November 23, 1996

June 26 murder of Veronica Guerin, reporter for Ireland's Sunday Independent, forces Government to pass a series of laws giving law enforcement agencies the ability to deal with the newly sophisticated enemy she was writing about: organized crime; Irish police, who have heretofore been more restricted than officers in other Western countries, feel certain they know the identities of the men responsible for killing Guerin, but need to build an impregnable case before exercising their new, one-time right to detain them for questioning; Paul Ward has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly having harbored the killers after the crime; photos of Guerin, her family and John Gilligan, who believes he is prime suspect (L)

State Education Commissioner Richard P Mills orders Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew to take direct control of 42 failing schools in New York City and improve them; warns that the state may force the closing of the schools if they do not get better; schools represent nearly 4 percent of all public schools in the city; action may seem like a harsh judgment on Crew's first year as Chancellor, but it does confer on him the greater control he has been seeking over troubled schools; all but three schools on the list are run by local school boards, which have blocked intervention by previous chancellors; photo (M)

Mayor Giuliani effectively withdrew his demand for broad control over the school system and would give the Chancellor more power. Page 21.

Re-election of five black members of Congress whose districts were redrawn to eliminate black voting majorities sharpens the debate on whether it is still necessary to gerrymander legislative districts along racial lines to insure minority representation; those who successfully petitioned Supreme Court to rejects districts drawn along racial lines say success of black candidates in the five districts shows that minorities do not need super-majority of black voters to win; civil rights leaders argue that key to victories was less the design of the districts than the incumbency of the black candidates; graphs show racial makeup of the old and new districts of the re-elected black Congressmen: Georgia's Sanford D Bishop Jr and Cynthia A McKinney, Florida's Corrine Brown, and Texas's Sheila Jackson-Lee and Eddie Bernice Johnson (M)

Success at Subic Bay Subic Bay, the former United States base in the Philippines where President Clinton and 17 other leaders are to meet next week, has become a symbol of economic success. Page 3. Democrats to Return Gift The Democratic Party said it would return $450,000 solicited from an Indonesian couple by John Huang, who is at the center of inquiries into party fund-raising. Page 9. Couple Guilty in Assault In a case that stirred ugly memories in a Southern town, a white couple were convicted in an attack on a 10-year-old black boy, but were acquitted of a more serious charge. Page 8. Physics Trailblazer Dies Abdus Salam, a Pakistani who shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on two of the fundamental forces of nature, died at 70 in Oxford, England. Page 11.