THE WEEK
By JANICE M. HOROWITZ, LINA LOFARO, BELINDA LUSCOMBE, MICHAEL QUINN, JEFFERY C. RUBIN, ALAIN L. SANDERS AND SIDNEY URQUHART
NATION
PLEASE GIVE IN--OR ELSE!
President Clinton and his Republican opponents all went on the rhetorical offensive after G.O.P. congressional leaders canceled the latest set of budget talks at the White House. The two parties appeared to be preparing for the possibility that no budget deal will be reached.
HILLARY'S TRAVAILS
In the Senate, White House aide Carolyn Huber explained that she had indeed discovered Hillary Rodham Clinton's long-sought law-firm billing records--but only after the records unexpectedly turned up on a table in the book room of the White House residence. That prompted Republicans to pounce and say they would seek further information. Earlier, former presidential aide David Watkins told a House committee that it was he, and not the First Lady, who ordered the controversial 1993 firings of White House travel employees. He did concede, however, that he felt pressure coming from Mrs. Clinton.
WHITHER THE MIDDLE?
Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine, a member of the Senate's vanishing moderate wing, announced he would not seek re-election this year--the 13th Senator to do so. Cohen attributed his decision to the current budget stalemate, prompting the White House to express concern over the political center's "capacity to govern." In the House of Representatives, meanwhile, the retirement list grew to 35, when Pennsylvania's William Clinger said he would quit.
THE SHEIK IS SENTENCED
The nation's biggest terrorism trial ended with a lengthy harangue from Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman castigating the U.S. as the "enemy of Islam"--and a federal judge's imposition of a life sentence on him for his role in the plot to bomb major New York City landmarks. The nine co-defendants, who were convicted with the Sheik last October, received sentences ranging from 25 years to life. The judge said if the plan had been carried out, it would have caused "devastation on a scale not seen in this country since the Civil War."
GOTCHA!
Mexican authorities arrested and promptly deported to the U.S. Juan Garcia Abrego, one of the hemisphere's top suspected drug lords. Garcia Abrego, whom the FBI had placed on its 10-most-wanted list, faces trial in Houston on charges of running one of the region's most powerful cocaine operations. Authorities say his group is notorious for both its murderousness and its capacity for dispensing bribes. The U.S. hailed the Mexican action as sign of increasing drug cooperation.
FROM DEATH TO LIFE
She would have become the second woman executed in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, but hours before Guinevere Garcia's scheduled lethal injection, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar commuted her sentence to life in prison without parole. Edgar said he acted not because of Garcia's troubled background but because the case was one in which the punishment did not fit Garcia's 1991 crime of having killed her husband during a botched robbery.
PARENTS' WORST NIGHTMARE
Four days after a witness said he saw nine-year-old Amber Hagerman being seized screaming from her bicycle by a stranger in a black pickup truck, a man walking his dog found the child's nude, lifeless body floating in a nearby creek, her throat cut. Police in Arlington, Texas, are investigating all leads.
O.J.: DOUBLE EXPOSURE
O.J. Simpson is scheduled to be deposed by lawyers for the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, who are seeking civil damages from him. The deposition begins Monday and may take several days. Simpson, says a source, is worried that leaks from the deposition may undercut interest in his new video, for which he received $1 million upfront. Angry that "these white folks ain't gonna let me do anything" to make the kind of money he used to, he is reaching out for black support. Later in the week O.J. is supposed to submit to a cable-TV interview on Black Entertainment Television. The hour-long interview, says the source, will not take up the criminal or civil cases but instead be about "O.J. since the trial and what he's been going through."
WORLD
WAR OF THE CHECHEN SECESSION
Reflecting growing frustration with Chechen rebels, who have proved annoyingly tenacious in their fight for secession, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the Russian army, police and security forces to attack the village of Pervomaiskoye, where some 300 Chechen rebels held more than 100 civilians hostage. Yeltsin claimed that 82 people were released in the sledgehammer operation, but the village was destroyed and some of the terrorists--reportedly including their leader, Salman Raduyev, related by marriage to Jokhar Dudayev, the chief rebel leader--escaped back into Chechnya.
YELTSIN BOOTS LAST LIBERAL
Bowing to hard-line critics of his government's economic reforms, Russian President Boris Yeltsin accepted the resignation of Anatoly Chubais, the chief strategist of that restructuring effort and the last prominent liberal in Yeltsin's Cabinet.
BALKAN SHORTCOMINGS
Washington privately scolded Bosnia and Croatia for failing to rid Bosnian soil of foreign fighters by last Friday's deadline. The U.S. is angry that Croatia has allowed some of its troops to remain inside Bosnia, and even more rattled that the Bosnian government has allowed half of the some 600 foreign mujahedin it believes were in the country to remain behind. The Pentagon fears anti-American terrorists are hidden within their ranks. Washington has threatened to cut off arms and military training for Bosnian forces if the Islamic freedom fighters aren't booted out.
WAR-CRIMES DATA STOLEN
Burglars broke into the U.N. Center for Human Rights in Zagreb, Croatia, and stole four computers containing data on human-rights violations in Croatia that had been gathered during four years of research. While some of the information had been copied and stored elsewhere, the rest was not backed up anywhere, making the loss appear irretrievable. Said the center's director: "At this point we would like to avoid any political interpretation" of the data's theft.
FIRE KILLS REFUGEES IN GERMANY
A fire blazed through a hostel for refugees in Lubeck, Germany, killing four children and six adults. Asylum seekers from 19 countries lived there, among them immigrants from Syria, Zaire, Togo and Poland.
U.S. DEFECTORS IN NORTH KOREA
The Pentagon said four U.S. soldiers who deserted their units in South Korea in the early 1960s are believed to be living in North Korea. One of the men was identified in a photo published by a South Korean newspaper last week as having appeared in a North Korean propaganda film, Nameless Heroes.
RUSSIA'S CURRENCY OF CHOICE
Moving to assuage panic about the redesign of the $100 note, a U.S. Treasury Department spokesman held a news conference--in Moscow. Jittery Russian savers, oft burned by the unstable ruble and corrupt banks, hold $15 billion in U.S. cash, most in $100 bills, and up to $200 million in greenbacks is flown to Russia daily to meet demand. Despite U.S. assurance that old notes will be valid "forever," Russians are expected to race to exchange their old notes as soon as the new ones are released next month.
BUSINESS
A PRUNING AT APPLE
Reporting a loss of $69 million for the quarter ending Dec. 29, Apple Computer announced a layoff of 1,300 employees, at least 8% of its worldwide work force. The company is expected to pull away from making entry-level computers, concentrating instead on more sophisticated, expensive machines.
VIACOM HEAD ROLLS
Frank Biondi, president and CEO of Viacom, was ousted by chairman Sumner Redstone, who said the company needed more aggressive leadership. Nine years ago, Redstone lured Biondi away from Coca-Cola, and in 1994 he awarded him $16.3 million in cash and stock-option bonuses for his role in Viacom's takeover of Paramount.
SCIENCE
IS THERE LIFE OUT THERE?
Astronomers reported the discovery of two planets orbiting stars similar to the sun. At least one appears temperate enough for water to exist, raising the tantalizing idea that it could possibly support extraterrestrial life.