News Digest July 4-10

By Ginia Bellafante, Christopher John Farley, Richard Lacayo, Alexandra Lange, Erik Meers, Michael Quinn, Anastasia Toufexis, Sidney Urquhart

NATION

G-7 Summit

At the Tokyo meeting of the leaders of the seven major industrial democracies, Bill Clinton acted the parts of statesman and campaigner in equal measure. While the Japanese indulged a fascination with his wife Hillary, Clinton courted a younger generation of Japanese politicians. In public appearances he urged the Japanese to open their markets -- a tactic that helped him cast the summit for his public back home as one more part of his jobs program. The meeting started on a promising and surprising note: an agreement in principle by trade ministers to cut anti-import tariffs on hundreds of items (although not the most contentious ones), which could lead to a resumption of the stalled GATT world trade talks. By the end of the week, other substantive achievements were announced: a $3 billion aid plan for Russia and a "framework" agreement that will guide future negotiations to reduce Japan's trade surplus with the U.S.

Perot and the "Radical Middle"

A national survey by President Clinton's pollster found that three-quarters of those who voted for Ross Perot would vote for him if he ran in 1996. The poll described this group as a "radical middle" that Clinton must win over to be re-elected.

Water, Water, Still Everywhere

Floodwaters kept rising to never-before-recorded levels along the upper Mississippi River. While estimates of crop damage exceeded $1 billion, more than 4,500 families also face property damage.

The Biggest Jackpot

There was a small-town winner for the very big, $111 million prize in the Powerball lottery held by 14 states and the District of Columbia. Less than four hours before the drawing, Leslie C. Robins, a 30-year-old English teacher, bought the winning ticket for his fiance at a grocery store in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. After learning that they had beaten odds of 55 million to 1, the couple fled to Florida to escape the media.

Acquittal in Idaho

White separatist Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris, a family friend, were acquitted in the 1992 slaying of a U.S. marshal. The marshal was killed in a gunfight after federal agents converged on Weaver's remote cabin to arrest him for failing to appear in court on a weapons charge. Weaver's 14-year-old-son also died in the shoot-out. The shoot-out was followed by an 11-day siege in which Weaver's wife was killed by a federal sniper.

More Jail Time for Keating

Charles Keating Jr., whose greed and recklessness made him an apt symbol of the savings and loan calamity, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison for draining the Irvine, California-based Lincoln Savings, a swindle that cost taxpayers $2.6 billion. The sentence will run concurrently with a 10-year state prison sentence that Keating, 69, is serving.

A Third-Rate Burglary?

They didn't actually use the word Watergate, but Democratic Party officials told Chicago police that thieves stole computer disks, research notebooks and strategy documents from a suite they had been using as a temporary headquarters at the Stouffer's Riviere in Chicago, where the Republican National Committee was meeting one floor below.

WORLD

Trying to Expel the Sheik

Washington and Cairo cooperated last week to keep Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman out of circulation. The U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals rejected an asylum bid by the radical Muslim cleric, now being held in a federal prison, and upheld a deportation order issued in March. Egyptian authorities also began seeking his extradition to face charges of inciting antigovernment riots in Egypt in 1989 -- though the 1874 treaty governing extradition between the U.S. and Egypt does not appear to cover that offense. Egypt hanged seven of the sheik's followers last week for attacks against foreign tourists and conspiring to overthrow the government.

Baghdad Balks at Cameras

No pictures, Saddam Hussein told frustrated U.N. inspectors who have been trying for more than a month to install surveillance cameras at two missile- testing sites. The U.N. responded by proposing to place tamper-proof seals over the most sensitive missile components until the camera issue is resolved.

Yanks in Skopje

An advance guard of 41 soldiers from the U.S. Army's Berlin Brigade arrived in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia to join 700 U.N. peacekeepers keeping an eye on the borders of neighboring Albania and Serbia.

Farewell to Auschwitz

A controversy that has anguished Catholics and Jews for nearly a decade ended with the departure of the last Carmelite nun from a convent adjacent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, where more than 1 million Jews were slaughtered. When the convent opened in 1984, in a building once used to store poison gas, Jewish organizations around the world protested that this Roman Catholic presence was inappropriate at the very gates of a place of such particularly solemn significance to Jews. Pope John Paul II ordered the nuns to move out in April.

Rioting in Nigeria

Hundreds of people took to the streets of Lagos, Nigeria's capital, to protest the despotism of General Ibrahim Babangida, who three weeks ago annulled last month's election while the votes were still being counted. The general has repeatedly backed away from earlier promises to return his country to civilian rule. He says he will step down at the end of August, but refuses to hand over the government to businessman Moshood Abiola, the clear but unofficial winner of the June election.

The Czar's Bones

British and Russian forensic scientists have determined beyond all doubt that bones discovered two years ago at Ekaterinburg in the Urals are those of Czar Nicholas II and his family, murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. DNA from the remains was compared with that of samples taken later from Romanov descendants -- among them Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The tests shed no light, however, on the fates of the young Prince Alexei and Princess Anastasia, who may have survived the execution.

BUSINESS

Gold Goes Higher and Higher

Generally bad news about the global economy, and rumors that big speculators were buying, made good news for gold. Prices pushed toward $400 an ounce last week, perhaps portending an end to a 13-year down market.

Apple Slices Itself

Locked in a fierce price war with competitors, no-longer-fat-and-happy Apple Computer -- whose stock has declined 40% since January and which got a tough- minded new CEO last month -- announced plans to lay off 2,500 workers, 16% of its work force.

Northwest Airlines Pact

To head off bankruptcy, Northwest Airlines, the fourth largest U.S. carrier, agreed to give its unions a strong voice on its board of directors and a large financial stake in the company in exchange for contract concessions worth $1 billion.

SCIENCE

No Cure for Hepatitis B

Two of 20 participants in a clinical trial of the drug fialuridine, a new treatment for chronic hepatitis B, suffered from a bad reaction to the drug and died of liver failure. Nine others remain hospitalized. Eli Lilly, fialuridine's American manufacturer, quickly stopped all tests in late June, after the 11 patients started showing dangerous symptoms.

Acid Rain Improvement

Into each person's life a lot less acid rain must fall -- so the Federal Government has reported. According to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey, concentrations of sulfate and nitrate -- two components of acid rain -- declined significantly between 1980 and 1991.

Finding Viroids Faster

Before being released to growers, imported apple and pear trees are kept in federal quarantine centers for up to five years. Inspectors, who have to certify that the plants are free of viruslike microorganisms known as viroids, must wait until the trees bear fruit and check the apples and pears for viroid scarring and spotting. Agriculture Department scientists announced that they have developed a test that takes only two months: botanists graft a branch of the imported tree to a healthy plant, let it grow, then examine sap from a new twig or leaf for viroids.

MEDIA & THE ARTS

Murdoch to Post: Drop Dead

The New York Post, America's oldest continuously published daily, is apparently out of business; provisional publisher Rupert Murdoch dropped his bid to buy the tabloid after he and the unions failed to agree on cost cuts. The Saturday edition of the paper was canceled, and staff members started cleaning out their desks. The unprofitable paper's fate was left in the hands of a bankruptcy court this week, but plausible new buyers seemed unlikely to appear.

Record Price for a Drawing

A slightly damaged drawing by Michelangelo, Holy Family with the Infant Baptist on the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, brought $6.32 million at auction at Christie's in London -- a world record for an old-master drawing. The buyer was the supremely well endowed J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.

Mailer's Picasso

Norman Mailer's latest work in progress, a biography of Pablo Picasso, has become embarrassing for his publisher, Random House, and his prominent editor, Jason Epstein. Picasso biographer John Richardson, who is also edited by Epstein, refused to allow excerpts from his 1991 book, A Life of Picasso: Volume I, 1881-1906, to be used in Mailer's book, which he denounced as a "scissors-and-paste job." Mailer now expects to sell his project -- sans the Richardson passages -- to another publisher. Richardson is staying at Random House but has switched editors.