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.