News Currents

UNITED STATES Following Tuesday's runoff, it's certain that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will have its first Hispanic supervisor in more than a century, after a Feb. 19 vote. The five-member body will lose its Republican majority.... The Supreme Court Tuesday let stand a decision that a 101-year-old dining club for students at Princeton University must admit its first women members. The court also ruled that it will not interfere with local statutes in California that forbid or severely restrict the use of land to support offshore oil drilling. And it decided that an investigatory grand jury is not required to meet the same probable cause standards to obtain information from suspects as required in a criminal trial.... Secretary of State Baker indicated Tuesday that the United States, despite Moscow's crackdown on the Baltics, may proceed with a US-Soviet summit next month on slashing strategic nuclear weapons.... US state and federal agencies approved a plan Tuesday for cleanup of 178 contaminated areas at the government's Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility in Golden, Colo.

SOVIET UNION

Mikhail Gorbachev agreed Tuesday in Moscow, after talks with Latvian President Anatolijs Gorbunovs, not to impose presidential rule on Latvia. Also on Tuesday, the European Parliament in Paris, in response to the Soviet crackdown in the Baltics, blocked $1 billion in food-aid for the USSR. Gorbachev also denied responsibility for the latest round of killings by Soviet troops in the Baltics and placed blame on nationalist leaders.... Soviet citizens Wednesday besieged savings banks and sought to sell off wads of rubles to each other after the Kremlin announced it was withdrawing big banknotes from circulation. The government made the move to fight black-market activities.... The independent Soviet news agency Interfax Tuesday quoted an unidentified member of the Soviet general staff as saying 90 percent of all allied air strikes against Iraq had missed their targets. The report said most Iraqi air bases and aircraft had not been hit because they are so well camouflaged.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

Hundreds of young Australians have answered an international call by the World Zionist Organization in Jerusalem for volunteers to fly to Israel to help that nation during the Gulf war. They would stay for six months, working on farms, in hospitals, and doing social work.... Chinese student leader, Wang Dan, who played a prominent role in the 1989 wave of pro-democracy demonstrations, went on trial Wednesday in Beijing.... China will seek to inject new blood into the Communist Party by replacing aging party workers with younger officials, a Hong Kong newspaper said Wednesday. The Beijing-funded Wen Wei Pao said China would replace older officials at the provincial and ministerial level with younger cadres.... Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu announced Japan's second package of cash support - this for $10 billion - for the Gulf war effort.