October 24, 1992

Tonight, the dream of all harried Americans will come true: They will be given an extra hour, free. In addition to this 60-minute gift from daylight time, the country gained 24 hours in February by dint of a leap year. And in June, a second was added to the nation's master clock at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington to reflect an infinitesimal slowing of the earth's rotation. Adding up what happened in February and June, this year has had 86,401 extra seconds, making it the longest year since the same thing happened in 1972. But is Mr. or Ms. Too-Much-to-Do basking in a Zenlike calm, feasting on the manna of additional moments?

Mayor David N. Dinkins and his top advisers met yesterday to assess the risks of keeping Randy Daniels, the newly appointed Deputy Mayor, in his City Hall position as Mr. Daniels waged a furious public campaign to save his job. Mr. Dinkins appeared to have seized on two clear tracks: distancing himself from the politically explosive allegations of sexual harassment that have been made against Mr. Daniels, and leaving Mr. Daniels with the task of responding to criticism.

In the volatile 1992 election year, at least this has seemed certain: Gov. Bill Clinton will win California big, and he will bring with him two female Democratic Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But an upset could be in the making. By painting the liberal Ms. Boxer as a free-spending Washington insider, a 60-year-old conservative Republican who has never held elective office before is swimming against the rushing Democratic tide. Poll takers say he has surged in recent days, shaking the Boxer camp and feminists nationally.

A French court convicted three former health officials today on charges of distributing tainted blood that resulted in the infection of more than 1,250 hemophiliacs with the virus that causes AIDS. Already 273 of them have died. The case stirred outrage in France after an official investigation showed that senior health officials had ordered the continued use of the blood-clotting factor that hemophiliacs need even though the officials knew it to be contaminated at a time when procedures to detect and eliminate the virus were already available.

Emperor Akihito, opening the first visit to China by a Japanese monarch, acknowledged today that Japan's wartime occupation had "inflicted great suffering on the people of China," but he stopped short of the apology demanded by a growing number of Chinese. The Emperor's statement, made shortly after his arrival, unambiguously placed the blame on Japan for its wartime aggression, marking the clearest acceptance ever by Tokyo of responsibility for its conduct in the 1931 seizure of Manchuria, the 1937 invasion of China and the brutal occupation that followed.