The Senate voted to lift agricultural sanctions imposed against India and Pakistan after their nuclear weapons tests in May. Senators voted unanimously to exempt from the Arms Export Control Act all U.S. Government loan guarantees for supporting food and medicine exports. The act automatically triggered sanctions against India and Pakistan when they detonated their nuclear weapons. This act follows concern that sanctions could disproportionately affect American farmers and food exports to the two countries. Under the original sanctions, farmers were not allowed to sell any wheat to the two countries. Last year, Pakistan bought more than a third of all of the wheat produced in the northwestern part of the country. India buys far fewer American agricultural products. President Clinton, who is expected to sign the legislation, said "Food should not be used as a weapon." Current sanctions met with widespread criticism as being an inappropriate response to the South Asian situation. One Senator said that the remaining sanctions may encourage India and Pakistan to look outside the U.S. to fill their agricultural needs.

After creating viable individual careers, appearing on Broadway, producing albums and families, Donny and Marie Osmond are getting back together for a television show. Their daytime talk show debuts this fall, which is being described as more of an entertainment program than a talk show. It will be a stop along the way for people promoting movies, music, books, and television series, in addition to performances. "Yes, I wore purple socks, and yes, I sang 'Puppy Love,'" Donny said of the 70's. The original variety show, "Donny & Marie," aired on ABC from 1974 to 1978. When it launched, Donny was 16 and Marie was 14 - they were the youngest hosts ever of a weekly national television show.

Because of verbally interrupting courtroom proceedings several times, a Long Beach judge ordered the defendant zapped with 50,000 volts from a stun belt that was fitted to his jail jumpsuit. The incident last week was the first time a defendant was shocked with the belt since Los Angeles County began using them three years ago. The defendant was acting as his own attorney at a sentencing hearing for a petty theft conviction, which is also his third conviction so he is facing the consequences of the "three strikes" law of 25 years to life in prison. Three courtroom bystanders complained, and a public defender who witnessed this said "Nothing he was doing, in my opinion, constituted any sort of security risk." The LA County Sheriff's department is conducting a routine investigation. An Amnesty International spokesman said the act is "smack dab in the middle of a definition of torture under every international human rights law." More than 15 states and 100 counties across the U.S. use the stun belt for inmates according to the manufacturer. They say it has been used 27 times without causing physical injury.

A traumatic event in a child's preschool years may disrupt a key period when the brain is collecting and storing massive amounts of information, according to researchers. Studies on animals suggest that extensive corrective experiences can help over time. A critical period exists when brain development is most ready for stimulation and synapse formation, and that a deprived child may never fully or healthily develop without careful and expensive intervention. They suggest mandatory preschool for all children. The brain stores new information in systems - one tied to its own developmental timetable and another that extracts potentially useful information for later use. In essence, experience alters brain structure to form persisting memories, not in a monolithic or rigid fashion, but rather utilizing multiple, flexible brain systems that can encode different types of experiences, and often on different developmental schedules. While adults certainly can be traumatized by experience, children are likely to be far more vulnerable to pathological experience, either abuse or deprivation, particularly during periods of rapid creation or modification of synaptic connections. The animal studies suggest that extensive and caring intervention can often break the cycle and heal the damage. Even if a critical period is misused or neglected, humans retain the potential to use corrective experience to make up for their early loss. By the same reasoning failure to help abused or neglected children can lead to a lifelong patterns of distress and dysfunction.

While on a military training exercise at an army base in Wainwright, near Calgary, Canada, a soldier plunged 4,500 ft when his parachute failed to open properly. The 22-year-old rifleman passed out before he hit the ground at 70 mph during the adventure training. He was in a coma for 24 hours after landing on a muddy grass bank near Calgary. His legs and pelvis were broken. His father, an ex-soldier, said, "He's a very lucky young man. Wind turbulance caught him and he went into a spin. The more he twisted the more his parachute cords tightened up and closed." His regiment flew his mother, a nurse, to Canada to be with him. He is expected to be moved to hospital in England to complete his recovery. This was his fourth parachute jump.