12 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, April 5, 1995
Senate, House narrow gap on Defense Dept. budget.
fhe Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Senate negotiators
yesterday raised by $1 billion the amount of
money they are willing to give the Pentagon
to replenish Defense Department coffers
drained by recent peacekeeping and humani-
arian operations.
The Senate move came after a week of
closed-door talks with the House on a number
of defense-related issues. The talks have nar-
rowed differences between the two chambers
over U.S. aid for rehousing Russian rocket
forces residing in Ukraine and Belorussia, but
left them still divided over the House's deter-
mination to terminate the technology rein-
vestment program, a Clinton administration
initiative aimed at promoting technologies
that have defense and civilian benefits.
A final deal on the supplemental defense
appropriation measure remained stalled over
Senate insistence that most of the $2.94 bil-
lion in its new replenishment proposal be
offset by cuts in lower-priority programs
within the Pentagon's budget. The House
wants to add $3.2 billion to the Pentagon.
Republicans in both houses, responding to
the deficit-cutting climate, have been forced
for the first time in recent memory to refi-
nance the Pentagon in mid-year without wors-
ening the overall federal deficit.
House appropriators acknowledged that
in the latest version of their proposal, some
$600 million of added costs would be offset
by reductions in non-defense programs.
But they argued that it was unfair to use
military accounts to make up for costs of the
$1.5 billion operation to restore Jean-Bertrand
Aristide as president of Haiti because it was
more a foreign policy than a military mission.
The clash over a relatively small amount
of money in terms of the overall defense
budget has brought out sharp differences be-
tween the two houses and has sparked maneu-
vering between President Clinton and his pos-
sible presidential rival in 1996, Senate Major-
ity Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.).
Last week, Dole threatened not to send
the defense measure to the White House
until Democrats stopped stalling a larger
package of cuts in non-defense programs
now on the Senate floor. Administration
officials have charged Republicans with
denying the Pentagon funds needed to re-
tain military readiness.
Yesterday, Dole proposed stripping from
the defense bill a provision giving the nation
of Jordan $275 million in debt relief, and
attaching it as a rider to the spending cuts
measure.
Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) charged
Clinton was "being jacked around on the issue*
of aid to Jordan," and implied Dole was trying
to embarrass the president by putting the
Jordan aid in the big spending cuts package-
which Clinton has threatened to veto.
Researchers:
Secondhand
smoke causes
heart disease
Egypt pres. gives
Clinton promise
on nuclear treaty
CHICAGO (AP) - Nonsmokers
are much more sensitive to heart dam-
age from secondhand smoke than smok-
ers are because their bodies have not
built up defenses against the onslaught
of tobacco poisons, researchers say.
"The cardiovascular system adapts
to insults," said Stanton A. Glantz, a
professor of medicine at the Univer-
sity of California at San Francisco
and an antismoking activist.
The conclusion is not new but was
drawn from the most complete re-
view to date of studies on how sec-
ondhand smoke affects the heart and
blood vessels.
It also heightens the debate over
secondhand smoke, indicating that
even small amounts can endanger
nonsmokers. The tobacco industry
claims that the link between second-
hand smoke and heart disease is un-
proven and that, in any case, non-
smokers breathe in very little ciga-
rette smoke.
"When you take a nonsmoker who
doesn't have all this garbage in their
body, and you put a little bit of it in,
you get a big effect," Glantz said.
"Smokers are chronically poison-
ing themselves with cigarette smoke.
The smoker's cardiovascular sys-
tem has done what it can to adapt -
adding a little more doesn't make
much difference," he said.
GlantzandDr. William W. Parmley,
chief of cardiology at UCSF, pulled
together data from more than 80 previ-
ous studies. Their review is published
r in today's issue of The Journal of the
American Medical Association.
About47,000peopleayeardiefrom
heart disease caused by secondhand
smoke, and 150,000 others suffer non-
fatal heartattacks, according toan analy-
sis prepared last year for the Occupa-
tional Safety and Health Administra-
tion. An estimated 3,000 people die of
lung cancer annually because of sec-
ondhand smoke, OSHA said.
Though nonsmokers in smoky
surroundings may breathe only 1 per-
cent as much smoke as people who
puff on cigarettes, their elevated risk
of heart disease is much greater than
1 percent of smokers' added risk,
Glantz said.
"If you smoke, it about doubles or
maybe triples your risk ofheart disease.
A doubling of risk is a 100 percent
increase. If you're a passive smoker,
then your risk of heart disease goes up
about 30 percent," he said.
Walker Merryman, vice president
of the Tobacco Institute, said the pa-
per "does not represent mainstream
scientific opinion," including views
from government research agencies
and findings from large population
studies.
AP PHOTO
Police criminalist Dennis Fung points out areas at 0.J. Simpson's house where blood samples were recovered.
Ito chastises Simpson prosecution
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES-Prosecutors in
the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial
struggled on two fronts yesterday, as
Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito
chastised them for a series of errors
and an important witness admitted
under cross-examination that he had
changed elements of his testimony.
Forced to grapple with another dis-
pute in the contentious trial, an exasper-
ated Ito ordered the government team to
prepare inventories of its evidence, twice
told the jury to disregard testimony and
exhibits introduced by the prosecutors,
urged Deputy District Attorney Hank
Goldberg to apologize for his admitted
mistakes and wryly warned the govern-
ment lawyers that theirpunishment could
have been worse.
The latest evidence fights twice
interrupted testimony in the trial, first
delaying the morning session and then
forcing a brief recess in the afternoon.
While on the stand, Los Angeles Po-
lice Department criminalist Dennis
Fung testified about blood evidence
that he collected, showing the jury
more than a dozen spots and smears
that he removed from the inside of
Simpson's white Ford Bronco.
That testimony and the photo-
graphs that accompanied it offered
graphic -though bitterly disputed-
support for the prosecution's conten-
tion that Simpson committed the
slayings, fled the crime scene in his
Bronco and returned home to meet a
limousine that took him to the airport.
Simpson has pleaded not guilty to the
June 12 slayings of his former wife,
Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend
Ronald Goldman.
But while the blood drops helped
prosecutors build their case against
Simpson, defense attorneys began
to take aim at the integrity of that
Ito ordered the
government team
to prepare
inventories of its
evidence.
evidence yesterday afternoon by
sharply questioning Fung about the
role that a less experienced
criminalist named Andrea Mazzola
played in collecting much of the
evidence. The defense played a vid-
eotape of Mazzola handling differ-
ent items of evidence without chang-
ing her latex gloves, an example of
what the defense has said was sloppy
work by investigators.
Barry Scheck, a member of
Simpson's defense team, confronted
Fung with his testimony in previous
hearings and suggested that he had
omitted references to Mazzola during
those sessions because he was con-
cerned that an inexperienced
criminalist played such an important
role in such a high-profile case.
Fung denied that he had intention-
ally downplayed the importance of
Mazzola, but conceded that his testi-
mony about her role had changed
over time.
"That testimony wasn't accurate,
was it?" Scheck asked Fung at one
point.
"That I personally did all that
stuff, no," the criminalist answered.
Outside the jury's earshot, mean-
while, defense attorneys also found
support from Ito, whose rulings and
caustic remarks yesterday marred the
government's presentation. Ito be-
came progressively more irritated with
prosecution lawyers as the day pro-
gressed, especially after Goldberg
displayed an exhibit that contained
information Ito already had warned
the jury to disregard.
Earlier, Ito had chastised the pros-
ecution for failing to turn over
promptly a videotape made by police
on the day after the slayings but not
given to the defense until late last
month. Prosecutors explained that de-
lay by saying they were unaware of
the tape until recently and by explain-
ing that police only made the tape to
protect themselves in the event that
Simpson accused them of breaking
anything or stealing anything during
their search of his home.
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak, after
months of threatening to block U.S.
efforts to renew indefinitely the inter-
national pact regulating nuclear weap-
ons, pledged yesterday not to with-
draw from the treaty even if Israel
refuses to sign.
On the eve of talks with President
Clinton, Mubarak's comments, in an
interview with the Los Angeles Times,
diffused the most troublesome dis-
pute between the United States and
Egypt since before the Camp David
agreement in 1978.
Egypt had suggested it would lead
a boycott by the 22-nation Arab bloc
and other Third World countries
against indefinite renewal of the 25-
year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty and hinted that it might pull
out unless Israel, the only Middle
East nation known to have nuclear
weapons, signed on.
"We are not going to withdraw
from the NPT, that is for sure,"
Mubarak said.
He did not promise Egypt's vote
to make the treaty permanent but he
conceded that if a majority of the 171
nations that have signed the pact vote
to extend it indefinitely "it is going to
affect all countries." Aides said later
that Egypt almost certainly will vote
with the United States on the issue.
The Clinton administration has
made the permanent extension of the
NPT, which comes up for renewal at
a conference opening on April 17 at
the United Nations, the centerpiece of
its program to curb the spread of weap-
ons of mass destruction.
Although U.S. officials are be-
coming increasingly confident that
extension will command a majority,
the White House wants an over-
whelming vote to dramatize its non-
proliferation goals. The defection
of a close ally like Egypt would be
extremely embarrassing to the ad-
ministration.
Clinton, Major
settle dispute
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - President
Clinton and British Prime Minister
John Major, so estranged last month
that Major refused to take Clinton's
telephone calls, patched up their
feud over politics and personality
yesterday, declaring that the Wash-
ington-London "special relation-
ship" is alive and'well.
"Throughout this century the
United States and the United King-
dom have stood together on the great
issues that have confronted our
people,"Clinton told reporters with
Major at his side. "We have, as
always,found much to agree about."
"We've had the opportunity to-
day for agood-humored, worthwhile, 4
productive and very far-reaching se-
ries of exchanges on a whole range of
matters," Major responded.
Relations between the two men
- strained from the start because
Majorseemedto support formerPresi-
dent Bush in the 1992 election - got
much worse last month after Clinton
entertained Irish republican leader
Gerry Adams at the White House. *
The British government believes
that Adams, head of Sinn Fein, the
legal political wing of the outlawed
Irish Republican Army, has not yet
done enough to make peace in North-
ern Ireland to merit official hospital-
ity in the United States. After the St.
Patrick's Day reception, Major was
so angry that he would not return
Clinton's telephone calls, according
to sources in both countries.
The atmosphere was notimproved
when Clinton announced he would
celebrate the end of the European
phase of World War II in Moscow
next month, sending Vice President
Al Gore to a rival ceremony in Lon-
don.
Dole walks fine political line in bid for presidency
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - At 71, Bob
Dole is suddenly enjoying a second
spring.
More popular than ever in public
opinion surveys, he leads his com-
petitors for the 1996 Republican presi-
dential nomination by giddy margins
of three-to-one or more and regularly
tops President Clinton in tests of the
general election.
Once derided as a political hatchet
man for his caustic attacks, Dole's
words often sound statesmanlike now
next to militant voices such as Texas
Sen. Phil Gramm, Dole's leading ri-
val for the nomination.
And in a city polarized by the
competing visions of Clinton and
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-
Ga.) - two men stamped indelibly
by the 1960s-Dole often seems like
the adult supervision: a stoic survivor
of the World War II generation who
offers stability, balance, maturity.
"Isn't it amazing how I've become
the voice of reason in the Republican
Party?" he marveled earlier this year,
when he dropped in for a courtesy call
at a meeting of Senate Democrats.
That status is the foundation of Dole's
strength in the polls. It is also his
potential Achilles' heel.
After last fall's historic victory,
much of the GOP's activist core -
the partisans who largely will deter-
U U
mine the choice of next year's nomi-
nee - are looking for a leader who
will be unreasonable, in the sense that
he rejects accepted wisdom about the
scope of "reasonable" retrenchment
of the federal gov-
ernment.
Dole, who
sparred regularlyI
with the party's
most conservative
elements over the
past 15 years,
bends toward that
current now -
sharpening his op- S<
position to affirma- Dole
tive action, hiring
campaign organizers from the Chris-
tian Coalition and promising the Na-
tional Rifle Association that he will
attempt to repeal the ban on assault
weapons that Congress narrowly ap-
proved last year.
Those gestures to conservatives
ultimately could endanger Dole's
standing with the centrist voters who
will decide the general election. At
the same time, even these signals may
not be sufficient to suppress lingering
suspicion of Dole on the right during
the primaries.
Since Bush's defeat, Dole has
emerged as the leading Republican
voice on foreign policy, promoting a
neo-Nixonian vision of hard-headed
self-interest as the basis of America's
engagement with the world and
sharply criticizing Clinton for relying 4
too much on the United Nations.
When Clinton took office, many
conservatives feared - and some in
the White House hoped - that Dole
might be willing to meet the new
president in the center. Instead, Dole
quickly carved out a position of in-
tense partisan resistance, beginning
with the successful filibuster early in
1993 that killed Clinton's economic
stimulus plan. Ignoring Democratic
efforts to paint him as an obstruction-
ist; Dole led an ever-hardening GOP
opposition that doomed some of
Clinton's major initiatives in 1994,
from lobbying reform to health care.
Dole heads toward the formal an-
nouncementofhis candidacy on April
10 as the man on the tightrope: He
stands far above everyone else, but
must walk an exceedingly narrow line.
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