May 26, 1994

Officially, the House Committee on Ways and Means is making its way through the various alternatives for health care restructuring. Unofficially, it is struggling to deal with one of the most painful rituals on Capitol Hill: the slow fall of a public man. Each day, the masses of reporters and photographers inside the committee room grow larger, the lobbyists in the corridors less discreet as they talk about the passing of the man they feared and cultivated for 13 years. Each morning, Dan Rostenkowski bounds in to take the chairman's seat, trying another performance of business-as-usual. But each time he moves, or confers with a colleague, or engages in a quasi-metaphorical gesture like biting his nails, he hears the whir of a dozen motor drives and looks up with a jolt to a wall of photographers. In such moments, he looks haunted, trapped in his own committee room.

An influential New York State advisory panel has recommended, unanimously, that the state resist pressure to legalize physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. The report comes amid escalating support for the practice, as voiced in polls, state legislatures and courts around the country. The panel, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, released a report yesterday concluding that legalization would benefit only a few and would open the door to widespread abuse. In particular, they said it might lead some doctors to prescribe deadly drugs rather than trying to improve the generally substandard care of patients who are dying, in severe pain or seriously depressed.

Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali expressed exasperation today at the refusal of most countries to send troops to Rwanda. He called the continuing slaughter there "genocide" and said it was a "scandal" that the world has not acted speedily to end the blood-letting. At a news conference in New York, the Secretary General described the United Nations efforts in Rwanda in harsh terms, saying: "It is a failure not only for the United Nations; it is a failure for the international community. And all of us are responsible for this failure. Not only the great powers but the African powers, the nongovernmental organizations, all the international community.

Da Nang is now a stop for cruise ships. Cam Ranh Bay may get Club Med as a neighbor. And the Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton by Americans held there during the Vietnam War, is really becoming a hotel. The travel industry, which has been slowly discovering Vietnam as a tourist destination over the last few years, is scrambling to cut more deals there since President Clinton lifted the American trade embargo in February, making it easier for Americans to invest and travel.

The Economy Sharply disagreeing with a Congressional study, the Federal Reserve's chairman, Alan Greenspan, testified that new legislation was not necessary to supervise derivatives, the rapidly growing and sometimes profitable family of products offered by banks and brokerage firms to corporations and investors. [ Page D1. ] Orders for durable factory goods edged up one-tenth of 1 percent in April, below most expectations, Commerce Department figures showed, more evidence of slowing business expansion. Separately, home resales climbed 1.2 percent. [ D1. ]