May 22, 1996

Financial disclosure forms filed with the State Ethics Commission show that a top official in Gov. George E. Pataki's administration received personal travel expenses for months after she took office last year from a fund that had been established solely to finance the Governor's inauguration and transition. The official, Health Commissioner Barbara A. DeBuono, declared that she got more than $1,000 in personal expense reimbursements from the fund, but state disclosure laws did not require her to be more specific. The money from the fund was used to repay her for personal travel to her former home in Rhode Island between January and August 1995 so she could visit her family.

A group of prominent scholars and writers contends that Princeton University is allowing itself to be used by the Turkish Government as a center for propaganda about Turkey's role in the massacre of a million Armenians during World War I. Three years ago, the university accepted $750,000 from the Government of Turkey to endow a new Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and hired a professor, Heath W. Lowry, who had worked for the Turkish government, as executive director of the Washington-based Institute of Turkish Studies.

The bipartisan consensus among the nation's governors on Medicaid and welfare, announced with much fanfare in February, appears to be crumbling, reducing chances that the programs will actually be overhauled in this election year. On Wednesday, Republicans in Congress will introduce a bill to carry out recommendations of the National Governors' Association, which were praised 15 weeks ago by President Clinton and many members of Congress as a possible basis for compromise.

A Vote to Repeal Gasoline-Tax Increase

For six months, prosecutors say, a baby-faced undercover officer would make connections and buy drugs from teen-agers and adults across Hunterdon County. Yesterday, police officers swept through the county's schools and arrested 14 students. They also arrested 10 adults at their homes and workplaces. Sharon Ransavage, the County Prosecutor, said the undercover operation resulted in 55 transactions yielding LSD, Ritalin, Ketamine and other drugs, and came in response to a recent increase in drug use in the relatively affluent county, especially in the schools.