News In Brief
THE US
Vice President Al Gore and Republican opponent Jack Kemp prepared for a nationally televised debate. They shrugged off suggestions that the event might be a dress rehearsal for a presidential contest in the year 2000.
Bob Dole took a more critical tack in his campaign to replace President Clinton in the White House, vowing to lean harder on ethical issues. In New Jersey, Dole targeted Clinton's integrity in two stump speeches and referred to the president as "Bozo" in a rejoinder to a man who shouted "Please get Bozo out of the White House." "Bozo's on the way out!" Dole replied.
A bill designed to increase airline safety and reduce the threat of terrorism was signed into law by Clinton. He also signed the Marine Security Act, which provides subsidies for US flagships that would be available to the US in wartime.
Hillary Rodham Clinton helped draft a document that valued a parcel of land at $400,000, but which only brought $38,000 when the government took it over, real estate records show. The property, called Holman Acres, was owned by the savings and loan of Clinton's Whitewater partner. The records are the focus of Whitewater criminal investigators, who must determine if the land's value was inflated to disguise improper real estate commissions.
A recent artificial flood on the Colorado River has revived natural habitats in the Grand Canyon and bolstered claims that the government should mimic nature, an Interior Department study said. The report culminates six years of research on the effects of the Glen Canyon dam.
The Anaheim City Council approved a $1.4 billion expansion of Disneyland in California. Disney plans to break ground next year on the 55-acre project - the biggest expansion in its 41-year history.
The Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry were awarded to five Americans and a Briton. The physics prize went to David Lee and Robert Richardson of Cornell University and Douglas Osheroff of Stanford University for their work on the superfluidity of helium three. Robert Curl Jr. and Richard Smalley of Rice University and Harold Kroto of the University of Sussex won the chemistry prize for the discovery of fullerenes, carbon atoms bound in the form of a ball.
Deputy Interior Secretary John Garamendi condemned logging of the virgin All Species Grove in California. The 400-acre site is one of six virgin redwood groves where proposed logging has sparked widespread controversy. Environmentalists claim logging poses a threat to endangered species.
A final report on Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's trade missions abroad was highly critical of the department. It said no one could even account for who was on the 16 trips taken from 1993 to 1995. The report, issued by the Energy Department's inspector general, reported the cost of the trips at $4.58 million.
The US decided to return thousands of documents seized two years go when US troops intervened in Haiti. Human rights groups say the papers could help uncover abuses of Haiti's former military government.
Contributions from charitable Americans rose last year, but the number of givers declined from 1993. That is the conclusion of a Gallup survey. The average inflation-adjusted contribution per household was up $89 to $1,017. But only 69 percent gave anything, down 4 percent.
Virginia Military Institute announced it would admit at least 30 women next year. The move comes after last month's decision to admit women rather than go private in response to a June Supreme Court decision that VMI's single-sex policy was unconstitutional.
THE WORLD
Israelis and Palestinians engaged in another round of negotiations amid reports that the peace talks had snagged over the issue of Israeli withdrawal from Hebron in the West Bank. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said the talks would fail unless Israel changes its position. Meanwhile, Israel announced that 10,000 Palestinian workers may return to their jobs in Israel, but few crossed the border - apparently because most didn't have permits.
Irish Prime Minister John Bruton said the IRA had "betrayed" peace hopes for Northern Ireland with attacks on two British military installations near Belfast. Bruton accused the IRA of behaving like Nazis to gain access to peace talks on its own terms. Meanwhile, leading politicians urged Protestant paramilitary groups not to retaliate. In Washington, the US condemned the IRA attacks.
The first US troops serving as NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia were withdrawn. Some 200 soldiers headed for their bases in Germany via Hungary. To help cover the withdrawal, other US troops were bound for Bosnia from Germany. US assignment in the republic expires Dec. 20, but it is expected that NATO will continue to maintain a presence there after that date.
Despite cutbacks, the US remains the world's leading military power, according to an annual survey by London's International Institute for Strategic Studies. The IISS also concluded that Russia's decline in military capability is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.
A senior US official praised China for playing a more active and constructive role in arms- control negotiations. John Holum has been holding high-level talks with Chinese officials in Beijing to smooth Sino-US ties. But the Washington Times reported that China made a new sale of nuclear weapons-related material to Pakistan. Officials of both countries denied the report. The State Department did not comment.
The first national census under South Africa's black majority government got under way, with officials determined to check every house, shack, and homeless person to find out who lives where and under what conditions. In the country's apartheid era, the population of black townships was estimated by helicopter flyovers. Meanwhile, verdicts were to be delivered in the trial of former defense minister Magnus Malan and 15 codefendants for apartheid-era atrocities against blacks.
Muslim guerrillas in Algeria were blamed for 34 more deaths in their continuing campaign against the country's military-backed government. Algerian newspapers said the guerrillas ambushed a bus near a major natural-gas field where many foreign energy experts are employed.
An estimated 200,000 ethnic Tutsis have been given one week to leave eastern Zaire or face hostile action from the country's military forces. The Tutsis, whose ancestors arrived more than a hundred years ago from what are now Rwanda and Burundi, have settled on Zaire's South Kivu plateau. Some Tutsis have been fighting with government forces, and aid workers say they worry that all-out war may develop if the mainly Tutsi armies of Rwanda and Burundi come to the aid of their kinfolk.
Business leaders in Australia's largest city were warned not to expect the Olympic Summer Games in the year 2000 to be a cash cow. Citing the experience of the Atlanta Games this year, a chamber of commerce official in Sydney said economic expectation should be kept "realistic." The Atlanta Olympics, he said, enriched the Georgia economy by about $4 billion, whereas some initial projections were more than twice that high.
ETCETERAS
''The Irish state cannot be hostage to tactical maneuvers by a violent movement that is only willing to give up ... violence if it gets the terms that it has dictated to everyone else."
-- Irish Prime Minister John Bruton, after accusing the IRA of betraying Northern Ireland peace hopes.
An anonymous collector in London paid $232,000 at auction for an envelope bearing each of the world's first three postage stamps. Britain introduced the Penny Black and Twopence Blue in 1840 and the Penny Red in 1841. The envelope was mailed to an address in Scotland in July 1841. It's believed to be the only one of its type in existence.
Buckle-up, Bowser! Three high-school students from Roanoke, Va., are winners in the 1996 Young Inventors contest for creating a doggie seat belt/vest for pups that go cruising. More than 100,000 dogs a year are killed or injured in car crashes, they note.
Spanish remains the numero uno language, but Arabic and Chinese are the fastest-growing foreign languages on US college campuses, says a survey by the Modern Language Association of America. Chinese enrollment rose by 36 percent and Arabic by 28 percent between 1990 and '95.
THE DAY'S LIST
Top Movies in the US and Canada by Per-Location Revenue, Oct. 4-6
Per-location revenue gauges movie popularity by community response to a film. Movie titles are followed by per-location revenue, number of locations, and weeks in release.
1. "Big Night;" $4,767; 251 locations; three weeks.
2. "First Wives Club;" $4,765; 2,312 locations; three weeks.
3. "Bound;" $3,452; 261 locations; one week.
4. "Glimmer Man;" $3,401; 2,236 locations; one week.
5. "That Thing You Do;" $3,320; 1,870 locations; one week.
6. "D3: The Mighty Ducks;" $3,001; 2,056 locations; one week.
7. "2 Days in the Valley;" $2,670; 855 locations; two weeks.
8. "Extreme Measures;" $1,763; 2,298 locations; two weeks.
9. "Fly Away Home;" 1,438; 1,401 locations; four weeks.
10. "Nutty Professor;" $1,010; 644 locations; 15 weeks.
- Exhibitor Relations/AP