February 20, 1993

President Clinton's hand in the coming budget struggle was strengthened today when the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan, who is a Republican and a staunch conservative, endorsed Mr. Clinton's proposal to cut the budget deficit. Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Greenspan, who is widely respected on Wall Street, called the plan "serious" and "credible" and praised it for including detailed cuts, rather than relying on vague goals to cut the deficit.

The official version of the 13-year-old's death was this: The boy was about to throw something on the back of a military truck, and a United States marine, believing it was a grenade, shot and killed him. No object was recovered on the teeming street where he died. Lul Mahmoud Mohammed, the mother of Omar Ahmed Mohammed, first guessed that her son might have been killed as she listened to the 9 P.M. BBC broadcast. He had not returned home after running out to play around noon, and the BBC reported that night that a Somali child had been shot dead.

For decades, if not centuries, state residents have debated whether Fairfield County, with its Greenwich estates and its Westport weekend homes, was more a New York City suburb than a true region of Connecticut. In recent days, Cablevision Systems, the cable television company that serves the county, has cast its vote definitively with New York City.

The Clinton Administration is moving toward a plan to use American cargo planes to drop relief supplies to parts of Bosnia and Herzegovinanot being reached by United Nations aid deliveries, Administration officials said today. Administration officials indicated that they had reached a decision in principle to make such airdrops, which would represent the first direct use of American military forces in the war-torn country.

At Least 285 Survived Sinking of Haitian Ferry As hopes faded for discovering more passengers alive, the Red Cross said it had accounted for 285 survivors from a ferry that sank off Haiti's southern peninsula. So far, 179 bodies have been reported recovered; survivors and officials put the passenger count at 800 to 1,200. Page 3. Reading Scores Drop Reading scores dropped in 9 of 10 New York City elementary schools last year. Performance also declined in junior high schools. Page 22. A Society Becomes History After 188 years, with a crowd of 120 gathered outside, the New-York Historical Society closed its doors. Will it ever reopen? Stay tuned. Page 9.