September 16, 1995

President Clinton said today that he would veto the Republicans' legislative package for Medicare and Medicaid. He said that their proposals for large savings in the Government health plans for the elderly and the poor would have "Draconian consequences" and would "dismantle Medicare as we know it." Speaking to elderly people at the White House just 24 hours after House Republicans outlined their proposals, Mr. Clinton said, "If these health care cuts come to my desk, of this size, I would have no choice but to veto it."

To win the Miss America pageant here, it is not enough to look good. A contestant must also do good, identifying a social issue, or "platform," she plans to embrace. Miss Hawaii's is "aging with dignity." Never mind that she is competing in a contest with an age limit of 24 and an evident prohibition on wrinkles.

In weaving a fragile consensus among more than 5,000 delegates from 185 countries -- a spectrum including militant Muslim fundamentalists, radical feminists and many people in between -- negotiators at the United Nations Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing could not possibly please everyone. After 12 days of lengthy negotiations, the last item agreed upon at the final session was an affirmation that women's rights should supersede national traditions, arguably the most far-reaching stance on human rights ever taken at a United Nations gathering.

As arrests continued in a high-tech drive against the peddling of child pornography on the nation's largest computer network, the Federal authorities said today that they expected to apply the same surveillance techniques to fight many other computer-related crimes, from consumer and securities fraud to money laundering. Going under cover and posing as individuals in search of child pornography, agents this week arrested more than a dozen customers of America Online, including the operator of a child-care center in a Chicago suburb. According to court papers, the suspect had used a computer to send images of nude preteen-age girls, some of them in sexual situations with adult men.

The Serbs of Bosnia today took the first steps to lift the siege of Sarajevo, reopening the roads and the airport and giving relief convoys free passage. They also withdrew a few tanks, howitzers and heavy artillery pieces from the hills surrounding the Bosnian capital. President Clinton led a chorus of NATO allies and -- after a week of intensifying criticism -- the Russians in welcoming the brokered agreement, which calls for the Serbs to withdraw their heavy weaponry in exchange for a halt in the NATO bombing campaign.