October 22, 1993

Bureaucracy 1, Gore 0 The Clinton Administration dropped its proposal to save money by merging the Drug Enforcement Administration into the F.B.I. Page A12. Ukraine to Keep Chernobyl Ukraine's Parliament voted to continue operating the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, site of the worst civilian nuclear disaster. Page A8. P.L.O. Moderate Is Slain A leading moderate in the Palestine Liberation Organization was slain in Gaza, raising more fears about the pact on Palestinian rule. Page A3. Russia Cancels Sea Dumping Russia suspended plans to dump nuclear waste at sea, but linked the decision to financial help for a nuclear waste-processing plant. Page A9.

Two European crises -- unemployment and the airline industry's poor financial condition -- converged today to produce a third day of chaos and violent clashes at the two major Paris airports and on the roads leading to them. Air France, like other European and American carriers facing increasingly stiff global competition, has been trying for three years to slash costs.

Catching financial markets off guard, Germany's central bank lowered its two most important interest rates today by half a percentage point, awakening hopes that Western Europe's troubled economies will begin to bounce back in the months ahead. The Bundesbank cut the discount rate to 5 3/4 percent from 6 1/4 percent and reduced the Lombard rate to 6 3/4 percent from 7 1/4 percent. The new rates take effect on Friday.

SOMETIMES television viewers begin to think of the characters they watch as real people. Psychologists have a term for this. The viewer, they say, has entered into a "parasocial relationship" with the figures on the small screen. The psychologists do not have a term for what has happened to the people who work near the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway and 54th Street in Manhattan, the new home of "Late Show With David Letterman."

The fight for Paramount Communications became hostile yesterday, as QVC Network Inc. decided to bypass the Paramount board and take its offer directly to the shareholders. Furious over the Paramount board's slowness to negotiate a merger through a previous $9.5 billion offer, QVC said it would offer Paramount's stockholders an $80-a-share all-cash deal for 51 percent of the company. The rest of the company would be purchased with shares of QVC stock. The overall value of the deal remains $9.5 billion.