November 11, 1995

Nearly four months into a newspaper strike here, the companies that own this city's two daily papers appear to be defeating their unions. Here, in the city that is sometimes called the labor capital of the country, the papers have published a newspaper every day since the strike began on July 13. Since September, the two papers have each been publishing their usual separate daily editions.

Ignoring inense last-minute lobbying by New York City's powerful police union, Gov. George E. Pataki vetoed a much debated police arbitration bill today, saying it would unravel the merger of the city's three police forces. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani had opposed the bill, saying it would not only disrupt the merger but also increase city labor costs by hundreds of millions of dollars. Tonight, he called Mr. Pataki courageous for defying the police union when almost the entire State Legislature, which passed the bill earlier this year, would not. "The Governor is to be commended for standing up to that pressure and for demonstrating that he's the Governor of the entire state," Mr. Giuliani said.

In trying to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, Congress is banking on a promise from Alaska political leaders that all money earned from oil leasing will be split evenly between the state of Alaska and the Federal Government. But members of Alaska's powerful Congressional delegation, all Republicans, have been saying one thing in Washington and quite another back home. The lawmakers have told their constituents that the promise of a 50-50 split is a ploy to win approval in Congress. Once the refuge is opened, they said, Alaskans will sue to get 90 percent of the royalties.

Jennifer Timbrook went to work last Saturday at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn much as she had for the last week, signing in at 9 A.M. on the sixth-floor pediatrics ward, pulling on scrubs and taking on her new duties as a third-year medical student on rotations. As she often did on her days off, she had volunteered to come in that day to help examine newborns, talk to new mothers and discharge patients. But at 11:30 A.M., she signed out, and some time later took an elevator down to a deserted second-floor radiology darkroom.

Nigeria's military Government today executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of the country's leading environmentalists and authors, provoking international protests and calls for punitive measures against Nigeria. Mr. Saro-Wiwa, 54, a prominent critic of the Government who was arrested last year on charges of murder that he had steadfastly denied, was hanged with eight co-defendants at the prison in the eastern city of Port Harcourt at 11:30 A.M., the official Nigerian press agency said.

The Israeli Police Minister said today that the man who killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the leader of a band of young religious nationalists dedicated to assassinating Mr. Rabin and attacking Palestinians in areas they control in the West Bank. The assassin was influenced by militant rabbis who effectively issued a death warrant for Mr. Rabin by invoking the "pursuer's decree" of Jewish religious law, the Police Minister, Moshe Shahal, said in an interview on the Israeli television. The law holds that a Jew is morally obligated to kill someone who poses a mortal danger to him.

Progress in Talks on Bosnia

Standard & Poor's, a leading credit agency, warned that the budget impasse in Washington had already damaged investors' confidence. Business Day, page 37.

The House voted today to give President Clinton ways to avoid both a Government shutdown and a default on its bonds, but only on terms that he has called unacceptable and has promised to veto. On a nearly straight party-line vote, the House passed a bill to extend the Government's authority to borrow money. The vote for a four-week extension was 219 to 185 -- with 7 Republicans voting no, largely because they oppose raising the limit on Government debt at all, and 4 conservative Southern Democrats voting yes. The vote sends the measure to the President.

Over the objections of some environmentalists, the Pataki administration has decided to allow owners of private woodlands in New York's Adirondack Park to clearcut tens of thousands of acres where trees were damaged in a windstorm last summer. The largest previous permit for clearcutting involved 55 acres. Article, page 25.

Because of an editing error, an obituary yesterday about Francis Grover Cleveland misstated the election history of his father, the country's 22d and 24th President. Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was elected in 1884 and 1892, not in 1888. That year he gained a majority of the popular vote but lost the Presidency in the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison, a Republican.

A sports chart yesterday comparing the rushing statistics of Dallas's Emmitt Smith with those of other great football runners misstated those for Jim Brown. He rushed for 12,312 yards on 2,359 attempts in his career.