June 28, 1994

The Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional a public school district that New York State created for the benefit of a village of ultra-Orthodox Jews. As the result of the 6-to-3 decision, the Kiryas Joel Village School District, established by a 1989 law for the benefit of the village's Satmar Hasidic residents, will now go out of existence. It will probably be absorbed by the Monroe-Woodbury Central School District, from which it seceded.

These are scary times for some corporate executives in Japan, and not just because of the depressed economy and the strong yen. Consider the case of Juntaro Suzuki, a senior managing director for the Fuji Photo Film Company. Mr. Suzuki answered the doorbell of his western Tokyo home one evening last February to find a stranger who said he had accidentally driven into Mr. Suzuki's fence. A few minutes later, Mr. Suzuki lay dying in his doorway, stabbed several times with what the police believe was a samurai sword.

TROUBLES WITH TEACHER TENURE After Jay Dubner, a special education teacher in New York City, was sent to prison in 1990 for selling cocaine to undercover police officers, school officials thought it would be easy to dismiss him. Not so. While Mr. Dubner served his sentence, he collected his teacher's pay. And he still has his job. The labyrinthine disciplinary processes supporting tenure have become the focus of a debate about balancing the rights of academics against the need to discipline unethical or incompetent teachers or principals. A1.

Ten years ago, a dollar bought 250 Japanese yen; a month ago, it bought just 105. Now, it buys about 100. The dollar's slide against the yen, as well as against the German mark, in recent weeks has evoked cries of alarm from Wall Street and has been read by some as a judgment of American policy -- and policy makers. "The market is saying your economy is not in good shape," said Georges de Menil, a senior editor of the European-based journal Economic Policy.

A VISITOR to Akikazu Takeuchi's office at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory might be forgiven for feeling spied upon. On the screen of Dr. Takeuchi's computer is a seemingly human face that tries to maintain eye contact with the visitor, tracking him as he moves around the room. The face is created by computer graphics and controlled by software. It is one of many efforts in Japan, the United States and Europe to create artificial faces for computers to make it easier for people to communicate with the machines.