June 25, 1998 All Things Considered (entire program) Requires the RealAudio Player

An index of the day's stories:

SUPREME COURT: VINCE FOSTER -- NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg reports on the Supreme Court ruling today that attorney-client privilege continues even after a client has died. The case concerned whether the attorney for the late Vincent Foster, the deputy White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993, could be compelled to disclose to the Whitewater grand jury information from his conversations with Foster. (5:00)

SUPREME COURT: LINE-ITEM VETO -- Linda talks with Senator Carl Levin, a Democratic senator from Michigan. They discuss why Senator Levin is happy with todays Supreme Court ruling against the law that awards line-Item veto power to the President. (4:15)

SUPREME COURT: COAL MINERS -- The Supreme Court today declared a 1992 law concerning the coal industry responsibility for health benefits to be unconstitutional. The law would have forced companies formerly active in the coal industry to pay lifetime health care for retired miners and their dependents. The justices ruled in favor of a Massachusetts-based company that had left the coal mining business years before federal law made it responsible for benefits for about 15-hundred people. The company had argued that the law wrongly took the firm's private property for a public purpose. NPR's Chitra Ragavan reports. (2:45)

HOLBROOKE IN KOSOVO -- Noah talks with NPR's Sylvia Poggioli, who is in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. They discuss the US envoy and Richard Holbrooke's meeting today with Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. It's the second time the two have met in the last three days, as part of an effort to restart negotiations between Yugoslav authorities and the leadership of ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo province. Holbrooke also met with representatives of the Kosovo Liberation Army. (3:45)

NORTHERN IRELAND VOTE -- Noah talks with Kevin Cullen, a reporter for the Boston Globe who's in Belfast covering the elections of Northern Ireland . They discuss what this election is for and the politics behind the creation of a new semi-autonomous assembly for Northern Ireland. This new assembly will end 26 years of direct rule from London. Cullen also talked with voters in Newtownhamilton, where a 13-year-old was wounded by a bomb attack yesterday. The Irish National Liberation Army took credit for the blast. (5:00)

CALIFORNIA BAR NEARS BANKRUPTCY -- Peter Jon Shuler of member station KQED reports that the California Bar Association is on the brink of bankruptcy. After months of feuding with GOP lawmakers over what was seen as the organization's liberal political endorsements, Republican Governor Pete Wilson cut off the Bar's ability to collect dues. Without relief, the Bar could be out of business as early as tomorrow. (3:45)

EINSTEIN'S LETTERS -- A collection of love letters written by Albert Einstein will be auctioned off tomorrow in New York City. The letters were addressed to Margarita Konenkova and were written between 1945 and 1946. Linda talks with Paul Needham, the former director of Sotheby's department of books and manuscripts, about the collection and the expected price that the letters could bring at auction. (6:00)

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CHUCK CLOSE -- Chuck Close is internationally famous for his very large portraits. He paints from photographs, but divides his canvas up into tiny squares and fills each with little squiggles that are analogous to pixels. Viewers see the individual shapes up close, but as they back away, the image gels into a portrait. Chuck Close was famous before he was struck with a collapsed spinal artery. It left him a partial quadraplegic, but he still paints from his wheelchair using a motorized canvas. A major retrospective is now touring the country. Karen Michel reports. (8:00)

SUPREME COURT: HIV -- NPR's Barbara Bradley reports on today's Supreme Court ruling that people infected with HIV, but showing no symptoms, are nevertheless considered disabled, and are therefore eligible for anti-discrimination protection. The case involved a dentist who refused to treat an HIV-positive woman in his office. He insisted that he would fill her cavities only in a hospital, and that she must bear the additional expense. Experts say the ruling should also serve to protect other people whose medical conditions are not obvious, but could make them the victims of discrimination. (4:00)

SUPREME COURT: NEA -- The Supreme Court today upheld the so called "decency" provision in the National Endowment for the Arts grantmaking procedures. The language requires the endowment to take into consideration "standards of decency and respect for the values of the American public in awarding grant money." The provision had been challenged by four artists whose grants had been denied. These artists have come to be called the NEA Four, the most well known being performance artist Karen Finley. Lower courts had struck down the provision as unconstitutionally vague. The Supreme Court disagreed with that ruling and said that the provision was only one of several factors to be taken into consideration. The Supreme Court maintains that it did not violate the artists' First Amendment rights. NPR's Dean Olsher reports. (4:00)

IS THE STRIKE ILLEGAL? -- NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Detroit that General Motors is putting more pressure on the United Auto Workers union to end the strikes that have all but shut down GM's North American operations. The company has filed a grievance with the union, calling the strikes illegal and asking for immediate arbitration. GM is also speeding up the shut down of other plants, putting more non-striking union employees out of work. The union says the strikes are legal, and that GM is engaging in a public relations gimmick. (4:00)

FLORIDA FIRES -- NPR's Cheryl Devall reports from Ormond Beach, Florida that residents of a rural neighborhood were ordered today to evacuate their homes because of the threat from nearby forest fires. Rather than focusing on putting out the blazes, firefighters have had to concentrate their efforts on keeping them away from residential areas. Firefighters are also dropping ping pong balls filled with chemicals onto unburned areas. The small fires will burn brush and grasses that could fuel larger fires. (3:30)

FIREFIGHTER'S PERSPECTIVE -- Linda talks with Carl Crawford, Foreman of the Chief Mountain Hot Shot Fire Fighting Team from Browning, Montana. Mr. Crawford and his crew of Native American firefighters are in Florida's Osceola National Forest fighting the fierce wild fires there. Firefighters from all over the country are helping to control the wild fires in Florida and are having to contend with a variety of adverse conditions. In addition to the intense heat and humidity, firefighters are also having to avoid scorpions and other poisonous animals. (4:30)

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED -- NPR's Vicki O'Hara reports from China where President Clinton has begun a nine day visit. The President, his wife, and their daughter were welcomed to the ancient capital of Xian by a pageant of young men and women dressed up as members of the two-thousand-year-old Tang dynasty. This symbolic welcome is expected to set the tone for the visit. Analysts, however, expect a lot of symbolism and very little substance. (5:00)

TIANANMEN HISTORY -- Linda talks with Jan Wong, a columnist for the Toronto Globe and Mail. She was that newspaper's Beijing bureau chief during the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square. They discuss the historical and cultural significance of Tiananmen Square to the Chinese people. In addition to the Square's notoriety as the place where pro-democracy advocates staged their main protests during the 1989 demonstrations, Tiananmen Square is also significant because it's where Mao Zedong declared the People's Republic of China in 1949. (5:00)

NEW PLANET -- NPR's Richard Harris reports on the discovery of another planet outside our solar system. Although it's the twelfth suspected planet found by noting the wobble in stars, it's by far the closest to us; only 15 light years. It's also next to a low-power star, which is quite different from the stars where other planets have previously been spotted, suggesting that planets can form in a variety of stellar systems. (2:30)