The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post leads continue reports on the Capitol shootings while digging deeper into the gunman’s troubled past. The New York Times leads with Ken Starr’s latest gift for the President: a Federal grand jury subpoena.
The WP describes Russell “Rusty” Weston Jr. as a mentally disturbed loner who, when not panning for gold in Montana streams, raved about his ties to the Kennedys and being betrayed by President Clinton. The LAT reports that the wounded gunman, who has a “50-50” chance of survival, has been charged with murder and could receive the death penalty. Both papers note the reopening of the Capitol the day after the shootings. The LAT alone specifies the shooter’s mental illness as paranoid schizophrenia.
The NYT confirms that President Clinton has been subpoenaed to appear before a Federal grand jury–a first ever for a sitting President. Lawyers continue negotiating to avoid subjecting Clinton, sans attorney, to jurors’ questions. While legal scholars can’t agree whether Clinton can be forced to testify, certain House Democrats have agreed publicly that the President should answer the grand jury’s inquiries well before November elections.
Plans to arrest Bosnia’s two most wanted war criminals have been scrapped, according to a NYT front page piece. Cold-footed French officials and fear that arrests would provoke further Serbian aggression undermined the 2 years and over $100 million spent on training and surveillance in prepararation for the roundup. The NYT does not explain why millions of dollars were needed to track two men later described as easy to find.
A WP front page story reports on the acknowledgment of former South African ‘coloreds’ that they are indeed black. Many apartheid-era blacks claimed mixed ancestry in order to avoid more severe restrictions, often changing family names and falsifying birth records. Cynics cite the opportune timing of coloreds’ rediscovered blackness now that the black-majority government has instituted policies helping those who faired worst under apartheid.
The WP takes a look at exploited immigrant high tech workers on its front. U.S. companies that sponsor temporary visas for foreign workers can pay them less and work them harder. The workers need new visas to change jobs and face stiff fines for doing so. Moreover, companies dangle green cards in front of employees working under the federally legislated $65,000 salary cap just to keep them honest.
The always AIDS-conscious NYT reports on a new U.N. dilemma: whether to advise mothers infected with the AIDS virus to stop breast-feeding. Cultural and medical considerations include fears that non-infected mothers will discontinue breast-feeding and the danger of formula mixed under unsanitary conditions. U.N. statistics show that more than a quarter of mother-to-child transmissions of the HIV virus occur from breast-feeding.
A NYT Week in Review piece questions the wisdom of recent attempts to align the values of the military with the rest of society. One defender of separate military culture opines, “We shouldn’t be running the military like a college campus.” Today’s Papers wonders if an inner-city high school might prove a more effective model.
