THE WEEK

NATION

PLEASE GIVE IN--OR ELSE!

President Clinton and his Republican opponents all went on the rhetorical offensive after G.O.P. congressional leaders canceled the latest set of budget talks at the White House. The two parties appeared to be preparing for the possibility that no budget deal will be reached.

HILLARY'S TRAVAILS

In the Senate, White House aide Carolyn Huber explained that she had indeed discovered Hillary Rodham Clinton's long-sought law-firm billing records--but only after the records unexpectedly turned up on a table in the book room of the White House residence. That prompted Republicans to pounce and say they would seek further information. Earlier, former presidential aide David Watkins told a House committee that it was he, and not the First Lady, who ordered the controversial 1993 firings of White House travel employees. He did concede, however, that he felt pressure coming from Mrs. Clinton.

WHITHER THE MIDDLE?

Republican Senator William Cohen of Maine, a member of the Senate's vanishing moderate wing, announced he would not seek re-election this year--the 13th Senator to do so. Cohen attributed his decision to the current budget stalemate, prompting the White House to express concern over the political center's "capacity to govern." In the House of Representatives, meanwhile, the retirement list grew to 35, when Pennsylvania's William Clinger said he would quit.

THE SHEIK IS SENTENCED

The nation's biggest terrorism trial ended with a lengthy harangue from Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman castigating the U.S. as the "enemy of Islam"--and a federal judge's imposition of a life sentence on him for his role in the plot to bomb major New York City landmarks. The nine co-defendants, who were convicted with the Sheik last October, received sentences ranging from 25 years to life. The judge said if the plan had been carried out, it would have caused "devastation on a scale not seen in this country since the Civil War."

GOTCHA!

Mexican authorities arrested and promptly deported to the U.S. Juan Garcia Abrego, one of the hemisphere's top suspected drug lords. Garcia Abrego, whom the FBI had placed on its 10-most-wanted list, faces trial in Houston on charges of running one of the region's most powerful cocaine operations. Authorities say his group is notorious for both its murderousness and its capacity for dispensing bribes. The U.S. hailed the Mexican action as sign of increasing drug cooperation.

FROM DEATH TO LIFE

She would have become the second woman executed in the U.S. since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, but hours before Guinevere Garcia's scheduled lethal injection, Illinois Governor Jim Edgar commuted her sentence to life in prison without parole. Edgar said he acted not because of Garcia's troubled background but because the case was one in which the punishment did not fit Garcia's 1991 crime of having killed her husband during a botched robbery.

PARENTS' WORST NIGHTMARE

Four days after a witness said he saw nine-year-old Amber Hagerman being seized screaming from her bicycle by a stranger in a black pickup truck, a man walking his dog found the child's nude, lifeless body floating in a nearby creek, her throat cut. Police in Arlington, Texas, are investigating all leads.

O.J.: DOUBLE EXPOSURE