Washington briefs

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 9, 2001

U.S.: Returned items not gifts to Clintons

WASHINGTON -- About $28,000 worth of household items that former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton removed from the White House and then returned were government property, not personal gifts meant for them, the government has found.

"It appears that everything on the list is White House property," said Jim McDaniel, speaking for the National Park Service, which conducted the examination.

The Clintons returned 19 items -- sofas, lamps, an easy chair, a kitchen table and other household goods -- Wednesday after some donors said their gifts were for the White House, not the former first family.

Senate passes bill on pipeline safety

WASHINGTON -- The Senate unanimously passed a bill Thursday calling for increased federal funding of pipeline safety efforts, responding to several deadly accidents involving pipeline explosions in the last two years.

The Pipeline Safety Improvement Act would allot $26-million to fund pipeline safety and earmark $17-million more for grants to states to help with pipeline safety measures in the 2002 fiscal year.

In the House, a similar measure failed last year. But a revised version has been introduced in the lower chamber.

Former officials . . .

GORE: Al Gore's lectures at Columbia University are off the record, but his classes at two Tennessee universities will be a matter of public record.

Students in Gore's courses at Fisk University and Middle Tennessee State University are welcome to talk to news organizations about the former vice president's lectures, officials at both schools said. His lectures in Tennessee start next week.

RENO: Janet Reno was back in the attorney general's office Thursday for lunch with her successor John Ashcroft. The atmosphere was cordial and good-humored as the Clinton Democrat returned from her home in Florida to meet the Republican, who was one of the first senators to call for Clinton's impeachment.

RILEY: Richard Riley, who served for eight years as President Bill Clinton's education secretary, will teach government at his alma mater in South Carolina, Furman University in Greenville, and resume practicing law at a firm that bears his name.

GLICKMAN: Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman has joined a lobbying and international law firm where he will advise clients on food, agriculture and trade issues. Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Kansas, served as agriculture secretary from 1995 until last month.

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