The week's big news, and how's it's being spun.
Aug. 10 1997 3:30 AM

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Sen. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., shook up the Helms-Weld confirmation war by taking the tobacco industry hostage. Lugar, whose Agriculture Committee will soon take up tobacco price supports and the proposed liability settlement, indicated that he could make trouble for Helms' home-state industry if Helms persists in denying ambassadorial nominee Bill Weld a hearing. The prevailing spin in the media has been that Helms will win, as always, because no one ever resists him with equal determination. Lugar has suggested that he's ready to disprove that assumption. (Check out Slate's "Assessment" of Weld. And for more on Weld vs. Helms, see the "Frame Game.") (8/8)

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A woman in North Carolina won a $1 million civil judgment against her ex-husband's secretary-turned-mistress-turned-wife for wrecking her marriage. Jurors agreed that the secretary had seduced the husband (her boss), who then divorced his wife (with whom he had three kids) and married the secretary. The suit was based on an old North Carolina law allowing legal recourse for adultery. Locals predict a wave of copycat suits. Conservatives hailed the award as a blow for family values--prompting liberals to accuse them of divorcing their anti-government philosophy and shacking up with lawyer-driven social engineering. (8/8)

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Science news: Researchers have figured out the cause of Huntington's disease and other brain disorders: excess proteins "bunched up into a huge ball of crud" inside brain-cell nuclei. The upshot is that treatments can be devised to dissolve the crud, though it may take years to develop them. Meanwhile, a Wisconsin company announced a new cloning technique that it says has already replicated 10 cows. Skeptics noted that the offspring are still in the womb, and that the company shouldn't count its calves before they hatch. The company said it hoped the news would promote its IPO. (8/8)

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A convicted child molester in Ohio was raped and tortured by his wife and his mother-in-law. According to police, the two women, along with the wife's aunt, entered the man's home, wrestled him to the ground, bound him, cut off his pants and underwear, shaved his pubic hair and his scalp, "assaulted him anally with a cucumber," applied a heat-generating lotion to his genitals, wrote "I am a child molester" on various parts of his body, drove him 70 miles to his hometown, and left him there wearing nothing but a pink-and-green Minnie Mouse blanket. The wife has pleaded innocent to rape and kidnapping charges by reason of insanity. (8/8)

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Cyberhell has frozen over: Apple and Microsoft are partners. Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple, promised not to sell its shares for three years, and agreed to produce Office software for Macs. Apple agreed to make Microsoft's Internet Explorer the Mac's preferred browser. To make things even stranger, Apple appointed Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (one of Microsoft's sharpest critics) to its board. Microsoft has achieved such an aura of diabolical genius that reporters, who initially focused on the deal's benefits to Apple, spent the next two days developing theories as to why Microsoft is really the big winner. Best theory: Microsoft is propping up Apple as a putative competitor in order to avoid a far more expensive antitrust suit by the feds. (8/8)

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A Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed in Guam, killing 227 people. Best available explanation: It was a dark and rainy night. Other than that, nobody can discern what went wrong. Reporters groped for a larger issue--terrorism, the Korean conflict, Korean Air's history (KAL 007), and Boeing's (TWA 800)--and came up empty. (8/8)

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Sports in courts: Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer was arrested for carrying a loaded, unlicensed handgun into an airport. Switzer claimed he had put the gun in his travel bag to keep it away from the children at his home and then forgotten about it. The New York Times, referring to owner Jerry Jones' "K.G.B." tactic of using dorm-room surveillance cameras to enforce player curfews during training camp, sneered that Switzer's arrest shows "it is not that easy to change the culture of a lawless team." Virginia police arrested basketball star Allen Iverson on narcotics and gun charges after catching him riding in a car that was going 93 miles per hour. Broadcaster Marv Albert's name and former phone number were found in the address book of a murdered dominatrix. A police source said Albert is not thought to be involved in the woman's death, but didn't say whether or how he was involved in her life. Two National Basketball Association referees have pleaded guilty to filing false tax returns. (8/6)

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Straws in the wind: Several cities are considering plans to bottle and sell their tap water. They figure they can make money at it, since their water is just as good as bottled water (filtered tap water already accounts for 35 percent of bottled water sold in the United States) and, "for whatever reason, people seem to like to get their water out of bottles." The New York Times reports that the new fashion statement in Shanghai is wearing pajamas outdoors. Explains one enthusiast: "Comfort, No. 1. Convenience, No. 2. Looks, No. 3." (No. 4: Showing the neighbors "you don't care what they think.") The Los Angeles Times reports that more and more prisons are billing inmates for room and board, complete with automatic debits and collection agencies for delinquent parolees. (8/6)

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Yasser Arafat is taking the rap for last week's suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Evidence reportedly implicates Hamas in the bombing, and Arafat has condemned it. Nevertheless, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blaming him for making incendiary remarks and failing to cooperate fully on security issues. Israel has now sealed off Palestinian territory, cut off Arafat's tax revenue, and threatened to stop honoring its agreements with Arafat. Meanwhile, almost every minister in Arafat's cabinet offered to resign to appease Palestinians angry over stories of corruption in his government. The New York Times' Tom Friedman concluded that Arafat has been a reckless fool, his folly equaled only by Netanyahu's. (For a backgrounder on Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, see the "Gist.") (8/4)

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The naked and the dead: Beat Generation writer William S. Burroughs died at 83, proving that drugs kill. Obituaries rehashed the culture war over whether his seminal work, Naked Lunch, was incisive or crude, mind-expanding or meandering, revolutionary or revolting. The New York Times noted that in later years Burroughs had given up his life of heroin, prowling, and pedophilia to indulge quieter interests "in painting and photography and in collecting and discharging firearms." (Also see Slate's "Summary Judgment.") The world's oldest person, Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, died at 122. Her putative secrets to longevity: port wine and olive oil. (8/4)

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New York City is on edge over domestic terrorism. A bomb scare forced the evacuation of the World Trade Center on Aug. 4, the opening day of the trial of two Middle Eastern men for the 1993 Trade Center bombing. Meanwhile, investigators have found no evidence linking the alleged Brooklyn suicide-bombing ring (discovered last week) to Arab terrorist groups. The prevailing spin on the Brooklyn bombers is that immigration authorities were reckless to have let the ringleader roam free in the United States--since Israel had named him as a Hamas member--and the cops are heroes for nabbing him. Hamas denied any link to the Brooklyn ring, lest it alienate its American sponsors. (8/4)

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The Teamsters began their long-anticipated strike against United Parcel Service. The key issue is the company's practice of hiring part-time workers at half the hourly wage it pays full-timers. Analysts predicted economic chaos, since UPS has 80 percent of the package ground-transportation business, and its competitors aren't big enough to pick up the slack. (8/4)

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Critics of the Clinton-GOP budget deal have found a new cause for outrage: an amendment that lets tobacco companies deduct new cigarette-tax revenues from their proposed $368 billion liability settlement. Tobacco opponents were already upset that negotiators had cut the new tax in half. Nobody seems to know how the amendment got there. The prevailing spin is that this bodes well for the tobacco industry as Congress considers the settlement proposal, since it shows how wily and powerful the industry still is. The backspin is that it bodes ill, by reminding lawmakers how wily and untrustworthy the industry still is. This supplants the previous criticism of the budget deal: that it loots today's economic surplus instead of addressing tomorrow's solvency crisis in retirement programs. (8/4)

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Miscellany: Newsweek says that a former White House aide says that another former White House aide told her that President Clinton made passes at her in the White House. The woman at whom the passes were allegedly allegedly allegedly made allegedly didn't consider them harassment and allegedly doesn't consider them relevant to the case of Paula Jones, whose lawyers have subpoenaed her. JonBenet Ramsey's parents took out a newspaper ad displaying parts of the ransom note found after her disappearance and asking readers if they recognize the handwriting. Vanity Fair reports that New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has wrecked his marriage by having an affair with his 32-year-old spokeswoman. Giuliani issued a denial. His wife issued a non-denial. (8/6)