The House began debate today on a three-year bill to combat trafficking and use of illegal drugs. The measure has the support of most representatives and House Speaker Thomas O'Neill says he expects it to pass by tomorrow. Among other things, the bill would increase penalties for violators, provide money to increase drug enforcement and coast guard personnel, and require drug producing countries to establish eradication programs as a condition of US support for development loans.


A cultural exchange between the US and the Soviet Union may face an American boycott unless US News and World Report correspondent, Nicholas Daniloff, is freed from a Moscow jail. An American style town meeting is scheduled to take place in Latvia next week, but the two hundred seventy Americans due to take part say they won't go if Daniloff remains in jail. They add the decision is a personal one and is not being made by the Reagan Administration in retaliation for the Daniloff detention.


Egyptian and Israeli negotiators have reached agreement on resolving the Taba border dispute, clearing the way for a summit between the two countries to begin tomorrow. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will meet in Alexandria. Details of the Taba agreement have not been made available.


The United States House of Representatives is debating an omnibus drug bill and expects to pass the measure tomorrow. Though the bill has attracted strong bipartisan support, NPR's Cokey Roberts reports the debate on the issue points up the differences between political parties.
When Congress returned from the Fourth of July recess, House Speaker Tip O'Neill said there was only one thing members were talking about in the cloak-room: drugs. The Democrats quickly pulled together chairmen from twelve different committees to draft a drug package. Then, stung by criticism that they were acting in a partisan fashion, the Democratic leaders invited the Republicans to join them in the newly declared war on drugs. So, when the bill came to the House floor today, the party leaders led off debate. Texas Democrat Jim Wright.
"It's time to declare an all-out war, to mobilize our forces, public and private, national and local, in a total coordinated assault upon this menace, which is draining our economy of some two hundred and thirty billion dollars this year, slowly rotting away the fabric of our society, seducing and killing our young. That it will take money is hardly debatable. We can't fight artillery with spitballs."
The question of just how much money this measure will cost has not been answered to the satisfaction of all members. Democrats say it's one and half billion dollars over three years, with almost seven hundred thousand for next year. Republicans claim the price tag will run higher and are trying to emphasize other aspects of the drug battle, aspects which they think play better in Republican campaigns. Minority leader Robert Michel.
"The ultimate cure for the drug epidemic must come from within the heart of each individual faced with the temptation of taking drugs. It is ultimately a problem of character, of will power, of family and community, and concern, and personal pride."
Among other items, the bill before the House increases penalties for most drug related crimes, sets the minimum jail term of twenty years for drug trafficking and manufacturing, authorizes money for the drug enforcement administration and prison construction, beefs up the ability of the coast guard and customs service to stop drugs coming into this country, and creates programs for drug education. The various sections of the measure give House members ample opportunity to speak on an issue where they want their voices heard. Maryland Democratic Barbara McCulsky was nominated for the Senate yesterday. Today, she spoke to the part of the bill which funds drug eradication programs in foreign countries.
"When we fought yellow fever, we didn't go at it one mosquito at a time. We went right to the swamp. That's what the Foreign Affairs section of this legislation will do. It will go to the swamps, or where cocaine is either grown, refined, or manufactured."
Republican Henson Moore is running for the Senate in Louisiana. He spoke to the part of the drug bill which changes the trade laws for countries which deal in drugs.
"We're moving to stop something; it's absolutely idiotic. It needs to be stopped: this situation of where a country can sell legally to us on the one hand and illegally to us under the table, selling drugs in this country poisoning our young people and our population."


Today in China, in Nanjing, balloons, firecrackers and lion dancers mark the dedication of the Johns Hopkins University—Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies. For the first time since World War II, Chinese and American students will attend a graduate institution in China that is administered jointly by academic organizations that are worlds apart figuratively and literally. NPR's Susan Stanberg reports.
Cross-cultural encounters can be extremely enriching; cross-cultural encounters can be utterly absurd.
"Let's see. That would be eighty-seven. So, ... ba-shi-qi-nian-qian, ... let's see, ... equal ... proposition equal, ..."
Here's what that American was trying to say in Chinese.
"Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation ... a new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
Now you don't have to be dealing with classic American oratory to run into problems. In planning for the Center for Chinese and American Studies, there was much debate as to whether the new auditorium on the Nanjing campus should have a flat or sloped floor. If the floor were flat, the auditorium could be used for dances, for parties, but a sloped floor would be better for listening, for viewing films and slides.
"The argument finally won out that for practical reasons a flat floor would be best because it ... it really would make it a multi-purpose room. You wouldn't have to fix the furniture."
Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University, the US end of this Sino-American joint venture in learning.
"So, a flat floor was built. Only the Chinese in building it finally ended up with a flat floor but at two different levels, one higher than the other. So, if you want to use it for dances, you either have to have very short women with very tall men or vice versa."
Twenty-four Americans and thirty-six Chinese of mixed heights are the first students at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center. Nanjing used to be Nanking, by the way, back in the days when Beijing was Peking. The Americans will take classes in Chinese history, economics, trade, politics, all from Chinese faculty. The Chinese will study the US with American university professors. Johns Hopkins President Stephen Muller says this is advanced study work. All the Chinese students are proficient in English; all the Americans have master's degrees plus fluency in Chinese.
"The twenty-four Americans come from about eighteen colleges and universities. No one institution in this country produces that many people of this character; so that's a beginning. Nanjing is not the place; the Center is not the place to go, if you want a doctorate in Chinese history or Chinese language or Chinese literature or whatever. This is a pre-professional program."
Which means the men and women who spend the year at the Nanjing Center will end up as diplomats or business people in one another's country.
"Our hope is that the Americans, to speak about those, who are going to be incidentally rooming with Chinese roommates, which is a very interesting thing the Chinese agree to, that the Americans will not only bring a year of living in China, a year of having studied with Chinese faculty and hearing the Chinese view of Chinese foreign policy in economics and so on, that they will also have the kind of friends among Chinese roughly their age who are going to be dealing with the United States. That will slowly, over the years, create a real network, if you will, if people who, because they've had this common experience, can deal with each other very easily and, you know, be kind of a rallying point—an old boy, old girl network, as it were."
Hopkins President Muller admits that a simple exchange program—Chinese students coming to the US, and American students going to China—would involve far fewer headaches than running jointly an academic institution on foreign soil. Plus the success of the Hopkins-Nanjing Center depends on undependables, like continuing sweet Sino-American relations and being able to attract funding. And there's this wrinkle."
"Some of the people who will study there, without any question, will probably come from or afterwards enter the intelligence community. That it's really desirable that people who do that have that kind of background. We're very honest about that, but it's so easy to denounce the whole thing as an espionage center, or something. You know, there's a lot of fragility in this thing."
Stephen Muller is President of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies was dedicated today in China. I'm Susan Stanberg.
"How do you say good luck in Chinese?"
"Don't know. I don't know Chinese."
"You'd better learn."
"That's a phrase I should know. Yes."