April 6, 1991

Police Chief Gets Support In the latest twist in the political fight that arose after the police beat a motorist, the Los Angeles City Council moved to overrule the suspension of Chief Daryl F. Gates. Page 10. A Deal on Television Reruns A majority on the Federal Communications Commission agreed on a proposal to relax the rules that have barred television networks from the lucrative rerun market. The Fox network may gain the most. Page 27.

In a dingy basement apartment in Harlem, a well-dressed man in his late 40's drew deeply from a pipe fashioned from a miniature whisky bottle and a stubby glass tube. Holding his breath, he passed the pipe, with the blue-gray smoke of crack still swirling in its chamber, to a friend sitting at his side at a crowded old wooden dining table. Another weekend of partying was starting at Chuck's Place.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the champion of forces arrayed against the central Government, capped a week of parliamentary victories today by winning expanded powers to rule by decree in the Russian republic and the establishment of a republican presidency. The vote came on the last day of a special session of the full Parliament of the Russian republic, the largest and most powerful of the nation's 15 constituent republics. The session had been called by the Communists themselves to pillory and possibly unseat Mr. Yeltsin, the chairman of the republic's Parliament.

Reflecting an increasingly grim labor market, the Government reported today that the nation's unemployment rate climbed three-tenths of a point in March, to 6.8 percent, the highest rate since late 1986. With the ranks of the jobless swelling by another 414,000, there are 2.1 million more people looking for work now than there were last June. The total number of unemployed is nearly 8.6 million.

Under intense pressure to help thousands of Kurds fleeing the Iraqi Army, President Bush ordered Air Force transports today to begin dropping food, blankets and clothing to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq on Sunday. State and Defense Department officials said they were still working out the details of the airdrop, which they said would go on indefinitely, but they said they hoped to provide supplies to at least 50,000 people initially. That would be a small portion of the more than half-million Kurds who have fled their hometowns in northern Iraq since the Iraqi Army crushed their postwar rebellion.