January 14, 1995

El Nino is back and appears to be showing its hand in both the disastrous rainstorms in California and the mild winter the Northeast has experienced so far. Named for the Christ child because it usually appears in the eastern tropical Pacific around Christmas, El Nino is a vast pool of unusually warm equatorial ocean water. The warmth sets off atmospheric events that rearrange air masses and redirect storm tracks around the globe.

The head of Russian domestic intelligence today ruled out any negotiations with the leader of the secessionist Chechen region, and Russian troops launched one of their fiercest assaults yet on the rebel capital. Sergei V. Stepashin, director of the Federal Counter-Intelligence Service and a member of the Russian Security Council, said in an interview that after Russian troops take the presidential palace in Grozny, Moscow will install a new government there.

The indictment of Malcolm X's daughter on charges of conspiring to kill Louis Farrakhan provoked widespread skepticism today, from the Nation of Islam, blacks around the country and former associates of the crucial Government witness in the case. Prosecutors have declined to identify the witness, apparently the person whom the 34-year-old defendant, Qubilah (pronounced keh-BEE-lah) Shabazz, is charged with trying to hire as an assassin. But lawyers close to the defense identified him today as Michael Fitzpatrick, 34, a friend of Ms. Shabazz from their high school years in New York City.

Italy's search for a new Prime Minister ended today with the appointment of the current Treasury Minister, a nonpolitical banker with international financial credentials, to replace Silvio Berlusconi and form a government of technocrats to guide a program of fiscal and election reform through Parliament. After three weeks of fretful negotiations, President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro named Lamberto Dini, a 63-year-old veteran of the central bank, as his choice to try to lead Italy out of its political stalemate and to reassure jittery financial markets.

President Clinton called today for an end to the Russian military onslaught in the secessionist region of Chechnya but also said that it would be wrong for the United States to respond by cutting back on aid to Moscow. Until today, Mr. Clinton had said almost nothing in public about the Russian assault, letting the State Department express official alarm and reserving his own criticism to a letter he sent last week to President Boris N. Yeltsin. But White House officials said the new determination being shown by Russian forces to impose a military solution to the crisis, together with growing criticism from Congress, had led Mr. Clinton to speak out.