July 8, 1995

Following their thrust into national politics, religious conservatives are creating their own legal organizations to combat what they see as a broad assault on religious liberties. More than half a dozen religious liberty law firms, some founded in the 1990's, are waging battles in courts, schools and city halls to carve out a greater public space for religious activity -- be it for student Bible clubs in schools, for the display of crosses in public parks or prayers at graduation ceremonies.

At first glance Aleksandr Korotkov seems like the happiest man in Russia. Packed tightly into a black leather jumpsuit and dancing as if a disco beat had taken hold of his soul, once a week he becomes an openly gay man in a society that has never had much use for openness or for homosexuality. Mr. Korotkov, who is 27, earns enough as a graphics designer to live here in a comfortable apartment. He owns a car, and every Saturday he spends $30 for the privilege of entering Mayak, this city's most fashionable gay nightclub.

Almost six months ago, prosecutors began the O. J. Simpson murder trial by trying to knock the defendant off his pedestal. That effort was an implicit acknowledgment that before a jury would consider what prosecutors called the "mountain of evidence" against Mr. Simpson, they had to drain the deep reservoir of good will he had created for himself on the football field and on the screen. To most legal experts, the prosecution has produced the mountain it promised, built of DNA evidence and bloody shoe prints, hairs and shirt fibers, carpet threads and reams of testimony. But as the state concluded its case on Thursday, there were questions as to whether that mountain was big enough, partly, the experts said, because the reservoir of good will still looked intact, even replenished.

A Role for Wild Fires A year ago wild fires ravaged the West; now the Clinton Administration is endorsing using such fires as a land management tool. Page 6. China Arrests Dissident Harry Wu, a Chinese-American who has alleged rights violations in China, was arrested in Wuhan and formally charged with spying. Page 2. Sampras and Becker in Final The Wimbledon final is set: Pete Sampras (no surprise) against Boris Becker (big surprise). Page 27.

Convinced that it cannot survive on its own in a medical marketplace racked by budget cuts and dominated by managed care, Presbyterian Hospital, one of the city's leading academic hospitals, is actively looking to merge with another medical center. Executives at Presbyterian, the hospital at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, have begun discussions with two other leading centers, the New York Hospital and New York University Hospital, and hope to cement a partnership within a year, said Dr. William Speck, President of Presbyterian.

The job market perked up in June as employers added 215,000 payroll jobs while the unemployment rate edged down slightly to 5.6 percent, the Labor Department reported today. Despite a stronger overall performance than most analysts expected, there were some pockets of weakness. Factory jobs -- which tend to be better paying than most -- dropped 40,000, the third straight sizable decline. Such unevenness blunted the second-guessing by some analysts and investors of the Federal Reserve's decision on Thursday to reverse course and cut short-term interest rates for the first time since 1992. The Fed acted before it was fully aware of the latest report, which suggested that the current economic slowdown is unlikely to turn into a recession.

One Brazilian company has a contract to paint the peeling Havana Libre hotel, long a symbol of Cuba's revolution. Another is shipping an entire cigarette factory to Cuba to revive tobacco production. Once an obedient follower of the United States trade embargo on Cuba, Latin America increasingly ignores Washington, choosing to develop full economic and diplomatic relations with the Communist Government. The United States is the only country in the Americas with a trade ban on Cuba and one of only five that do not have formal ties with it.

In an acceleration of a four-year trend, the murder rate in New York City has plunged sharply since January, to the lowest level in 25 years, according to Police Department statistics. In the first 25 weeks of the year, reported murders have fallen by nearly a third, to 563 from 826 in the same period last year. If the trend holds through the rest of the year -- even accounting for the normal surge of summertime mayhem -- 1995 will record the fewest slayings since 1970, when 1,117 people were killed.

The House ethics committee wants to hear about Speaker Newt Gingrich's much-debated book deal directly from the two major players. The committee has called Mr. Gingrich and Rupert Murdoch, the publishing magnate, to a closed meeting to testify about the agreement they struck for "To Renew America," a book detailing Mr. Gingrich's views on what direction the country should take.

A picture caption yesterday with an article about a Roman Catholic priest's role in massacres in Rwanda misstated the date of the photograph in some editions. The scene, refugees in a church where the accused worked, occurred a year ago, not last month.

Because of a production error, an article yesterday about Government approval for the marketing of the first drug for the treatment of impotence included scrambled passages in some editions. A corrected copy appears today on page 7.

Because of an editing error, the Real Estate column on Wednesday about an office building under construction in Chicago for the headquarters of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois referred incorrectly in some editions to the amount of space leased by the organization at its current headquarters, in Two Illinois Center. It is 75 percent of the building, not 90.