December 13, 1994

Eddie Sixpack walks a beat one block long: 46th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, from 6 P.M. to 2 A.M. Like the marquees above his sidewalks, his job goes dark on Sunday and Monday nights. Why do theater people call him Eddie Sixpack?

One week after Western European proposals to withdraw peacekeeping troops from Bosnia created a diplomatic furor, France reversed course today and said it wanted not only to keep its soldiers in the former Yugoslavia, but also to expand their mission. "My Government does not wish to see this withdrawal take place," the French Defense Minister, Francois Leotard, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference after a meeting with Defense Secretary William J. Perry. "It would undermine the credibility of international organizations, namely the United Nations and NATO."

THE tiny cardiac catheterization room at St. Elizabeth's Hospital was never meant to hold two dozen doctors, nurses and visitors, all wearing heavy lead aprons to protect them from a constant barrage of X-rays. But last Wednesday was a day most of the crowd in the room had anticipated for years. It was the day when Dr. Jeffrey Isner and one of his associates, Dr. Robert Schainfeld, were attempting the first gene therapy for vascular disease. If the experiment succeeded, it would herald a revolution in the treatment of vascular disease that might eventually replace bypass surgery with gene therapy. The idea was to add genes to arteries that would direct the formation of new blood vessels to grow around an area blocked by plaque. If it worked, it would be a sort of auto-bypass.

The Summit of the Americas had just ended in Miami, and President Clinton and his counterparts from 33 other countries were heading triumphantly home. At a long table in the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, the man not invited, Fidel Castro, argued that Cuba's exclusion had been their loss, not his. "If the summit of Miami was a great show, it would have been a better show if I had been there," he said, grinning through the beard. "We are the last rebels," he said of his Communist Government. "That was no meeting for rebels."

Pressure on Cortines Mayor Giuliani wants to make the Schools Chancellor so uncomfortable that he will not seek reappointment, mayoral aides say. Page B1. Novel Bypass Surgery A dose of new genes may prompt a blocked artery to grow its own bypass, researchers in Massachusetts say. Science Times, page C1. Railroad Feels Squeezed Hurt by airline fare wars, accidents and rising costs, Amtrak is considering cuts in service, including trims on the Northeast corridor. Page A27.

THEY are tiny mandibled versions of Shiva, the Hindu god of devastation and restoration. In a mere three days, they can strip away every last trembling leaf, every vestige of chlorophyll from a large grove of trees. A herd of elephants or a blazing inferno could hardly do more damage to the face of a forest. Yet once they take their herbaceous plunder underground, the pillagers become gentle farmers, using the leafy matter to cultivate vast gardens of blooming fungi. They nourish the fungus, and the fungus in turn feeds their hungry multitudes. And so the famed leaf-cutting ants act out their high drama of destruction and renewal, defoliating trees, bushes, vines, everything in their path -- and from the wreckage creating a subterranean Eden, a myrmecian paradise.

Things are suddenly looking up at the H. W. Wright Hardware Company, a small family-owned enterprise that buys the inventories of companies that go out of business. "I think this bankruptcy is going to wipe out a lot of small-business men in Orange County -- the people who would supply oil for the county's trucks and toilet paper for the bathrooms," said H. W. Wright, the owner. "They will be the very last to be paid by the county, and a lot of these are small-business men who can't afford that kind of delay."

BOMBING IN NEW JERSEY: COAST-TO-COAST CONNECTIONS It did not take long for Federal agents to conclude that the mail bomb that killed an advertising executive over the weekend was sent by the shadowy figure who had unleashed 14 similar attacks. The bomb was designed like the others. And, the agents disclosed, the information still legible on the shredded package was also chillingly familiar. A1. Members of a special task force are pursuing an attacker they have never seen, yet they talk as if he is out there watching them. B8.

From the street, the only sign that marks Gloria's cafe is the fragrance of pork-filled tamales and steaming Salvadoran corn tortillas, bulging with cheese. Yellow Pages listings for the clandestine kitchen in Gloria's house do not exist. Credit cards are not accepted. All payments must be in cash. And woe to the customer who strides up the clean-swept porch without respecting a basic rule of the underground economy -- reservations are a must.

A confidential Justice Department study of a deadly 1992 standoff between a white separatist and Federal agents found that senior officials violated not only their own policies but also the Constitution when they relaxed the rules that govern when Federal agents may shoot a suspect. The study was prepared by a 24-member investigative team reporting to the Office of Professional Responsibility, the Justice Department's internal disciplinary unit. It traces the long chain of events that led to a 10-day siege around the remote mountain home of the separatist, Randall C. Weaver, after a sharpshooter for the Federal Bureau of Investigation mistakenly shot Mr. Weaver's wife, Vicki, as she stood in the doorway.

A new study of teen-agers' use of illegal drugs shows that the increases of recent years are continuing, a trend that the study's director attributed to the "glamorizing" of drugs by the entertainment industry. The survey of nearly 50,000 students from 420 public and private high schools nationwide, which was made public today, found that one in four high school sophomores and one in three seniors said they had smoked marijuana at least once within the last year. Those figures were an increase of six percentage points among the 10th graders and an increase of four percentage points among the 12th graders.

They were madly painting and polishing at the Jaguar Cars plant here one recent day, making the place sparkle for a visit from a loyal customer, Queen Elizabeth II. But the changes at Jaguar of late have been more than cosmetic. After nearly five years in which it has posted nothing but operating losses -- and made its parent company, the Ford Motor Company, look foolish for having paid $2.5 billion to acquire it in 1989 -- Jaguar appears on track to reap something more than a visit from the Queen: a profit.