July 6, 1996

Edward Cooper, a Portland, Ore., businessman, is black. His wife and business partner, Barbara McIntyre, is white. Their 12-year-old son, Ethan McCooper, is, like his name, a blend of his parents, and harder to classify. On Ethan's school forms and other official papers, his parents sometimes check both the "white" and the "black" boxes. If "other" is available, they check that and write in "interracial." When ordered to choose between "black" and "white," they resolutely leave the form blank.

U.S. and North Korea Talk

As they seek to cast Bob Dole as a tobacco villain doing the bidding of the cigarette companies that give millions to Republican campaigns, Democratic strategists are being forced to confront their party's own long financial relationship with the tobacco industry. Last year the Democratic National Committee accepted $50,000 from Philip Morris, and in the decade before 1994, when the Republicans gained control of Congress, Democratic candidates got as much tobacco money for their individual campaigns as did Republicans.

The Clinton Administration, and its allies in Bosnia, have concluded that the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, will not deliver on his earlier promises to remove two Bosnian Serb leaders indicted on war crimes charges from their positions of power, American and European diplomats say. That leaves the allies facing limited and unappetizing options, which include reimposing sanctions on Yugoslavia or taking military action to seize Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, and possibly the Bosnian Serb military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic.

As the Viper Militia prepared to fight the Federal Government, one of its two women members suggested that the group "take action" against the families of some Federal agents, according to testimony today in Federal court here. The woman, Ellen Adella Belliveau, 27, then the treasurer of the group, made the suggestion as a way to seek retribution against Federal agents if any militia member was arrested, said Steve Ott, supervisor of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents on the case.