February 5, 1994

Jeannie Evans was pregnant last year and had no reason to expect her child would be born with any problems. She was 28 years old, and her risk of having a baby with a birth defect caused by abnormal chromosomes was 1 in 435 -- too low, according to standard medical opinion, for her to undergo an amniocentesis test and court an even greater chance that the procedure might cause a miscarriage.

Jury Gets Evers Slaying Case After hearing closing arguments in the third trial of the white supremacist accused of murdering the civil rights leader Medgar Evers, a jury began its deliberations. Page 7. Health's Universal Quandary The debate over the future of health care in the United States centers on whether the nation can and should provide everyone with health insurance. News analysis, page 8. Prodding Korea's Neighbor Talking of sanctions, the United States asked China to press North Korea to open its nuclear installations to inspection by Feb. 21. Page 5. Security Warning on Internet Users of the Internet, a web of computer networks, have been warned of a rash of break-ins into government and university computers. Page 37. Giuliani and School Cuts Mayor Giuliani said he would consider other ways to save money in the schools if the Chancellor could not cut 2,500 administrative jobs. Page 23.

In the crowded streets of a city still better known to the world as Saigon, there was a sense today that the war was finally over, the last battle concluded half a world away in the corridors of the White House. The news that President Clinton had decided to lift the American trade embargo against Vietnam reached here today shortly before dawn, and by breakfast it was the only topic of conversation to be found in much of Ho Chi Minh City, the city that the Americans had to flee in humiliation a generation ago.

Despite growing concern that the embargo on Haiti is not working and is badly squeezing that nation's poor, the United States said today that it would ask the United Nations Security Council next week to impose tougher sanctions on Haiti. The proposed new sanctions, which aim to show Haiti's military leaders that the world will not back down in its campaign to force them to restore democracy, would broaden the current embargo on fuel and arms to include almost everything except food and medicine.

Severe winter weather crimped the expansion of business payrolls in January as the Government's new method for sampling the nation's households showed an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, the Labor Department reported today. But while the job figures were difficult to interpret, analysts said they regarded the data as consistent with an economy still moving briskly ahead in the early weeks of the year after unsustainably rapid growth of 5.9 percent in the final three months of 1993.