August 31, 1993

Mayor Dinkins and leaders of the teachers union announced a tentative contract with pay raises averaging 9 percent over four years. Page B4.

Guo Liang Chi thought he was talking to a friend when he described how he had ordered the murder of two of his trusted lieutenants in Chinatown last January. "Do it," he said, according to Federal transcripts of a secretly taped conversation. "Do a clean job." Speaking by telephone in February from a hiding place in China, he recounted how he had given the command, and explained why they had to die -- they had challenged him for a heftier cut of the huge profits their gang was earning from smuggling Chinese immigrants. But the friend, it turned out, was an informer, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation taped the call. Rare Look at Gang Life The brutal simplicity of that execution order was just one of the elements about life within a violent Chinatown gang that emerged yesterday as Federal authorities, after more than two years of investigation, unveiled what they described as conclusive evidence that will finally put Mr. Guo, the leader of the Fuk Ching gang, away for life. The smoking gun, described in the Federal complaint against Mr. Guo, is a taped conversation in February between the gang leader and a confidential informer. Mr. Guo was already in Fujian Province in China, where he fled in January after the killing.

INCREASINGLY, scientists designing new materials are looking to nature as a source of inspiration. In their search for ways to make substances that are harder, stronger, lighter and more durable, they are mimicking nature and enhancing it. Some scientists have discovered how to "petrify" wood to make it more resistant to pests, while others are duplicating the multilayered structure of seashells to make new ceramics that are tough without being brittle. Still other researchers have recently made fundamental discoveries about spider web silk, capping decades of study and raising the hope of mass-producing threads stronger than Kevlar, the substance used to make bulletproof vests. And scientists have begun studies of reindeer antlers to see why this tough, light material absorbs shock so well.

NEW YORK CITY CORTINES IS CHOSEN TO HEAD SCHOOLS The Board of Education, divided 4-3, decided to appoint Ramon C. Cortines, the former Schools Superintendent in San Francisco, as the city's next Schools Chancellor. Mr. Cortines is planning to fly to New York today. A1. Six months after a bitterly divided Board of Education ousted Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez, the chief policymaking body for the nation's largest school system seems as divided as ever. B3. TENTATIVE AGREEMENT ON TEACHERS' PACT Mayor Dinkins and the leaders of the union representing 65,000 teachers said that they had reached a tentative agreement on a new four-year contract calling for raises averaging 9 percent over the length of the deal. The tentative settlement, reached on the eve of both a new school year and the general election campaign, could help Mr. Dinkins win the endorsement of the powerful union, the United Federation of Teachers. B3.

Accompanied both by hopeful forecasts and angry warnings, the Israeli Government approved a draft agreement with the Palestinians early today that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said could be signed before nightfall in Washington. In Tunis, a senior official of the Palestine Liberation Organization also said the two sides were on the brink of a breakthrough and would be able to announce a deal in the next day or two.