A Palestinian woman dances with joy Monday as she celebrates the return to Gaza of Hamas leader Sheil Ahmed Yassin at a tumultuous reception in Gaza City's Yarmouk football stadium. Sheik Yassin returned to Gaza from Jordan, where he was sent following his release from an Israeli prison last week.



National

Republicans fume over fund raising

WASHINGTON - Outraged Senate Republicans accused the Clinton administration Tuesday of trying to run out the clock on their campaign fund-raising investigation and urged President Clinton to "step up to the plate" to force his supporters to testify.

Facing a Dec. 31 deadline, the Republicans teed off against Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno for more than two hours while the White House point man for the 1996 campaign, Harold Ickes, waited to testify.

As Ickes sat in a back room outside the large Senate hearing facility, his written statement was provided to reporters, and it demonstrated his oft-demonstrated combativeness.

He said the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee's "virtually exclusive focus on Democratic . . . fund raising in general, and fund raising by the winning campaign of President Clinton and Vice President Gore in particular, serves a partisan - not a public - agenda."

Congressional pay raise unpopular

WASHINGTON - Most Americans believe they should get cost-of-living pay increases every year, but they sure don't feel that way about members of Congress. In fact, some feel so strongly they say they'll vote against any lawmaker who supports a raise.

That expression of sentiment comes in an Associated Press poll taken just after Congress approved legislation making possible a $3,072 pay increase for itself, the first in five years.

The bill passed through the House and the Senate last week and awaits President Clinton's signature. Clinton hasn't said what he will do, but a spokesman said the president thinks the question is one for Congress to decide.

The poll suggests possible trouble for legislators who supported the increase for themselves. Fully 26 percent of those questioned said they would be less likely to vote to re-elect a member of Congress who had voted for the pay raise. About 58 percent said it didn't make any difference.

On the other hand, the general proposition that people's pay should go up to keep pace with the cost of living was approved by better than 80 percent.

Clinton hearing aid sparks interest

NEW YORK - When President Clinton was fitted with hearing aids, baby boomers got the message loud and clear.

The First Baby Boomer's example is apparently leading many middle-aged people to inquire about gadgets they once associated with the Geritol set.

"I really didn't want to face up to it," said 57-year-old lawyer Nathan Beck, who often had trouble hearing in the Jersey City, N.J., courthouse where he sometimes works. "But with the president and reading how common this is, I recognized that there isn't any magic solution."

On Saturday - a day after Clinton's annual physical turned up the hearing problem - Beck finally had the hearing aid fitting his doctor had been recommending for more than three years.

He was not alone. The normally quiet audiology department at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore fielded calls from nearly a dozen patients in one day who cited Clinton's example. The Hearing Industries Association said it has been besieged with calls.

Pay phone prices expected to rise

WASHINGTON -Keep your change handy -the price of a local pay phone call could be going up.

Federal Communications Commission rules permitting pay phone owners to charge whatever they want for local calls went into effect Tuesday.

The provisions, deregulating local pay phone rates, implement a 1996 law that lifted decades-old regulations on the telecommunications industry.

The FCC has argued that competition will keep a check on rates. But consumer groups predict that deregulation will cause pay phone prices to go up about 40 percent, a dime more for a call that now costs a quarter.

Historically, most state regulators have capped pay phone rates, usually at 25 cents a call.

Seven states have deregulated them, the FCC said. In five, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and Wyoming, the price already is 35 cents a call. In the other two, Montana and South Dakota, it is 25 cents.

The $4-billion-a-year pay phone industry says deregulation is warranted because the industry is more competitive now than ever. Independent pay phone owners control 500,000 of the nation's 2.1 million pay phones.

Gene Kimmelman, co-director of the Consumers Union's office here, said that competition doesn't benefit consumers.

Instead, he said it gives owners of restaurants, bars, gas stations and others that have pay phones more choice in selecting a pay phone company to operate in their establishments. The owners get a slice of the revenues from the pay phones.

"It's crazy to deregulate a market where consumers have no choice of pay phone companies," Kimmelman said. "The only choice is for the property owners who decide which companies'phones to put in their stores."

A federal appeals court here in July affirmed the FCC's decision to let market forces set local pay phone rates, handing the pay phone industry a victory.

State regulatory commissions and the National Association of the State Utility Consumer Advocates had challenged the FCC's authority to deregulate rates for local pay phone calls.

The FCC intends to monitor rates to ensure that they remain reasonable, said an FCC official speaking on condition of anonymity. The official also said the FCC will be looking to hear from states on whether the rules are not working and not benefiting consumers.

State

Tabloids still banned from stores

CINCINNATI - From stacks of adoring biographies to Elton John's reworked "Candle in the Wind," anything seen as a tribute to Princess Diana is being snapped up from mail-order houses, bookstores and record shops.

But some grocery stores still aren't selling tabloids, which are viewed as more exploitative.

"We are not in the business of censorship," Pierre Wevers, president of Bigg's Hypermarkets, said of its ban.

"But at the same time, we felt it was the right thing to do. It's our way of expressing disagreement with the way these publications do business."

Biggs has 10 stores in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Colorado. That chain and several local stores took tabloids off the racks after Diana, Dodi Al Fayed and a driver were killed in an Aug. 31 car crash in Paris.

Patrol