News Digest May 9-15

By Sidney Urquhart, Richard Lacayo, Michael D. Lemonick, Christopher John Farley, Tom Curry, Michael Quinn, Ginia Bellafante and David E. Thigpen

NATION

Even as his job-approval rating sank below 50%, Bill Clinton had one significant victory in Washington last week. Voting 24 to 14 along party lines, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a modified version of the President's plan to raise taxes $250 billion over five years, one of the largest tax increases ever. Clinton accepted a few changes -- chiefly the elimination of his investment tax credit and the reduction of his proposed increase in the tax on corporate earnings. His package, including an energy tax and higher income taxes for the rich, remained essentially intact. While the bill will probably pass the full House unchanged, it faces much tougher going in the Senate.

More detail emerged on the likely shape of the plan that Clinton's health-care task force will present next month. For instance, while Medicare will continue to cover retirees already in the program, in the future elderly Americans will be covered by the new plan instead. White House health adviser Ira Magaziner also disclosed that the plan would probably be financed by a payroll tax split between employers and workers.

Proving that Republican filibusters won't work every time, the Senate broke one to pass the so-called motor voter bill. The law will require states to allow people to register to vote when applying for a driver's license, as well as to register by mail and at welfare offices and military recruiting stations. The new system will presumably add many more Democrats than Republicans to the voter rolls.

Senator Sam Nunn's Senate Armed Services Committee resumed its hearings on gays in the military with a shrewd photo-op tour of bunks in cramped naval vessels. In a week of testimony that included pleas to lift the ban on gay servicemen and -women and assertions by retired Army General Norman Schwarzkopf that openly gay soldiers would undermine morale, the emotional high point was Marine Colonel Fred Peck's surprise declaration that he would discourage his son Scott -- "a recruiter's dream" -- from joining the military "because my son is a homosexual." Many Senators seemed inclined toward a tricky "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise that would do away with the old policy of asking new recruits their sexual orientation but would continue to prohibit them from acting on it openly.

Star Wars -- the antimissile defense scheme, not the movie series -- is finished. The Strategic Defense Initiative that Ronald Reagan proposed in 1983 to establish an outer space-based shield against Soviet nuclear missiles was declared dead by Defensec Secretary Les Aspin. Some $30 billion had been spent on the program.

Another legacy of the Reagan years was undone when the Clinton Administration decided to invite 11,400 air-traffic controllers to reapply for the jobs that Reagan had them dismissed from during their illegal 1981 strike.

Some members of Congress said they would favor swift military retaliation against Iraq if it could be proved that Baghdad was behind a supposed plot to assassinate George Bush during his trip last month to Kuwait.

Attorney General Janet Reno urged Congress to draft legislation barring abortion-clinic blockades and the harassment of doctors, patients and staff by antiabortion protesters.

The U.S. Olympic Committee has decided to pay athletes $15,000 for each gold medal an American wins at the next Olympics, $10,000 for each silver, $7,500 for a bronze and $5,000 for a fourth-place showing. (In the past the committee awarded $2,500 for any top-eight performance.)

A jury in Austin, Texas, convicted rapist Joel Valdez, who claimed his victim had consented to "making love" because she asked him to put on a condom. The woman said her request was driven by a fear of AIDS. Valdez was sentenced to 40 years.

For a moment it seemed like the '80s again in the art market: while a dozen works by Andy Warhol failed to find any buyers at all during the spring auctions in New York, a still life by the French post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne sold for $28.6 million.

WORLD

Bosnia's Serbs pressed ahead toward a referendum that would almost certainly ratify their leaders' rejection of the Vance-Owen peace plan. Europeans continued to resist America's proposals for arming the beleaguered Bosnian Muslims and conducting air strikes against Serb military targets, arguing that sanctions are the best route to peace. The no-longer-emboldened President Clinton backed off, agreeing not to act unilaterally.

Boris Yeltsin shuffled two conservative officials, Security Council Secretary Yuri Skokov and Deputy Prime Minister Georgi Khizha, out of their jobs to make way for reform-minded allies.

It appears that last month's radioactive-waste explosion in Siberia contaminated surrounding farmland, despite official denials.

The U.S. has dropped its insistence that Ukraine give up its nuclear weapons before receiving more economic aid; Washington still wants the country to disarm but figures a carrot might work better than a stick.

Leaping as promised into the Middle East peace negotiations, the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to persuade Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a formula for self-rule in the occupied territories.

Japan tried -- and failed -- to have the International Whaling Commission temporarily lift a seven-year-old ban on whaling. Norway is expected to start ignoring the ban.

Exploding methane gas killed at least 49 South African coal miners at a mine recently honored for its safety record.

The death count in a fire at a toy factory near Bangkok passed 200, the worst ever in a factory blaze.

Two fraction-of-an-inch-long slivers of wood said to be pieces of Christ's Cross -- previously authenticated as relics by the Vatican -- sold at auction for more than $18,000 in Paris. Though the proceeds went to charity, the Vatican called the sale a possible sin.

In a suburb of Paris, a gunman toting 21 sticks of dynamite took a nursery- school class hostage, demanding $18.5 million. After 46 hours the gunman dozed off, and police shot him dead; no one else was harmed.

Paraguay has elected Juan Carlos Wasmosy its first civilian President since 1954. Although the election was marred by irregularities, observers said the outcome was unaffected. Said Secretary-General Joao Baena Soares of the Organization of American States: "We all know you don't get instant democracy. It's not like coffee."

BUSINESS

Fears of inflation spooked the U.S. bond market and helped gold reach a 17- month high after a report that the Consumer Price Index rose an unexpected 0.4% in April. Prices have increased at a 4.3% annual rate so far this year, up from 2.9% in the first four months of 1992.

IBM and Blockbuster Entertainment announced a joint venture to develop a new way to deliver CDs; they will be recorded one by one on demand right at the store, eliminating the need for inventory and the possibility of shoplifting.

No plaintiff has ever won damages in a lawsuit against a tobacco company, but a ruling by a Mississippi judge may provide plaintiffs with their strongest ammunition yet. The judge wrote that cigarettes are "defective and unreasonably dangerous" because they cause illness when used as intended. If his reasoning becomes generally accepted, plaintiffs in smoking cases will no longer have to prove that tobacco companies were negligent but simply that cigarettes led to illness or death.

SCIENCE

The Environmental Protection Agency has completed a survey of lead in U.S. drinking water. The result: 819 water systems, serving 30 million people, have too much of the toxic metal. Most of the bad systems were in the East.

A geologist reports that two major earthquake-prone faults in southern California have achieved synergy. An 1857 rupture of the San Andreas fault, he says, has been triggering aftershocks on the nearby San Jacinto fault ever since. If he's right, the next great earthquake near the Mexican border will happen 20 years from now.