July 4, 1995

The contest for leadership of the Conservative Party lurched into its imponderable end game today with both candidates -- Prime Minister John Major and his challenger, John Redwood -- warning that he alone could rescue the party from a Labor landslide. The vote on Tuesday by up to 329 Tory members of Parliament will determine whether Mr. Major, in office since November 1990, survives as Prime Minister.

Pentagon officials have crafted a plan with members of the independent commission on the closing of military bases that they hope will save thousands of jobs at a California Air Force base and political face for President Clinton. After intense negotiations over the weekend involving the commission, the military and the White House, the Pentagon is preparing to recommend that the President reject the panel's suggestion that 11,000 jobs at McClellan Air Force Base be transferred out of state.

Four years ago, the Texas Legislature approved what was to be the largest, most aggressive drug treatment program of any prison system in the world. The issue of treating addicts in prisons had no genuine champion anywhere in the nation until Ann W. Richards, the state's new Governor and a recovering alcoholic, made it her cause. At the time, there was much fervid rhetoric about a revolutionary change in Texas's attitude toward criminals. State Senator Ted B. Lyon, a Democrat and a prime sponsor of the bill, proclaimed: "If we can break the cycle of addiction, we can break the cycle of crime." Governor Richards, who visited prison therapy sessions and afterward sent inmates handwritten notes, felt strongly that Texas could someday show the nation how to use the prisons to break the cycle of drug use.

With the zeal of a supersalesman, Andrzej Zarnoch walks the blustery piers astride the Baltic Sea, showing off his shipyard's latest prize, a 440-foot bulk carrier destined for Norway. Mr. Zarnoch, the marketing director of the yard, has reason to feel buoyant. Gleaming vessels like the Fossnes Bergen are moving out of the berths here at record speed. Production time has been cut by half in two years, the order books are filled with contracts from the West, and the Szczecin shipyard, once Poland's poor sister to the fabled Gdansk, is now ranked among the world's top dozen.

A strike by toll collectors threw operations on the New Jersey Turnpike into confusion today, forcing officials to allow tens of thousands of motorists to ride free for about eight hours, until supervisors, part-time workers and people hired on the spot replaced them for part of the afternoon and evening. Some members of the union attempted to return to their jobs late tonight in compliance with a superior court judge's order to end the walkout. But they were turned away by New Jersey Turnpike Authority officials, although the agency was unable to muster enough replacement workers and had to leave the tollbooths empty again overnight.