August 26, 1995

Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon reversed his stance today and called for public hearings into sexual and official misconduct charges against him. For months, critics as diverse as the National Organization for Women and the Christian Coalition have clamored for public hearings before the Senate Ethics Committee, while Mr. Packwood and his allies in the Senate insisted that the charges be heard behind closed doors.

"I lied to them," said the human rights campaigner Harry Wu, leaning forward in his study today as he recounted his two months of imprisonment in China, "and so what?" "I said that if they released me I would stay away from politics and have a good life with my wife," he said in an interview just hours after his expulsion from China and return to his home here, 30 miles south of San Francisco.

One day ago, 53 Station Road was a small blue and white frame house where children kept bicycles and a little red wagon, family photographs were on display and the kitchen wall was hung with frying pans. Today the house, where a family named Dyson had lived, seemed to have been turned inside out. The heat of a wildfire had blown out windows and ripped walls apart, revealing beds and chairs and clothing blackened beyond recognition.

A grandmother wearing the thick head scarf and ankle-length dress of an observant Muslim sits near the aluminum pier in the 85-degree heat, swathed in pungent tobacco smoke swirling up from her water pipe. Every so often, a call to prayer booms through the trees. A prayer leader hikes along the gravel path skirting the campsites. He's traded his traditional red fez, white turban and flowing robes for jeans and a T-shirt. It's Islamic summer camp in the Poconos.

Buffett in Geico Bid Underscoring an early success, Warren E. Buffett, through Berkshire Hathaway, bid $2.3 billion for Geico's remaining 49 percent. Page 33. Threat to National Parks In a visit to Yellowstone, Clinton warned that budget cuts sought by the Republicans were a threat to the nation's natural treasures. Page 7.