October 7, 1991

The American and Soviet arms control initiatives have left the superpowers in agreement on eliminating their battlefield nuclear weapons, but the two sides still have major differences about how to cut their long-range, intercontinental nuclear arms. In responding to President Bush's arms control initiative, the Soviet President, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, said he would match the American move to destroy or withdraw from service most tactical nuclear weapons on land and at sea.

A community group has asked Manufacturers Hanover and Chemical Bank to make a commitment of at least $10 billion for mortgages and other loans for low-income housing in New York City over the next 10 years. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, a group that seeks to encourage more bank lending in low-income urban areas, is making its demand as the two banks are planning to merge at the end of the year. The group, known as Acorn, has threatened to file a protest against the merger with banking regulators if the two banking companies do not cooperate.

For Ruth Williams, a middle-age grandmother who says she has asthma, high blood pressure and phlebitis, the welfare check for $87.50 she received twice a month from the State of Michigan "was like a life raft." "I'm poor, very poor" she said. "The check wasn't much, but it gave me a chance to feel like a human being."

As a hushed crowd sat primly in anticipation of the Southeastern Savoyards Light Opera Company's performance of "H.M.S. Pinafore" Saturday night, the music director, in white tie and tails, turned to the orchestra and raised not a baton, but a tomahawk. In Atlanta, where gleeful crowds lined Peachtree Street this weekend exchanging Indian war chants and the Braves' signature "tomahawk chop" salute with passing cars, nothing is immune from the giddy euphoria set loose by the Atlanta Braves' unlikely ascent from perennial doormats to National League West champions.

When Haiti's military toppled a democratically elected president in a violent gambit to restore an authoritarian past, they also robbed Micheline Cesar of her future. For most of the last week, Mrs. Cesar has held an anxious vigil in her sparsely furnished home in Queens Village, awaiting word on the fate of her husband, Camille, a supporter of the ousted President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was arrested in Port-au-Prince after the coup. The decor is minimal because Mrs. Cesar had been slowly shipping her household goods to Haiti in anticipation of joining her husband in December after spending a quarter century of self-imposed exile in the United States.