News In Brief
The US
Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting System continued inching toward an $8.5 billion deal that would create the world's biggest media conglomerate. At issue yesterday: the approval of John Malone, a major Turner stockholder. Malone, who is head of the US's largest cable company, Tele-Communications Inc., is said to be edgy about joining with his biggest cable competitor, Time Warner. Also, federal regulators could block the deal on antitrust grounds.
A parade of battleships, a squadron of B-1 bombers, 10,000 veterans, and 27 ambassadors - all were expected to be part of 50th anniversary celebrations of V-J Day in Hawaii. Bob Hope will host a program tonight. President Clinton will speak tomorrow, urging Americans to pull together as World War II soldiers did.
Dr. Jack Kevorkian should be prosecuted for assisted-suicide, not murder, a judge ruled Wednesday. Although he set up the device that killed two women in 1991, he did not push the button to activate it, the judge said.
The CIA gave $500,000 from the sale of convicted spy Aldrich Ames's suburban home and red Jaguar to the Justice Department's crime victims fund yesterday. Ames earned $70,000 a year from the CIA, but he got $2.5 million over nine years from the KGB.
Personal incomes rose 0.7 percent in July, the largest increase in six months, the Commerce Department said yesterday. As a result, consumers spent more for a third straight month and put more into savings.
The mystery leg found in the Oklahoma City bombing belongs to a black woman, forensic authorities said Wednesday. This cast doubt on a defense attorney's assertion that the leg belonged to the ''real bomber.''
The owner of a Florida apartment complex will pay $1.2 million because he charged some blacks higher rents than whites and refused to rent to others in his North Miami Beach complex. The race-bias settlement, which was reached Wednesday, is the largest ever obtained by the Justice Department.
Ross Perot, asserting that the Medicare system is turning his fellow senior citizens into ''wards of the state,'' lent support to GOP plans to stem spending on the health care program for the elderly. He spoke Wednesday to the Senate Finance Committee. The GOP plans to cut $270 billion in spending over four years. Specifics of the GOP plan will likely emerge next week.
Glendale Savings won a major victory Wednesday in its long fight with federal regulators. A federal appeals court ruled that the US broke its contract with S&Ls by changing a rule in 1989 to require owners of thrifts that were buying other failed thrifts to raise millions of dollars in new capital. In a case with large implications for the thrift industry, Glendale said it will now pursue a $1.5 billion claim against the government.
NASA scrapped Endeavour's launch yesterday because of an overheated fuel cell that is used to produce water for the astronauts. Repairs could take a week.
Anxieties are high over a planned protest near Cuba. The State Department urged Havana to exercise ''utmost discretion and restraint'' in dealing with the dozens of boats expected to sail from Miami tomorrow. Cuba has said it will sink any boat crossing its territorial boundary. Protesters, who include Fidel Castro's daughter, have said the boats will stop at the 12-mile limit but that some motorized rafts could go past it. One purpose of the protest is to encourage domestic dissent among Cubans.
After 24 years in the House, California Republican Rep. Morehead, a Republican, will not run again, he said Thursday.
The World
NATO claimed significant successes Thursday in its attacks on Bosnian Serb positions and said the strikes could increase if the Serbs resist peace negotiations. NATO launched a search-and-rescue mission for two French flyers downed Wednesday by a Serb missile. France said the flyers ejected safely and had not been captured. And the US Pentagon is sending more planes to the Balkans to add to NATO's force. Meanwhile, five EU peace monitors reportedly killed near Sarajevo were apparently attacked by Serbs and not killed by NATO bombs. (Story, Page 1.)
Burma's Nobel Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi spoke at the women's NGO conference in China yesterday - via videotape. The smuggled in keynote address called for expanding women's power to bring greater peace to the world. Amnesty International displayed posters of 12 victims of human rights abuses - including Chinese journalist Gao Yu - in a demonstration outside one session. Police didn't intervene. (Story, Page 1; Photos, Page 6.)
Israel has offered to let PLO offices in Jerusalem stay open if they cut ties with Arafat's government, reports said yesterday. Israel ordered three offices to close today as part of its campaign to assert its sovereignty in East Jerusalem. In Lebanon, masked gunmen killed Sheikh Nizar al-Halabi, head of a rapidly growing pro-Syrian Sunni Islamist group, yesterday in the country's first political assassination in a year. (Story, Page 7.)
Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui won an overwhelming vote yesterday to become his ruling Nationalist Party's nominee in this island's first direct presidential elections next March. China has lambasted Lee for what it claims is his aim to make Taiwan independent from China.
Kashmiri separatists holding four Western hostages demanded immediate release of 15 of their jailed comrades. Warning their patience was wearing thin, the militants set no deadline.
Mexican prosecutors are standing by their conclusion that gunmen mistook Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo for a drug trafficker. Church officials contend he was targeted in 1993 for speaking out against the drug trade.
An aide to the leader of a powerful Georgian paramilitary group was arrested yesterday in the bombing that injured leader Eduard Shevardnadze, who announced a presidential bid Wednesday. A search of the aides offices turned up large amounts of ammunition and guns.
Preliminary results show Kazakstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev won a large majority vote for a constitution granting him broad powers Aug. 30. Western diplomats and Kazakstan opposition groups called the constitution autocratic.
Demonstrators in Tahiti stormed government buildings to protest France's plan to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific.Police called in riot squads. Polynesian activists warned the tests, which may start this weekend, could spark violence.
French President Chirac suggested extending the country's nuclear umbrella to the EU yesterday. Seven EU nations have urged Chirac to abandon the tests. And French police arrested 20 people suspected of involvement with extremist Islamic movements in Paris and Lyon, seizing weapons and documents.
Seven of 10 delegates selected by Japan's all-male Cabinet to attend the UN Conference on Women in Beijing will be men. Japan's parliament has only 2.7 percent women - the lowest of industrialized nations.
Etcetera
Editors of a new translation of the New Testament deny that it tries to be ''politically correct.'' In the translation children do not ''obey'' their parents but heed them. Wives are no longer ''subject'' to their husbands but are committed to them. ''Darkness'' is no longer equated with evil because of racist overtones, and the ''Lord's Prayer'' begins ''Our Father-Mother in heaven.'' Published by the Oxford University Press, ''The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version'' goes on sale Sept. 11.
About 20,000 people pelted each other with overripe tomatoes Wednesday, turning the main square of Bunyol, a town in eastern Spain, into a red, juicy pool in an annual festival known as ''La Tomatina.'' Four 25-ton truckloads of tomatoes were used in the free-for-all.
Scientists said yesterday that they had found in France a huge nest containing hundred of thousands of fossilized dinosaur eggs. The site, in the southern Pyrenees mountains, covers an area of 5.8 square miles of what used to be a beach.
Not Just Prestige: The Top US Colleges
A recent college survey ranked schools by the highest graduation rates, the lowest tuition fees, and other criteria. It found some unconventional winners.
1. New College of the University of South Florida
2. Rice University (Texas)
3. Northeast Missouri State University
4. Trenton State College (N.J.)
5. California Institute of Technology
6. University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
7. State University of New York at Binghamton
8. Spelman College (Ga.)
9. University of Illinois at Urbana
10. State University of New York at Albany
42. Harvard University (Mass.)
46. Yale University (Conn.)
97. Columbia University (N.Y.)
- Money magazine/AP
'' It is not the prerogative of men alone to bring light to the world. Women with their capacity for compassion and self-sacrifice ... have done much to dissipate ... intolerance and hate.''
- Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner, speaking via videotape to the UN women's conference.
