News In Brief

President Clinton returned to Washington after a 24-hour summit with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. The two leaders agreed to intensify antidrug efforts, in part by setting new benchmarks for measuring progress. A $4 billion, two-year line of credit to Mexico from the US Export-Import Bank was announced, along with some environmental aid to Mexico and a civil-aviation pact that is expected to increase air traffic between the two countries.

Dozens of American musicians will travel to Cuba late next month to work with artists there, attorney Bill Martinez announced. Martinez, who has obtained a US license for the cultural exchange, said US performers had toured Cuba before, but were barred by a 40-year-old US trade embargo from collaborating on new works. As many as 35 jazz, rock, and country artists - ranging from Jimmy Buffett to the Indigo Girls - will work and perform with Cuban artists from March 21 to 28. The exchange is the latest project of Alan Roy Scott, a California songwriter and music producer who has promoted similar events in the former Soviet Union, Indonesia, Romania, and Ireland.

The percentage of Americans wearing seat belts increased in 1998 as police stepped up enforcement of seat-belt laws, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported. Seat-belt use reportedly jumped from 62.2 percent to 65.1 percent around Memorial Day - and again from 69.6 percent to 70.1 percent around Thanksgiving. The increases took place during crackdowns in which 4,000 law-enforcement agencies erected checkpoints and ticketed drivers not wearing the belts. Officials noted that prior to Memorial Day seat-belt use had been hovering for three years at about 60 percent.

John Ehrlichman, who died at his home in Atlanta, was President Nixon's domestic-affairs adviser at the time of the Watergate coverup, which led to Nixon's resignation. As a result of his role in those events, Ehrlichman served 18 months of a four-to-eight-year prison term for obstruction of justice, conspiracy, and perjury. He went on write political novels and do radio commentary.

Henry Kendall, who died in Florida, was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and pioneer of the environmental movement. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor shared the 1990 Nobel Prize for Physics with Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor after the three became the first to observe traces of quarks, subatomic particles thought to form the basis of 99 percent of matter. Kendall was a founding member - and chairman since 1973 - of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Monitor Founder Mary Baker Eddy was honored with the 1999 Media Award from the National Foundation for Women Legislators at a ceremony in Washington Feb. 12. The award honors what the nonprofit group calls "the most influential journalists and women of achievement." The award for Mrs. Eddy was accepted by Virginia Harris, chairman of the Christian Science Board of Directors, which publishes this paper, and by John Selover, manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society. Selover said Mrs. Eddy founded the newspaper two years before her passing in 1910 "out of her unquenchable love for mankind." He noted that her mission statement for the paper - printed daily on the front page - "remains our touchstone in judging the what, how, where, when, and why of our daily news coverage."

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