September 3, 1994

Employment figures released today provided the clearest evidence to date that the economy has slowed from last year's unsustainable pace, but that it retains enough strength to avoid braking too severely. Job growth slackened in August as the unemployment rate, 6.1 percent, stood at essentially the same level for a fourth straight month, the Labor Department reported today. The rate had fallen markedly early this year.

With the future of Russia's space program resting in his hands, the commander of the orbiting Russian space station Mir manually docked with a cargo ship carrying supplies needed to keep the station operating.

The partner of the undercover transit officer wounded in a subway shootout last week has told investigators that the off-duty New York City police officer who mistakenly fired on the undercover officer "was shooting with a vengeance," and appeared intent on killing him. Transit Officer David Thompson, in a 45-minute interview he gave to investigators, said Officer Peter Del-Debbio's face was full of anger as he emptied his five-shot revolver into Transit Officer Desmond Robinson, and added, "I would never have thought in my wildest dreams that he was a police officer."

A polite, helpful 11-year-old who everybody called Jake was fatally shot in his bedroom in this small rural town on Thursday, and a 13-year-old friend was charged hours later with killing him. The boy, Jacob Tracy, who was about to begin the fifth grade, was killed with a gun, which may have been stolen, after he refused to accept an apology from a third boy, the authorities said.

It was a killing like hundreds of others over the last 25 years in Northern Ireland: a group of gunmen approached a man repairing a car on a Belfast Street, shot him dead and fled. The victim was Roman Catholic; the killers were members of the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a Protestant paramilitary group. But for politicians and church leaders here, the bluntly sectarian killing Thursday night -- the first blood spilled since the Irish Republican Army declared its unilateral cease-fire nearly 24 hours earlier -- was less a shock than a cold-blooded reminder of how distant any real or lasting peace is in the divided province.