President Clinton tore a tendon in his knee. It happened when he fell
down the steps outside golfer Greg Norman's house in Florida March 14 at 1:20
a.m. Surgeons put him under local anesthesia while they reattached the tendon
to his kneecap. Pundits rehashed the rules of succession in the event of
something worse. For now, Vice President Gore is shouldering/indulging in the
president's less essential duties. Follow-up reports focused on what sort of
painkillers Clinton is taking. Doctors say Clinton could be on crutches for up
to eight weeks. The widely noted irony is that Clinton will be the invalid at
his meeting with Boris Yeltsin this week. (3/17)
Dr.
Jack Kevorkian has opened an exhibit of his paintings. Among the images
reported on by the New York Times are "two hands holding up a severed
head by the hair," "a man confronting his own severed head on a plate," and "a
man's brain and the upper end of his spinal column ... ripped from his body and
hang[ing] from chains." Kevorkian says he stained one of the frames with his
own blood. (3/17)
Jordan's King Hussein apologized in person to the families of seven
girls massacred by a Jordanian soldier. Accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, Hussein went to the families' homes, knelt before them, and
asked their forgiveness. Israelis were moved, and commentators concluded that
Hussein is repairing his relations with Netanyahu. But Netanyahu refused to
halt an inflammatory Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, and Israel's justice
minister, regarded as Netanyahu's closest aide, warned that if Palestinians
react violently to the settlement, there might be a "war to the finish" in
which "our response will reach Arafat himself." (3/17)
News
from the NCAA basketball tournament : 1) North Carolina Coach Dean Smith
broke the record for the most victories in college basketball. 2) Wake Forest,
whose center, Tim Duncan, is one of the most highly touted pro prospects in
years, was knocked out of the tourney. Commentators were disappointed that
Duncan wasn't suitably rewarded for staying in college this year instead of
going pro. 3) The early-round Cinderella team, Coppin State (Maryland),
narrowly missed squeaking through to the Sweet 16. (3/17)
Albania is imploding . (Primer: It's between Italy and Greece.) Nine
pyramid investment schemes collapsed, which wiped out the life savings of
thousands of Albanians, which led to protests, which led to rebellion, which
led to police giving loyalist civilians assault weapons, which led to gunfire,
looting, and roving bands of robbers. Inmates are escaping from jails, and the
president has lost control of the army. The European Union has agreed to send
in a few dozen military and police advisers, but not a big force. The United
States wants Albania's president to step down, but he refuses to do so.
"Albanians themselves were unsure whether to call the violence a civil war, a
revolution, a popular uprising or just plain chaos," said the New York
Times . (3/17)
The
anti-anti-cloning backlash is underway. At a Senate hearing, Republican
senators worried that a ban on human-cloning research might prevent lifesaving
medical breakthroughs, and researchers and ethicists said there is no need to
legislate hastily, since it will take a while to refine the sheep-cloning
technique to work in humans. This comes after President Clinton banned federal
funding of human-cloning research and two lawmakers filed bills to ban human
cloning. The New York Times reported that through in vitro
fertilization, "tens of thousands of embryos are steadily accumulating
in tanks of liquid nitrogen" in the United States, and their lives can be
started at any time in the future. An elderly Milwaukee couple are soliciting
women to conceive and bear their grandchild using frozen sperm from their dead
son. (3/17)
Newsweek reports that Timothy McVeigh confessed to the Oklahoma
City bombing. This is the third such report in recent weeks. The first two
appeared in the Dallas
Morning News and Playboy .
Newsweek 's account, citing "anonymous sources close to the
investigation," says McVeigh confessed during a lie-detector test administered
by his attorneys. (3/17)
Rebels in Zaire easily captured Kisangani, the country's third-largest
city, and are expected to head for the capital soon. Everyone is now convinced
that the loyalist army is a joke, and President Mobutu Sese Seko is finished.
The only catch is that Mobutu can't be physically deposed, since he's hiding
out in France. (3/17)
Julius Rosenberg's former KGB contact has come forward. Alexander
Feklisov says 1) that Rosenberg passed U.S. military secrets to the Russians
but 2) supplied no useful information about the atomic bomb, contrary to the
assertions of J. Edgar Hoover, and 3) that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed
along with her husband, did no spying for Feklisov. The bottom line, according
to Feklisov, is that the executions were unjust. (3/17)
Update on the Democratic fund-raising scandal : 1) President
Clinton said FBI agents denied him advance warning about Chinese
influence-buying efforts by telling his aides to keep the information secret.
The FBI then issued a statement contradicting Clinton. Pundits oohed and aahed
over the quarrel. The next day everyone insisted it was just a
misunderstanding. Attorney General Janet Reno said she tried to tell National
Security Adviser Tony Lake about the Chinese scheme 10 months ago but was
unable to reach him by phone, so she asked the FBI to tell the White House,
which led to the above fiasco. 2) The FBI warned six members of Congress last
year that China had targeted them for illegal campaign donations through
foreign companies. 3) The New York Times reported that the
administration endorsed a project in China that was financially important to
the Riady family just after a Riady-controlled company put Webster Hubbell on
its payroll. White House special counsel Lanny Davis said Clinton may have
known three years ago that his friends were subsidizing Hubbell.
(3/14)
Political fallout from the scandal: 1) The Senate expanded its
investigation to include "improper" as well as illegal conduct in the 1996
elections. This brings soft money and other much criticized practices under
scrutiny. It is seen as a rebuke to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and a
victory for Democrats, Sen. Fred Thompson (who will chair the investigation),
and campaign reform. 2) House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde said he
has begun to examine impeachment procedures in the event they are justified. 3)
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said the White House knew of
Chinese efforts to influence U.S. elections a year sooner than the
administration admits, yet continued to raise money through Chinese-affiliated
fund raisers. The White House denies this. 4) Clinton's job rating fell from 60
to 55 points in a Washington Post poll, apparently because pollees
disapproved of his use of the White House for fund raising. 5) Dueling
spins : The New York Times says the scandal will dog and impede
Clinton's foreign policy. The Washington Post says Clinton's foreign
travels will distract attention from the scandal. (3/17)
Republican fund-raising hypocrisy watch: 1) The Washington
Post reported that a Republican House committee counsel hit up
investment firms for $100,000 contributions to the GOP shortly after working on
financial-deregulation legislation. 2) Democrats released documents indicating
that Republicans sold big political donors meals with the party's leaders in
federal buildings in 1995. 3) The Washington
Post reported that
for $5,000, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is offering donors a
chance to give Trent Lott and other senators "advice" at a forum next month.
(3/12)
Other
news from abroad: 1) British Prime Minister John Major announced that a new
national election will be held May 1. Polls show the opposition Labor Party
leading by nearly 2-to-1. 2) A Church of England priest has ignited a furor by
arguing that it's OK to shoplift from chain supermarkets because they're
driving local stores out of business. 3) A Pakistani woman won a historic court
victory allowing her to remain married to the man she loves (and with
whom she eloped) despite her parents' insistence that under Islamic law, they
have the sole authority to choose her husband. Her father is appealing to the
country's supreme court. (3/17)
TCI , the country's biggest cable-TV company, plans to raise its rates
by 7 percent . This comes after TCI recently hiked its rates by 13 percent.
Critics say the price increase proves 1) last year's telecommunications bill
failed to keep cable rates down as promised, and 2) competition from
satellite-dish TV services isn't deterring rate hikes either. Other cable
companies are expected to follow suit if TCI gets away with the rate increase.
(3/14)
A
suspect has been charged with the murder of Ennis Cosby . A $100,000
reward offered by the National
Enquirer led to a tip, which led
police to the gun and the killer's cap, which led to the arrest of Mikail
Markhasev, an 18-year-old Russian émigré with a criminal background. Markhasev
also matches the description provided by the woman who allegedly saw the
gunman. Early reports linked Markhasev to a Russian car-theft ring, but police
now say the killing looks like a random robbery attempt gone awry.
(3/14)
The
TWA Flight 800 missile theory is back. A group headed by former ABC
newsman Pierre Salinger published a massive report in Paris
Match
claiming that a U.S. Navy missile blew up the plane. The key evidence cited in
the report: 1) a red residue on the plane's seats showing "chemical elements
consistent with solid missile fuel" and 2) a government radar tape showing a
fast projectile on a collision course with the plane. Federal investigators
said that lab tests show the residue is from standard glue used in plane seats.
They also seized the radar tape, examined it, and said it shows no missile. The
Washington
Post groaned that the TWA mystery "has become the
aviation equivalent of the Kennedy assassination"--i.e., no amount of disproof
satisfies the conspiracy theorists. (3/14)
Five
female soldiers say Army investigators pressured them to falsely
accuse their superiors of rape. Four of the five say they had sex with
their instructors, but that it was consensual. The women claim they were
promised helpful transfers if they told investigators what they wanted to hear
and threatened with retaliation if they didn't. The announcement was organized
by the NAACP, which suspects racism in the investigation because all the
accused officers are black, and most of the accusers, white. (3/12)
Germany
told the United States it would expel an American spy . Initial reports
indicated the Germans were angry because the agent was conducting economic
espionage against Germany. But U.S. officials now say that the agent was
gathering intelligence on another country--most likely Iran--and that the
Germans ordered the diplomat out because they're tired of the United States
using their country as a spy nest and keeping them in the dark about it.
American officials are asking Germany to let the agent stay. (3/12)
Russian President Boris
Yeltsin ordered a shake-up of his Cabinet. Yeltsin pledged to keep only two
aides: Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly
Chubais. The betting is that Chubais, a free-market advocate whom Yeltsin
promoted just last week, can now put allies in key jobs and restart economic
reforms. The Washington
Post declared that Yeltsin is back in the
saddle and is launching a much-needed second wave of economic reform. But the
Chicago
Tribune warned that Chubais will fail, because he is a
lousy manager and everyone in Russia hates him. (3/12)
