February 24, 1993

Neighbors recall watching him roller-skate past the curving row of tumbledown two-story apartments where he lived with his mother and six brothers, a chubby-cheeked 10-year-old with close-cropped hair who, like so many other boys in the tough Walton neighborhood, seemed much older. But people in the bleak area say they still cannot see him as a murderer, or get their minds around the idea that the boy who used to run errands for them and play with their own children now stands accused, along with another 10-year-old, of abducting a toddler from a Northside shopping mall, taking him three miles across town and brutally killing him. Few Do Not Know Names The disfigured body of 2-year-old James Bulger was discovered Feb. 14 on a railroad embankment in Walton, two days after security cameras in the New Strand mall videotaped him being led away by two unidentified boys. Only moments before, the victim had become separated from his mother during a shopping trip.

Ken Rusk remembers the first time the titanium box in his abdomen did what it was supposed to do -- deliver an electric shock to his heart. It felt like being kicked in the chest by a horse. The incident happened early in 1991, about a year and a half after surgeons implanted the device.

In a long-shot effort to keep the huge car assembly plant here from closing, New York State officials are knitting together a multimillion-dollar package of inducements for the General Motors Corporation, including financing for the plant's retooling and the building of a companion parts-making plant an hour away. The state is trying to avert the loss of 3,000 jobs and a $122 million payroll when G.M. closes the plant in 1995. The loss, wrenching for the local economy, would have repercussions statewide because of its effect on tax revenues. But executives at G.M. said they knew of no changes in the plan to close the plant.

In a new challenge to the United Nations, Iraqi forces aimed their guns at the helicopters of two inspectors on Monday, interrupting their search for Scud missiles, officials said today. The officials said the episode occurred as United Nations inspectors mounted a major air-and-ground search west of Baghdad for hidden missiles and missile parts or missile launchers.

President Clinton's criticism that European governments subsidized the Airbus aircraft consortium at the expense of American jobs was greeted with scorn here today. The President's comments, made to workers at a Boeing Company plant on Tuesday, seemed to tighten trans-Atlantic trade tensions over the subsidy issue, which had appeared to be resolved with an agreement last year.