  Pema Tsering's escape from Tibet began 30 years ago with a nighttime trek through the Himalayan mountains and ended three weeks ago on an Alitalia jet to Kennedy International Airport. With hot buttered tea and steamed beef dumplings, New York's entire Tibetan community turned out to help him celebrate, fitting comfortably into a small East Side restaurant.   For the 500 Tibetans in the United States, Mr. Tsering's arrival was a very big deal, the beginning of a wave of Tibetan migration to the United States that will ultimately quadruple their minuscule but passionate exile community. It was made possible when Congress authorized 1,000 special visas for Tibetans.

Quiet Tibetan Influx; Devout, Exiled but Kept Out by U.S.

  THE classroom is filled with blocks, toys, a sand table and books with titles like "Pig Pig Grows Up." The students like to paint and sing songs and go to the playground, but the uncontested highlight of the day is snack. If the cookies fail to meet the taste test, they are certain to be rejected with an emphatic "Yuck!"   Not what most people would consider higher education.

Sand, Cookies And a Hearty Taste of Life

  Canadians used to break down the wealthy into three categories: the rich, the superrich and the Reichmanns.   The Reichmann family business, Olympia & York Developments, is the world's largest real estate developer, having altered skylines throughout Canada as well as in New York and London. But in March it ran out of cash, and fear is rippling through many corners of the Canadian economy.

Reichmann Troubles Roil Canada

  Since Friday, distribution of The New York Times in parts of the New York region has periodically been disrupted because of a labor dispute affecting a wholesale delivery company used by the paper. (Article, page B1.)   The Times regrets the inconvenience to readers.

To Our Readers

  The Bush Administration said today that it would seek to negotiate a free-trade agreement with Chile after a free trade pact with Mexico and Canada is completed.   American officials say that establishing a bilateral free-trade pact with Chile could be the first step toward setting up a free-trade bloc with all of South America.

Trade Talks With Chile Are Planned

  In the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Californians are buying firearms at the highest rate since the state began keeping records 20 years ago, and other states are reporting similar surges in gun sales.   In large part the rush to buy guns in California can be attributed to one of the more frightening messages to come out of the two days of arson, looting and violence in South-Central Los Angeles. That message, that fear, is that the police might not be able to defend people during an outbreak of civil unrest.

LOS ANGELES RIOTS SPURRING BIG RISE IN SALES OF GUNS

  The Dinkins administration will permit drug addicts in New York City to receive clean hypodermic needles under an ambitious research effort announced yesterday intended to measure whether such an approach will slow the spread of AIDS.    The needle-exchange programs, which will begin June 1, will be financed by a private organization and the New York State Department of Health. But they were made possible by a policy shift on the part of Mayor David N. Dinkins last November, who had previously opposed needle-exchange programs as encouraging illegal drug use.

Needle Swaps To Be Revived To Curb AIDS

  THE scene is set in New York's SoHo area: Natural light floods the three room apartment, bouncing off the white walls and the white-painted wood floor.   In the center of the living room, a pair of steel and leather Mies van der Rohe stools are piled high with books; a bicycle is parked in front of the turn-of-the-century mantelpiece upon which brass candlesticks, some postcards, a potted orchid and a ceramic by Marc Leuthold, a young artist, are artfully, but not too self-consciously, arranged.

Less or More, Style Rules

  Three astronauts ventured into the vacuum of space Wednesday night, reached out with gloved hands and snared a wayward satellite.   It was the first time so many astronauts had gone forth into space together and the first time anyone had captured an orbiting satellite with nothing but their hands. All previous salvage jobs and previous attempts on this mission had mainly used some type of hardware.

3 Astronauts, in Space Walk, Grab Errant Satellite

  A group of New York City police officers charged last week in a cocaine ring that reached from Brooklyn to Long Island devised careful strategies to outmaneuver supervisors, investigators and even suspicious fellow officers, Suffolk County investigators said yesterday.   The officers never took a step without first checking schedules of superior officers in their precincts or watching out for particular officers who they feared might be on to them, investigators said. And they constantly altered the days and hours of their transactions to elude detection, said the investigators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Safeguards Were Dodged In Drug Case

  Retail Sales Climb Back Up   A nine-tenths of 1 percent gain in April retail sales cheered some analysts but not others, as the rise only offset a March decline. Page D1.

INSIDE

  A gay employee of the Federal Emergency Management Agency says he was pressured last year to provide a list of other homosexual workers to managers and security personnel, who maintained that they needed the information to help identify potential security risks at the agency.   The employee, Jerald E. Johnson, a 32-year-old management analyst, said agency officials held up clearance for him to participate in an international project until he identified agency workers who were rumored or he knew to be homosexual, an action he says he now regrets.

Government Agency Ferreted Out Names Of Its Gay Workers

  Two labor economists reported yesterday that the pay of most college-educated people -- once thought to be exempt from the wage stagnation that has afflicted Americans for more than 15 years -- had failed since 1989 to keep up with inflation.    The findings, published by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington research organization that often supports Democratic candidates, suggest that as many high-paying jobs vanish from the workplace, a bachelor of arts degree is becoming less of a ticket to a rising income -- a conclusion that other economists said was probably accurate.

Pay of College Graduates Is Outpaced by Inflation

  The Economy    The wages of most college-educated people have failed to keep up with inflation since 1989, two labor economists reported. Such wages were once thought to be exempt from the wage stagnation afflicting most Americans for more than 15 years.  [ Page A1. ]   Retail sales climbed 0.9 percent in April, essentially offsetting a March decline that was bigger than first thought, Commerce Dept. figures showed.  [ D1. ]

BUSINESS DIGEST

  One of four officers acquitted in the beating of a black motorist will be tried again, the Los Angeles District Attorney announced. Page A20.

Officer Faces Second Trial

  Retail sales climbed nine-tenths of 1 percent in April, essentially offsetting a March decline that was bigger than first thought, Commerce Department figures showed today.    The report unsettled some economists who saw it as a sign that the budding recovery might have begun to wilt, but it reassured others that sales climbed, albeit from a lower starting point.

Retail Sales Rose 0.9% In April

  In the first signs of a break in the volatile eight-day newspaper delivery dispute that has disrupted distribution of The New York Times, a panel of go-betweens selected by the drivers union met yesterday with officials of The Times and a news distributor and said afterward that they had started a process they hoped could lead to a settlement.   At the same time, the newspaper reported its first night without problems affecting production or delivery since a labor contract was rejected last week.

Intermediaries Are Optimistic In Dispute At The Times

  Retail Sales Climb Back Up   A nine-tenths of 1 percent gain in April retail sales cheered some analysts but not others, as the rise only offset a March decline. Page D1.   /* //* //* //* //* //* //*

  As the New York State Legislature has struggled in vain to negotiate a Congressional redistricting plan, the devil has been in the details -- the political details.   The Democratic-majority Assembly and the Republican-dominated Senate have agreed in principle on which incumbents should be forced to run against each other as the state's Congressional delegation shrinks to 31 seats from 34.

Districting Accord in Albany Detoured by Political Details

  EVEN in the schoolyard, the adult world of the White House is a favorite target of ridicule, with the Vice President the butt of many jokes.   "Like Dan Quayle said, 'The mind is a terrible thing not to have,' " said 11-year-old Clarissa Wolf of Public School 9 on West 84th Street in Manhattan. She paused for effect. "He should know!"

What's So Funny? Ask The Young

  In a pessimistic report to the Security Council, the United Nations Secretary General today ruled out sending peacekeeping forces to end the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and even raised the possibility of pulling back from the plan to station some 14,000 troops to keep the peace in Croatia because of new disputes there.   Serbian militias, accused of being the main instigators in the fighting, began a cease-fire this morning, and the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, had its quietest day in the last 10.  [ Page A12. ]

U.N. Rules Out A Force to Halt Bosnia Fighting

  Congress is trying -- once again -- to rein in the profits that some companies are making on "orphan drugs," pharmaceutical products aimed at diseases affecting relatively few patients.    Backers of an amendment to the Orphan Drug Law have proposed that once an orphan drug reaches $200 million in revenues, it would lose the special tax breaks and seven-year monopoly protection that the Government grants companies to produce specialized drugs presumed to have only a limited market.

Seeking Limits to a Drug Monopoly

  Retail Sales Climb Back Up   A nine-tenths of 1 percent gain in April retail sales cheered some analysts but not others, as the rise only offset a March decline. Page D1. Turmoil in Nigeria    Anti-Government demonstrators battled the police in protests set off by a gasoline drought in Africa's major oil-producing nation. Page A3. 1940! 1940! 1940!    The chant that has haunted the Rangers since they won their last Stanley Cup grew a year older. Page B15.

  NEW YORK CITY  NEEDLES FOR ADDICTS: CLEAN, LEGAL AND FREE   For the first time in two years, drug addicts will be able to legally get free clean needles in New York City as a group of public and private agencies try to measure whether such programs would slow the spread of AIDS. The new effort, markedly different from a previous one, will use community workers to seek out addicts on the streets to distribute needles and offer access to social services and drug treatment. A1. MESSAGES FROM SOUTH AFRICA . . .    A Mayoral delegation returned from South Africa bearing a letter from Nelson Mandela, urging Mayor Dinkins not to lift New York's economic sanctions until an interim government is established, aides to Mr. Mandela and city officials said. B3. . . . AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

METRO DIGEST

  Carl C. Icahn, the chairman and chief executive of Trans World Airlines, has found what he hopes is a solution to one of the airline industry's perennial problems -- what to do with extra airplanes in the winter when traffic drops.   In an unusual move, Mr. Icahn is leasing airplanes for very short periods over the summer and will turn them back to their owners in the winter.

T.W.A. Hopes to Cut Costs With Short-Term Jet Deals

Nie Rongzhen was a Marshal of the People's Republic of China. He died as the last People's Liberation Army (PLA) marshal.

May 14, 1992

Headlines from May 14, 1992

Quiet Tibetan Influx; Devout, Exiled but Kept Out by U.S.

Sand, Cookies And a Hearty Taste of Life

Reichmann Troubles Roil Canada

To Our Readers

Trade Talks With Chile Are Planned

Billboard 200

Adrenalize

Totally Krossed Out

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Classic Queen

Ropin' The Wind

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for May 14, 1992