News In Brief

The US

Vice President Al Gore and GOP candidate Jack Kemp were polite but pointed during their televised debate. Kemp said the economy is in trouble. Gore attacked the Dole-Kemp remedy, a 15 percent tax cut.

Common Cause accused both political parties of violating campaign-finance laws. The watchdog group accused both the Clinton and Dole campaigns of circumventing the law by having political parties pay for ads. It urged the appointment of an independent counsel to pursue criminal charges.

The Interior Department issued regulations giving environmental concerns precedence over power needs in managing the flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The measure, restricting a power cooperative's ability to send wildly fluctuating amounts of water through the Glen Canyon Dam, is expected to be a model for dams nationwide.

President Clinton signed a measure that ended the nation's helium-reserve program. The reserve, based outside Amarillo, Texas, had been a perennial target of budget-cutters who said private sources could now adequately supply US needs.

The US Commission on Civil Rights said an alarming rise in racial tensions nationwide was reflected in the recent burnings of black churches in the South. Agency officials were sending letters to six states, requesting meetings to discuss the issue.

A federal judge in New York refused to prevent extradition to Israel of Hamas leader Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook. He is charged with murder and other offenses. The decision is subject to appeal.

A federal judge in Seattle made public an Oct. 2 ruling against the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The ruling requires the INS to reopen deportation proceedings affecting thousands of aliens. US District Judge John Coughenour said the agency routinely used "confusing" and "legalistic" forms and procedures to enforce a 1990 immigration law on fraud.

The INS denied GOP complaints that it was speeding up the processing of citizenship applications for political purposes. Republicans have accused the agency of trying to naturalize as many people as possible before the November election. The agency said it was reducing an application backlog.

The US moved more than 100 Asians from a crowded Chinese-registered freighter to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a temporary measure. Three men from New York have been indicted in Massachusetts with attempting to smuggle them into the country.

A federal appeals court in Arkansas upheld Susan McDougal's contempt sentence for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Clinton's business dealings.

Three men with ties to a white supremacist group were arrested on bomb and bank robbery charges in Spokane, Wash. They are accused of setting off pipe bombs at a bank, a newspaper office, and a Planned Parenthood clinic.

A consumer group said nearly a fourth of the nation's 110 nuclear reactors should be shut down. The Critical Mass Energy Project, an arm of Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization, listed 25 reactors as unsafe. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accused the group of alarming the public unnecessarily.

The US budget deficit shrank to a 15-year low of $109 billion, two GOP lawmakers estimated. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Rep. John Kasich of Ohio released the figure to preempt an expected White House announcement of the good news later this month.

Former Gov. George Wallace was to attend a dinner in honor of Vivian Malone Jones, the black woman he tried to keep out of the University of Alabama 33 years ago. Jones was to receive the first Lurleen B. Wallace Award of Courage from Wallace's own foundation.

Time Warner shareholders voted to create the world's largest media company, approving a $7.5 billion merger with Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

The World

Police in Northern Ireland interrogated a man in connection with the IRA's latest bomb attacks on British Army installations. The suspect was arrested in a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast less than a day after the release of a composite photo of one of the bombers. Under British law, he can be held for one week before being charged or released. In Dublin, meanwhile, the Irish parliament debated what might be done to keep the Northern Ireland peace process afloat. Prime Minister John Bruton resisted calls to break off ties to the IRA's political ally, Sinn Fein.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told members of his Palestinian Legislative Council to "be prepared to confront all possibilities" because talks with Israel had achieved no results. But in a rare live broadcast seen throughout the Arab world, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Arafat "our partner for peace." Israeli President Ezer Weizman announced plans to visit Jordan and Egypt, whose relations with Netanyahu have worsened recently.

African leaders were to be joined in Arusha, Tanzania, by Secretary of State Warren Christopher to discuss maintaining an economic blockade of Burundi. Sources at the gathering said there was overwhelming sentiment for leaving sanctions against Burundi's Tutsi-led government in place until it agrees to make peace with the majority Hutu opposition. Army Maj. Pierre Buyoya, who heads Burundi's government, wants sanctions eased and says he will talk with Hutus only if they disarm first.

The US proposes to fund an all-African military response force for crises such as the one in Burundi, Christopher told an Organization of African Unity meeting in Ethiopia. He said the unit would be deployed under UN auspices. OAU Secretary General Salim Ahmed Salim endorsed the proposal, telling reporters the US and Europe no longer have the political will for direct involvement in African military crises. South African President Nelson Mandela reacted cautiously to the plan.

Six Inkatha defendants were acquitted in South Africa's apartheid-era atrocity trials. The judge in the case also tore apart the prosecution's case against former Defense Minister Magnus Malan, making it likely that he, too, would be found not guilty. The six men had been accused of carrying out a 1987 attack that killed more than a dozen people in a black township near Durban. Malan is the highest-ranking former government official to be tried in the case. Judge Jan Hugo said prosecution witnesses had not shown that the deaths Malan and others were accused of planning had any official connection to the South African military.

Conflicting reports from Afghanistan raised doubts that Taliban militiamen have won back territory north of Kabul that was lost to troops of the former government. Fighting in the area was said to be fierce, with heavy casualties. Taliban leaders also were considered unlikely to agree to a meeting of all fighting factions proposed by rebel commander Rashid Dostum.

Auto workers completed a phased-in strike of GM plants in Canada, shutting down the company's final four Ontario facilities. Industry analysts said it was likely the move would result in more GM workers being sent home from US plants. No progress was reported in ongoing contract talks.

International peacekeepers should remain in Bosnia through 1998 if the country is to have any hope of recovering from its war, EU special envoy Carl Bildt said in a speech in London. The mandate of 53,000 NATO peacekeepers expires Dec. 20, but the alliance is pressing for an indefinite extension.

Etceteras

"The problem with this version of Niagara Falls is that Senator Dole and Mr. Kemp would put the American economy in a barrel and send it over the falls."

- Al Gore during the vice presidential debate, after the GOP ticket's tax-cut proposal was compared to Niagara Falls.

A couple wielding metal detectors has outdone the Red Army. After World War II, Soviet soldiers scoured Saxony for the treasure of Germany's oldest royal family. But they missed crates of gold and silver. The couple found the loot, whose value is believed too great to be calculated, by using a book as a guide. A museum is holding the treasure until ownership is decided.

Director Martin Scorcese will receive the American Film Institute's top award Feb. 2, joining the ranks of Steven Spielberg, Orson Welles, and Clint Eastwood - the 1996 winner.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher eclipsed his predecessor in miles flown in office. After a trip from Mali to Ethiopia, his mileage reached 704,487. James Baker flew 700,131 miles before stepping down to manage former President Bush's 1992 reelection campaign.

Former Philippines President Corazon Aquino became the first Asian to receive the J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding.

The Day's List

Nobel Prizewinners

Previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced today in Oslo:

1995 Joseph Rotblat, Poland-Britain

1994 Yasser Arafat, Palestine; Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, Israel

1993 F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, South Africa

1992 Rigoberta Menchu, Guatemala

1991 Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma

1990 Mikhail Gorbachev, USSR

1989 Dalai Lama, Tibet

1988 UN Peacekeeping Forces

1987 Oscar Arias Sanchez, Costa Rica

1986 Elie Wiesel, Romania-US

- The World Almanac, Funk & Wagnalls

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