News In Brief
The US
When Jhonny Yoon arrived at the Statue of Liberty while on a trip from Los Angeles, the statue's doors were closed. Lady Liberty was closed because of the budget impasse. No meetings between the White House and GOP leaders were planned yesterday to resolve the dispute. Senator Boxer and Representative Durbin pressed a ''no budget, no pay'' bill to block congressional paychecks during the dispute. The bill passed the Senate, but its sponsors say Speaker Gingrich is blocking it in the House. And an ABC/Washington Post poll found that 46 percent of Americans blame the GOP for the shutdown; 27 percent blame President Clinton; and 20 percent blame both. (Story, Page 1.)
Astronauts from the US, Russia, Canada, and Germany - a record number of countries - met 245 miles above Asia yesterday as shuttle Atlantis locked its docking bay onto space station Mir. Then they ferried supplies, including 900 pounds of water, into Mir. (Story, Page 3.)
Secretary of State Christopher made little progress Tuesday during 12 hours of shuttling between the three Balkan presidents holed up in Dayton, Ohio. Insisting that a partial compromise will not suffice, administration officials scheduled several more days of talks. ''We can't drag them across the finish line. They've got to walk across themselves,'' a State Department spokesman said. Separately, Clinton said the US would contribute $600 million to help rebuild Bosnia in addition to spending about $1.5 billion to send 20,000 US troops to enforce peace.
Knight-Ridder wants Joe Camel out of its 33 newspapers nationwide. Though the company, whose papers include The Miami Herald and The Philadelphia Inquirer, did not ban tobacco ads outright, its ''suggested guidelines'' encourage its papers not to print ads that make cigarettes seem appealing. Critics say the move opens the papers to pressure from other interest groups, like opponents of alcohol and movie violence.
Rep. Enid Waldholtz of Utah filed for divorce from her missing husband, who was her unpaid campaign treasurer until Saturday, when he disappeared from the National Airport in Washington. The Justice Department said its probe of Mrs. Waldholtz's 1994 campaign is focused mostly on Mr. Waldholtz, but didn't rule out investigating Mrs. Waldholtz.
One in 3 American women has been the victim of domestic abuse, and half were assaulted before the age of 18, a study of 1,952 adult women by the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore found. Domestic-violence experts said the survey confirms their estimates.
The US government raised $57.6 billion in cash Tuesday by selling short-term securities in an emergency move to pay off its debts during the budget impasse. The auctions were part of Treasury Secretary Rubin's plan to avoid a first-ever default by the government.
The ballot's in the mail. Oregonians will get ballots tomorrow for the nation's first-ever mail-in election for US Senate. They are voting to replace Senator Packwood, who resigned this summer.
The 108-year-old Interstate Commerce Commission would be closed in a bill that passed the House Tuesday. Deregulation of the bus, railroad, and trucking industries has left the agency with little to do.
The New York Public Library began using a new $9.5 million computer system Tuesday that lets people find books and documents, scan databases for articles, and use the Internet. It is one of the nation's most comprehensive systems open to anyone. For outside users, the address is: http://www.nypl.org
Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles apologized Tuesday for the deceptive scare calls made to older voters in the final days of his 1994 reelection campaign. They were ''a terrible mistake,'' he said. The calls described Chiles's GOP opponent, Jeb Bush, as a tax cheat, among other things.
The World
Security was tight as Osaka, Japan, opened a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum today. Japan has deployed about one-tenth of its police force to calm concerns over Aum Shinri Kyo members who are still at large. This year's goal? Set terms for three- to five-year action plans on trade liberalization to be presented at next year's meeting in Manila. US Trade Representative Mickey Kantor and Japanese Trade Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto met yesterday without fanfare. President Clinton is expected to make only a token appearance because of the budget crisis at home.
Five men believed to be followers of terror mastermind Abu Nidal are being held on suspicion of plotting to assassinate PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Palestinian police said yesterday. The men came from Libya and Algeria last week. Also, police arrested two ultra-Orthodox seminary students for desecrating Yitzhak Rabin's grave yesterday. Meanwhile, an Israeli Cabinet minister called for tough action against extremists, including cutting off state funding for religious institutions.
South Korea's former President Roh Tae Woo was summoned by prosecutors for more questioning yesterday about his $650 million slush fund. Prosecutors announced they discovered that Roh used $42 million from an illegal bank account to help his relatives buy buildings. South Korea's news media said he could be arrested on corruption charges as early as today.
The US Embassy didn't make major security changes after receiving threats last April and June because the country was seen as ''one of the safest'' places in the world, the US ambassador said yesterday. Apparently, the source of the blast that killed six people was a van in a nonrestricted-access parking lot. Ambassador Raymond Mabus hinted at possible foreign involvement.
Brazil launched a ''green policy'' Tuesday that President Fernando Henrique Cardoso said would show the world his nation took environmental protection seriously. The initiative limits public-sector finance to projects that take account of their ecological impact.
The Mexican peso plunged to a new low - 7.81 to the US dollar - Tuesday despite predictions by Treasury Secretary Guillermo Ortiz that the economy will soon recover from a year of rampant inflation and unemployment.
Euro Disney posted a year-end profit yesterday of $22.8 million for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Defying critics of the Paris theme park, the earnings put its operator in the black a year ahead of schedule. Last year Euro Disney lost $366 million.
President Geidar Aliev's party won a majority of votes in Azerbaijan Sunday in an election that observers said was neither free nor fair. His New Azerbaijan party won 78 percent of the vote to take 18 of 25 available seats in the new 125-seat parliament.
More than 50 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes by war, atrocities, and persecution. But the nature of the refugee problem is changing, with displaced people increasingly staying in their own countries, a UN refugee agency report released yesterday said.
Young children mine gold in the Peruvian jungle, spin silk in India, and race camels in the United Arab Emirates (above), the US L:abor Department said in a survey of the ''shameful practices of child labor'' around the world. The 1,500-page survey documents the use of young children for arduous and often-dangerous work in 56 countries.
Former Barings Bank futures trader Nicholas Leeson will be extradited to Singapore from Germany, the Justice Ministry said Tuesday. Leeson was arrested in March at Frankfurt Airport. He could face up to 14 years in prison if he is convicted of fraud and forgery charges said to have been committed while trying to cover up the huge losses.
Etcetera
Chiune Sugihara, known as the Japanese Schindler, was honored posthumously Tuesday night in New York City. During a six-week period in the summer of 1940, Sugihara, then Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, acted against orders from Tokyo and issued visas to some 6,000 Jews who sought to flee Nazi Europe.
Scientists have found the first firm evidence that primitive man lived in Asia almost 2 million years ago. They base their conclusions on a jaw bone and some ancient tools found in China's Sichuan Province.
Thieves steal more than $1 billion worth of art every year, international art experts said Tuesday. A stolen-art hunter, London's Art Loss Register, with its artwork database, said it has helped recover more than $25 million in art since it was founded in 1991.
Novelist Tom Clancy is supplementing his books with a new collection of computer games, some of which will feature Jack Ryan, the hero of his ''Hunt for Red October'' and ''Patriot Games.'' The games, on CD-ROM, will reportedly be issued by the interactive division of Simon & Schuster.
Government Shutdown
Many Washington, D.C. tourist sites are closed, but the city's tourist agency says some interesting attractions are still open.
Closed:
The White House
National Zoo
National Air and Space Museum
The National Gallery of Art
Holocaust Memorial
Natural History Museum
American History Museum
Still Open:
The Franciscan Monastery
Mount Zion and Female Union Band Cemeteries
George Washington's estate in Mount Vernon, Va.
The Corcoran Gallery of Art
The Lincoln, Jefferson, and Vietnam memorials
Statue of A. Philip Randolph
- AP
'' This bird flew beautifully.''
- Atlantis commander Kenneth Cameron, on the 100-ton shuttle, which linked up with space station Mir yesterday.
