According to reports, Jenna and Barbara Bush, the 19-year-old twin daughters of President Bush, were caught trying to order drinks at a Mexican restaurant in Austin. It is the second time in less than a month that University of Texas freshman Jenna has been caught drinking underage. She pleaded no contest to a charge of being a minor in possession of alcohol after getting ticketed by police at a popular Austin nightclub. A judge ordered her to pay $51.25 in court fees and serve eight hours of community service, plus six hours of alcohol awareness training.

This is the first bust for Barbara, a Yale University student.

Police say the manager of Chuy's restaurant called 911 on Tuesday evening after minors -- allegedly the Bush daughters -- tried to order drinks. No charges have yet been filed, pending an investigation.

So, is this a big deal? In this country, drinking is illegal for anyone younger than 21, but the reality among American college students is usually very different. Drinking happens -- and no one expects the restaurant to call 911.

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For years there's been a broad bipartisan consensus that the combined problems of "loose nukes" -- weapons and materials that aren't adequately secured -- and the "brain drain" of Russian scientists -- some of whom are being lured by governments like Iran and Iraq to make those nations nuclear powers -- pose the greatest threat to national security that the U.S. faces.

That's why there's now bipartisan alarm at President Bush's decision to cut $100 million from highly successful federal programs that keep tabs on Russia's nuclear weapons and material and prevent those materials from falling into the hands of hostile states and terrorists.

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The scheduled execution of McVeigh, who was convicted of killing 168 in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, has now been postponed to June 11, when he will be executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. But McVeigh's lawyer, Rob Nigh, said that his client was frustrated by the events and might reconsider his earlier decision not to challenge the execution order. Meanwhile, families of those killed in the bombing expressed anguish at the delay.

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"Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently superior to others," reads the Legislature's statement, which was approved 9-5 Tuesday by the state's House Education Committee. It will soon go before the full House.

Among Broome's pet peeves, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, are that Darwin "teaches that some humans have evolved further than others." That he "holds that people of color are 'savages,'" and that in doing so he has "provided the main rationale for modern racism."

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Bush's short speech on Tuesday afternoon gave little new insight into what a plan might look like, with scant specifics regarding the range and capability of the weapons involved, and no estimate of cost or who would end up paying for the system. (Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said after the speech that he feared the cost could climb as high as $200 billion. Other defense analysts have guessed that Bush's plan would cost $10 billion a year during the research and development phase, with greater cost as it was deployed.)

But the president's focus on modifying or scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, our 1972 agreement with what was then the Soviet Union, sent a signal to those in the Republican Party who have long argued for a national missile defense -- and against continued treaty talks with Russia. In Tuesday's speech, Bush tried to straddle the line between members of his own party at home who want the treaty done away with, and American allies abroad who want the treaty to remain intact. Choosing his words carefully, the president spoke of "a new framework" for global defense that "move(s) beyond the constraints of the ABM treaty."

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The bill makes it a federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman. Pro-choice and women's rights groups backed an alternative measure that would have extended the same additional criminal penalties for crimes against pregnant women, but by establishing special compensation for the woman, not by designating the fetus as a separate victim. That amendment, sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., was rejected, with conservatives insisting on the moral imperative of treating the fetus as a victim.

"This is not an abortion bill," insisted House Judiciary Committee chairman James F. Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., adding that "killing an unborn child should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

While it's true that the bill does not address abortion specifically, it firmly establishes special protections for a fetus or zygote, defining it as a separate person.

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"American planes come to the edge of our country and they don't say 'excuse me,'" President Jiang Zemin exclaimed, even as he expressed hope that the two sides could reach a "common understanding" about the incident that led to the death of Chinese pilot Wang Wei. "This sort of conduct is not acceptable in any country."

In fact, American intelligence has conducted reconnaissance flights for some 50 years, and so have dozens of other countries -- including China, which conducts extensive surveillance all over the Pacific. But the Chinese were miffed that the Clinton administration had ramped up these operations last year in response to mounting tensions over the potential sale of U.S. weapons to Taiwan. (President Bush approved the sale of weapons to Taiwan this week, but he excluded the most contentious weapon from that deal -- an Aegis radar system that had China rattling its sabers.) Chinese officials also complained last May that the flights were coming too close to the coast; the American military responded bluntly that the flights were in international airspace and would continue.

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That's why a CIA plane, contracted to do intelligence as part of a drug interdiction operation with the Peruvian government, suspected on Friday that a small Cessna carrying a family of Baptist missionaries was running drugs.

According to statements by a U.S. intelligence official, the three-person U.S. surveillance crew, who were civilian contract employees of the CIA, informed a Peruvian A-37 fighter jet on patrol about its suspicions, but asked it to check its identity before taking any action. The U.S. crew communicated only with the Peruvian air force liaison on board the surveillance plane. By agreement, U.S. personnel are not in the Peruvian chain of command and have no authority to control their actions. Despite the American objections, the Peruvian officer on board the CIA plane instructed the jet crew to fire on the suspicious Cessna, according to the official.

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It may sound ridiculous, and more than a little bit gross. (Sumell warns that her project is not for the faint of heart, and says her roommates are a little bit miffed.) But she's had a great response so far -- more than 200 contributors. She plans to hang the bags of bush on a clothesline at the National Organization for Women's April 22 march in Washington. And if all goes well, there will be 538 of them -- the number of certified votes by which Bush won in Florida, plus one. Sumell is using this number to symbolize the way the election has, she says, set back women's rights.

Sensationalist San Francisco stunt? Yeah, well, maybe so. But Sumell says her purpose is to draw attention to the erosion of pro-choice laws -- and how else to combat a lack of attention than with a shocking public display?

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"I would like to make it clear I am innocent," Berenson said Tuesday in fluent Spanish to a panel of judges. The first day of the trial marked what many hope will be a second chance for the 31-year-old New York native, who now faces the lesser charge of "terrorist collaboration" in a civil court. But the stakes are high for both sides. A conviction could mean up to 20 years in prison for Berenson. And as state prosecutors try to prove their case against Berenson, Peru will face another sort of trial in the court of international public opinion.

Berenson was found guilty in a secret military court five years ago, at age 26, and was sentenced to life in prison by hooded military judges for allegedly helping the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, or MRTA, plot a takeover of the Peruvian Congress.

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The grant became news because classmates of Charles Andrew Williams described the 15-year-old freshman and alleged shooter as a kid who'd been bullied to the breaking point. The description is strikingly similar to those given by friends and fellow students of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Both boys were reportedly mocked and taunted routinely and sought revenge through a deadly plan against their fellow students. News also surfaced this week that Williams had saved one bullet in the attack -- reportedly for himself.

Some of Williams' classmates insisted that he was no more tortured than any other student at the school was. The disagreement about Williams illustrates one of the chief problems with efforts to crack down on bullying: It's sometimes hard to agree on what constitutes bullying and who's behind it.

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But whatever the investigation of Williams uncovers, one thing is already clear: The high school freshman will be tried as an adult, thanks to California's latest crackdown on juvenile crime, Proposition 21, a ballot measure that passed last year and requires that teenagers as young as 14 who are accused of murder be tried as adults. Now Williams' attorneys are trying to use his case to challenge Prop. 21 by arguing that its provisions, which automatically move their client's case to adult court, are unconstitutional.

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Against that grim backdrop, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a major change in policy Tuesday. The Bush administration, he said, will ease general economic and trade sanctions against Iraq and institute more targeted, or "smart," sanctions -- ones designed to hurt Saddam directly rather than placing the burden on civilians.

"The message I've consistently heard," Powell told the press Tuesday during a visit to European leaders in Belgium, "is that overdoing it with the sanctions gives [Saddam] a tool that he is using against us -- and really is not weakening him." During his first trip to the Middle East as secretary of state last weekend, Powell sought support for sanctions from leaders of the allied Arab states. The consensus he found among them was that America must change its approach, or continue to lose their support.

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But Ariel Sharon became the prime minister of Israel by an overwhelming 25 percent lead on Tuesday, one of the highest margins in the history of Israeli politics. And Sharon has ambitious designs for a broad coalition of parties in Israel's Knesset, one much farther-reaching than the fragile government of his defeated predecessor, Ehud Barak. Like it or not, Sharon is now the man in charge of Israel, and the key to prospects for peace.

After a terrifying four months of intifada that has caused the deaths of roughly 350 Palestinians and 50 Israelis, Israeli voters seem concerned first and foremost with security. And though many, both Arab and Jewish, blame the uprising on Sharon's incendiary visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Sept. 28, many also believe he is the only Israeli leader firm enough to confront the Palestinian violence and Yasser Arafat.

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Guatemala offers little or no protection for women who are abused. When she asked the Guatemalan police for help, they told her they couldn't get involved in domestic disputes. The judge she appealed to said the same thing. She made several unsuccessful attempts to leave her husband and live elsewhere in Guatemala, but he always tracked her down.

Then, in 1995, Alvarado made the dangerous, illegal crossing into the United States via Brownsville, Texas, and soon landed in San Francisco, where she found pro bono legal representation and filed for asylum protection with the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Alvarado has made a new life here, supporting herself through hourly wage jobs in the Bay Area. According to her co-counsel, Karen Musalo, the hardest struggle has been living without the children Alvarado had to leave behind, a then-8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, who she did not want to expose to the risk of her illegal flight.

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Let's accept that Times profiles of men may sometimes favor the silly over the substantive. Let's acknowledge that Rice isn't exactly a new figure on the national stage, and the Times has written seriously about her before. It was still shocking, on the day she became the nation's first female national security advisor, to read a profile so heavy on retrograde gender imagery.

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Welcome to the first World AIDS Day of the new millennium.

The event, held each year on the first day in December, comes on the heels of a sobering report released jointly in the past week by the World Health Organization and the United Nations AIDS agency. By the end of this year, says the report, more than 21 million people across the world will have died of AIDS since the epidemic began. Three million of those deaths will have occurred this year alone. Today, more than 36 million men, women and children are living with AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Approaches to stopping the spread of AIDS have changed vastly since the early 1980s, when the disease was known as "gay cancer" or "gay-related immune disorder," since most of the earliest cases occurred in urban gay communities of the United States. Health officials responded by closing gay bathhouses and launching education campaigns targeting homosexual men, who drastically curtailed anal sex and other high-risk sexual practices.

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But hopes for an agreement collapsed over the weekend and the meeting ended without a deal. According to press reports, there were two major bones of contention. First was the issue of countries earning reduction credits for forested land (known as carbon "sinks" since they soak up carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas). Heavily forested countries such as the U.S. and Canada lobbied aggressively for such provisions while the Europeans opposed them, offering only limited credits for sinks.

The second issue was the establishment of a system to trade cash credits for emissions. This would effectively allow polluting countries to purchase their way into compliance with treaty requirements through deals with nations whose emissions fell well below the mandated limits. Again, the U.S. was the key backer of creating this kind of trading system.

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Social issues like gun control and abortion have played a hot role in the presidential race and the battle for Congress. But voters also faced direct proposals on everything from gay marriage to legalizing pot. Here's a roundup of the hottest state proposals and how they fared:

Drugs:

Northern California's Mendocino County became the first in the nation to vote to approve growing marijuana plants. Measure G, which won 58 percent of the vote, will allow each adult resident to cultivate up to 25 pot plants.

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Yesterday, the debate over security leaks reached a kind of climax in the form of a bill, approved by Congress, that awaits President Clinton's signature -- or veto -- by Nov. 4. The controversial provision, tacked on to a larger intelligence spending bill, tightens government security by making it a felony for anyone with security clearance to knowingly disclose classified information to anyone without authorized access to it.

An alliance of press organizations -- including CNN, the Washington Post and the American Society of Newspaper Editors -- is up in arms over what they say is a broad threat to journalistic freedom.

And even people who support the law admit that there's a lot wrong with it. It's extremely broad, covering the entire gamut of classified information and making it illegal to leak to the press anything -- no matter how innocuous -- that's been classified.

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