May 11, 1991

When the United Parcel Service moved its corporate headquarters here in 1975, it was part of an exodus of companies fleeing the high costs of living and working in New York City. This week, United Parcel Service officials announced that they were moving again, this time to Atlanta. But it was for much the same reason. The company said the chief reason it planned to move 1,000 employees was that the cost of suburban housing that offered a welcome refuge two decades ago had risen so much.

In proposing the darkest budget New York City has seen since its brush with bankruptcy 16 years ago, Mayor David N. Dinkins said yesterday, "No one is to blame for this crushing burden." But it is weighted by bundles this Mayor chose to carry. "To suggest that we are in this fix because of actions of our own is not accurate," Mr. Dinkins said, noting that recession and punishing cuts in state and Federal aid have robbed his city of resources.

Behind the immediate horror of the cyclone that killed more than 100,000 people last week lies a painful truth: It is not so much weather that is killing people as it is poverty. The loss of life on such a scale would be preventable, relief experts and Bangladeshi officials say, if only there were enough money to build more cyclone shelters and higher embankments against the sea. But money is short, and so the next big cyclone will also kill tens of thousands of destitute villagers forced by population pressures to live in dangerous areas. Vulnerable to Any Storm "I will stay here," said Abdulkarim, an 18-year-old man on Gomatali Island, which barely rises a few feet above the Bay of Bengal and is vulnerable to any storm.

A new Federal law requiring drug makers to cut their prices to Medicaid programs has touched off efforts by virtually every other major purchaser to control the costs of prescription drugs. Taken together, these efforts represent the most serious challenge yet to the ability of drug makers to continue raising prices far more rapidly than the general rate of inflation. Prescription drugs have been one of the fastest-growing but least regulated health-care costs.

The Bush Administration pressed Iraq to reconsider its rejection of a United Nations police force to secure the repatriation of the country's Kurdish population. United States military leaders said they would try to avoid further expansion of their security zone in northern Iraq. Saudi Arabia is to announce that it will join its five Arab gulf allies in sending an observer to attend any peace conference between Israel and the Arabs, a senior Saudi official said. Articles, pages 4 and 5