August 23, 1997

Barbara Zack Quindel, Federal election overseer, says he made her decision to invalidate Ron Carey's election as teamsters' president before the UPS strike began but held off on issuing it for fear of making the ruling a factor in the labor-management dispute (M)

Federal appeals court upholds constitutionality of New York State law calling for the names and address of thousands of sex offenders to be made public; state officials will information to police departments across the state in September, and departments can provide it to anyone who asks for it; lower court had nullified law (M)

Four decades after mercury poisoning made Minamata, Japan, synonymous with environmental disaster, prefectural government has declared mercury levels in fish from Minamata Bay now meet safety standards; net that cordoned off Bay's fish from surrounding sea since 1974 is being removed, and commercial fishing should resume in Fall 1997; to many Japanese, announcement marks symbolic end to saga that helped awaken world to evils of pollution and led Japan to question ethic of growth at any cost; photos; map (L)

Jane Blasio's search for her birth mother in McCaysville, Ga, brings to light the black-market sale of as many as 200 babies delivered there by the late Dr Thomas Jugarthy Hicks between 1951 and 1965; Hicks performed abortions, which were illegal at the time, in addition to caring for miners, farmers and townspeople, and he persuaded some young women who came to him for abortions to carry their babies to full term; sold newborns to people who wanted a baby with no questions asked, sometimes requiring them to go through an odd charade of childbirth; about 50 'Hicks babies' and seven mothers have come forward so far, but no positive matches between parents and children have been made; photos of Blasio, Hicks and Judge Linda Davis, who helped Blasio unearth the story (M)

Speaker Newt Gingrich accuses Pres Clinton of caving into unions on rules that, he says, undermine the new welfare law, and he vows that central legislative drive for the fall will be a bill to correct those weaknesses; is particularly concerned about regulations issued by Labor Department requiring states to treat welfare recipients in community service jobs as regular employees, with protections and benefits like minimum wage, which states have argued are too expenses; former Vice Pres Dan Quayle says Clinton's efforts to alter welfare law are reason enough to scuttle new budget deal, which he criticizes Gingrich and other Republicans for entering (M)