News In Brief
The US
Some House Republicans reacted with dismay to President Clinton's signed responses to 81 questions put to him by the Judiciary Committee. They said his answers provided little information to help the panel decide whether he had committed perjury, obstruction of justice, or abused the powers of his office. On Tuesday, the committee will hear from legal experts and convicted perjurers on the consequences of lying under oath. The panel's chairman, Henry Hyde (R) of Illinois, has invited the president or his lawyers to present a defense one week later. The White House had not yet responded.
Merger talks between Exxon and Mobil are the clearest sign yet that the lowest world oil prices since the early 1970s are shaking up the entire industry, analysts said. The two largest US oil firms acknowledged late last week that they were discussing a "possible combination transaction." If a merger takes place, the new company would surpass Royal Dutch/Shell to become the world's biggest oil firm.
Clinton is scheduled to meet at the White House today with Yasser Arafat, who will also take part in discussions at the World Bank, Commerce Department, and State Department while in the US. Clinton is to be in Gaza mid-month to address the Palestinian National Council and oversee a reaffirmation of its revocation of clauses in the Palestine Liberation Organization charter that call for Israel's destruction, a critical element of the Mideast peace accord negotiated last month in Maryland. Clinton, who will also visit Israel and the West Bank, is scheduled to depart Washington Dec. 12 and return Dec. 15.
The US will try to mobilize financial support for Middle East peace today at a conference
of donors to the Palestinian economy. Representatives of at least 45 countries are to gather at the State Department in a reprise of a gathering held in Washington in October 1993. The US reportedly expects to raise pledges of more than $2 billion over five years. The value of pledges from the 1993 conference started at $2.3 billion and rose over time to $4 billion. Donors eventually gave $2.1 billion.
Violent weather has cost the world a record $89 billion this year, more money than was lost from weather-related disasters in all of the 1980s, according to preliminary estimates released by the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group, and Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer. They indicate that total losses from storms, floods, droughts, and fires for the first 11 months of the year were 48 percent higher than the previous one-year record of more than $60 billion in 1996. The report blames a combination of human-triggered deforestation and general climate change for some of the year's severest disasters.
Critics and supporters of gun control were eager to monitor the launch today of Phase 2 of the 1993 Brady law, during which the FBI will try to provide "instant" background checks for people trying to buy handguns. The new system, which is supposed to operate much like credit-card approvals, replaces a five-day waiting period. It is hoped that a new federal database in Clarksburg, W.Va., can screen would-be buyers for felony convictions, domestic-violence convictions, restraining orders, and other offenses - but FBI officials said a number of financial and technological problems were still unresolved.
