June 2, 1993

The moderate economic expansion, which showed signs of flagging in earlier this year, might be back on a slow but steady track, according to reports issued yesterday. Manufacturing grew modestly in May after weakening in the previous three months, a closely watched survey of corporate purchasing managers showed. And the Commerce Department said yesterday that consumers returned to shopping malls and car dealers' lots in April after staying home most of March.

The city street was a slash of bright sunshine and teeming noise as William Wooden emerged from prison after 25 years inside, squinting at the outside. This murderer-robber, and duly punished ex-convict, 55 years old and determined to salvage something from time, re-entered the slipstream of free humanity from an old warehouse building in Queens, now a holding center where inmates shed their prison greens and muster back out in mufti.

CARDINAL O'CONNOR LOOKS BACK Reflecting on nearly 10 turbulent years at the helm of New York's Roman Catholic Archdiocese, John Cardinal O'Connor said that he might have gone too far at times in leaps of faith that thrust him and his church into secular politics -- from his implicit criticism of Geraldine A. Ferraro in 1984 to his loose alliance with Pat Robertson last month. A1. NEW YORK CITY A LITTLE BOY IS MOURNED A tape cassette recording of his classmates, their voices raised in song, was placed gently inside a small veiled white casket with Kayesean Blackledge, a 4-year-old whose lifeless body was found beaten and strangled at the base of a garbage chute at a Brooklyn housing project. B3.

The Guatemalan military forced President Jorge Serrano Elias from office with the backing of political parties, business executives and some civic organizations. The move came eight days after the President had seized nearly dictatorial powers with the support of the army. Article, page A8.

Five months ago, seeking to raise billions for President Clinton's economic programs and at the same time promote conservation, the White House proposed a broad tax on most forms of energy. Then armies of lobbyists beseeched the White House to make the tax fairer, squadrons of Congressmen amended it to make it less onerous, and Mr. Clinton horse-traded some clauses to gain support for his budget.