May 31, 1997

From Welfare to Work

Jesse K Timmendequas is convicted on all 11 counts in the rape-murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka in Hamilton Township, NJ, in July 1994; verdict makes him eligible for death by lethal injection; photo (M)

Prices for used automobiles fall 2 percent in last 12 months, after rising briskly for four years; weaker prices may reflect fading popularity of used cars, after several years in which they were increasingly seen as alternative to new models; lower used-car prices will have ripple effect throughout automobile industry; graphs (M)

Federal Education Department tells New York City school to reduce disproportionately high number of black and Hispanic students in special-education programs or face lawsuit and ultimately revocation of tens of millions of dollars in Federal aid; concludes that long-held perception of such programs as warehouses for minority children is rooted in fact; this is first time Federal officials have waded into problem, which has long troubled high-level school officials (M)

US deploys 'bunker buster' nuclear bomb, designed to destroy underground factories and laboratories while causing relatively little surface damage; weapon, designated B-61, is repackaging of a 30-year-old hydrogen bomb that was originally designed to be dropped from an airplane by parachute and explode while still aloft; dropped without parachute, it can burrow as deep as 50 feet into soil before exploding; critics say B-61 is new weapon intended to be used against rogue states suspected of trying to develop weapons of mass destruction in underground complexes; diagrams (M)