Talk of the Brown
Dow Corning Corporation's $3.2 billion settlement with 170,000 women for
illnesses caused by the company's breast implants leads at all papers except
the Wall Street Journal , which presumably went to press
too early to cover it. The average dividend for each claimant will amount to
about $31,000, with some women eligible for up to $250,000 ( USA Today )
and $300,000 ( Los Angeles Times ). Nonetheless, as all the papers point
out, studies have been inconclusive on the degree to which the implants are
linked to sickness. The settlement ends a legal struggle that has gone on for
over six years, but individual women can still pursue their claims for damages
of up to $550,000. The settlement also pulls Dow Corning out of Chapter 11
bankruptcy, which the company entered in 1995 when faced with 19,000 implant
lawsuits. Production of the offending implants ceased in 1992.
Nigeria watch: All papers' front pages (except for the Washington Post , which links a front-page photo to an
inside story), cover the riots in the capital of Lagos and several towns, which
were sparked by the Tuesday death of opposition leader Moshood Abiola and by
military leader Abubakar's Wednesday dissolution of his Cabinet. Rioters
suspect the government of killing Abiola, and close to 20 people have died
already. In response, Nigeria's military leader appealed for calm, and has
promised that two U.S. doctors will be brought in to perform a fair autopsy for
Abiola. An inside NYT story reports that U.S. policy hinges on the
outcome of the autopsy.
Star editor Tina Brown's resignation from the New Yorker receives
front-page play at all papers. The URI=/info/contents/contents.html">
New York Times goes with a two-column headline and a photo of Brown,
with two additional articles inside accompanied by a timeline of the magazine's
history. Brown was offered a five-year contract renewal, but declined, opting
instead to start a new monthly magazine in partnership with the film company
Miramax. The new glossy would serve as a launching pad for articles that could
later be turned into films or television shows. Congratulations go to Howard
Kurtz of the WP : His article (in the Style section) was the only one at
all five papers not to use the words "venerated" or "venerable" to describe the
New Yorker .
The WSJ 's A-head column claims that dots are replacing hyphens as the
new grammatical vogue. Despite the egregious lead pun ("The punctuation world
is entering a new period"), the story insightfully observes that dots are
leaking from cyberspace addresses into traditionally hyphenated items such as
telephone numbers. Among the arguments for boarding the dot-wagon: dots take
less space than hyphens, and the period key is easier to hit on the keyboard.
T.P. applauds the new trend.
