NATION
A Deal with Cuba?
As U.S. and Cuban diplomats began talks in New York City on migration issues, more Cubans boarded jerry-built boats to flee starvation in their homeland. Washington proposed an agreement under which the U.S. would accept some 20,000 legal immigrants annually (up from about 2,700 last year). In return, Fidel Castro's regime would take further steps to deter unsafe rafters from departing Cuba. The 16,000 Cubans now at Guantanamo naval base would have to take their place on a waiting list, meaning they would not enter the U.S. for many years.
U.S. Beefs Up Haiti Threats
Faced with an increasingly defiant military government in Haiti, the Clinton Administration declared an American-led invasion all but certain. Four Caribbean countries -- Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago -- have promised to contribute a grand total of 266 support troops to a "multi-national" invasion force. Earlier in the week, the Rev. Jean-Marie Vincent, a prominent supporter of the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the exiled President, was assassinated, the first priest killed since the military took over in 1991.
Duffer's Paradise
Ending a bruising summer with a long-delayed vacation on Martha's Vineyard, President Clinton turned his attention to important, ego-satisfying goals in life, like getting his golf score under 80. He got as close as 82, and spent the rest of the week resting with his family and having dinner with superlawyer Vernon Jordan, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and novelist William Styron.
Trial for AWACS Crew?
A board of Air Force officers recommended that members of the AWACS radar plane involved in last April's shooting down of two U.S. Army helicopters over Iraq be court-martialed for dereliction of duty. A Defense Department study found that the AWACS crew failed to warn U.S. fighter pilots that the helicopters were American Black Hawks, not Iraqi aircraft. Twenty-six U.S. and foreign personnel were killed in the incident. An Air Force general must now decide whether the crew will stand trial.
The Cost of Harassment
The price of sexual harassment jumped sharply as a San Francisco jury ordered Baker & McKenzie, the world's largest law firm, to pay Rena Weeks, who worked in 1991 as a secretary at the firm, $6.9 million in punitive damages in a harassment suit. Weeks accused Martin Greenstein, a former Baker & McKenzie partner, of dropping candies in a pocket of her blouse, groping her breasts and making lewd remarks. The jury found that the firm had failed to take action to stop his behavior. Baker & McKenzie denounced the award as "grossly disproportionate to the compensatory damages awarded to the plaintiff," a mere $50,000.
World War II Revisited
The Smithsonian Institution succumbed to mounting criticism from Congress, veterans and historians and announced it would revise its planned exhibit commemorating the 50th anniversary next year of the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Originally focused narrowly on the bombings, which killed more than 200,000 Japanese, the exhibit will now cover Japan's aggression during World War II and factors that influenced the decision to drop the Bomb, including U.S. military leaders' belief that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would leave hundreds of thousands of dead on both sides.