The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, a UPS strike update. We have a report on what's moving and what isn't, and two experts on why it happened; also, Jeffrey Kaye on cars that drive themselves; the Huntington's Disease breakthrough; hope and resignation in Gaza; and political analysis by Paul Gigot, joined tonight by Tom Oliphant. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. NEWS SUMMARY

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Negotiations to end the Teamsters strike against United Parcel Service continued today with no reports of progress. White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said President Clinton hopes both sides will redouble their efforts to reach a settlement, but McCurry again said the administration will not intervene to stop the strike. The two sides met this afternoon in Washington with a federal mediator, following a session of more than 10 hours yesterday. Union and company executives talked with reporters as bargaining resumed today.

JAMES K

ELLY, CEO, UPS: Well, what continues to stand out in my mind, there are customers, and our people are disappointed that we're not serving our customers for an entire week, and we're not keeping our promise, and our disappointment that our people are caught in the middle of a lose-lose situation. And we're trying to get this resolved so there are some jobs at UPS for us all to go back to.

RON CAREY, Teamsters President: People will say, you talk for 10 + hours; what do you talk about? You talk about, is there a middle ground, is there a way that you can find that middle ground? And that's really what takes place. Now, what this is about--it's about good jobs. It's about part-time America won't work. That's what this is about.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We'll have more on the UPS story right after the News Summary. On Wall Street today the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by nearly 157 points to close at 8031.22. A day of volatile trading saw the average drop by more than 200 points in the early afternoon. In Guam today a Buddhist memorial service was held at the Korea air crash site. Two hundred and fifty-four passengers and crew were on board the Boeing 747. Twenty-nine survived. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board said preliminary evidence indicates the pilot was in control of the plane and the crew unaware of any problems before the crash. NTSB team leader. George Black said there were no signs of mechanical failure and the cause of the crash is still unknown. A team of scientists said they have discovered what causes the onset of Huntington's Disease and six related disorders. The scientists said an insoluble ball of protein forms in the nucleus of a brain cell and kills it. The findings are reported today in the journal "Cell" and also in the journal "Neuron." Huntington's is an inherited degenerative brain disease. Victims lose muscular coordination and suffer severe dementia. We'll have more on the story later in the program. Negotiations to organize a Korean peace conference will resume next month, officials said today. The four-nation talks, which opened Tuesday in New York, broke up last night without agreement. The talks include the United States, China, and the two Koreas, and are aimed at creating a lasting peace to replace the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean conflict. At the State Department today Spokesman James Rubin said the negotiators were not surprised by the pace of the talks.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: They did not expect to close in one preparatory meeting on all the details of any negotiation as complex and an issue of this importance, and on a subject so unprecedented. So they're hopeful that in the return, that it will be possible to successfully conclude the talks, and we think important goals were achieved, butmore work needs to be done.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In Yonkers, New York, the 12-year-old grandson of the late civil rights leader, Betty Shabazz, was sentenced to at least 18 months at a juvenile home. Malcolm Shabazz set the June 1st fire that killed his grandmother, the widow of black Muslim leader Malcolm X. He pleaded guilty earlier this month to the juvenile equivalent of second degree manslaughter and second degree arson. His sentence can be extended year by year until he is 18 years old. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now, it's on to what's behind the UPS strike, smart cars, a breakthrough in Huntington's Disease, the latest from Gaza, and political analysis with Gigot, joined tonight by Oliphant. UPDATE - NO D

ELIVERY?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: First tonight, what's driving the UPS strike. Betty Ann Bowser begins our report.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: On picket lines from Maine to California the first five days of the UPS strike have been marked by growing tension.

SPOKESMAN: This is a picket line. You don't need to break it. You can call in sick. There's no reason to be here.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Representatives of the 185,000 striking Teamsters tried to keep non-union employees from crossing picket lines to go to work. And when they did in suburban Boston, 11 wee arrested, handcuffed, and sent to jail. In Chicago Teamsters marched and chanted into the night. And in Denver, they heckled anyone and everyone who tried to drive through their picket line. Nationwide businesses that depend on UPS to move their products reported disruption and inconvenience. Analysts say if the strike continues through Labor Day, some companies will face huge economic losses. All over the country businesses had a hard time finding alternatives to UPS. Federal Express is more expensive. Airborne, the post office, and other services are overbooked. Some are limiting the number of packages they will take. Because there aren't many alternatives, the Colorado Saddlery Company isn't moving any of its stock and trade: Handmade saddles, ranging in price from $800 to $1200. They're too big for the post office to ship and too expensive for any other form of transportation. The only product the company is moving right now are small packages of bridle and saddle parts. And now one comes to pick their packages up. Employees have to load them and take them to the post office themselves. Shipping manager Rita Weber says she finds all of this frustrating as her customers do.

RITA WEBER, Colorado Saddlery Company: We've got a reputation that we ship on time. As you know, this summer is coming to a close, and these people would like to ride their saddles a few times before the snow flies because 90 percent of our saddles go up to Wyoming, Montana, and over into the West, where it snows already like middle of September or maybe even the first of September.

SPOKESPERSON: We have a variety of sizes, from the little

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But the UPS strike means more than inconvenience to small businesswoman Penelope North. She runs a $1/4 million gourmet jelly company. For the past eight years she has not turned a profit. 1997 was supposed to be the year she operated in the black for the first time. Then came the strike and an estimated daily loss of $1200. And in her case if customers don't get what they've ordered on time, they cancel.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And what happens to you if you can't get this out and get it to your customer?

PENELOPE NORTH, Penelope's of Evergreen: Then I've lost the sale, and it's a $400 sale. So I've lost the sale on this one. This one over here has a cutoff date of the 18th as well. I can't go much longer. I mean, I personally thought that it would be two days, maybe three at the most, but the problem is cash flow, of course. We have orders that we shipped out prior to the strike that our customers haven't received, so that money is not going to come in. The customers have 30 days to pay. They're not going to pray until they get the product. We're not--we have shipped nothing out this entire week. So we will not have any income to come in

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Ten days. Could you go on with this for 10 days?

PENELOPE NORTH: Oh, if it goes 10 days, I'm really going to be stressed out.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: But at one Denver-based company, Bolle America, 90 percent of its French-made, upscale sunglasses, sport goggles, and eye wear parts are still moving, with the help of UPS managerial personnel who stop by to ship the company's packages. This U.S. distribution center for Bolle spends about $400,000 a year with UPS. But Bolle is finding it expensive to move the other 10 percent of its stock, and manager Mike Shoemanker says in the end the cost will be passed on to the public.

MIKE SHOEMANKER, Bolle America: Ultimately, I think the end consumer is the one that is going to suffer out of this whole situation because Federal Express costs more for me to use than UPS. That eventually is going to get passed along to the consumer.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Do you think that's fair?

MIKE SHOEMANKER: Well, when you have a situation like this that the Teamsters have decided to take this action, they're not striking against UPS only. This is really striking against everybody because of the size of UPS.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: What do you mean?

MIKE SHOEMANKER: Well, UPS handles like 80 percent of the packages in the United States. And because of that volume, it affects everybody. And, ultimately, every consumer in the United States is going to end up paying in part for this strike.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: By week's end, the same issues that initiated this strike remained unresolved. A key point is part-time employment. The union wants UPS to open up more full-time positions for thousands of part-time employees. Currently, full-time employees earn an average of $50,000 a year and get an estimated $20,000 in benefits. UPS drivers are the highest paid in the industry. Part-time employees, who make up more than half the company's work force, earn an average of $11 an hour, or about $38,000 a year, but they also get benefits. In what UPS officials said was their best and last offer, the company promised to create 1,000 new full-time positions, but the union rejected the offer, saying 10,000 of its members are, in effect, full-time workers already, without full-time pay, because they put in 35 hours or more a week. In Denver, part-time loader Rada Shockley says even if more full-time jobs were created, it takes years before UPS employees like her are able to move into them.

RADA SHOCKLEY, Teamster: I would like to make more money. I would like to be offered a full-time job because right now I'm working part-time with UPS, and then I have a full-time job. You know, that's kind of hard on you because I'm working 5 to 9 and then midnight to 8:30. You know, they don't give us this opportunity, so if we want full-time we can take it, so we don't have to work two jobs or twelve hours a day.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: UPS says it will increase the starting wage of part-time employees in the new contract. And on the NewsHour earlier this week company spokesman David Murray said it's not devaluing full-time employment.

DAVID MURRAY, UPS Negotiator: UPS has not shifted work heretofore done by full-timers to part-timers. The fact of the matter is, there's a whole lot of part-timers who only want part-time work. Now, there are people who do want to go to full-time jobs. We have the greatest full-time jobs in the country. We also have pretty good part-time jobs. You hear a lot about the $8 rate. That's the entry level rate. Part-timers with five years or more average almost $14 an hour.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: The other unresolved issue is who will run the pension fund for UPS employees. Currently, UPS contributes over a billion for its union workers to the Teamsters pension fund, making it the largest contributor. The company says if it had control over how that money was invested, employees would have a better nest egg when they retire. The Teamsters oppose a UPS pullout, saying the union can do a better job of managing UPS employees' money. So far, President Clinton has refused to intervene in the strike, but pressure is mounting. Penelope North has added her small gourmet food business to a growing list of retail giants, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Sears, Toys R Us, and Circuit City. The companies have written the President, telling him a prolonged strike will irreparably harm the country's robust economy.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Charles Krause has more.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Now, for more on the strike and the issues it raises, we're joined by Harley Shaiken, a professor of industrial relations at the University of California, Berkeley, and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of organization and management with Emory University's School of Business. He's also a consultant to the UPS company. Gentlemen, welcome. Prof. Sonnenfeld, there are reports that UPS is losing $50 million a day as a result of this strike. And, as we've heard, there's not much progress apparently in then negotiations. How much pressure is the company under to settle?

JEFFREY SONNENFELD, Emory University: [Atlanta] The company is under enormous pressure to settle. And I think when you saw David Murray's frustrated face on the screen--I think that was a Monday night clip that we just saw on this show--or their bewildered faces walking out of the negotiations Sunday evening when they broke off and the Teamsters walked out, what you saw is they were so close I think that they thought they could have had an agreement. And they--they thought--this is a company that has always valued fairness and high rewards, as you heard in your package. These are the highest paid workers in their industry, and they thought they were offering them a great gift with this pension that's going to more than double the payments they're making because the enormous unfunded liability of the Teamsters' own fund, so they said let's bring it in the sunlight, away from corruption, inefficiency, jointly manage it. And there's a lot of--they thought that the Teamsters would jump at that. The company has always been a very pro-union company. I think what's astounding is even at this point you don't hear any UPSers taking on what many times we see- -as I know my colleague Harley Shaiken has seen this many times-- hostile management, a lot of strike breaking, sort of workers hired or attacks on unions' integrity. They invited the Teamsters to organize actually in 1921. It should be a strong UPS and a strong Teamster at the same time.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Fair enough. But the point is that the company has said that the offer that it made was the last and final offer, and apparently, the union isn't going to settle unless there are some changes in it. So, again, how much pressure is the company under to revise this offer in order to get negotiations really underway?

JEFFREY SONNENFELD: Well, I think the company would like to see the offer actually brought forward and voted on; is that the rank and file members haven't actually had this brought to them for a vote. There's a good sense out there that the workers would jump at this; that the Teamsters members, the UPS Teamsters would jump at this officer because it's a very attractive one. And that's what they'd like to see happen, but this is a fantastic wage package. This is job guarantees. You know, we hear so much about the new social contract, where so many employers are justifying downsizing it. This is not a company that does that.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right, fine. Let me go to Prof. Shaiken for a minute. Prof. Sonnenfeld is saying that if only the UPS workers were allowed to vote on the contract, they'd vote for it, and the strike wouldn't have been necessary. What's your take on that?

HARLEY SHAIKEN, University of California, Berkeley: [San Francisco] Oh, I think that's not the case. They might jump at it, but not necessarily to accept it. At the heart of this strike are a number of specific issues certainly but really is the question of creating decent jobs that pay fair wages. And if we have a very profitable company, such as UPS, a growth economy, and we can't create more full-time jobs under these circumstances, I think we'd really have to ask when could we create these jobs. I think at the core of the strike the issue of creating more full-time jobs is a very central one that also addresses so much of the economic anxiety ordinary Americans feel. And at UPS it's not an argument simply of whether part-time jobs are good or bad but rather that there are over 10,000 jobs where workers are working more than 35 hours a week that are classified as part-time jobs. So to call those full-time jobs, which is one of the contract demands the union has, I think sets an example of creating more decent jobs and creating the purchasing power that goes along with those jobs. So I think those are really the issues that underlie this dispute.

CHARLES KRAUSE: What specifically is the union demanding of the company with regard to the jobs, the full-time jobs?

HARLEY SHAIKEN: Well, the union is demanding that during the life of this next agreement 10,000 full-time jobs be created, but, in effect, you have, as I mentioned, 10,000 workers currently working over 35 hours a week. So really you're talking about not simply creating full-time jobs out of thin air but reclassifying jobs in a way that workers earn full-time wages and full-time benefits. Starting wages for part-timers at UPS has been frozen since 1982. Full-time wages have gone up considerably under those--during that time period. So you have an important difference of wages here, but you also have important protections for full-time workers. 80 percent of the jobs UPS has added during this last agreement have been part-timers. If you switch the balance--and currently 60 percent of UPS workers are part-time--then you're going to begin having a drag on full-time wages for the next agreement.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. Let me ask Prof. Sonnenfeld, who is familiar with the company's position, why is the company--the company, as we reported, has offered a thousand new full-time jobs. The union is talking about 10,000 jobs. Why is the company resisting? Why is that not possible from its perspective?

JEFFREY SONNENFELD: Well, the company is guaranteeing the increase--that people will move--the present part-timers will have opportunities for at least 11,000 full-time jobs. Since the last contract, fully 13,000--this is three and a half years ago--13,000 part-timers moved into full-time jobs. There are 90,000 full- timers. Fully half of them were part-timers. The company's sadly only growing so fast, but that's tremendous absorption. There's no company in the country we can point to that has that kind of entry feeding of half of them--40,000 moved into these 90,000 part-time jobs. And these part-time jobs are fantastic part-time jobs. These are part-time jobs that, unlike the ones that--Harley is one of the nation's experts on part-time jobs. And he can verify that four out of five employers that do offer part-time jobs don't offer benefits. This is a fabulous benefits package. If you go to a restaurant--some fast food restaurant--that's paying $10/$11, like UPS, on average or up to $15, they're not offering the benefits package that's equal to $6/$7. This is a $17 an hour part-time worker. Full health and benefits. Nobody knows of a UPSer who is in dual career situation, including part-timers, whose spouse has a better plan; that the family elects that spouse's plan. There are schoolteachers and clergy as part-timers who work at UPS because this is such a lush benefits package. This is essentially more than a $17 an hour worker, with career opportunity, training, and a job guarantee. How many companies are providing these contract guarantees to part-time and full-time, plus 13--a movement of 11,000 guaranteed into the ranks?

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. Let me go to Prof. Shaiken. You've heard what Prof. Sonnenfeld has said. Is that correct? It seems to contradict some of what's been certainly reported in other places?

HARLEY SHAIKEN: No, actually I don't think it is correct. Before our eyes glaze over with all the numbers, I think, overall, what we we're talking about is a union demand that affects about 5 percent of the total work force at UPS. And UPS made over a billion dollars last year. The real issue is: Can a company this profitable in an industry--a service industry--that depends on the commitment of its employees and the professionalism of its employees--in both these areas I think we would both agree UPS employees have done 110 percent or more--can a company under these circumstances have the wherewithal to create better career paths, more full-time jobs? Because if it can't, then as an economy, we are in very serious trouble. The whole history of this economy in post World War II America is people entering the middle class by working for a firm and being able to prosper and to grow at that firm. What we have here is, in effect, a form of hidden downsizing. More jobs are created, but they are part-time jobs that pay about half of what the full-time jobs pay.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Let me go to Prof. Sonnenfeld very quickly.

JEFFREY SONNENFELD: Which is more than twice--this is a figure which is more than twice the minimum wage. It's a very high-paying job at $17 an hour, with benefits. It's extraordinary. And this is the world's largest employee-owned firm. Who benefits from these profits? And by the way, that billion dollars represents just 1 + percent on revenues. And sadly, that's not such a great return. And where does that money go? 95 percent of it is reinvested back in the business. The other 5 percent goes to the employees. 100 percent goes to the employees. 95 percent of the business

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right.

JEFFREY SONNENFELD:5 percent--as to the employee-owners, which are 60,000 of them are hourly workers, 40,000 are managers; that's everybody. There are no greedy Wall Street barons in this picture. There's no greedy downsizers in this picture.

CHARLES KRAUSE: All right. We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you, gentlemen, both very much. Thank you. FOCUS - LOOK MA, NO HANDS!

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, for those preparing to hit the highway this August weekend a look at a new driving experience. Jeffrey Kaye of KCET-Los Angeles reports.

JEFFREY KAYE: "Look, Ma, no hands" seemed to be the major theme of a transportation technology demonstration in San Diego this week. The showcase was put on by a two-and-a-half-year- old consortium of private companies, government agencies, and universities. The exhibition was a condition of federal funding. Although some of the technology is new, automating automobiles is not a new idea.

SPOKESMAN: [1939 Worlds Fair Film Clip] Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control.

JEFFREY KAYE: The concept was presented by General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair. Now, GM is part of a private-public consortium, 80 percent funded by the US government. GM engineer Jim Rillings is the consortium's program manager.

JIM RILLINGS, National Automated Highway Systems Consortium: Our goal is to develop a prototype automated highway system. But more than that, it's really to advance highway automation technologies to improve safety and reduce congestion on highways.

JEFFREY KAYE: Consortium members are using a range of technologies on a variety of vehicles.

RAL: This car has a communication radio that talks between cars 50 times every second.

TODD: These sensors actually monitor the blind spot of the bus for the computer.

JEFFREY KAYE: Radar, lasers and cameras send highway information to on-board computers. The computers control motors, which operate braking, acceleration, and steering. This week's demonstrations took place on a seven and half mile stretch of express lanes on a San Diego freeway. The road had been equipped with buried magnets, which act as guides.

AUTO VOICE: Speed control on.

JEFFREY KAYE: One demonstration was of a convoy of cars, traveling as an automated pack, fast, yet close together. The point was to show how to move more cars, more smoothly and safely along highways. Rajesh Rajamani is with the University of California at Berkeley.

RAJESH RAJAMANI, University of California, Berkeley: The car is being centered on the lane using the magnets. The computer controls the steering wheel to keep the car centered. Also, the computer uses the radar and the radio system on the car to maintain a spacing of twenty feet, and a speed of about sixty miles per hour from the car in front.

JEFFREY KAYE: Other demonstrations showed automatic lane changes to avoid obstacles. And a garbage truck was programmed to automatically pick up highway debris.

JEFFREY KAYE: But as dazzling as this technological wizardry may be for some, there are those who question its value and expense. And critics want to put the brakes on development of the so-called automated highway system. The Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles is a virtual monument to the car culture. That's where we met with Catherine Burke, an expert in transportation and innovation at the University of Southern California. Burke says an automated highway system is not the answer to America's transportation problems.

CATHERINE BURKE, University of Southern California: They're trying to come up with a quick solution based on highways. And what we need is somebody to think about the overall picture; what do we need to move people and goods in urban areas?

JEFFREY KAYE: But transportation planners say automation is just one piece of a puzzle. Dick Bishop of the U.S. Department of Transportation oversees the consortium for the federal government.

DICK BISHOP, U.S. Department of Transportation: In some areas automation is not the answer. In other areas it might be just the thing to increase the capacity of the highway, respond to the needs of the public, and at the same time maintain the land use goals and the mobility goals.

JEFFREY KAYE: If automation is to make mobility safe and efficient, it's got to work. And Catherine Burke says there are many unanswered questions about the technology itself.

CATHERINE BURKE: What happens if a tanker, you know, jack- knifes, and it hits this automated lane where you can't even get out of the way. As far as I know, nobody's worked out how to do an interchange. Not everybody wants to go in a straight line. Some people want to turn.

JEFFREY KAYE: Getting from one highway to the next?

CATHERINE BURKE: Right. The other issue, that is a technical issue, is what happens when you exit?

JEFFREY KAYE: Burke says there could be bottlenecks when automated cars leave their designated lanes.

AUTO VOICE: Approaching destination.

RAJESH RAJAMANI: That is a wake up call for the driver.

JEFFREY KAYE: Experts do have some answers. For example, to the question about a jack knifed truck.

RAJESH RAJAMANI: There's two responses possible. One is if there is no obstacle in the next lane, the convoy would make a lane change. Alternatively, the platoon would stop before we hit the obstacle.

JEFFREY KAYE: Who would be faster in that circumstance, a human or a computer?

RAJESH RAJAMANI: The computer would be much faster than a human.

JEFFREY KAYE: But as to the problem of potential bottlenecks when automated cars leave the highways, Rajamani said research remains to be done. There are many such unanswered questions, but engineers point out the new technology has useful applications short of full automation. The San Diego demonstration showed trucks and buses equipped with warning devices.

TODD JOCHEM, Carnegie Mellon University: So you can feel when the front tires hit that shoulder, the alert goes off to tell you you need to pay attention now.

JEFFREY KAYE: Todd Jochem is a scientist with the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He says that while it may be decades before technology replaces drivers, consumers are gradually being prepared for automation.

TODD JOCHEM: We think that probably the average person--average consumer--is going to be a little apprehensive about going from his car now, to a car where he hits a button and it drives by itself. So what we need to do is two things. We need to make sure that the drivers are comfortable with the technology. And at the same time we need to make sure the technology is capable And the way to do that is to first deploy the systems in a warning capacity. It's important to phrase this kind of stuff in terms of like a cruise control. Everybody has cruise control. Everybody's comfortable hitting those buttons. They just need to get comfortable hitting the buttons to adjust the sensitivity of their warning, or adjust their headway gap, things like that. If you do that in small steps, I think people will recognize there is a benefit.

JEFFREY KAYE: Proponents of automated highway transportation systems see a promising future. They hope public demonstrations like this will spur support for continued federal funding. Congress will consider authorizing more money later this year.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour, the Huntington's breakthrough, a report from Gaza, and Gigot and Oliphant. FOCUS - BREAKTHROUGH

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, new research about Huntington's Disease. Three new studies published in the journals "Cell" and "Neuron" show that excess protein formulation in the brain appears to be responsible for Huntington's Disease and six other similar debilitating neurological disorders. To explain, we're joined now by Dr. Christopher Ross, director of the Huntington's Disease Research Center at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was also a co-author of one of the studies released today. Thank you very much for being with us, Dr. Ross. What is Huntington's Disease?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine: Huntington's Disease is an inherited neuro-degenerative disorder in which patients lose control of their ability to think and to move and slowly go downhill and eventually die of the disease. It's a very tragic disorder. And it's a disorder which is inherited genetically within families. Anyone who's affected with the disorder has a 50 percent chance of passing it on to any of their children. And it generally begins in adult life. So, often they don't even know that they're going to get the disorder before they have children, and, therefore, it continues to progress in families.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And it's not treatable, right?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: So far, there are no treatments that can slow the effect of the illness. Usually, people die within fifteen to twenty years of getting their first symptoms.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now, you knew--it was discovered four years ago that a certain gene played a role in it, right? So what's happened that's changed what's new about these studies?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: That's right. So after really a long search to find the Huntington's Disease gene, it was discovered four years ago in a collaborative study, and that was a big breakthrough, but the unfortunate thing was the protein that the gene made had no resemblance to any other known protein, and, therefore, no clear function within the cells. And so we didn't know either what the normal function was, or what it might be doing to damage the brain and kill nerve cells, which is what the effects of the disease are.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And your study found

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Our study, we believe, gives us a very strong lead as to what the protein does to actually kill nerve cells. And I could show

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Please do.

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Here in the brain, the area of the brain that's affected in HD. This is a model--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: HD being Huntington's Disease

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: --of Huntington's Disease, right. This is a model of the brain showing the--what's so called the cortex, the place where we do all our thinking and control of movements. And then if I turn the brain around, you see on the inside a region called the basal ganglia. And this is the region that's most severely affected in Huntington's Disease. And what happens is for reasons that have so far been unclear, nerve cells within this region--both in the cerebral cortex and in this region called the basal ganglia--simply begin to die, so that patients lose control of their bodily functions. And if we were to take a cross-section through a brain of an actual patient with Huntington's Disease, as shownin the picture that we have

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Oh, yes. We have a couple of pictures here too.

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: So this picture shows these are postmortem brains from a normal individual and an individual with Huntington's Disease. They're actually turned on their side compared to the model. But you can see that the brain from a Huntington's Disease patient is overall shrunken and smaller. And, in particular, the region in the center of the brain is severely shrunken. In fact, you can see the enlargement of the black area, the fluid-filled space within the brain, due to the shrinkage of the brain caused by loss of neurons, loss of the cells of the brain.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And is the significance of the studies released today, of which you were one of--you participated in one- -that you know now why that happens?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Well, it certainly gives a strong clue as to why cells die. I think it's a little premature to say we know for sure. But what we found is that the Huntington's Disease protein--that is, the protein made by the DNA in the HD gene--the Huntington's Disease protein abnormally changes its location within the cell, and it accumulates in kind of a dense mass that we hypothesize gums up how nerve cells work. And this is due to the chemical change in the protein caused by the mutation in the HD gene.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you know why the gene mutates?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: That was discovered as part of the discovery of the HD gene four years ago. This is a kind of mutation called an expanding triplet repeat mutation, which is becoming increasingly common and seen in more and more diseases, especially in neuro-degenerative diseases.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Like, for example, just before we go on

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Like Huntington's Disease is a member of a class of diseases which include spina cerebellar ataxia, three different forms of it, a disease called DRPLA, which is a rare inherited disease, and a disease called SPNA, which is another rare inherited disease. But all of them were caused by the same kind of genetic mutation, an expanding triplet repeat. And what's exciting about this finding in Huntington's Disease is that it gives us strong clues about how all these diseases work. And in one of the other papers being published later this month, the one that you mentioned in "Neuron," it was found that the same kind of changes that we observe in the Huntington's Disease protein take place actually in patients with a related disease, SCA-3.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And--is Alzheimer's related too?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Alzheimer's disease is also a neuro- degenerative disease, but it's not caused by this same kind of genetic mutation. What's striking, though, is that we're finding that this accumulation of protein, which we had never imagined to see in a disease like Huntington's Disease, is very much like the fact that protein accumulates in Alzheimer's Disease, in that case a different protein and in a different location in cells and outside of cells, but it's giving us the idea that all of these are degenerative diseases, and they share more features than we have previously established.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Will the goal now be to find a way to dissolve these globs of protein that are in the nucleus?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Well, there are really a number of things that need to be done. First of all, we need to confirm that this protein is present in all of the diseases with this mutation. We need to really see if this protein is killing the neurons, the accumulation of this protein.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You have the fact that it's there, but you're not 100 percent sure it's killing them.

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: That's right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It has to be completely established.

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: That's right. What we have are a mouse model made in England in Jill Bates's lab in which this protein accumulates and accumulates before the animals show any symptoms. And that's the reason why we believe that the accumulation of the protein has something to do with killing the neurons.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Just for families of sufferers of Huntington's Disease and for the sufferers, themselves, what do you say to them right now about what their hopes can be?

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Well, we always have to be careful. When we make these kinds of advances in the lab, we don't want people to believe that all of a sudden we have a new medicine or a new treatment. What this really gives us, we hope, is a better understanding of the disease, a way to look further for exactly what's going wrong, and particularly a way to develop in the lab models to screen treatments. So we can take now Huntington in a test tube, Huntington in these mice with the abnormal Huntington's gene, and we hope in cells in the lab, and treat them with small molecules that can be used as drugs to try and prevent the accumulation of the protein.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Oh, well

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: And that would be the hope for developing treatments.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you, Doctor Ross, very much for being with us. Congratulations on your findings.

DR. CHRISTOPHER ROSS: Thank you. FOCUS - FRAGILE PEACE

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, a Middle East situation report as tensions have grown between Israelis and Palestinians after the Jerusalem market bombing. Some officials are working to keep the peace process on track. Sirah Shah of Independent Television News has this report from Gaza.

SIRAH SHAH, ITN: The bombings have brought Israeli and Palestinian cooperation on security to a grinding halt. An exception is here at the Gaza headquarters of the joint patrols, set up in the heady days of the peace process. Israeli and Palestinian soldiers worked together to maintain civilians security. Business is often done on a nod and a wink.

LT. COL. MICKI HADDAD, Israeli Commander, Joint Patrol: The joint patrols is good--not very good--not excellent, but good. They are having troubles like any joint patrols, but they can solve everything. Every time there is any trouble, they argue a little bit, but eventually they solved the problem.

SIRAH SHAH: On the ground a Palestinian and an Israeli jeep travel together. They're even careful to take turns at leading the convoy. They've proved adept at defusing potential flashpoints before they get out of hand. But relations between Israel and the Palestinians have all collapsed around them, leaving these soldiers' spirit of cooperation looking more and more out of step with the communities they patrol. Israel believes that the Palestinian population is sheltering the men who threaten its security. It says Yasser Arafat hasn't done enough to clamp down on the extremists in their midst.

COL. DAVID HACHAM, Israeli Government Security Advisor: What we like to see is that Arafat will act, will take the necessary measures, the necessary steps in order to put an end to this terrorism. Arafat has to know that terrorism has a double target. It's not only vis-a-vis Israel, but at the same time it is undermining all the peace process. It is not going to put an end to this chain of bloodshed and terrorist attacks. The whole peace process is in danger.

SIRAH SHAH: Just a few kilometers from where the joint patrols are operating Mr. Arafat is opening a new police building in Gaza. Foreign donors paid for this apartment block for policemen but Gaza's police chief isn't among the assembled dignitaries. Israel claimed he's a terrorist and demands his arrest. He's holed up in his office for fear of an Israeli snatch squad.

GHAZI JIBALI, Gaza Police. I must laugh about this. I am very sorry to hear this thing from the Israeli government. I am very sorry to hear this thing. When we make agreement, we make this agreement between our authority and the Israeli government. Israel can't. They cannot arrest me. And if they come here to Gaza or to any place where I am, they will not return back.

SIRAH SHAH: Jibali's fighting talk is backed up by Palestinian police muscle and political will. The police forces out on the street haven't arrested a single member of Hamas or Islamic Jihad since the bombings. Mr. Arafat says Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. He warns of a big explosion. It's a threat some Israelis take seriously.

EHUD BARAK, Israeli Opposition Leader: By pushing or cornering Arafat you might reach one of two conclusions: either a new erupt of violence which cannot serve any side, or alternatively, replacement of Arafat by Hamas or Jihad leaders, which cannot be better neither to the Israelis nor to the Palestinians. And we are slipping on a kind of slippery slope toward new violence.

SIRAH SHAH: This family would maintain that Mr. Arafat has already been tough on Hamas. Their son, a Hamas member, was jailed after the last wave of bus bombings over a year ago. He's been neither charged nor released.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: [speaking through interpreter] They've kept our sons in prison. They didn't do anything, but they've been kept there for 15 months so far. We don't know if they're okay. The Israelis only used to keep them in jail for two or three months and then let them go.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: [speaking through interpreter] More and more people are rushing to join Hamas because the Palestinian administration isn't good. There are beatings, mistreatment of prisoners, human rights abuses. All that helps Hamas.

SIRAH SHAH: The only member of Hamas to have joined Mr. Arafat's cabinet now talks of quitting, a veiled threat to Israel.

IMAD SALOUJI, Palestinian Authority: If Israel were to see real security for their state, their peoples, they must try and understand the Palestinian advice. But if Israel continues their policy, nobody can speak about security because their security in our hands is a security in our hand, and their security is joined with our rights.MNEIL

SIRAH SHAH: The perpetrators of last year's bus bombs in Israel are still fated by Hamas supporters. After last Wednesday's bomb, there are few reasons to hope for change.

L. COL. MICKI HADDAD, Israeli Commander, Joint Patrol: My partner was in Gaza when he heard of the bombing. He came especially from Gaza to here to tell me how much he's sorry for this bomb in a residence and for the deaths. Especially he came to here to talk with me, and it was very important to me. The peace process is living. We are the proof.

SIRAH SHAH: However, the commander is one of the few who believes that the peace process is still on track. Israeli intelligence sources predict another wave of bombings inside Israel. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Now our Friday night political analysis and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: And that analysis comes from NewsHour regular and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. Joining Paul tonight, filling in for the vacationing Mark Shields, is columnist Tom Oliphant of the Boston Globe. Welcome, gentlemen. Well, Paul, there have been some new developments in the saga of President Clinton's nominee as ambassador to Mexico, Gov. William Weld, caused by Sen. Dick Lugar, who says he's going to take on Sen. Helms to get Bill Weld a hearing. Is this going to breathe new life in the nomination?

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: Well, what he said last Sunday was he was going to try to go around the committee chairmen to get him a hearing. He didn't seem to have many takers. There was a resounding lack of rallying to him on this issue. So what he said later this week was he was going to use his power on the agricultural committee, which he chairs, to maybe look into tobacco subsidies, which are near and dear to the heart of Jesse Helms from North Carolina. It probably doesn't make any difference at all.

MARGARET WARNER: Really?

PAUL GIGOT: I don't think it changes the balance of power one bit.

MARGARET WARNER: Why not?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, he can have all the hearings he wants on tobacco. Can he have the votes to get rid of them? I doubt it. The power of a chairman like Jesse Helms, a chairman--you have to understand--Jesse Helms is unique. He doesn't care what people think about him. He doesn't care what the New York Times writes about him. He doesn't care what Dick Lugar, what opinion Dick Lugar might have. And the only way that Bill Weld is going to become ambassador to Mexico is if Jesse Helms moves for some reason-- decides, okay, I'll just give up--or Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader, decides to overrule him, and that's the last thing that Trent Lott wants to do, having bigger fish to fry down the road. So I don't think--it's a good headline or two, but I don't think the facts on the ground change much.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree?

TOM OLIPHANT, Boston Globe: I think Paul is fundamentally correct for an additional reason. I think everyone in Washington knows that Lugar and Helms have been personally feuding for over a decade. And the result was that his

MARGARET WARNER: Explain why first.

TOM OLIPHANT: Helms essentially blocked him from becoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he did it after the 1986 election. In that case it was for a ranking minority member. And they've feuded ever since. And so having that in the backgrounder undercut the credibility of what Lugar had to say. And I think it's the reason that he found no takers. But Paul mentioned something that I think I agree very strongly it holds the key to this--and this is not just Jesse Helms. It's Trent Lott. Paul said he doesn't--Lott doesn't want to have to--but he will if he has to. And that helps us understand that the key to all of this is whether individual Republican Senators come out for former Gov. Weld. And about that important matter, there are a couple of things. First of all, it's so important to former Gov. Weld that he went fishing this week in the Adirondacks. Secondly

MARGARET WARNER: Confirming his image of a man who doesn't take these things too seriously.

TOM OLIPHANT: Some people would probably not want to be in a foxhole with the guy. But in addition, former Gov. Weld has made none of the trips you have to make on Capitol Hill to individual Republican Senators to ask for their support. My sense is that he needs about twenty to twenty-five before Majority Leader Lott would sit up, take notice, and go to Helms to work something out. And Weld is nowhere near that.

PAUL GIGOT: It was notable this week too that in the President's press conference there was a what I would describe as a pro forma endorsement of Bill Weld's candidacy. He said, we'll do everything we can; we've got a team working on it. I'd like to know where in the White House, you know, they're working on it.

MARGARET WARNER: Team's meeting right now.

PAUL GIGOT: How small the team is. Because the fact is that Bill Clinton has a lot he has to get through a Republican Senate. He has to get a NATO treaty through. He has to get a fast track trade negotiating treaty through. He has arms control treaties that he wants to get through. Bill Weld is fifth to sixth--twenty-fifth down the list.

TOM OLIPHANT: Absolutely. Clinton made one other thing clear too. And that is that he will have no part of the kind of thing that Senator Lugar briefly suggested last Sunday.

MARGARET WARNER: Just trying to go around Sen. Helms entirely, get it to the floor somehow.

TOM OLIPHANT: That's right. You know, you could imagine a couple of Republicans on that committee perhaps voting for something that would make Helms uncomfortable, but Clinton will have nothing to do with something like that, and that only makes it even more difficult.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Tom, saying with the President now, he also said at the Wednesday news conference, he indicated that he might veto--use his new line-item veto authority to veto some items in either the tax cut or the budget package. What are the calculations going on inside the White House right now? He had five days from Wednesday to decide.

TOM OLIPHANT: Every indication at this hour is that the President made a big mistake in that press conference. And that was a two- fold mistake. First of all, he made a big deal out of a little deal. The line-item veto is not the answer to psoriasis, bad breath, and all our other national problems. It is a small scalpel that can help in certain situations to enforce order on the fiscal matters. But secondly, he, in effect, made a promise to find something in the budget and tax deal to line-item veto before he had studied the bill in question, before he had any idea of what some of the choices are. And as the week went on, it was very interesting, the more they looked at this bill, the more they discovered that by and large you could find a reason in logic or even sound policy for most of the stuff in it. Now, I still think he will find something, but this very unseemly scramble at the end of the week has in a sense undercut some of the presidential-like significance with this authority that he supposedly believes in so much.

MARGARET WARNER: Why did this happen? Are they looking for a test?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, it's a significant increase in presidential authority. I mean, he now gets to delve into the real bowels of the bill, pick things out, and it enhances negotiating authority across a variety of problems. As Tom says, these items are not virgin births. I mean, they're in these bills because somebody wants them. Usually somebody wants them, usually somebody powerful, committee chairmen, often Democrats, often friends of the President, often people you want to vote for. You need their vote on a treaty.

MARGARET WARNER: Or it was a trade-off for something else.

PAUL GIGOT: So you have to be careful. On the other hand, the political downside of this, other than making one or two Senators mad--is not--I mean--is not great. I mean, he gets to veto something, say a spending bill, say a special interest tax, but I guess a stand-up for the national interests against special interests. He has to say I don't want that spending going on; it enhances his reputation for fiscal integrity. I think he's looking for something for precisely that reason, and one other one. A presidential power that's not exercised is not really a power. You have to instill some fear.

TOM OLIPHANT: There is, though, a timing problem here. I think most of us envisage this coming to a head, being used the first time in one of the appropriations bills that Congress must pass every year. Now, along comes this monster budget and tax bill, and picking out what amounts to a tax expenditure to be line-item vetoed for the first time could complicate the absolutely inevitable constitutional test of this authority that will follow its first use. And so there has even been the argument made to the President leave this all alone and wait for one of the appropriation bills in the fall before you

MARGARET WARNER: Yes. We should point out--I mean, this will be- -in fact, it's in the legislation--on a fast track directly to the Supreme Court.

PAUL GIGOT: There are a lot of people, especially the people who would have their items vetoed, who will send this directly to court. So he should pick something that is both politically strong and legally strong.

MARGARET WARNER: All right.

TOM OLIPHANT: It's just you can't find one.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. But explain something else, Paul. Congressional Republicans, I gather, are divided over whether they would support the President on this or not.

PAUL GIGOT: Well

MARGARET WARNER: Some Republicans think it's a good idea. Explain that.

PAUL GIGOT: Republicans gave it--this power to them. It was part of the Contract With America. They say he wants it so they can't turn around very easily and say oh, my God, he misused it. On the other hand, it might be something that's very near and dear to their hearts, so this is a rare thing in American history, if you ask me. A branch of government- the Congress--ceding authority to another branch voluntarily, and the bad luck the Republicans have is that Bob Dole lost. And so Bill Clinton gets to be the first to exercise it against them.

TOM OLIPHANT: So there is some indication in the crafting, particularly of this tax bill, that the line item veto is having an effect that perhaps nobody thought of at the time it was proposed, and that is as a kind of a deterrent. Nobody wants to be the congressman who is singled out for having authored the provision that is, you know, a narrow, little special interest, and so to an extent I think some things ended up on the cutting room floor that might otherwise have gone into a tax bill in the past.

MARGARET WARNER: But some Republicans are warning the President that there's also a good faith issue here that they negotiated this whole deal together, and if he vetoes one of them, they're going to regard that as bad faith. Do you think that's legit? I mean, that that's a real danger he faces?

PAUL GIGOT: It may be--it is legitimate on some items--it is not legitimate on 79 specific elements of the tax code. I can tell you that those--all of those items were not negotiated.

MARGARET WARNER: Give an example.

PAUL GIGOT: There was one for a big contributor by the name of Harold Simmons. I forget the precise details of it

TOM OLIPHANT: Sale of a piece of land to a farmer's cooperative that I think grows sugar beets.

PAUL GIGOT: It just so happens that I think Tom Daschle, the SenateMinority Le