News In Brief
THE US
The US will take part in an international relief operation for Zaire, the White House said. President Clinton made the decision after consulting Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrtien. Canada is expected to lead a 12-nation force of some 15,000 troops to aid 1.1 million mostly Rwandan Hutu refugees. Aides said the president had agreed in principle to deploy some 1,000 US ground troops and several thousand support personnel.
Up to 10,000 US troops may soon be sent to Bosnia, aides to the president said. They would be part of a 30,000-strong international force replacing 60,000 troops currently keeping the peace there.
Clinton will actively oppose efforts to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, aides said. The president had seemed to soften his stance in comments made Tuesday.
Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary submitted a letter of resignation. It came after a Tuesday meeting with the president.
The Navy and Air Force were told to review their training programs for signs of sexual harassment. Defense Secretary William Perry ordered all three armed services to report what their units are doing to communicate a resolve not to tolerate sexual misconduct and nonprofessional relationships. Also, an Army sergeant in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., was sentenced to five months in jail and given a bad-conduct discharge for having sex with three female recruits.
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, as expected. The Fed's Open Market Committee met in Washington.
Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr requested a 90-day delay in the sentencing of James McDougal, a former Clinton partner in an Arkansas real estate deal. McDougal, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy on May 28, is reportedly cooperating with federal prosecutors in the Whitewater probe.
Plans for a National Commission on Civic Renewal were announced by retiring Sen. Sam Nunn (D) of Georgia and former Education Secretary William Bennett. They said the commission would conduct a yearlong study of the breakdown of civic trust in the US.
Rioting broke out in St. Petersburg, Fla., following the exoneration of a white policeman in last month's shooting death of a black motorist. A policeman was was shot in the leg and about a dozen fires burned during the night after a grand jury ruled officer Jim Knight had reason to fear for his life when a car driven by Tyron Lewis lurched toward him several times before he shot Lewis. After the incident, some 300 people rioted. And similar circumstances triggered violence in Pittsburgh. An angry crowd of about 50 gathered outside a courthouse there after the acquittal of a white police officer in the 1995 death of black motorist Jonny Gammage.
The AFL-CIO, United Farm Workers, and National Organization for Women joined forces to support California strawberry workers. The Labor Department says strawberry workers received more than 17 cents of every dollar paid for strawberries in 1985, but get less than 10 cents of every dollar today. Presidents of the three groups formed a commission to monitor working conditions and build public support for strawberry workers.
The governor of Ohio declared a state of emergency and called out the National Guard to help clear roads in three northeast counties. Four to 10 inches of additional snow were forecast in areas that already had four feet on the ground.
Launch of the space shuttle Columbia was postponed until Tuesday. The mission was already a week behind schedule.
Honda recalled nearly half the 1995 Accords sold in the US. Owners of some 164,000 Accords are to be offered free replacement of air-bag control units. Federal safety officials are investigating complaints that the Accord air bags deploy unexpectedly.
Cardinal Joseph Bernardin died in Chicago. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate in the United States and leader of 2.3 million Chicago-area Catholics.
THE WORLD
The first US troops assigned to refugee-relief duty in eastern Zaire arrived in neighboring Rwanda to assess obstacles to their mission. But at the world food conference in Rome, Zaire demanded that all such assistance be distributed outside its borders. In the Zairean city of Goma, meanwhile, artillery fire again delayed the feeding of refugees fleeing the latest fighting.
A new agreement on redeployment of Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron could come in about a week, US officials said. They spoke after American mediator Dennis Ross made a brief stopover in Tel Aviv. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled a trip to the US in anticipation of a deal to begin Palestinian self-rule in Hebron. But Palestine Authority President Yasser Afafat said he was "not optimistic" that agreement was near.
Judges in China scheduled a hearing for today on the appeal of dissident Wang Dan's 11-year sentence for subversion. But Wang's mother, who serves as one of his attorneys, said she does not expect the verdict or sentence to be repealed. Wang was convicted Oct. 30 of plotting to overthrow the Beijing government. Secretary of State Warren Christopher is due to visit China next week.
China said Christopher could open a discussion on human rights but only if he makes no attempt to "meddle" in the country's internal affairs. On Christopher's last visit to Beijing, in 1994, China responded to his concern about human-rights abuses by rounding up and jailing political dissidents.
Christopher warned Bosnia's three copresidents that the UN might impose new sanctions unless key provisions of the Dayton peace agreement were restored. Christopher singled out freedom of movement throughout Bosnia, especially for refugees. The Serb, Croat, and Muslim leaders met with senior diplomats in Paris to approve a peace-stabilization plan for Bosnia. In northeastern Bosnia, meanwhile, NATO troops confiscated ammunition, weapons, and vehicles from an Army warehouse near the scene of a Muslim-Serb shootout.
A widely respected voter-preference poll in Thailand gave former prime minister Chuan Leekpai and his Democrat Party the edge in Sunday's election. The survey predicted Chuan's organization would win 149 of the 393 parliamentary seats at stake in the vote, with the New Aspiration Party of Defense Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh coming in second. Outgoing Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa's Chart Thai Party was expected to drop to fourth place. Thirteen parties are contesting the election.
Thousands of demonstrators dispersed without incident in East Timor after protesting Indonesia's treatment of Nobel Prize-winner Carlos Belo. The Roman Catholic bishop has been under heavy criticism for a magazine interview in which he complained of the treatment of East Timorese by Indonesian troops. The demonstrations began earlier this week, on the fifth anniversary of an incident in which at least 50 anti-Indonesia protestors were killed by soldiers. Indonesia forcibly annexed East Timor in 1976.
Much of South Korea returned to normal after the nation's annual college entrance exam day. The government-supervised tests attracted 795,000 high-school seniors who were competing for roughly a half-million openings in South Korean universities next year. The national testing day affects business openings, traffic patterns, airline schedules, and the hours of government workers. Scores are to be announced Dec. 7.
ETCETERAS
''I think we need to find out why the citizens of the world's wealthiest, most envied, most powerful country are so cynical, so angry ... about so many things."
-- Former Education Secretary William Bennett, on a new commission seeking ways to overcome Americans' cynicism.
Buck the horse may whinny to his heart's content in Schuyler, N.Y. - and the neighbors won't mind at all. Earlier this year, his owners were informed their property had been zoned commercial. So the horse had to go, even though he'd lived there 12 years. But the proverbial buck didn't stop there. More than 1,000 angry Schuyler-ites petitioned the town to reconsider. A zoning variance was granted, and Buck's corral is OK again.
Don't be surprised if your local dry cleaners offers no free 1997 calendars this Christmas. A poll of 200 small-business owners by Income Opportunities magazine found that more than half of them plan no holiday giveaways to customers or clients. The reason: a growing belief that the gifts don't stimulate sales.
When the campus telephone service at the University of Cincinnati kept conking out, officials blamed the the men's basketball team. Preseason polls rank the Bearcats No. 1 in the US, and the school announced that fewer than 1,000 tickets remained for each home game. Hundreds of thousands of incoming calls from anxious ticket-seekers overwhelmed the system.
THE DAY'S LIST
Record-Breaking Women
Working Woman magazine lists 300 "female firsts" of the last 20 years. The publication says the look back shows how fast gender barriers are falling. Some of the record-breakers, their accomplishments, and the years in which they happened:
Sandra Day O'Connor: first female justice of the US Supreme Court, 1981
Geraldine Ferraro: first woman to run for vice president from a major political party, 1984
Libby Riddles: first woman to win the Iditarod race, 1985
Dawn Steel, first woman to head a major film studio, 1987
Toni Morrison, first black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1993
Sheila Widnall: first female secretary of the US Air Force, 1993
Sgt. Heather Lynn Johnsen: first woman to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 1996
-Working Woman/AP
