From CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Lynn Vaughn.
This is Headline News.
Lawyers in the O.J. Simpson trial today are debating what the prosecution knew and when
it knew it.
A few minutes ago, Judge Ito rejected defense claims that prosecutors had known of retired
police detective Mark Fuhrman's racial bias and didn't tell anyone.
At issue now are crime scene photographs.
The photographer says were taken at night, but Fuhrman testified were taken around 7
a.m.
That matters because one shot is of Fuhrman pointing to a bloody glove, which he says
he didn't get near until after he'd found its apparent mate at Simpson's estate.
We should note the jury is not present.
Earlier today, the judge rejected a second defense attempt to throw out the glove and
everything else found after Fuhrman scaled Simpson's wall.
Yesterday, Fuhrman himself returned to the witness stand but refused to answer questions.
Jurors were again out of the room, but the defense will try to have him brought back
in their presence.
Fuhrman is scheduled to be the final defense witness.
A member of the Senate Ethics Committee says Bob Packwood deserves the atomic bomb penalty
of being expelled.
The Ethics Committee voted unanimously yesterday to expel Packwood from office.
Chairman Mitch McConnell says the argument of public and showed a pattern of aggressive
sexual misconduct and abuse of power.
He says Packwood should be spending time behind bars or would be spending time behind bars
if the charges had been heard by a criminal court.
The Ethics Committee is releasing all of the relevant documents in its investigation of
Packwood, some 10,000 pages.
He has made at least 18 unwanted, unwelcome sexual advances on women.
He intentionally obstructed the committee's inquiry by tampering with his diary.
He asked lobbyists for jobs for his wife to reduce his alimony payments.
His offenses, taken cumulatively and even individually, are unacceptable.
By any standard, in any workplace in the United States of America, he would have been fired
and I voted to fire Senator Packwood from the United States Senate.
Packwood denies, says he doesn't remember or contests most of the charges against him.
California Democrat Barbara Boxer today called on him to step down.
She says the Senate has pressing budget matters to attend to and shouldn't be diverted by
having to vote on Packwood's future.
This is an ugly situation.
This is an abuse of power in the rawest form because there aren't too many offices in this
country that are higher than the United States Senator in terms of the power and the prestige
of the office and to abuse that over and over again is a very low thing to do.
Two-thirds of the Senate would have to agree for Packwood to be expelled.
Packwood would lose all retirement and health benefits if he is forced out.
He would keep them if he steps down.
Federal officials blame white separatist Randy Weaver for setting the stage for the siege
of his home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
They are now testifying at Senate hearings into the incident.
Weaver's wife and son and a federal marshal were killed in the 1992 standoff.
The head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms says no one should have died,
but Weaver started the series of events by offering to sell illegal guns to an informant.
Yesterday, Weaver testified federal agents had issued, in his words, death warrants against
his family.
President Clinton says his two-year-old campaign to reinvent government is a success.
Vice President Al Gore joined the president in the Rose Garden today to announce $70 billion
in proposed budget savings.
Most came from suggestions to cut government jobs and bureaucracy.
The president says with the budget battle looming in Congress, it is more important
than ever to spend the people's money wisely.
We cannot balance the budget in a way that will drive us into a prolonged recession,
that will cut off our nose to spite our face, that will be penny wise and pound foolish,
that will aggravate the wage stagnation and the other problems that people have in this
country today, which means we have to have the money that is left to invest in ways that
really serve the American people and serve their larger purposes.
The president has proposed balancing the budget in nine or ten years compared with seven years
proposed by Republicans.
The space shuttle Endeavour lifted off into the cloudy skies above Kennedy Space Center
in Florida late this morning.
Storms had threatened to delay the launch.
The flight had been postponed twice because of problems with the rocket booster seals
and a power generator.
During the scheduled 11-day mission, the five-member crew is to release and then retrieve
two satellites.
Two days after remarks in which she strongly criticized some of China's policies regarding
women, Chinese officials have labeled Hillary Rodham Clinton's statements unwarranted.
On Tuesday at the UN Women's Forum in Beijing, Mrs. Clinton denounced forced abortion and
sterilization.
She also criticized Chinese harassment of delegates at the Companion NGO conference in suburban
Beijing.
Some of the women's conference delegates headed to the Great Wall of China today may leave
reports on their effort to symbolically weave women of the world together.
They came by the busloads with a police escort to visit the Great Wall of China, but there
were no diplomats, no dignitaries, just 200 NGO women on a very special mission to complete
a project that took two years in the making.
At the top of the wall is where the women began their long-awaited ceremony to weave
the world with peace.
800 meters of handmade quilts and tapestries woven by women from 125 countries were stretched
out along the Great Wall.
This was only half the number of quilts that were actually made for the project, which
started in Cambodia.
200 pairs of hands just weren't enough to carry all of them to the wall.
Living is a hard work, more patient work.
We have to link one thread to another.
It means women have to link the solidarity, link the unity, link the common idea together.
I think it binds women together.
It gives a feeling of sisterhood.
It gives a feeling that we are all one.
We have all similar problems, similar aspirations and similar goals.
Women weaving peace around the world.
And in the process of sewing that message of peace and unity.