September 10, 1991

Lightning slashed across the sky over this city known for its hot barbecue, cool jazz and tough police officers. One officer, Jim Pott, sat in a patrol car watching the storm and talked about his place on what he and colleagues bitterly call "the bad boys list." The list, a computer printout of 25 officers who have an unusually large number of citizen complaints against them, is part of the Kansas City Police Department's new "early warning system." The program is intended to prevent officers from using the kind of excessive force that provoked public outrage last spring when a videotape of Los Angeles police officers beating a motorist was made public.

Battalions of grumbling, shoulder-to-shoulder commuters encountered delays of up to an hour crossing New York Harbor on the beleaguered Staten Island Ferry yesterday as city officials offered gloomy assessments on recovering from a mysterious fire that devastated and closed the ferry's Manhattan terminal. It might be two weeks or more before undamaged but asbestos-contaminated lower portions of the terminal can be cleaned up and near-normal service restored, officials said, but it could take months or years for a $40 million reconstruction of the more heavily damaged upper-level passenger concourse.

Thomas K. Duane and Liz J. Abzug, the two gay candidates competing to represent the City Council from the Third District, were startled to find themselves campaigning outside the same subway entrance in Greenwich Village early last Friday morning. After nodding with the icy civility of divorced spouses who unexpectedly meet at a party, the two rivals stood within five feet of each other, handed out fliers, glad-handed subway riders and exchanged not a word. Hostilities did not break out until Mr. Duane left, and Ms. Abzug tried to greet one of Mr. Duane's supporters, Jane Sweeney, campaign chairwoman of the Village Independent Democrats. When Ms. Abzug banteringly said, "Well, at least I'm friendly," Ms. Sweeney retorted with a resounding, "Hah!" and exclaimed: "Friendly?! Your mother has yelled at half of Greenwich Village over this." She was referring to Bella Abzug, the former Congresswoman whose fierce, Gypsy Rose Lee-like campaign on behalf of her daughter had become a contentious campaign issue -- like almost everything else in this close and impassioned race.

In a step that could provide a model for modernizing telephone communications throughout the technologically backward Soviet Union, A.T.& T. next month plans to provide long-distance service directly to Armenia, a first for a Soviet republic. Like the rest of the Soviet Union, Armenia has received its few calls through the scarce and sternly monitored lines funneling through Moscow. But Moscow itself is able to receive fewer calls through normal telephone channels than a medium-size Manhattan apartment building, or 91 simultaneous conversations. And even that is a sharp increase from as few as 16 simultaneous calls as recently as 1987. The Communist Party kept telecommunications primitive as a means of political control. Some switching equipment, essential for completing a call, dates to before the 1917 Revolution. First Direct Dialing The American Telephone and Telegraph Company in mid-October will provide 200 new long-distance circuits into Armenia using A.T.& T.'s flagship 5 ESS digital switching system. That would make direct-dial calls possible for the first time. Calls today go through a central operator in Moscow and can take three days or more to complete.

Yugoslavia's disintegration appeared to have been pushed a step forward today. The results of a referendum in the southern republic of Macedonia on Sunday showed that an overwhelming majority had voted to follow the secessionist republics of Croatia and Slovenia in seeking independence. Preliminary results made public today indicated that roughly three-fourths of those who voted want Macedonia to become a sovereign state. About 75 percent of the 1.3 million eligible to vote did so; Macedonia's Albanian minority boycotted the balloting.