November 23, 1994

The United States has secretly negotiated the delivery of a large cache of bomb-grade uranium from Kazakhstan to this country for safe storage, Clinton Administration officials said tonight. The existence of the more than half a ton of highly enriched uranium had not been previously disclosed. The material, enough to make dozens of bombs, has been a major worry for Administration officials since they learned of its existence. Officials said the material has arrived in the United States by plane, and will be stored in the nuclear complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

New Jersey officials said today that they planned to cut the amount of money hospitals receive to care for Medicaid patients by 20 percent starting in March. William Waldman, the State Human Services Commissioner, said he expected a court challenge, but is confident the move, which would reduce hospital reimbursements by $135 million annually, would be upheld. "We cannot be in the business of subsidizing hospitals," Mr. Waldman told reporters at a meeting in his office. "We must become the purchasers of services that are delivered efficiently and economically."

Four people, including a District of Columbia police sergeant and two F.B.I. agents, were killed today in a wild eruption of gunfire inside the Police Headquarters building, the authorities said. Two other people were reported to have been wounded. The police said the incident began around 3:30 P.M. and lasted about an hour. But by tonight many details of what had happened remained unknown.

After years of investigating Prudential Securities' improper sales of limited partnerships, Government regulators are turning their attention to the rest of Wall Street. The Securities and Exchange Commission's inquiry focuses on partnership sales by several of the country's biggest brokerage firms, including the Paine Webber Group, Merrill Lynch & Company, Dean Witter Reynolds and Lehman Brothers, people with knowledge of the investigation said yesterday.

THE potato got to the "21" Club at 8:30 in the morning, after having been bounced around plenty in the back of a C & S Wholesale truck. It was a yellowish Yukon Gold variety, and it did not lack for companionship. It arrived packed with 300 pounds of kinfolk. "Lot of spuds," noted Phil English, the C & S driver. "Man, somebody is going to eat." He had acquired the potato at the Hunts Point market in the Bronx before dawn, and under the now-brightened skies he unloaded the sacks on West 52d Street and entrusted them to Charlie Mottola, who presides over the avalanche of purchasing and receiving for the "21" Club. Each potato cost the restaurant roughly 17 cents.