October 28, 1995

Surpassing nearly all expectations, the economy rebounded vigorously over the summer to grow at a 4.2 percent pace while inflation, already low, subsided further, the Commerce Department reported today. The Clinton Administration sought to turn the combination of swelling output, steady prices and the likelihood of brighter prospects for job growth to its advantage as the White House enters the final stages of budget negotiations with the Republican-controlled Congress.

In an eruption of national pride, tens of thousands of Canadians poured into Montreal from across Canada today to call for unity and to urge Quebec to remain part of their country. At the Place du Canada in downtown Montreal, a crowd estimated at 150,000 waved the maple leaf flag of Canada and the fleurs-de-lis flag of Quebec and sang the national anthem, hoping to convince the Quebecers to vote No on Monday in their referendum on whether their province should secede from Canada.

New York City officials said yesterday that they were abandoning their drive to force Medicaid recipients into cost-saving managed health care plans, after the Clinton Administration ordered the city to slow down and scale back the effort. Donna E. Shalala, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said yesterday that New York City could not expand its plan to make managed care mandatory for most Medicaid recipients unless it agreed to certain stringent conditions.

Jay Schechter could tell the new Schools Chancellor a thing or two about how hard it is to raise attendance at a New York City public school. Since becoming principal at Sarah J. Hale High School in Brooklyn a little over a year ago -- when nearly one in four children, or 385 out of 1,675, were absent every day -- Mr. Schecter has made lassoing truants his top priority.

The drug-sentencing bill attracted little notice in Washington, compared with the attention focused on the pitched debate over the future of health care and welfare. But prisoner rights groups say word of its passage flashed through Federal prisons, and soon after there were rumblings of possible disturbances. Prison officials will not say if they believe the uprisings that followed at five sites were related to the vote in Congress. But the disturbances have suddenly drawn attention to the debate over mandatory Federal sentencing laws for crack cocaine offenses. These laws, which Congress voted to maintain in the bill, are harsher than those for crimes involving powdered cocaine, and many lawyers and legislators say they have a disproportionate impact on poor black men.