June 7, 1994

In the most aggressive effort yet to identify and treat children with H.I.V. in New York State, the Department of Social Services plans to begin routine testing of children in the foster-care system who are believed to have been exposed to the virus. State Social Services Commissioner Michael J. Dowling said his department was developing regulations to require that all children entering foster care be evaluated for H.I.V. infection within five days. If a child is found to have risk factors, like drug addiction at birth, an H.I.V. test would be performed within a month, he said.

The directors at the Times Mirror Company have decided that their shareholders will benefit from having stock in two companies: Times Mirror and Cox Cable, which will be a major operator of cable television systems. But the people who control Times Mirror -- the Chandler family -- have opted for a different deal. They will forgo any investment in Cox, and instead take extra dividends.

Tax on Illegal Drugs Vioded In another sign of a new wariness about anti-drug tactics, the Supreme Court overturned a tax on illegal drugs, calling it a version of double jeopardy. Page A18. Testing Children for H.I.V. In an effort to identify and treat children with H.I.V., New York State plans routine testing of children in foster care who are believed to have been exposed to the virus. Page B1. The Ultimate Balloon Race As many as five teams of balloonists will draw on high technology and daring in equal parts as they vie to be first around the world nonstop in a balloon. Science Times, page C1.

THE pain is like no other, its sufferers say, deep, gnawing agony that goes to the bone. Those who have experienced other conditions known for their measure of pain, like cancer, childbirth, arthritis and surgery, almost always say none compares with the torment of sickle cell disease. The pain of sickle cell is not only intractable but in many cases lifelong. And while many people have heard that the condition is associated with acute suffering, experts say, few have a sense of how bad it can be.

ALBANY EXPANDS WELFARE FINGERPRINTING The Governor and legislative leaders have agreed to expand a contentious program for fingerprinting welfare recipients to a total of 12 New York counties. But top officials said that the plan, part of an evolving deal on the state budget, excludes New York City, where two-thirds of the state's welfare recipients live. A1.

Five and a half years ago, the authorities say, Paul Cox walked into the Larchmont house where he had lived as a child and, for seemingly no reason, brutally stabbed to death the couple -- both doctors -- who had bought the house from his parents. The case remained unsolved for four years until the police were told that Mr. Cox, by then a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, had, as part of his recovery efforts, been telling fellow members that he thought he killed the couple during a drunken blackout.

TO ride the winds around the world in a balloon has been the dream of aeronauts for two centuries, but despite many attempts -- some of them disastrous -- none has succeeded. Now, at last, the smell of success is in the air, and world-class balloonists are scrambling to join competing teams for what may be the greatest balloon race of all time. As many as five teams may try for the ultimate ballooning achievement: a nonstop circumnavigation of the globe. Hopes are riding not only on high spirits but on new technologies and the innovative balloon designs that the competing groups have devised. Some of the contestants hope to fly higher than any previous balloonist, and they will carry sophisticated scientific apparatus to conduct experiments in the upper atmosphere.

Unlike other Arab towns in Gaza, Dhaniya is not celebrating Palestinian self-rule. There are no pictures of Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. leader. Nor are there Palestinian flags or graffiti welcoming Palestinian independence. Instead, the wind-swept streets of this town of about 500 people on the southeastern edge of the Gaza Strip are largely empty, except for a few children playing and the occasional stray dog. Most residents stay at home, sometimes peering from behind steel shutters, checking out Israeli Army patrol cars or rare visitors venturing from Gaza's border.

Comforted by visions of Nelson Mandela visiting the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, institutional investors are beginning to look at the country they once shunned. But few are pulling out their checkbooks and, so far, the main business beneficiaries of South African political change have been large American companies whose stocks were once boycotted. The big public pension funds that led the anti-apartheid charge are now free to invest in more than 100 of the largest United States corporations with ties to South Africa. In Michigan, for instance, the $24 billion state employees pension fund no longer faces a ban on more than 40 percent of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index -- including in-state giants like Ford Motor and General Motors. 'Fertile New Fields' Barry Stevens, the Michigan system's director of investments, said that the change "opens up fertile new fields" and that "before, we could just invest in teeny parts of the American market."

They look no different from the other guys who hang out at the Grange Hall or the ones who bowl in the Friday league. But talk to them, the heroes of Omaha and Utah Beach and the others, and they have a thousand tales to tell. That is just the point. Most led ordinary lives before their supreme test on D-Day, and ordinary lives afterward as well. Most do not see themselves as heroes, and they talk hesitantly, if at all, about the scenes of carnage that met them on that gray morning in 1944.

John Wallace remembers the day Pan American World Airways flew for the last time: the Kennedy International Airport maintenance shop where he had worked as a machinist for 24 years was "the quietest thing I've ever seen in my life." "There was no screaming, no complaining," he said. "We all just got our tools and left."

The Sara Lee Corporation, faced with shifting trends in fashion and life styles as well as with problems in its women's hosiery business, said today that it would embark on a program of plant closings and job cuts that would reduce its work force by about 8,300 people, or 6 percent. The actions will result in a $732 million pretax charge in the company's fourth quarter, which ends on June 30. The charge is equivalent to $495 million after taxes, or $1.03 a share. Most of the charge is related to changes at Sara Lee's largest business, the personal products unit. The company did not identify the plants that it would close.