December 23, 1991

After being nurtured for a decade by state and local governments that set aside a portion of their contracts for minority businesses, thousands of such companies have closed or are foundering in the aftermath of court rulings that the racial preferences are unconstitutional. At least two dozen cities, from Philadelphia to Portland, Ore., have suspended the set-aside programs voluntarily or under court orders. So have many states, including New York, New Jersey and California. And similar programs are being challenged in court or are under administrative review in most of the 32 states, 200 cities and countless counties and public authorities that have them.

An Egyptian immigrant was acquitted Saturday night of the murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane because the jury concluded that there were crucial missing links in the prosecution's case and that it had not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused man had fired the fatal shots, a juror and an alternate juror said yesterday. They said the doubts arose because the prosecution produced no witness in the five-week trial who saw the defendant, El Sayyid A. Nosair, shoot Mr. Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League, at a crowded pro-Zionist meeting at a hotel in midtown Manhattan last year.

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Richard C. Breeden, has sharply shifted course in several policy areas recently in what senior officials at the agency see as an effort to promote the Bush Administration agenda during an election year. The moves, some of them opposed by other commissioners, include proposed regulatory breaks for small companies, a delay in new rules governing corporate shareholder battles and new efforts to control what Mr. Breeden sees as excessive litigation by shareholders. In each instance, Mr. Breeden has moved closer to the White House position than where the agency stood earlier this year.

The six-month civil war in Yugoslavia has killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, wrecked Eastern Europe's most promising economy, created half a million refugees and stirred enough hatred to incite generations of future conflict. But it has not yet produced a decisive military result. The Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Army and its allies, the Serbian militias and irregulars, are bogged down after seizing control of a third of the separatist republic of Croatia and have recently withdrawn from several forward positions. Meanwhile, the hurriedly organized Croatian army is beginning to score some minor victories, raising hopes among politicians in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, that the lost lands may some day be regained.

President Boris N. Yeltsin of the Russian republic was reassuringly prosaic this weekend as he succeeded to the leadership mantle of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the President of a Soviet Union that has melted out from under him. While the watching Western world at first may miss Mr. Gorbachev's flourishes about historic new beginnings replete with fresh catchwords to match "glasnost" and "perestroika," there is something to be said for Mr. Yeltsin's bluff push forward sans rhetoric with the new Commonwealth of Independent States.