|
 |
|
|
An index of the day's stories: CLONING -- Jacki talks with NPR science correspondent Joe Palca about human cloning. Yesterday, NPR reported that a Chicago-area scientist plans to open at least one, and maybe many, Human Clone Clinics. Richard Seed says he could begin cloning within 90 days. Critics of the announcement included President Clinton, who wants the procedure banned. Palca explains how Seed could achieve his goal. (5:30) OTHER STORIES -- Other stories we're following today: Tobacco & Justice and Child Care. (1:00) XAVIER SUAREZ -- NPR's Cheryl Devall reports on the controversies swirling around Miami's new mayor. In the 2 months since he was elected, Xavier Suarez has dismissed 2 city managers, tried to have the city's police chief and 70 other city employees fired, and fought continually with the state oversight board over the city's financial crisis. He's also begun a feud with the city's leading newspaper, the Miami Herald, over what he says is unfair coverage of him and his administration. (4:30) CELLPHONE DRIVING -- The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration released a report today on the hazards of wireless communications devices in cars. The report said using cellphones while driving is dangerous, and pointed out other devices that may be even worse -- such as laptops. NPR's Steve Inskeep reports. (3:00) TOBACCO & JUSTICE -- Dan Charles reports that a California biotechnology company, DNA Plant Technology Corporation (DNAP) of Oakland, California, today agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to violate the Tobacco Seed Export Law. This law prohibited the export of tobacco seed without a permit up until 1991. The Justice Department says exports of seed to Brazil and other foreign countries took place between 1984 and 1991 as part of an effort to perfect and grow for commerical purposes a high-nicotine strain of tobacco, something prohibited in the U.S. Although the court documents filed today do not name a specific tobacco company as the partner of DNAP, press accounts and testimony to Congress by FDA officials have linked the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation with attempts to develop a high-nicotine tobacco, dubbed Y-1. This was the first charge filed in the Justice Department's broad investigation of the tobacco industry. DNAP has agreed to cooperate with the investigation. (4:00) CHILD CARE -- President Clinton is proposing a 21 billion dollar plan to help working families bear the cost of child care. A key part of the package would subsidize care for two million children over five years, through a block grant to states. Mr Clinton also would expand eligibility from "welfare-to-work" families to lower-income workers as well. NPR's Mara Liasson reports. (4:00) AVOIDING FOREIGN POLICY -- NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr says that unlike his predecessors, President Clinton has decided to focus on easier domestic issues, rather than the more complex foreign ones, in his second term. (3:00) JOINT EXERCISES -- NPR's Eric Weiner reports. Off the coast of Israel today, warships from the U.S., Turkey and Israel conducted a search and rescue exercise. Officials from the three countries described the maneuvers, the first of their kind, as 'humanitarian'. But Iran and several Arab countries view them with alarm and have sharply criticized the exercise, which they see as part of a growing military alliance between Israel and Turkey that the Arab countries and Iran see as a threat. (4:00) KITCHEN TABLE FEATURE -- The kitchen table was a fixture in commentator Marianne Jennings's childhood home. It was a beacon of support and warmth, and also the site of discipline and accountability. She worries about those children who never eat dinner witg their families, and end up growing up without the kitchen table as a source of stability. (3:30) CHIAPAS -- NPR's Phillip Davis reports from Mexico City that the governor of the southern Mexican state of Chiapas submitted his resignation today. Governor Julio Cesar Ruiz Ferro did not give a reason, but he has come under fire for failing to prevent last month's massacre of forty-five people in a Chiapas village. Critics say his office ignored warnings about the attack. Some have accused his administration of funding paramilitary groups like the one suspected of carrying out the massacre. (2:00) BOTHA -- Jacki talks to NPR's Charlayne Hunter-Gault about today's announcement in South Africa that former President P-W Botha will be prosecuted for refusing to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Commission wants Botha to tell what he knew about killings, bombings and torture carried out by his security forces while he ruled the apartheid regime in the mid-1980's. The former president has refused to cooperate, calling the Truth Commission a "circus" and a "witch hunt." (4:00) WALKING & RETIREMENT -- A New England Journal of Medicine study of older men of Japanese ancestry found that those who engaged in sustained year round exercise -- in other words, went for a walk every day -- had half the mortality rate from diseases like heart, strokes, and even cancer of those who didn't. NPR's Wendy Schmelzer reports that the more miles they walked the they longer they lived. (3:30) LIFESTYLE MANAGEMENT -- Jacki talks about the challenges of leading a healthy lifestyle, with all the sometimes-contradictory information that's been released in the media about what is and is not good for health. (2:15) CAPOTE -- Jacki talks with George Plimpton, who has written a new biography of writer Truman Capote. Plimpton interviewed dozens of Capote's friends and associates about his literary life and the social phenomenon he became. Capote burst onto the scene in his early 20s and was a literary sensation for years, with works like "Other Voices Other Rooms", "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and "In Cold Blood". But he also surrounded himself with the "glitterati" of high society...for example, he threw a party in New York in 1966 that is still talked about today. But he fell from grace almost as quickly as he rose, betraying many of his friends in one of his last books, and becoming consumed by drinking and drugs until his death in 1984. (The book "CAPOTE: In Which Various Friends, Enemies, Acquaintances, and Detractors Recall His Turbulent Career", by George Plimpton, is published by Doubleday.) (7:30) |
