July 27, 1991

Across the Soviet Union, people are starting their days by popping open milk and juice containers that are produced here thanks to machines that used to produce sophisticated military components too secret to be discussed. The Luch Experimental Works factory in this industrial city about 15 miles south of Moscow was an integral part of the vast and secretive military industrial complex, producing parts for nuclear reactors, lasers and metal optics used in advanced weapons systems. Now, as part of a joint venture with a Swedish company, the factory has been partially turned over to manufacturing machines that make cardboard containers for milk, orange juice, apple juice and guava juice.

The Milwaukee police responded two months ago to reports of a naked and bleeding teen-ager on the street. The three officers who investigated were apparently persuaded by Jeffrey L. Dahmer, now suspected in 11 killings, that the incident was a domestic dispute. Yesterday the three officers were suspended.

Hard hit by recession, state and local governments are raising taxes and fees more steeply than they have in decades. The total amount to be raised this year may approach the $23 billion in Federal tax increases that Congress enacted last fall. And despite all the political oratory about avoiding tax increases, public policy specialists say the trend is likely to continue because of the spiraling costs of education and prisons as well as health care and other social services. A Wider Tax Net With expenses rising sharply and revenues plummeting, states and cities have cast their tax nets deeper and wider than ever before:

As his medical career took him from one hospital to the next, Dr. Neal Rzepkowski said, he carried with him the conviction that he was doing the right thing. In most cases, he told his superiors he was infected with the virus that causes AIDS. When he beleved it appropriate, he told his patients. No one, he said, ever protested. But at a news conference yesterday, Dr. Rzepkowski watched the president of an upstate New York hospital make an announcement that could end the doctor's career at the age of 39. Officials at Brooks Memorial Hospital in Dunkirk, about 45 miles southeast of Buffalo, said that they had requested Dr. Rzepkowski's resignation because he is HIV-positive, and that he had agreed to submit it.

The Justice Department tonight approved a revised plan for redistricting the New York City Council, making it likelier that the city can hold historic elections on schedule later this year. The action by Assistant Attorney General John R. Dunne came 32 hours after the city's Districting Commission redrew the map for several Council districts to protect the voting rights of Hispanic people in East Harlem, the South Bronx and northern Brooklyn.