending the Dow
Jones industrial average to an all-time high: 11,522.56.
A New York
Times lead, poorly written and edited, says Vice President Al Gore
retreated from a declaration made during his Wednesday debate with Bill Bradley
that he would require any person he nominated to a chief of staff position to
"agree in advance [that is, before getting the nomination,] to let gays serve
openly in the military." A Washington Post story, reefered on the front in an early
edition and fronted in a later one, explains the story more clearly. Gore's
position, now the same as Bradley's, is that gays should be allowed to serve
openly in the military, and he would require his Joint Chiefs of Staff to carry
out such a policy, but not require them to support it before appointment. The
LAT
stuffs the news.
The Post goes with President Clinton's impending announcement
of an aid package promising Colombia more than $1 billion over the next two
years. He developed the proposal after congressional Republicans proposed their
own $1.6-billion-over-three-years plan; and after Colombian President Andres
Pastrana asked the U.S. to help pay for a comprehensive Colombian improvement
plan he developed. The big difference in the two packages is that the GOP wants
most of the money to go to police and drug trafficking while Clinton wants it
"more evenly divided between those efforts and government infrastructure and
economic assistance," like Pastrana wants. The issue of giving military aid to
Colombia is complicated by the rebel forces that control "most of the country's
drug-producing regions" and by Colombia's "unsavory human rights record." The
NYT doesn't seem
to carry the story at all; the LAT runs a wire piece about it.
Speaking of unsavory human rights records ... a NYT front piece announces
"Florida Passes Bill to Quicken Execution Pace." Gov. Jeb Bush proposed and
pushed through the bill, modeled on a 1995 Texas law his brother, Texas
governor and presidential hopeful George W., proposed and pushed through. GWB
has overseen the executions of 111 men and one woman. (By the way, the ACLU claims
that there have been 581 U.S. executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the
death penalty in 1976. So GWB has been responsible for almost one-fifth of the
total.) The Florida law will "shorten the length between sentencing and
execution to 5 years" from the current average of 14. The U.S. Supreme Court
plans to "review Florida's use of the electric chair" because the state has
botched a number of executions. Unfortunately, it's not until almost the end of
the piece that we learn "87 people on death row in the United States have been
found to be wrongly convicted, and released [since 1973]. The average time
those inmates spent on death row was seven and a half years." Not five. The
piece does not say, though it should, how much it costs to execute, or to house
per year, someone on death row. The LAT doesn't
have this important story; the Post only has a graph on it halfway through its "Nation In
Brief" section.
The Post , NYT , and LAT front stories about Russia's suspension of
airstrikes against Grozny, the Chechen capital. Rebel resistance helped cause
the moratorium. The Russians claimed the pause "was intended to allow the
thousands of civilians still trapped in Grozny to escape from the fighting"
( NYT ). But, since
two of three senior field generals were replaced concurrently, the "reason
behind the [suspension] ... was not entirely clear" ( Post ). The WP piece focuses on the dismissals. The NYT reminds that Russian
generals claimed last week they would quicfkly crush the rebels. Both
Times point out that Russia's new acting president, Vladimir Putin,
needs Russia to continue to appear successful in the war to retain popular
support. The LAT is alone in quoting a Moscow military analyst who
thinks "the initiative is slipping from the hands of the worn-out military and
into the hands of the Chechen rebels"; and in citing another analyst who
thought it suspicious that Putin removed two of his most ardent supporters,
also two of Russia's most popular generals.
The Post reefers a story the LAT off-leads
and the NYT runs a
wire piece about: A 14-year-old Tibetan lama, one of Tibetan Buddhism's most
honored leaders, secretly fled from China to India, joining the exile movement
led by the Dalai Lama. Scholars agree the defection is likely embarrassing to
the Chinese government, but the Chinese government's spin is that "it was due
to a split in his movement rather than disillusionment with life in China." As
the LAT
says, the escape "appeared to dash whatever hopes remained for a compromise
between Beijing" and the Tibetan Buddhist leadership.
A NYT
correction addressed an inconsistency TP noted
yesterday: "After Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said, 'I would take an
expression into the Oval Office of "Dear God--help me!" ' it was Gary L. Bauer,
not Alan Keyes, who replied, 'So would we, governor.' "
