Oregon State University - Beaver Yearbook (Corvallis, OR)

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It was the biggest, wettest story of the summer of 1993. The floods that washed across the Midwest may have been the worst in American history, and they captured the concern of people across the nation. The great flood was the story that most interested Americans in the summer of 1993, with nearly two of three telling pollsters that they followed the story “very closely — on a par with attention paid in years past to the Persian Gulf War. The stage for disaster was set during the winter, when unusually heavy snow fell. There were no midwinter thaws, so the snow melted rapidly as spring arrived, enough to cause scattered record flooding. And then came the rains. Des Moines, for example logged more than 32 inches by the end of July, compared with 18.7 in a normal year. The casualties ranged from the thousands left homeless to investors and consumers in ever ' corner of the United States. Some farm produce prices rose and insurers had to pay out millions in compensation. And Archer Daniels Midland Co., a big publicly traded grain processor, reported a drop in profits. APWid World Pkoun Handshake of peace On a sunny Monday, September 13. 1993, three American presidents gawked in awe, just like everyone else, at a sudden turn toward peace. All eyes were on two old enemies in their new roles as peacemakers, men who say peace salaam in Arabic or shalom in Hebrew. Their handshake — the grasp by Arab Yasser Arafat of the hand of Jew Yitzhak Rabin — brought a gasp, a shout, and finally applause from several thousand people on the White House lawn. A few minutes earlier Rabin s Israel and Arafat’s Palestine Ulceration Organization had signed a peace treaty that once seemed unimaginable. The lM.O recognized the right of Israel to live in peace; Israel, in turn, recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians. President Clinton, who guided Arafat and Rabin toward their historic handshake, called it a great occasion of history and hope. AT WorU Phocoi HISTORY IN THE MAKING by: Associated Press 10 WORLD N E W S

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 Heidi K. Dnxbsier • O r E N I N C 9

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APWi WotUPhotm AP Wide World Phoan President Clinton’s point man on health care reform in 1993 was his wife, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. When Mrs. Clinton appeared Ixifore Congress to implore its members to work with the administration to overhaul the health care system, she got a movie star's reception. Hut the talk was quickly turned to business. Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat, said he favored expanding Medicare to cover all Americans. He told Mrs. Clinton that his mother fears that she would be worse off under Clinton's reform plan, even though it calls for new Medicare coverage for prescription drugs. Mrs. Clinton, who chaired the While I louse task force on health care reform, conceded that Stark had a point. “I have a mother, t x , she said, so if we can't pass the mother test, we're in trouble. Russian coup fails Russia, one of the world's great powers, experienced political upheaval in 1993 more typical of a Third World nation. When President Boris Yeltsin disbanded the legislature September 21. many of its hardliners barricaded themselves inside the parliament building, or “White House, in Moscow. Vice President Alexander Rutskoi and others tried to wrest power from Yeltsin in an attempted coup. But, following Yeltsin's orders, tanks and tr x)ps flushed out the defiant lawmakers, many of them old-line Communists opposed to Yeltsin's attempts to move the nation toward a free market economy. The world was stunned by the sight of fire raging uncontrolled inside the stately parliament building. When the smoke cleared the relx llion was crushed, and its leaders — including Speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and former Security Minister Viktor Barannikov — were in jail. A commission was formed to create a new legislative framework, and elections for a parliament were scheduled. WORLD NEW s 11