June 28, 1996

In a last-minute move, the Legislature approved a bill yesterday that would delay for one year a plan to require jet skiers to pass a safety test. A bill enacted in January requires anyone operating a personal watercraft to take a boating safety course or pass a written test starting July 1. Legislators say they have been swamped with calls from people who say they cannot find a place to take the test or have had to wait in long lines. The measure goes to Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who has not stated a position. JOE SHARKEY

The Assembly approved two bills yesterday that would let judges substantially increase penalties for repeat criminal offenders. One measure would allow a judge to classify an adult sentenced for a sex crime as a repeat offender, subject to mandatory prison terms, if the offender had committed a similar crime as a juvenile. Currently, juvenile records cannot be considered in adult sentencing. The second bill would let a judge double the jail time and fines for a crime committed while a person is out on bail for another offense.

In the Kremlin, what goes around comes around, with a vengeance. Anatoly B. Chubais, the campaign adviser who last week triumphantly announced on television that he had helped purge the Kremlin of Boris N. Yeltsin's most hawkish advisers, has been quietly stripped of his direct access to Mr. Yeltsin and told to keep out of the public eye, campaign officials said today.

In a city crazy for news about its Super Bowl champion Cowboys, it was both sensational and disturbing when the Dallas football team's All Pro wide receiver, Michael Irvin, was arrested earlier this year on drug possession charges. But yesterday, with jury selection just getting under way in Mr. Irvin's trial, the Dallas police announced something even more shocking: the arrest of one of its own officers on charges of trying to arrange Mr. Irvin's killing.

As the bodies of the 19 American servicemen killed in a terrorist bombing here on Tuesday were flown home today and F.B.I. investigators sifted forensic evidence at the explosion site, American commanders defended the precautions they had taken to protect the base against terrorism. But numerous members of the Air Force's 4404th Air Wing, based at this Saudi military facility in what used to be civilian housing, said residents of the northeast corner building that suffered most of the force of the blast had joked nervously for months about their exposure to car bombs and talked of sleeping in their offices for safety.