News In Brief

President Bush talked up the benefits of his $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal in his weekly radio address, in which he also said his 2002 budget would fund the "national priorities" of Social Security, Medicare, education, and defense. But still to be announced are specifics about spending cuts. Tomorrow night, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, he is to urge sharply divided lawmakers to pass his plans.

Scrutiny of ex-President Clinton's last-minute pardons intensified still more. Federal prosecutors launched an investiga- tion into whether his commutation of fraud sentences for four Hasidic Jews from New York was payback for their community's support of Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate race. In addition, US Attorney Mary Jo White issued a subpoena for records of donations to Clinton's presidential library.

Lawyers for Microsoft and the US government were to square off again, this time before a seven-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington. Microsoft is challenging actions by US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, who ruled last year that the company violated antitrust law and should be broken up. Experts say there's a solid chance the breakup order will be reversed.

Fifty-two governors from the US states, commonwealths, and territories convened in Washington for the biannual meeting of their national association. They were to meet today with Bush, whose education proposals were expected to bring the most agreement, while his tax cut and budget plans were likely to produce differences.

Both teenagers charged with the murders of two Dartmouth College professors are likely to be tried as adults, experts said. Robert Tulloch, 17, already is being treated as an adult because his age under New Hampshire law no longer qualifies for the juvenile court system. But an attorney for James Parker, 16, said his client would seek to be tried as a juvenile. In the past 15 years, however, all first-degree murder defendants have been treated as adults in the state, a former prosecutor told news outlets.

Authorities said at least seven people were killed in Mississippi and several more injured in Arkansas and Texas from severe thunderstorms and tornadoes. Homes and buildings also were damaged.

The Monitor's electronic edition, csmonitor.com, was named best online service for a US newspaper in its circulation category by the trade magazine Editor & Publisher. It is the second year in a row that the website has taken the honor at the magazine's annual Interactive Newspapers Conference & Trade Show. Winners in other circulation categories were Washingtonpost.com, newsobserver.com, and staugustine.com.

(c) Copyright 2001. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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