August 8, 1999

Black Mothers' Mortality Rate Under Scrutiny** Medical experts are struggling to understand why black women in US are nearly four times as likely to die in childbirth, or shortly thereafter, as white women; disparity, which has remained about same for last four decades, holds true even for women who are middle class and have health insurance; has renewed interest among scientists and legislators in problem that many people think no longer exists; Reps Nita M Lowey and Jo Ann Emerson have convened panel of doctors, women's health advocates and disease control centers officials to discuss maternal mortality and garner support for bill that would provide additional Federal money to study it; graph; photo (M)

Leasing begins at new 208-apartment rental building at East 94th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan; developers, Sidney Fetner Associates and Sun America, got aid from New York State Mortgage Agency and offer 20 percent of apartments at reduced prices to low-income tenants; rendering (M)

Achievements of 106th Congress are scant as of August recess, and Republicans and Democrats show little inclination for compromise; they are more interested in deriving campaign fodder from legislative process than from actually legislating; photo (M)

Republican Presidential front-runner George W Bush and his wife Laura want to buy 1,550-acre ranch near Crawford, Tex; B F Engelbrecht, owner of ranch, says deal is scheduled to close on Aug 9, but could be delayed; declines to discuss price, but real estate agents estimate it will cost $1.3 million; map; photo (M)

Excerpts from dialogue between dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and dancer-choreographer Trisha Brown, who comment on their lives and work; photos (L)

Residents of Pec, Kosovo, are coping as best they can with infrastructure that was destroyed in war; relief aid is arriving slowly, and many residents have given up on their expectations for reconstruction help from Western powers that drove Serbs out of Kosovo; Kosovo's long and miserable winter is just two months away; United Nations official Dennis McNamara estimates that 300,000 to 400,000 people in Kosovo do not have habitable homes for winter; map; photos (M)

Article on marketing battle likely to result when record companies introduce DVD audio, new recorded music format intended to replace compact disk; DVD offers higher-fidelity recordings with surround sound but confusion will come when comsumers will be faced with two choices: DVD audio and Super Audio CD; drawing; chart (M)

White House officials say Pres Clinton will send Federal officials to all states to investigate whether they have improperly excluded people from Medicaid or from new Federal health insurance program for children; say Clinton plans to announce efforts when he addresses National Governors Association on Aug 8; say steps reflect his disappointment at way some states have carried out new health program for children; say Clinton is disappointed that only 1.3 million children have been enrolled in program; nationwide, over 10 million children lack health insurance (M)

British pub, neighborly spot serving pints of warm beer, is rapidly being replaced by trendy pub; it is all part of booming leisure industry, financed in large part by money from US and Japan, that has freckled British landscape with all trappings of mass-market society; set of government rules known as Beer Orders, which came into force decade ago and instructed brewers that owned over 2,000 pubs to sell either their breweries or some of their pubs, is behind revolution in $35 billion pub industry; photo (M)

Charles Strum Coping column, noting that our ancestors lived through plague, famine and persecution, holds New Yorkers, despite being bombarded by Doppler radar and 3-D weather graphics, should just accept fact that city is hot in summer; drawing (M)

Los Angeles Dodgers defeat New York Mets, 7-6, in game marred by poor performance by Mets' bullpen; photo (M)

Julian Kirnsky Summer Camps at Haverford College, Haverford, Pa, offer campers aged 13 to 16 chance to learn corporate skills; is outgrowth of golf and tennis camps that Krinsky, former tennis star, runs on Haverford campus with Adrian Castelli; photo (M)