May 27, 1993

ANITA RODDICK doesn't waste time with small talk. She doesn't say hello, or how are you, or nice to meet you. Dressed all in black, masses of dark hair framing her face, she lunges into an interview as if a bell has gone off. "Have you ever had orange and cranberry together?" She sips her drink. "Amazing in America. Always a new taste." For the next 80 minutes, stopping only occasionally to pick at fruit salad and pasta primavera at the small, elegant Mark Hotel, her home when she is in Manhattan, she hurls out words and thoughts and exclamations so intensely that she makes a frenetic New Yorker seem comatose by comparison.

In the seven New York City mayoral elections since 1965, only one man has sat in the navigator's seat each time, and five times his candidates have won. He is both credited and condemned as an auteur of that minor American art form: the modern political media campaign. Now at the age of 63, David Garth -- whose canniness and commercials helped elect both John V. Lindsay and Edward I. Koch -- is waging another crusade for City Hall, this time in the service of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the almost-was whom he is busily retooling as a might-yet-be. He remains a force to be reckoned with.

The Clinton Administration is preparing a broad new effort to weaken Iran by persuading reluctant allies to cut off loans, investment and arms sales to what American officials regard as a permanently hostile Government. The plan, drafted as part of an intensive policy review, reflects a conclusion that Iran must be isolated if it is to be prevented from emerging as a substantial threat to Western interests. Thus, the plan rejects Reagan and Bush Administration policies that offered to reward Teheran for good behavior. Abandoning a Balance Administration officials said the new approach aimed at denying Iran access to the money and weapons needed to complete a military resurgence. They said it was based on a decision that the United States and its allies should now treat Iran as harshly as it treats Iraq.

Cruising far beyond the outermost planets, two American spacecraft have discovered the first strong physical evidence of the long-sought boundary marking the edge of the solar system, where the solar wind ebbs and the cold of interstellar space begins. Voyager 1, now 4.9 billion miles out from Earth, began detecting intense low-frequency radio emissions last August. Signals were received at the same time by Voyager 2, which is 3.7 billion miles away from Earth.

In a landmark vote held while 10,000 opponents demonstrated in the streets outside, the lower house of Germany's Parliament agreed today to tighten the nation's asylum law, barring entry to thousands of foreigners who arrive in Germany each week to seek asylum. The new law, which was approved in the lower house by 521 votes to 132, will make it far more difficult for foreigners who say they suffer persecution in their home country to be admitted to Germany. Germany now accepts more than twice as many foreigners seeking asylum as any other country in Western Europe, and rightists have used their presence to foment nationalistic feelings that have led to violence.