July 20, 1996

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political chief who led his people in a brutal war of ethnic separation, has agreed to give up political power immediately, the special United States envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, said here today. The agreement removes an obstacle to September's national elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina and could aid the flagging peace effort by removing from visible public life a man indicted for genocide and other war crimes.

Growing Divisions in Mexico

Investors were clearly rattled by wild swings in the stock market, withdrawing $4 billion from stock mutual funds -- the largest weekly withdrawal in four years. While the data, released yesterday, do not reflect investor activity on Thursday and yesterday, when the stock market was calmer, they continue a trend.

Their days now are bracketed by briefings. In the morning and again in the evening, they listen to Government officials, who stand grimly in the front of a hotel ballroom near Kennedy International Airport and describe what, if anything, has been learned since the last such session.

Meeting in a windowless building here amid unusual security precautions, a committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended today that the agency approve for marketing the abortion-inducing drug RU-486, or mifepristone. The recommendation follows more than a decade in which American abortion protest has kept the drug, easily available in France, Britain and Sweden, out of the United States.

For Alison Perry, being multiracial has meant moving through life as if she had a giant question mark drawn on her forehead. Strangers frequently approach and begin a vexing guessing game: "Are you Israeli?" "Are you a Latina?" "Where are you from?" Yet for this slender, almond-colored woman with delicate features drawn from both her black-American father and her Italian-American mother, race is not what defines her.

Rough seas frustrated the search for the wreckage of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 yesterday, as Federal agents mounted an investigation in search of the method and motives behind what they think was a criminal act that blew up the plane in midair. Federal officers set up a toll-free number and asked Suffolk County residents who saw the explosion and crash to call. They invited anyone with information to communicate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation through its Internet site.

After six years of preparation, Atlanta welcomed the world tonight for the opening of the centennial Summer Olympics, which began with idealistic hopes for peace among nations moderated by anxiety about terrorism in the wake of the explosion aboard Trans World Airlines Flight 800. An estimated 7,000 athletes from 197 nations marched into the Olympic Stadium, filled with 83,100 spectators who paid up to $636 for a ticket, and witnessed a captivating and vibrant, if ear-splitting, celebration meant to honor 100 years of the modern Games and evoke the hospitable spirit of the modern American South. Competition will begin Saturday and continue through Aug. 4.

An obituary yesterday about Judith Connelly Delouvrier, who died in the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800, misidentified a group on whose board she served. The group, which encourages philanthropic leanings in children, is Common Cents, not Common Sense.

Because of an editing error, an article on Sunday about Aleksandr I. Lebed, national security adviser to President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, misidentified the person at a public forum who Mr. Lebed said sounded "like a Jew." It was a supporter of Mr. Lebed, not a reporter.

An article on July 7 about security lapses at American bases in Saudi Arabia misstated the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in assessing the threat of terrorism there. The agency did not reach an official conclusion that Saudi terrorists could not build a bomb larger than 200 pounds. The article was based on information provided by senior Air Force officials and other Administration officials. The C.I.A., in a letter to The Times, said that this was not accurate, and that it had produced "no assessment, analysis or reporting" including such a judgment.

An article in The Home Section on Thursday about playground sprinklers, including the waterworks in the playground at Battery Park City, misstated the surname of the landscape architect for the Battery Park City Authority. She is Susan D. Kaplan, not Kahn.