The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.
Jan. 19 1997 3:30 AM

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Abortion-clinic bombing Just as pro-choice activists in Washington were announcing a decline in abortion-clinic violence, two bombs exploded at an Atlanta clinic, gutting two rooms and injuring seven people. Investigators and reporters focused their outrage on the second bomb, which detonated 45 minutes after the first, wounding investigators and reporters who had arrived in response to the first explosion. Law-enforcement authorities cited the delayed bomb as a classic terrorist technique used by the Irish Republican Army and Middle Eastern groups to kill investigators. The two fears are: 1) This technique may become more common in America and 2) More clinics may be attacked as the Jan. 22 anniversary of Roe vs. Wade approaches. On the other hand, the vocal consensus against such violence seems to be broadening: Speaker Newt Gingrich, Operation Rescue, and the National Right to Life Committee joined President Clinton in denouncing the attack. (1/17)
A team of astrophysicists issued a new theory on the fate of the universe. The good news: It won't collapse back into an infinitely dense speck of matter. The bad news: It will scatter into an infinitely diffuse, pitch-black expanse of nothingness. All the visible lights will go out in 100 trillion years, then all the cinders will burn out in 10 trillion trillion trillion years, then all the remaining black holes will decompose into subatomic particles in 10,000 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years. Commentators seemed in no hurry to assess the outlook. (1/17)
Murder scene Bill Cosby's only son was shot dead while changing a tire alongside a freeway in an upscale section of Los Angeles. Leads on the killer were slim. The apparently random slaying, possibly during a robbery attempt, shocked everyone and was a top story on newspaper front pages and the network television news. (1/17)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat finally signed an agreement to withdraw Israeli troops from Hebron, including an Israeli commitment to turn over large rural parts of the West Bank next year. Analysts agreed that with this deal, Netanyahu has abandoned and killed right-wing dreams of a Greater Israel. Optimists who favor the agreement say he now has a firm stake in the peace process and may be able to secure the commitment to it of half of his Likud coalition--reasonable hawks and "soccer moms," who want a peace agreement with some guarantees of security. But the New York Times' Thomas Friedman warns that Netanyahu has been forced into the deal by domestic political considerations, and still has a "highly dysfunctional relationship" with Arafat. Israeli right-wingers have begun denouncing Netanyahu as a weak-kneed politician who caved in to American pressure. A majority of Likud Cabinet members supported the deal, however, lest Netanyahu end up forming a coalition with the Labor Party. The measure passed by a lopsided vote in the Israeli Parliament, clearing the way for the handover Friday morning of Hebron's military headquarters and the beginning of the withdrawal of most Israeli troops. (1/17)
Jim McDermott Update on the Newt Gingrich ethics melee: First, Democrats accused Gingrich of violating an agreement with the House Ethics Committee by plotting a damage-control campaign in a conference call. Then, Republicans accused Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., of committing a felony by leaking the surreptitiously recorded call to the press. And now, McDermott has recused himself from the committee, and is accusing its Republican chairwoman of squelching the tape and violating House rules by passing it on to the Justice Department (for criminal investigation) without a vote of the entire House. (1/15)
Two of the four women who enrolled at the Citadel this year have quit, claiming sexual harassment and abuse. Among their allegations: Senior cadets set them on fire, filled their mouths with cleanser, and rubbed up against one of them sexually. Citadel officials, while suspending two cadets and disciplining nine others in the case, defend themselves by pointing out that male freshmen are similarly abused. (The school's defenders have often argued that pain and humiliation help cadets bond into a unit.) Critics seem increasingly persuaded that the Citadel's institutionalized sadism transcends gender--which, in their view, makes it all the more revolting. (1/15)
The Food and Drug Administration is proposing to ban Seldane, one of the world's most popular allergy medicines. The drug's rare lethal side effects (heart failure, caused when Seldane is combined with other drugs and pre-existing health problems) have been known for years, but the agency is only now moving to prohibit it, because acceptable alternatives are only just becoming available. Conservatives have complained for years that people die because the FDA acts too slowly in approving new drugs; now the Seldane case is prompting liberals to complain that people die because the FDA acts too slowly in removing unsafe drugs. (1/15)
Dick Morris' book on the Clinton White House and re-election campaign has been released. Initial reports stress that Morris, while nominally acknowledging Clinton as "the mind behind the victory," takes credit for nearly everything Clinton accomplished. George Stephanopoulos joked that Morris seems to think he's Forrest Gump. The New York Times marveled at Morris' "breathtaking bluster"; the Washington Post called it "a 359-page leak." The media yawned that the book breaks no real news, since it doesn't get into Clinton's scandals. A few commentators argued that the real scandal is the incessant, poll-driven image-manipulation that Morris details between himself and Clinton. The Times' Maureen Dowd said "the lesson of the book is that the presidency has been corrupted and even ruined by quantitative thinking."(1/13)
Paula Jones The Supreme Court heard arguments over Paula Jones' sexual-harassment suit against President Clinton. At issue is whether the president should be immune from civil suits during his term. Previews agreed that 1) Jones has a pretty good case after all; 2) The media have shortchanged her through a combination of political bias (her ties to conservative groups and opposition to a Democratic president) and cultural bias (her lower-class trappings); 3) Stuart Taylor Jr. of the American Lawyer gets the credit for substantiating her case and persuading liberal journalists that it's OK to defend her; and 4) The Court will probably let her lawyers take depositions, but won't let the trial begin while Clinton is still in office. Feminists and conservative women's groups dredged up the Clarence Thomas case and rehashed their mutual charges of hypocrisy. (1/13)
Germany and Hollywood are at war over alleged German persecution of Scientologists. German institutions reportedly have excluded Scientologists from bank accounts, some state jobs, and membership in some parties, on the theory that Scientology is really a cult, an extremist group, an organized-crime syndicate, or a business--not a legitimate church. The interior minister wants state surveillance of the church, and a youth wing of the ruling party tried to stir up a boycott against the movie Mission Impossible because Tom Cruise is a Scientologist. A number of non-Scientologist celebrities, including Larry King, Dustin Hoffman, and Goldie Hawn, sent Chancellor Helmut Kohl an open letter comparing Germany's treatment of the Scientologists to its early measures against Jews in the 1930s. Kohl and other German officials fired back, calling the comparison ignorant and tasteless. (1/13)
Jacksonville Jaguar vs. New England Patriot The Green Bay Packers and New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers and Jacksonville Jaguars, respectively, to win berths in the Super Bowl. Last week's celebration of the upstart expansion teams was replaced by this week's relief that the upstarts had at last been dispatched--"finally bringing some semblance of order to the NFL playoffs," according to the Washington Post. Commentators applauded the Packers for resurrecting the old-fashioned values of the Vince Lombardi era, crediting their victory to a smash-mouth running game that would have made Lombardi proud and ignoring statistics that showed the Packers gained most of their yards through the air. (1/13)
O.J. Simpson took the stand again in his wrongful-death civil trial. Prompted by his attorney, Simpson came across as charming and good-humored. Pundits agreed that the evidence is now stacked against him (e.g., numerous photos show him wearing Bruno Magli shoes), and that the outcome will depend upon Simpson's success in convincing the jury he is too nice a guy to have murdered his wife. (1/13)
The mystery of the month is who killed JonBenet Ramsey. The 6-year-old beauty-pageant starlet was sexually assaulted and strangled in her Colorado home Christmas night; her skull was fractured and her mouth sealed with duct tape. Police haven't named JonBenet's parents--a prominent businessman and a former Miss West Virginia--as suspects, even though they were alone with her and her brother in the house that night, have refused to be interrogated by police, and have hired separate attorneys and a media consultant. (On the other hand, several other people reportedly had keys to the house.) The parents have hired a private eye and announced a $50,000 bounty for the killer's capture. Foreign reporters are flocking to Colorado; the local police chief has accused outsiders of "a sick curiosity" in the case. Theories on whodunit boil down to three analogies: Susan Smith (the parents are guilty and will be caught despite their attempts to plant false leads), O.J. Simpson (they're guilty, but it will never be proven), and Richard Jewell (they're innocent and are being crucified by stubborn cops and pack journalists). The latest spin is that the mother's obsessive orchestration of JonBenet's sultry career in the kiddie-pageant circuit is enthrallingly sick, even if it has nothing to do with the murder. (1/11)

--Compiled by William Saletan and the editors of SLATE.

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Photograph of abortion-clinic bombing aftermath by John Spink/Reuters; photograph of Cosby murder aftermath by Fred Prouser/Reuters; photograph of Jim McDermott by Dan DeLong/Reuters; photograph of Paula Jones by Bruce Young/Reuters; photograph of New England Patriots beating the Jacksonville Jaguars by Gary Hershorn/Reuters