June 17, 1992

President Bush and President Boris N. Yeltsin announced an agreement today that not only sharply reduces their stocks of long-range-missile warheads, but also eliminates all multiple-warhead missiles based on land, the core of the old Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. The accord was announced by the leaders in the White House Rose Garden just hours after Mr. Yeltsin began the first state visit to Washington by a Russian President. It must still be translated into a formal treaty, which United States officials said could be done within three months, then approved by the United States Senate and the Russian Parliament.

Just how hard was it for somebody to climb from the bottom of the economic ladder to the top in the 1980's? Two teams of researchers asking the same politically sensitive question -- both tracking individual households over the decade -- have reached quite different conclusions.

Caspar W. Weinberger, the former Defense Secretary and architect of the Reagan Administration's military buildup in the 1980's, was indicted today on five felony charges related to the Iran-contra affair, including accusations that he had lied to Congress and obstructed Government investigations. Mr. Weinberger is the highest official of the Reagan Administration to be charged with a crime in the five-year-long investigation. A longtime political associate of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Weinberger headed the Pentagon from 1981 to 1987 and operated within the inner circle of Mr. Reagan's advisers on military and diplomatic affairs.

On the face of it, the sweeping arms agreement announced today by President Bush and President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia seems precisely the kind of political medicine Mr. Bush needs. It displays Mr. Bush in his preferred role of accomplished international negotiator and peacemaker, which since the Persian Gulf war has been gradually eclipsed, in terms of public opinion, by concerns about health care, jobs, education, the environment and the credibility of politicians. Nuclear disarmament is obviously an easier sell than sluggish economic growth.

DR. DAVID A. KESSLER, the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, is adamant: there are stringent rules for regulating genetically engineered foods, and he intends to enforce them. "This is not a voluntary system," he said. Michael Hansen, a research associate at Consumers Union, is equally adamant: the rules aren't stringent. "Everything is left up to the discretion of the companies," he said. "The industry is on the honor system."