February 8, 1992

The day after the slaying of a Hasidic woman sent hundreds of Jewish demonstrators on a bitter protest march through the streets of Crown Heights, city officials, black and Jewish community leaders and the police tried yesterday to prevent the death from escalating into the kind of racial confrontation that racked the neighborhood last summer. The police said they had no suspects in the killing and no indication that there was any racial element involved. And while the streets in the frayed neighborhood stayed calm through early morning today, it was clear that racial tension still simmered beneath the surface of the community.

For the first time, Pakistan openly acknowledged that it has the technology to build an atomic bomb, but said it had no plans to do so. Page 5.

Leaders of the United States anti-missile research program, or "Star Wars," are pressing to buy critical technologies from the counterpart program in the former Soviet Union. The officials believe that this will significantly speed up deployment of the limited anti-missile defense system now planned by the United States. Their statements have been made in interviews and in Congressional testimony and quoted in an aerospace magazine.

In New Hampshire and in Congress, President Bush's Democratic opponents are offering much more ambitious plans for overhauling the nation's medical-care system than the one he unveiled on Thursday. Although no consensus exists on a particular plan, the Democrats are united in advocating more Government involvement in providing universal insurance coverage and restraining health-care costs.

The United States plans to propose to Russia the formation of a Western-financed clearinghouse intended to find jobs for thousands of Soviet nuclear scientists who might otherwise sell their expertise to hostile countries, Administration officials said today. The clearinghouse would pair the talents of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 scientists who have the most advanced nuclear knowledge with the needs of foreign investors, universities, private research organizations or governments willing to pay for commercial nuclear research.