News In Brief

Democrats seemed to have lost their bid to delay a vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said he and President Cllinton would make no further concessions to a small group of Senate conservatives. Daschle offered to pledge not to try to reschedule a vote on the treaty - "barring extraordinary circumstances" - before the swearing in of a new president and Congress in 2001. But Republican Sens. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, Jon Kyl of Arizona, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Bob Smith of Indiana held firm in demanding an early vote.

Alabama residents voted down a state lottery to benefit public education, rejecting the issue that helped Gov. Don Siegelman (D) oust former Gov. Fob James (R) last year. Critics had said the lottery, patterned after one started in Georgia in 1993, would be an immoral tax on the poor. With 94 percent of the state's precincts reporting, 54 percent of voters favored the lottery; 46 percent opposed it.

Acknowledging for the first time that tobacco is addictive and potentially unsafe, Philip Morris Cos. - parent of the world's biggest tobacco firm - launched a public-relations campaign to remake its image. A new corporate Web site offered advice on how to quit smoking, and new TV ads were to run during yesterday's baseball playoff games. Meanwhile, a new study indicated the US Department of Health and Human Services and many states have failed to enforce a 1992 law designed to limit the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products to minors.

At least a few unions were expected to break ranks by voting against AFL-CIO endorsement of Vice President Al Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination. That endorsement of Gore would be overwhelmingly approved at the AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles seemed virtually certain, but ambivalence among some union activists reflected their attraction to Bill Bradley as an alternative. The Teamsters Union, the United Automobile Workers, and the International Brotherhood of Painters and Allied Trades were reportedly set to vote against the resolution. Others were expected to abstain.

The Senate was expected to approve $8.7 billion in emergency aid to farmers. Lawmakers from the Northeast - unhappy that the bill doesn't provide more for growers hit by drought this year - were defeated in a last-minute attempt to make changes.

Robert Mundell of Columbia University won the 1999 Nobel Prize for economics. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the Canadian-born scholar did his most important work in the 1960s. It cited a pioneering 1963 article on the short-term effects of monetary and fiscal policy in an open economy.

Basketball Hall of Famer Wilt Chamberlain, who died in Los Angeles Tuesday, was perhaps the sport's most formidable player of the century. An agile, 7-foot-1-inch giant, Chamberlain will be remembered for numerous epic battles with the Boston Celtics' Bill Russell during a career that included stints with the Philadelphia (later San Francisco) Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain, who retired in 1973, still holds NBA records for most points in a game (100) and career rebounds (23,924).

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society