June 25, 1994

In a highly unusual step, a judge today halted a grand jury inquiry into the O. J. Simpson case, saying unrelenting pretrial publicity could prejudice the deliberations. In the absence of a grand jury, the case against Mr. Simpson is scheduled to be heard Thursday at a preliminary hearing where a judge will determine whether he should be brought to trial in the killings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman.

Days after President Clinton announced a health care proposal calling for a sharp rise in taxes on tobacco, lobbyists went into action.

A bipartisan group of moderates on the Senate Finance Committee unveiled a new health plan today that eliminates any politically contentious requirements that individuals or employers purchase insurance. But the plan also falls short of guaranteeing universal coverage, President Clinton's bottom line. The group appeared to decide that it was easier to give up the goal of guaranteed universal coverage than produce a palatable mechanism to attain it. The Finance Committee as a whole has been stalled for months over the issue of how to pay for universal coverage, and the moderates' proposal is widely seen as a good approximation of what the committee is likely to produce. Democratic leaders are eager to get the committee moving, even if it produces a plan that requires substantial revision later.

President Clinton dialed into a radio call-in program from Air Force One today and unleashed an unusually bitter 23-minute attack on the press, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, conservative radio talk show hosts in general and Rush Limbaugh in particular. Mr. Clinton, who won election a year and a half ago in part through his mastery of talk radio and television, portrayed the nation's airwaves as being filled with a "constant, unremitting drumbeat of negativism and cynicism."

A multibillion-dollar global buying spree today by the Federal Reserve and 15 other central banks to prop up the dollar in the face of a new onslaught from currency traders failed to prevent the dollar from again slipping against the Japanese yen and the German mark. The coordinated central bank operation, led by the Clinton Administration, initially stemmed the dollar's slide against both the mark and the yen, but only briefly, as the American currency resumed its drop, falling by late in the day to 1.585 marks, its lowest level in more than a year, and to 100.65 yen, just above the record low of 99.90 yen that it touched briefly on Tuesday.