News Digest May 23-29

By Sidney Urquhart, Richard Zoglin, Michael D. Lemonick, Christopher John Farley, Ginia Bellafante, Tom Curry, Michael Quinn

NATION

In a narrow but critical victory for President Clinton's economic plan, the House passed his deficit-reduction package of tax increases and spending cuts in a 219-213 vote. After frenzied eleventh-hour lobbying, the White House persuaded just enough Democrats to support the program, which is intended to reduce the deficit $500 billion over five years. The House was supposed to be the easy chamber for Clinton; the battle there suggests that the struggle for passage in the Senate may be all the more ferocious.

Moving to shore up his shaky White House staff, Clinton hired former Reagan communications chief David Gergen and transferred George Stephanopoulos to a new post. Gergen, a Republican, is expected to become Clinton's new spokesman. The shift came at the end of a week in which the White House tried to recover from a string of political gaffes. After dismissing seven travel-office workers for alleged mismanagement and then inappropriately calling in the FBI, the White House reinstated five of them within days. The President also denied charges that his Administration has "gone Hollywood" and apologized for tying up traffic at the Los Angeles airport to get a haircut. "I'm glad nobody found out about the manicure," he joked.

Ross Perot didn't help the President's week, declaring in a TV interview that Clinton is too inexperienced to run the government. If he came looking for work, Perot said, "you wouldn't consider giving him a job anywhere above middle management."

Clinton signaled that he was ready to soften his position on officially allowing gays in the military. Homosexuals should be allowed to serve, he said, as long as they keep their sexual lives private, so that the government "does not appear to be endorsing a gay life-style."

Steering a middle course on another controversial issue, Clinton renewed China's most-favored-nation trade status for another year. But he said further annual renewals would be contingent on the country's improving its human- rights record.

Private papers of late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall were made public, offering a singular glimpse of behind-the-scenes maneuvering over court decisions on abortion and homosexual rights. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, speaking for a majority of the Justices, denounced the Library of Congress for making the material available, claiming it damages the court's "long tradition of confidentiality." But Librarian James Billington said he was simply carrying out Marshall's wishes.

Despite opposition from conservatives, the Senate voted to confirm Roberta Achtenberg to head the fair-housing office in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She's the first open lesbian ever appointed to such a high federal post.

Naval Airman Terry Helvey was sentenced to life in prison for beating a gay shipmate to death. Helvey, who pleaded guilty, denied in court that the victim's homosexuality was a motive, but documents released after the trial indicated Helvey's longstanding ill will against the gay sailor.

A Louisiana man was acquitted of manslaughter in the shooting death of a Japanese exchange student who came to his front door by mistake. Rodney Peairs said he mistook Yoshihiro Hattori for a burglar when the youth ran toward him. The verdict provoked an outcry in Japan.

Six black Secret Service agents filed a race-discrimination suit against Denny's, claiming that they waited 45 minutes for breakfast at an Annapolis, Maryland, restaurant while their white colleagues were served in 10 minutes. The company called it a "service issue," but agreed to randomly check restaurants to ensure that they treat blacks fairly.

Former President Bush made his first speech for hire since leaving office. Calling his talk a "therapeutic confessional," he earned $80,000 from the National Restaurant Association.

WORLD

Yet another plan to end the war in Bosnia, agreed on by the U.S., Russia and several European allies, is in trouble. It would have created Muslim safe havens protected by U.N. forces and U.S. air power to enforce the peace. But critics at the U.N. argued that the plan failed to authorize military force to roll back territorial gains by the Bosnian Serbs.

In hopes of defusing neo-Nazi violence, Germany's parliament voted overwhelmingly to tighten the country's liberal immigration laws, which had allowed about 1,000 foreigners to enter Germany each day. Despite the vote, suspicious fires broke out in several buildings housing refugees. One blaze killed five Turks, including two young girls, and injured 14.

Florence's extraordinary Galleria degli Uffizi was rocked by a car bomb that also killed five people. The blast destroyed or damaged many works of art, including an important painting by the Venetian master Sebastiano del Piombo. "This was an attack in the style of the Mafia," said an Italian organized-crime investigator.

Ireland's President, Mary Robinson, had a private tea with Queen Elizabeth. It's the first time an Irish chief of state has met with a British monarch since the founding of the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

British Prime Minister John Major fired his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, and shuffled other ministers in an effort to recapture public confidence. Lamont was blamed for driving down the value of the pound.

After threatening to sabotage U.N.-sponsored Cambodian elections, the Khmer Rouge allowed the vote to proceed unimpeded -- and even bused people to the polls. The guerrillas may have reasoned that the election was the best way to dispose of their enemies, the country's pro-Vietnamese ruling party. Pressure from their longtime sponsors, the Chinese, may also have had a pacifying effect.

Guatemalans took to the streets to protest erstwhile reformist President Jorge Serrano Elias' seizure of power and dismissal of the country's supreme court. The court declared his actions illegal, and the U.S. cut off most aid.

One of Mexico's two Roman Catholic Cardinals, Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo, was killed in Guadalajara along with six others when assassins loyal to a local drug lord apparently mistook him for a rival trafficker.

) France expects to clear billions of dollars in a sell-off of 21 large state- owned companies, including Renault and Air France.

BUSINESS

Growth in GDP during the first quarter was a meager 0.9%, the weakest since 1991.

Three rival electronics consortiums agreed to combine forces in a single megaconsortium to produce a high-definition television system that will significantly improve the quality of TV picture and sound. The collaboration ends a drawn-out competition between different technical approaches and makes it possible that HDTV will be generally available as early as 1995.

Seagram, the Canadian liquor and beverage company, acquired a 5.7% stake in Time Warner, the entertainment and media company, and sought approval to purchase up to 15%. Seagram said its investment was friendly.

Microsoft introduced its feverishly anticipated and much delayed new Windows NT operating system, which can run expansive networks of personal computers as easily as the original Windows system operates individual PCs.

SCIENCE

The true edge of the solar system is a zone far beyond Pluto where charged particles from the sun meet the cold gas between the stars. NASA scientists believe they have finally found it, by means of the twin Voyager space probes; it is between 8.4 billion and 11.2 billion miles from the sun, or at least three times as far away from Earth as Neptune, currently the most distant planet.

Princeton University physicist J. Richard Gott has used standard assumptions about the statistics of populations to calculate that there is a 95% chance that humanity will become extinct somewhere between 5,100 and 7.8 million years from now.