August 20, 1994

F.T.C. Clears Macy Deal The F.T.C. has effectively approved the merger of R. H. Macy and Federated Department Stores, removing another potential obstacle to a combination of the companies. Page 37. Ruling in King Case A Federal appeals court upheld the convictions of two Los Angeles police officers for the beating of Rodney King and said their prison sentences had been too lenient. Page 7. Rabbi at Arafat's Side An anti-Zionist rabbi is the only Jewish aide to Yasir Arafat, but both the Israelis and the Palestinians are puzzling over his role. Page 2. A Revamped Crime Bill Democrats and moderate Republicans worked feverishly to sort out the details of a revamped crime bill proposed by the White House. Page 9. Less Time for the Pastime Maybe it's the strike, maybe it's an increasing apathy toward the game, but a poll shows that many fewer Americans are interested in baseball than five years ago. Page 31.

Miami's Cuban community expressed ambivalence over ending a policy that had allowed refugees to remain in the United States. Page 10.

To hear President Clinton's recent visitors tell it, he is frustrated with Congress, the news media and the whole Washington political culture. He speaks, those who have talked with him say, with weariness and some bitterness about his difficulties. More openly than ever, his senior aides admit that he and they have made serious mistakes, some of them again and again, and they freely concede that Mr. Clinton is in a political ditch (which is, after all, no more than an acknowledgement of what the polls say). Change now, they suggest, or it may soon be too late.

Linus C. Pauling, a brilliant chemist and an untiring political activist who received one Nobel Prize for chemistry and another for peace, died on Friday at his ranch in the Big Sur area of Northern California. He was 93 years old. The cause was cancer, said Steve Lawson, chief executive officer of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Palo Alto.

If the collapse of nuclear controls in Russia poses the near-term threat that terrorists could seize plutonium to make nuclear weapons, longer-term fears arise from nuclear energy programs launched by America's closest allies: Japan, Britain and France. Over the next two decades these countries, as well as Russia, plan to vastly increase the world's stockpiles of plutonium. They are producing it to fuel a generation of nuclear power plants whose time has never quite come.