September 25, 1993

The White House and the national Democratic Party, increasingly worried about Mayor David N. Dinkins's prospects for re-election, are organizing a series of efforts to help his campaign, capped by a visit from President Clinton on Sunday to help the Mayor raise a million dollars. A Presidential appearance to raise money in a mayoral race, even one as important as New York's, is unusual enough. But the White House is not stopping there -- it is dispatching Vice President Al Gore and several Cabinet members to the city to campaign for Mr. Dinkins and sending money to help the state party get people to the polls.

Before ABC News's "town hall" on health care went on the air Thursday night, Ted Koppel came out to instruct the audience on the pace of live television. The "Nightline" host told those in the crowd in the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center to keep their questions for President Clinton "pithy and to the point."

A Federal appeals court removed a large obstacle today from President Clinton's effort to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement by the end of the year. It ruled that the Administration could submit the agreement to Congress without an environmental impact statement. Preparing an environmental statement takes up to a year, a delay that could have killed the trade pact.

As large contingents of police moved around the Parliament building, a rump Congress of People's Deputies that is meeting in defiance of President Boris N. Yeltsin appeared to be backing down today amid internal dissension. The Congress adjourned tonight after the first signs of a split in its leadership began to appear. The Parliament Speaker, Ruslan I. Khasbulatov, survived a call for his resignation after Vice President Aleksandr V. Rutskoi rose to his defense and accused some deputies of trying "to flee in good time and to betray in good time."

In separate lecture halls on the Antioch College campus, male and female freshmen, one group surly and the other shy, this week attended the sexual consent workshops that are a mandatory part of orientation here. They had heard about Antioch's sexual offense policy, which evolved after two years of unruly undergraduate democracy, from commentators and comedians who have been poking fun at the "Can I do this? Can I do that?" approach.