June 4, 1992

With opinion polls showing Ross Perot cutting deeply into both Republican and Democratic strength, his embryonic campaign today announced the hiring of two veteran political strategists, one from each party: the engineer of Jimmy Carter's successful run for the White House in 1976, and Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign manager. At a news conference here, the Perot campaign said it was bringing on board Hamilton Jordan, the main strategist behind the only Democratic Presidential victory since 1964, and Edward J. Rollins, who managed Mr. Reagan's landslide re-election.

The Economy A new optimism is taking hold in executive suites across the country. After a steady stream of layoffs last fall and winter, businesses are mapping new hiring and expansion plans. [ D1. ] Some 164,000 more payroll jobs were lost than had previously been thought during the 12 months through February, the Labor Department disclosed. [ D2. ]

Conservative critics were decisively defeated today when the Senate rejected their efforts to reduce proposed Federal spending on public broadcasting by nearly $400 million over three years. By a 75-to-22 vote, Senators rejected a Republican measure to freeze Government financing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which had become enmeshed in a dispute over ideology and sexual expression.

A dollar does not buy much these days -- unless you are in the market for a superbly trained physicist, software designer or materials engineer working in the former Soviet Union. And the opportunity is not being ignored by the masters of capitalism: Last week A.T.& T. and Corning Inc. announced separate deals that would link Russian specialists in glass technology to major producers of fiber-optic cable and other glass materials in the United States.

After going to Hanoi in 1987 to try to free Americans who might have remained in captivity after the Vietnam war, Ross Perot and an associate discussed private business opportunities with top Vietnamese officials, according to a Vietnamese official and Mr. Perot. In a June 1990 letter the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry designated Mr. Perot and his company as a business agent of the Government of Vietnam to help procure American investment after diplomatic and trade relations were normalized, Mr. Perot said today. Those criteria have yet to be met.

Even by Albany standards, in which the anteroom to the Assembly chamber sometimes gets so packed that the sergeant-at-arms hangs up a "No Lobbyists" sign, the lobbying over the bill that would force New York City to arm its police officers with semiautomatic weapons has become ferocious. The police union, which wants the guns, has scheduled almost every Assembly lawmaker for a visit. According to some legislators, the union has raised the implied threat of a campaign against those who refuse to support the bill, although the union denies such a threat. Glock, a company that manufacturers semiautomatics, has distributed a rebuttal of a Police Department study that raised questions about the safety of the weapons.

DR. KAREN BURKE remembers a happy childhood spent "in relative solitude." She had no regrets about being an only child. Until she was an adult. "There are periods in my life when I get depressed not having a family and family gatherings," she said. "There is a great yearning in me."

SOMEWHERE there are early risers for whom dawn does not come up like thunder. Nighttime's tranquillity is broken instead by gentle sounds: soft-soled slippers, percolating coffee, coos from a windowsill pigeon. Not for Gordon Elliott. Forty-five minutes after a 5:15 wake-up phone call, a shower, a cab ride from his TriBeCa loft to the Upper East Side studios of WNYW-Fox 5, Mr. Elliott is knocking on the doors of unsuspecting citizens, sleep still in their eyes, teeth still in a glass. "Good morning!" he announces cheerfully in his down-under accent. "Gordon Elliott, Channel 5! May we come in?" His 6-foot-7-inch frame already is.

For months, when Jim P. Manzi has looked forward to the Lotus Development Corporation's 10th-anniversary blowout next week at the Boston Garden, he has dreamed about sharing the stage with his lifelong hero, the singer Ray Charles. But now, he will have even more to celebrate. On Tuesday the world's largest computer company, I.B.M., announced that it would incorporate two relatively new Lotus software programs into its networking strategy for personal computers. The move not only promises to enhance the market position of the Lotus programs, but may also vindicate Mr. Manzi's effort in recent years, often criticized, to find new products beyond the popular 1-2-3 spreadsheet program that made Lotus one of the largest software publishers.

METRO DIGEST LEARNING TO HEAL, AND TO LISTEN For years, patients have complained that their doctors lacked compassion, but only recently have the institutions that hire and train those doctors begun to devote significant resources to solving the problem. One residency program now has incoming residents check into the hospital incognito to see how it feels to be a patient. Other programs have student doctors wear blurred contact lenses and joint-restricting splints so they can understand the elderly. A1. AGREEMENT ON A REDISTRICTING PLAN Legislative leaders agreed today on a plan for redrawing New York's Congressional map, overcoming months of disagreement as they came face to face with the fact that the alternative was a plan imposed by the Federal court. A1. NEW YORK CITY MAFIA TESTIMONY SPURS INVESTIGATION After a former Mafia leader's testimony about payoffs in the construction industry, New York City officials yesterday began re-examining contracts with three companies that have obtained $100 million in city business in recent years. B3. NEW AIDS POLICY PROPOSAL The argument on how best to teach AIDS prevention in the public schools grew more tangled yesterday, as two board members offered a proposal that would virtually require mathematical computation of whether there was overall emphasis on abstinence as the most effective way of avoiding the disease. B3. 3-YEAR-OLD SHOT IN BROOKLYN A 3-year-old girl sitting on a bed inside her baby sitter's Brooklyn apartment was critically wounded when she was struck in the head by a stray bullet fired by someone spraying the street and building with gunfire. Two others were also wounded in the shooting in East New York. B3. LAWSUIT CHALLENGES MEDICAID CUTS A Federal judge has temporarily blocked the first phase of a $550 million reduction in New York State's Medicaid budget in what advocates say is the first in a series of lawsuits intended to modify the cuts. B6. REGION WILL INCUMBENCY BRING VICTORY? All 11 New Jersey Representatives who ran in Tuesday's primary won renomination, but incumbency may not mean so much in November. In the fall, when Presidential candidates top the ballot, scores of disenchanted voters could be drawn to minor-party candidates and independents competing in the Congressional races. B6. FATHER TELLS OF RUSHING HOME On the telephone, the Swiss au pair said, "Fire. Fire." Those were the words, William Fischer told a jury yesterday, that sent him racing home to learn that his 3-month-old daughter had been fatally burned. Mr. Fischer spent all day on the witness stand as the first prosecution witness at the trial of the au pair, Olivia Riner, who is charged with the arson murder of Mr. Fischer's daughter, Kristie. B7. COURTROOM CAMERAS ON HOLD A bill that would allow television cameras back into New York State courtrooms is running into unexpected opposition in the State Senate, and legislators said today that they were not sure whether it would pass. B6. Chelsea Journal B3 Chronicle B9

The worldwide epidemic of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, threatens to infect 40 million to 110 million people by 2000, and international efforts to stop the spread of the fatal disease have stalled, a leading AIDS research group said yesterday. The conclusions, compiled by 40 experts and researchers from around the world, are far grimmer than those of the World Health Organization, which predicts, at most, 40 million H.I.V.-infected people by 2000.

The Mayor was out today, out of the office and out of the running for what had begun to look like a lifetime job. His secretary said that he would not be in and that he would make no statements. And that was all there was from Mayor Thomas G. Dunn, now 71 years old, the day after he lost the Democratic primary and, for all intents and purposes, the office he has held since January 1965. It was an uncharacteristic response from a man who was almost never at a loss for words, or a point of view. Many remember his "shoot to kill" order to the Elizabeth police during the 1967 riots in neighboring Newark. Or the time he challenged an anti-apartheid law mandating state pension funds to divest themselves of stocks in companies doing business with South Africa. Or his memorandum in 1983 stipulating a dress code for city workers, which, almost as an afterthought, directed employees to speak only English in the office under threat of dismissal.