July 21, 1991

THEY began 17 years ago at Rambouillet, just outside Paris, these annual summer gatherings, with a handful of national leaders gathered in relative obscurity to talk about economic problems. But they have turned into the annual meetings of the Board of Directors of the Planet Earth, where political and military questions often dominate, where reputations and alliances and friendships are formed, and where great policy questions are pushed up or down the international agenda. Which is, of course, why Mikhail S. Gorbachev wanted so badly to come here last week, even if it did expose him to derision as a Bolshevik beggar. Critics complain that the G-7 summit conferences have become too elephantine and elaborate (this year's spectacular was a mini-tattoo, complete with lasers, fireworks and bands, in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace). All the important decisions are made in advance, the critics say, and all the rough edges of real debate are smoothed away so the 3,000 or so journalists who now attend can concentrate on image-building for domestic politics.

After the first serious outbreak of fighting in northern Iraq since the violent aftermath of the Persian Gulf war, Kurdish guerrillas control most of a major city in the region and are engaged in a tense standoff there with surrounding Government forces, United Nations officials said today. The officials, reporting by radio from the city of Sulaimaniya, told United Nations officials here that the rebels took over large areas of the city on Thursday after clashes with Iraqi forces that resulted in scores of casualties.

Toll Brothers, one of the region's leading builders of higher-priced houses, is finding new opportunities in the residential building slump by taking over distressed development projects from other investors. The company, which is based in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., will open two new single-family developments in Northern New Jersey this month. It bought the land and the development permits from VBS Bancorp Inc., parent company of Valley Savings Bank, which operates throughout Bergen County, and from the Glendon Development Company of Bryn Mawr, Pa. Toll Brothers would not disclose the purchase prices of the properties.

Only a year ago, movie audiences were thrilling to the sounds of breaking glass and flying expletives, but this summer's films bring to mind a different kind of dirty word: sensitive. Scratch any one of this season's movie heroes and you will find a gentle, thoughtful, considerate guy, even if he happens to be a trained killer made partly of metal. This summer's films are loaded with midlife crises, second thoughts about the fast track, commendable male role models and attitudes that are spiritually or politically correct. Possibly as a consequence of so much exemplary masculine behavior, the season's heroines, in a marked departure from the window-dressing bimbo roles of just a year ago, are less likely to be lending support and comfort and more likely to be spitting nails.

When the paramedics came onto the airplane that had made an emergency landing at the Columbus, Ohio, airport last Sunday evening, one of them asked Jim Leyland, who was having chest pains, "Have you been under any stress?" Several of the Pittsburgh Pirates' coaches laughed. They were not treating Leyland's distress lightly, but it was obvious that the paramedic didn't know that the stricken passenger was a major league baseball manager who lived with public stress at least 162 days a year.