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Around the Nation
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Around the Nation
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Although leaders held celebratory news conferences late last week to announce that they had finished work on the huge budget deal, negotiations continued through the weekend and into yesterday afternoon.
In a flurry of eleventh-hour haggling, negotiators took some provisions out, put some provisions in and continued to battle fiercely over others.
Kept in were nearly $2 billion of increased payments to Medicare home health care providers and a disability program for Persian Gulf War veterans that a senior GOP aide said will cost from $1 billion to $6 billion over 10 years.
Also preserved was legislation to repeal a government directive requiring peanut-free zones on some airline flights. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) chair of the Senate Appropriations transportation subcommittee, said the directive, designed to protect people with peanut allergies, was not based on scientific evidence.
"These guidelines represent why so many people have come to resent and distrust government," he said.
Stripped from the package were two provisions that had been promoted by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss): One would have exempted scrap metal recycling companies from liability under Superfund cleanup laws. The other, also backed by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) would have provided more than $350 million of agriculture credits to Russia.
The credits would have allowed Russian business interests to pay for frozen poultry and other products shipped overseas by American producers.
Also jettisoned was a White House proposal that would have raised $200 million by recovering broadcast licenses from companies that successfully bid for a piece of the broadcast spectrum but later went bankrupt. And negotiators abandoned a proposal by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) to add a multibillion-dollar "water resources" measure to the spending package.
As of late yesterday, a provision was still in play that would bar the United States from levying fees on Canadian flights over Alaska. Alaskans were worried that Canada would retaliate by charging U.S. flights that passed through Canadian airspace - which would affect most flights to Alaska. The provision was locked in a confusing battle over whether the fees were user fees or taxes, and if so, which committee had jurisdiction over them.
Another fiercely contested battle focuses on whether to provide $100,000 in financial compensation to each of the nearly 7,500 hemophiliacs who were infected with HIV in the 1980s by contaminated blood products. The House-passed measure was dropped from the budget package at the last minute, but it could be revived as free-standing legislation if the Senate approves it today.
The bazaar-like quality of the last-minute negotiations and the sprawling, provision-laden bill they produced was generating a backlash among some conservative Republicans, though aides said they were still confident the measure would pass.
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) sent his Senate GOP colleagues a scathing letter yesterday criticizing the bill and, by implication, the GOP leaders who negotiated it. "Does a Republican Congress make any difference?" Hagel asked. "What does the Republican majority in Congress stand for? Do we have an agenda? What is it? Do we believe in anything?"
Some Senate aides had predicted the measure would breeze through the Senate on a voice vote, but Hagel and other conservatives demanded a roll call. The Senate is scheduled to vote Wednesday morning, following an expected Tuesday evening vote by the House.
According to House Appropriations Committee figures, the bill would provide about $486 billion for the current fiscal year, an amount equal to about 29 percent of all federal funding.
GOP leaders have sought to buttress rank-and-file support for the bill by pointing to Republican victories on money issues such as defense spending and on policy matters such as abortion and the war on drugs.
But fiscal conservatives have begun to balk at the measure's cost, which aides from both parties say exceeds spending caps by about $7 billion _ not counting the nearly $22 billion of ``emergency'' surplus spending, which technically is not subject to spending caps.
Lott's effort to exempt scrap metal recycling companies from liability under the Superfund cleanup failed at the last minute, according to his spokesman.
Though the bill was co-sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, D-S.D., and reflected an agreement among industry, environmentalists and Clinton officials, some businesses and lawmakers argued that passing the measure this year would jeopardize the chances for comprehensive Superfund reform next Congress.
The failure of the measure marked a blow for Phil Morris, chief executive of Sherman, Miss.-based Morris Recycling Inc. Morris, a Sigma Nu fraternity brother of Lott from college, said the senator had visited his scrap yard in Sherman a few years ago and had been working on the issue for four or five years.
NewsCom 10/19/98 06:21:15 PM
As many as 500,000 sick Florida smokers are seeking $200 billion in damages from the nation's five largest cigarette makers.
"The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen, that this is an industry that has never accepted their responsibility - corporate responsibility - for the devastating health consequences caused by cigarettes," lawyer Stanley Rosenblatt said in his opening statement to the jury.
The only previous class-action lawsuit against the industry to make it to trial was that of flight attendants who claimed secondhand smoke made them sick. In that case, also handled by Rosenblatt, the tobacco industry agreed to a $300 million settlement to establish a research foundation.
The tobacco industry has also agreed to pay four states a total of $37 billion to settle lawsuits over the costs of treating sick smokers. Florida was among those states, but nothing in its settlement prevents individuals from suing.
Claiming the tobacco companies conspired to defraud consumers, Rosenblatt told jurors of experiments at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City in which researchers spread tar from cigarette smoke on the backs of mice, and about half got malignant tumors.
When the news came out in a 1953 article, the tobacco industry responded with a full-page ad appearing in more than 400 newspapers that cast doubt on the research and noted there are many ways of getting cancer.
"There is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of them," Rosenblatt read from the ad.
He also accused the industry of trying to get children addicted.
"The essence of the conspiracy and fraud of these defendants has been to get smokers hooked on nicotine as young as possible and make lifelong customers of them," Rosenblatt said, noting smoking among youths increased 73 percent between 1988 and 1996.
"As smokers get older, as smokers die, as smokers quit because they're sick, or for other reasons, there is only one source of replacement smokers - and that is kids," he said.
Lawyers for the defendants are expected to give their opening statements on today.
"The basic common sense of the American people for the most part is: You knew the risk, you took the choice and you should be responsible," the industry's lead lawyer, Robert Heim, said recently.
The defendants in the case are Philip Morris Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Liggett Group Inc., as well as Miami's Dosal Tobacco Corp., the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute.
Acknowledging the critical importance of research into mental disorders, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission nevertheless described current safeguards as inadequate and said that more needs to be done to ensure that those who participate in such studies receive ethical treatment.
"We anticipate that many new, potentially useful therapies for treating (mental) disorders will be developed over the next few years," committee members said in the draft of their report, scheduled to be formally voted upon today.
"The prospect of increasing numbers of research protocols, with the attendant potential increase in the number of persons with impaired decision-making capacity in these kinds of studies, makes it all the more important to clarify the ethical framework required for such research," the report said.
In any given year, more than 5 million Americans suffer an acute episode of a major mental illness and one in five families in the nation will have to deal at some point during their lives with someone who experiences a mental disorder, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
In the draft, commission members repeatedly cited a tragedy that was revealed in 1994 involving two subjects in a University of California, Los Angeles, study of an anti-schizophrenia drug who were taken off the medication without their knowledge. One threatened to kill his parents and attempted to travel to Washington to assassinate the president. The other later committed suicide. The researchers were reprimanded by the National Institutes of Health for failing to provide ``informed consent.''
The concept of informed consent _ in which subjects are required to be fully informed of the potential risks and benefits of medical experiments in which they participate _ and the work of institutional review boards that approve research proposals have been the ethical cornerstones of research in this country for more than two decades.
But there are obvious inherent tensions in studying patients with mental disorders. On one hand, patients and their families ``desperately want medical science to find ways to improve their conditions,'' the report said. On the other hand, there is much disagreement about how this can be done ``without exploiting those ... who participate.''
Currently, there are no specific federal regulations targeted for research participants who experience mental disorders, although existing rules cover them _ and other populations _ generally. There are specific regulations that apply to children, women and prisoners.
The commission, which was appointed in 1995 by President Clinton to advise the White House on bioethical issues arising from research, said that it found no instances of widespread abuse in this area.
But members said they worried that the lack of specific protections could raise the risk of future harm.
The recommendations will be forwarded to the White House, which will decide whether to implement them through federal regulation.
In the meantime, the commission is expected to urge the research community to follow them voluntarily.
(Optional add end)
The report, which followed a year of study, recommended among other things that institutional review boards that examine research proposed for a specific mental condition have at least two experts familiar with the disorder participate in the review process.
One of them, preferably, should be diagnosed with the disorder, be a family member of such a person or come from an advocacy organization for the disorder, the group said.
Such representation would ensure that the board's decisions ``will be responsive'' to the interests of the affected groups, the report said.
NewsCom 10/19/98 06:06:12 PM
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Around the World
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After negotiations that were surprisingly free of discord, the Social Democrats and their coalition partner, the environmentalist Greens party, wrapped up plans for significant reforms in Germany's tax, social and energy policies. They also have vowed to loosen strict nationality laws, which could enable up to 3 million foreigners to obtain German citizenship.
Since last month's election, much public attention has focused on the backstage jostling for key posts in Schroeder's government. As the dust settles, the emerging powers in his Cabinet reflect a dramatic shift in the conservative mind-set that has shaped government policy for the past 16 years, a transformation that augers important changes in Germany's political character.
During his successful campaign to oust Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Europe's longest-serving leader, Schroeder soothed voter fears by insisting he would tame his party's powerful leftist wing by carving out a "new middle" in German politics.
He touted his close personal connections with big business and invited Jost Stollman, a successful computer entrepreneur, to handle the economics portfolio.
But after losing a power struggle that could set the tone for Schroeder's government, Stollman Monday refused to take the job. He backed out after telling Schroeder he disagreed with the coalition pact reached with the Greens and expressing unhappiness that much control over economic policy would be channeled to Social Democratic Party chairman Oskar Lafontaine, the prospective finance minister.
Manfred Wissman, economics spokesman of Kohl's outgoing Christian Democrats, branded Stollman's retreat from the new government "one of the greatest deceptions in the history of postwar German politics." He said it was appalling that Schroeder did not "come clean with his voters" and tell them that economic policy would now be orchestrated by Lafontaine, long a darling of the party's left wing.
Lafontaine already has given notice that he intends to wield enormous influence. He has started jawboning the central bank to lower interest rates, promised that the government would restore cuts in sick pay and pensions, and given notice that Germany will push for a global initiative to curtail excessive capital flows when it assumes the presidency of the Group of Seven major industrial democracies in January.
Schroeder acknowledged that Lafontaine also would take control over all aspects of economic policy involving the European Union - a critical matter given the planned introduction in January of the euro, which will replace the mark and 10 other national currencies.
Lafontaine's ascendancy has compounded fears among German business leaders, who already had expressed anxiety about the impact of the Greens on the new government. ``If this government does what it says it will, then Germany will be ruined as a place to do business,'' said Dieter Hundt, head of the employers' federation.
The Greens succeeded in winning a commitment to start shutting down the country's 19 nuclear power plants, which generate about 35 percent of Germany's electricity. They also garnered a promise to hike taxes on gasoline, heating fuel and electricity as a way to encourage conservation and raise revenue to finance social security costs.
The Greens won three Cabinet posts _ the foreign, environment and health ministries _ and impressed many observers with their willingness to temper some of their more radical positions, such as a proposal to triple gasoline prices to more than $12 a gallon. Party leader Joschka Fischer, who will become foreign minister, also persuaded his members to end their earlier opposition and accept sending German soldiers on peace-keeping missions abroad.
The two parties are scheduled to sign the coalition agreement Tuesday at a ceremony in Bonn. The deal is expected to be approved by party congresses later in the week. Schroeder would take office once the new Parliament formally elects him when it convenes on Oct. 27.
NewsCom 10/19/98 04:26:44 PM
During the ordeal that began Saturday, the whales frustrated rescuers' attempts to keep them in deep water, returning repeatedly to the deadly shallows off the island state south of Australia.
Authorities estimated they were successful in rescuing 40-80 of the stranded mammals.
Experts remained puzzled as to why some grounded whales that were freed from shallow water and transported back out to sea simply returned to another section of coastline.
Parks and Wildlife Service director Max Kitchell said since Saturday that about 100 whales were transported to deeper water, but there was no way of knowing how many returned to the beach.
"I'm very confident that we saved more than 40, and it might be double that," he said.
Kitchell said once a whale is trapped in the shallows, it sends out distress calls that beckon others to help.
"But why, when we get them back out to sea and there's no more on the beach to call them, they still come in again, we just don't know," he said.
10-20-98
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