The Week May 29-June 4

By Leslie Dickstein, C.J. Farley, Christine Gorman, Lina Lofaro, Wendy King, Michael Quinn, Jeffery Rubin, Alain Sanders and Sidney Urquhart

NATION

| Clinton Embarks for D-Day

Hoping to use the occasion to buff his foreign policy credentials, President Clinton headed off to Europe to participate in the 50th anniversary celebration of D-day and engage in summitry with leaders there. On his way to Normandy, the President met with the Pope at the Vatican, where Clinton stood his ground on abortion rights in the face of steely papal opposition.

Rosty Is Indicted

After months of investigation, negotiation and speculation, powerful House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski was indicted on 17 federal counts for having allegedly engaged in a broad 20-year pattern of corruption. Among the charges: tampering with a grand-jury witness and embezzling more than $500,000 in public funds to pay office workers hired mainly to perform personal services. The indictment forced him to relinquish his pivotal chairmanship to Florida's Sam Gibbons as a result of House Democratic Party rules.

Military Gay-Rights Decision

Joining the growing phalanx of courts around the country that have attacked the military ban on gays, a federal district court in Seattle ordered the Washington National Guard to reinstate Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer, a highly decorated nurse and a lesbian. Although the decision struck down as unconstitutional the Pentagon's old, pre-1994 prohibition against gays, the court's reasoning provides ammunition for assailing the new "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue" policy.

Supreme Court Decisions

In a free-speech decision that gives government workers a little more breathing room to express themselves, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an agency may not punish or fire employees without some reasonable, factual, basis for believing their remarks were either disruptive or unprotected by the First Amendment. In a separate decision, the court came down on the side of environmentalists, ruling that the federal Clean Water Act gives states the power to control the quantity, as well as the quality, of water in rivers.

Vitriolic Preacher Is Shot

Khallid Abdul Muhammad, the former Nation of Islam spokesman whose vitriolic speeches against whites, Catholics and Jews have engendered outrage and condemnation, was shot and wounded in both legs after addressing a mostly black audience at the University of California at Riverside. Police arrested a suspect at the scene identified as an ousted member of the Nation of Islam.

The Final King Verdict

/ After deliberating for 11 days, the same jury that had ordered the city of Los Angeles in April to pay Rodney King $3.8 million as compensation for the beating he suffered in 1991 at the hands of L.A. police refused to assess punitive damages against the individual officers involved.

The L.A.P.D.'s Blue Flu

Meanwhile, the separate bitter dispute between Los Angeles and its police force over new contract terms intensified when hundreds of L.A. police staged a slowdown by calling in sick.

Ollie ... Oops?

At the end of a factious campaign, Oliver North took 55% of the vote and won Virginia's G.O.P. Senate nomination, defeating former Reagan budget director James Miller III. But the former Marine lieutenant colonel, a key Iran-contra figure, may have to face Democratic incumbent Charles Robb without total G.O.P. support. Virginia's Republican Senator John Warner had threatened to back the expected bid of former state Attorney General J. Marshall Coleman, who would run as an independent, in the event of a North victory.

WORLD

Going for Sanctions

The ongoing struggle with North Korea over its nuclear-weapons program entered a tense new phase as international inspectors said they had lost the ability to verify whether the country's engineers had diverted plutonium from peaceful purposes to bomb making. The Clinton Administration said it would seek economic sanctions against North Korea at the U.N. Security Council. North Korean Foreign Minister Kim Yong Nam warned that sanctions would "bring devastating consequences."

Israel Attacks Guerrilla Base

Israeli fighter jets and helicopter gunships attacked a training camp for Hizballah guerrillas in Lebanon in a raid that killed nearly four dozen people -- most of them teenage recruits. Israel justified the raid as self-defense, saying that the victims were soon to join Hizballah's fight against Israel in south Lebanon. The guerrillas retaliated by firing two dozen rockets into northern Israel, which caused no casualties.

Helping Out the Haitians

Offering to help President Clinton keep a sticky political promise he made last month, Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands said they would allow the U.S. to set up centers for hearing Haitian refugees' asylum requests. Since May 8, when Clinton said he would end the U.S. policy of summarily returning boat people, more than 1,400 have nevertheless been forcibly repatriated; the Administration says the first Haitians could begin processing in Jamaica this week.

No Cease-Fire in Yemen

With its army slowly advancing, northern Yemen ignored a U.N. call for a cease-fire in the country's month-old civil war with the secessionist South. The North shelled Aden, headquarters for the southern rebels, and tightened the circle around the port city. Accusing Iraq and Sudan of reinforcing the North, defiant southerners vowed to resist.

Failed Peace Talks I

Negotiators for mainly Tutsi rebels and Hutu government forces met twice without successfully establishing a truce in the two-month-old civil war in Rwanda. The rebels continued to tighten their stranglehold on the capital of Kigali and pushed their assault on Gitarama, where the government has relocated. Meanwhile, the Vatican appealed to the U.N. Security Council to establish a "safe area" -- the same concept tried with so little success in Bosnia -- around a large religious complex offering sanctuary to 38,000 Tutsis.

Failed Peace Talks II

After Bosnian Serbs failed to withdraw troops from around the Bosnian enclave of Gorazde, as they had promised to do more than a month ago, U.N.-sponsored talks were postponed. Observers say the several hundred armed Serbs had merely exchanged their soldier's uniforms for those of policemen. Also last week, the nascent Croat-Muslim federation in Bosnia elected Croat Kresimir Zubak as its first President.

Hungary's Ex-Communists Win

A renamed Hungarian Socialist Party -- i.e., the former communists -- swept into power after voters overwhelmingly elected their representatives to office. The Socialists chose party leader Gyula Horn, a former Foreign Minister, as their candidate for Prime Minister.

BUSINESS

A Stable Economy

The unemployment rate in May dropped four-tenths of one percent to 6%, the lowest level in more than three years. A roundup of other statistics released last week: the economy grew at a 3% annual rate in the first quarter of 1994, as opposed to a 7% rate in the last quarter of 1993, an indication that inflation is under control; home sales were down slightly in April due to the winter weather and higher mortgage rates; income rose a bit, but consumer spending was down 0.4%.

Fairy-Tale Ending?

The Walt Disney Co. has been rescued from its Euro Disney debacle by Saudi Arabia's Prince al-Waleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud. The prince, chairman of United Saudi Commercial Bank, will pump up to $439 million into the French theme park, a money loser since it opened in 1992.

Getting Wired

In a deal that could create the third largest cable-TV system, Times Mirror has tentatively agreed to sell its cable division to Cox Enterprises for $2.3 billion. Times Mirror has been cutting costs and retrenching, while Cox has been expanding its wireless communications business.The Times Mirror system has 1.2 million subscribers. Cox is the sixth largest cable operator, with 1.8 million customers.

New Role for ATMs

As part of Vice President Al Gore's Letterman-hyped "reinventing government" plan, the U.S. will begin distributing food stamps, Social Security benefits, welfare payments and other entitlements via the nation's ATMs. The initiative, which could save $195 million a year by 1999, is also expected to combat fraud.

Fly the Cost-Effective Skies

TWA and Delta may eliminate first class on international flights, the reason being that less than 1.5% of flyers purchase those seats. Plus, airlines use fewer flight attendants to service less swanky sections. The plans could take effect as early as this fall.

SCIENCE

A New Source of Protein

Astronomers at the University of Illinois have detected evidence that amino acids, which are the building blocks that make up all proteins, can exist in space. The find lends support to, but does not prove, the idea that protein- bearing comets or asteroids crashed into the earth more than 3 billion years ago, setting off a chain reaction that eventually gave rise to life on the planet. Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Maryland say they have found water near -- but not too close to -- what they think is a black hole at the center of a galaxy 200 million light-years away.

THE ARTS & MEDIA

TV Trends

In a move of unprecedented confidence in a notoriously volatile industry, King World, the television distribution company, announced that Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy and The Oprah Winfrey Show have been renewed through the end of the century. The programs are the three top-rated shows among syndicated programs, and thus among the most profitable in all of broadcasting.

RELIGION

No Doubt About It

The title says it all: in his six-page letter to bishops, titled "On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone," Pope John Paul II definitively reaffirmed the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women priests. Citing Christ's choice of male apostles as the foundation for an all-male priesthood, the Pontiff hoped to put an end to a debate on women's role in the church.