August 22, 1999

GAO and Federal advisory panel fault most states for not complying with 1989 law requiring that young children on Medicaid be tested for lead poisoning; Medicaid recipients are three times as likely as other children to have high amounts of lead in blood; tests cost under $10 but many doctors do not believe they are necessary or are unaware of Federal requirement; many poor children are often not taken to doctor until they are sick, and most children with high levels of lead do not display obvious symptoms; Centers for Disease control says 890,000 children, about 535,000 of them in Medicaid, have toxic lead levels in blood; screenings vary widely state to state (M)

Profile of S C Johnson & Co, one of US's largest family-owned businesses, and plan of its leader, Samuel Curtis Johnson, to split it up among his children into three separate entities; Fisk Johnson will head SC Johnson, core private business; Helen Johnson-Leipold already heads Johnson Worldwide Associates; Curt Johnson will run business that sells to industrial customers; photos; chronologies (L)

Sylvia Nasar Economic View column on new focus on inflation just year after global currency and banking crises; Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Wall Street investors suspect stellar inflation record was product of lucky, highly transitory breaks and therefore will not last (M)

Sergei V. Stepashin, who was ousted as Prime Minister of Russia this month, was expected to announce yesterday that he would be leading a new political alliance. Instead, he surprised much of the country by declaring somewhat bitterly that he had failed to pull together the disparate group and would now be going it alone. Article, page 8.

Changes in Ford Mustang since 1964 noted; photos (S)