June 28, 1995

Seeking to give all Americans the protections embodied in a bill passed in Trenton, United States Senator Bill Bradley introduced a bill yesterday to insure minimum hospital stays for newborns and their mothers.

A new battle between the states is brewing on Capitol Hill, transcending the forces of partisanship and ideology. It is fueled by the most primal of forces: the desire of 50 intensely competitive states to get their fair share -- at the very least -- of the Federal pie. Republican leaders hoped to avoid it. But by seeking to replace some basic antipoverty programs with limited lump-sum payments to the states, they have started a formula fight, the most dreaded of legislative struggles.

NACH WAXMAN is a man of infinite patience. Consider the customer standing before him in Kitchen Arts and Letters, the only culinary bookstore in Manhattan. He's just back from San Francisco. "Chez Panisse was never singular," he sniffs. "And Square One has lost its point. It isn't singing, isn't resonating. The best was Silk's."

Lynne F. Stewart, counselor at law and radical at heart, strode through the Federal courthouse in Manhattan, a purple cloth tote bag crammed with legal papers dangling from her hand, a New York Mets cap on her head. No formidable briefcase like those being borne about her. No sign of the dress-for-success standard of lawyering also abundant in the vicinity.

The Government moved today to limit the power of law school professors to use the American Bar Association's accrediting process to increase salaries and fringe benefits and ease workloads at the nation's law schools. Under pressure from the Justice Department's antitrust division, the A.B.A. agreed to change the way it bestows approval on law schools, a cumbersome and costly process that critics say has helped drive up tuitions for the 174 institutions that now have A.B.A. sanction.

The Government announced a package of measures today meant to ward off recession in Japan, but economists dismissed the steps as unlikely to make much difference and investors responded by selling off shares. The reaction underscored fears that if the Government was unable to stimulate the economy, conditions might worsen before they improve. As Japan moves into its fifth year of economic troubles -- and its eighth rescue package -- the fragile economy is teetering on the brink of recession. Last week, the Government reported that the economy had expanded a mere one-tenth of 1 percent in the first quarter of 1995 from the prior three months.

BEING a French-born American citizen, I have two national holidays to celebrate this month -- the Fourth of July and, 10 days later, Bastille Day. Both will mean a picnic on the beach at my home on eastern Long Island. For me, the July 4 holiday has more immediacy, since I have spent most of the last half century as an American, including three years in the United States Army during World War II. Part of that time was spent in the Army's cooking school, from which I was expelled (I'll get to that later).

As American sanctions loomed against Japanese luxury cars, Japan's Trade Minister showed new willingness to expand foreign access to the Japanese automotive market, American officials said early this morning. But it was not clear whether Tokyo would offer enough to persuade President Clinton to call off the 100 percent tariffs that are set to take effect within 24 hours. The sudden flexibility by the Japanese Minister of International Trade and Industry, Ryutaro Hashimoto, clearly took American officials by surprise. Mr. Hashimoto and Mickey Kantor, the United States trade representative, met three times on Tuesday, ending their final session at 1:45 this morning. A Japanese official said the negotiators planned to meet again late this morning.

MAYOR BLOCKED ON SALE OF WATER SYSTEM In a sharp rebuke of Mayor Giuliani's budget strategy, the city's Comptroller announced that he would block a plan to sell New York City's water system to a quasi-independent public agency. He called the $2.3 billion deal a "fiscal gimmick." [ Page A1. ] NEW YORK CITY

A managing partner at the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand was indicted yesterday on charges of defrauding both his firm and his alma mater, Seton Hall University, which had given him a distinguished alumnus award in 1987. Using checks from his personal account and his firm, Robert T. Caruso of Saddle River donated more than $150,000 to the university, the indictment said, but convinced Seton Hall to refund a substantial part of the money by promising that he would make a later contribution.

Consumer confidence took its steepest fall in nearly three years in June, dropping to the lowest level since late last year, the Conference Board reported today. The surprisingly big decline reported by the Conference Board, a New-York based business research group, was taken as a sign that consumers, their incomes growing slowly and saddled with high debt, will continue to spend cautiously in coming months.

The wife of the president of Guatemala's national archive was arrested in Manhattan last week and charged with selling 16th-century manuscripts and other rare documents that had been stolen from the collection and then sold to a New York gallery. The General Archive of Central America, in Guatemala City, is equivalent to the National Archives in Washington in that it holds important national documents, prosecutors and academics said yesterday. The archive holds a large collection of original documents from the Central American colonial period and is considered among the finest of its kind in Latin America.