The Week June 19-25

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NATION

Health-Care Maneuvers

With the Senate Finance Committee looming as perhaps the decisive hurdle for a health-care bill, a bipartisan group of committee centrists Friday offered a compromise plan for insurance reforms and for a special commission authorized to recommend further action if 95% of Americans are not covered by 2002. Notably omitted: President Clinton's requirement that employers pay most insurance costs. Earlier in the week, President Clinton vowed not to yield on his goal of universal health coverage.

Simpson Pleads Not Guilty

Looking grim and disoriented, O.J. Simpson pleaded not guilty to charges that he stabbed to death his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Controversy continued as authorities released dramatic audiotapes of an emergency 911 call made by Nicole Simpson to police in October, reporting her ex-husband's break-in at her home. In a twist at week's end, a judge aborted a grand jury investigation of the case for fear that swelling publicity might have influenced panel members, and channeled the proceedings to an open hearing instead.

Independent-Counsel Law

The House passed and sent to the President for his expected signature a renewal of the law authorizing an independent counsel to investigate accusations of wrongdoing by top federal officials. The law, which lapsed in 1992 because of Republican opposition, will probably be used to reappoint Whitewater special counsel Robert Fiske, first named by Attorney General Janet Reno. One feature of the measure offers good news for the President, who has been pondering setting up a legal-defense fund to meet his mounting bills: it authorizes reimbursement of some legal fees for those under investigation.

Supreme Court Decisions

Approaching the end of its term, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a flurry of decisions, among them a ruling requiring governments to better justify an actions that amounts to the taking of private property. The Justices also agreed to decide next term the politically potent question of whether states can impose term limits on their representatives in Congress.

Air-Base Tragedies

An airman discharged for psychiatric reasons came back to Fairchild Air Force Base in Washington State armed with an MAK-90 assault rifle. The gunman, identified as Dean Mellberg, killed four people and wounded 23 in the base hospital before being shot to death by a military policeman. Four days later another tragedy befell the base when a B-52 crashed, killing the four people on board.

Who Gets Raped

Releasing the shocking results of a study covering 11 states and the District of Columbia, the Justice Department disclosed that about half the victims of rapes reported to police in 1992 were girls younger than 18, and that about 1 in six was under 12. Most of the girls, the study found, were raped by relatives or friends.

Smoking Bombshell