June 29, 2000

House, 217-214, approves bill to offer prescription drug benefits to all 39 million elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries by subsidizing insurance companies that offer such coverage; Democratic minority, scoring Republican bill as sham and risky scheme that would 'privatize' Medicare, use variety of parliamentary and procedural tactics to delay work of House; score Republicans for blocking full debate on their bill for more extensive drug coverage; Pres Clinton, scoring Republican bill as empty promise, threatens veto (M)

Alliance for Downtown New York will present free pre-Independence Day concert on July 1 on Great Lawn of Battery Park featuring Grammy Award-winning pop singer Shawn Colvin and British folk rocker Billy Bragg; Wynton Marsalis and Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra will spotlight music of Louis Armstrong in concert on July 4; photo; Van Gogh: Face to Face, exhibit which started tour at Detroit Institute of Arts in March, will open at Boston Museum of Fine Arts on July 2; photo; Summergarden series of free weekend concerts at Museum of Modern Art will feature works of nearly 30 composers, particularly Bela Bartok, Charles Ives and Igor Stravinsky (M)

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column discusses career of New Jersey Nets forward Jayson Williams on occasion of his retirement; photo (M)

Supreme Court, 5-4, rules Boy Scouts may exclude gay members because opposition to homosexuality is part of organization's 'expressive message'; overturns New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that applied state's anti-discrimination law to require troop to readmit longtime member and assistant scoutmaster, James Dale, whom it dismissed after learning he was gay; Chief Justice William H Rehnquist writes majority opinion; dissenters accept principle that organization cannot be forced to adopt unwanted message, but challenge its application in case, holding Boy Scouts failed to show that they held opposition to homosexuality as key tenet before case; photo (M)

Detroit Tigers defeat New York Yankees, 13-6; photo (M)

Design Notebook column on interior design of Kahiki, Polynesian-style supper club of 1950's and 1960's in Columbus, Ohio; club opened in 1962 and was placed on National Register of Historic Places in 1997; photos (L)

Joyce Purnick Metro Matters column tells Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker what to expect if he decides to ride Number 7 New York City subway to Shea Stadium for game against New York Mets (M)

THREE a.m. on a summer Friday here. A smoke-filled room is packed with men, faces lighted by computer monitors, adrenaline running from online combat. Bicycles clutter the alley outside the door under the sign that reads NG Cafe. The men are muttering into their headsets, discussing attack strategies with teammates seated only a few computers away. Brown and green scenes of soldiers, terrain and tanks scroll rapidly across the screens. A mobile phone rings. ''What?'' a man snaps at the caller who interrupted him. ''I'm playing computer games.''

Web search engines are becoming more dependent on human judgment because computers and software cannot find and index all the new sites in the ever-expanding Web and because they are not yet at the point where they can analyze a Web document and, without any human interference, instantly understand what that document is about; librarians at Northern Light constantly fine-tune their directory structure and come up with names of categories for sorting Web sites; Google and other system may evaluate sites according to how frequently they are visited or the paths by which they are visited; information scientists see danger of human bias and 'tyranny of the majority' in such approaches; photo; drawing (M)

Federal Reserve votes to leave interest rates unchanged, giving itself more time to determine whether series of rate increases it has imposed are slowing economy sufficiently to avoid upturn in inflation; federal funds rate remains at 6.5 percent; central bank warns it could start raising rates again as soon as its next meeting, on Aug 22; Commerce Department says orders for durable goods in May rose 6 percent, to $218.89 billion, more than reversing 5.7 percent decline in April; graph on durable goods orders; photo (M)

Elian Gonzalez, 6, returns to Cuba with father and other friends and relatives after Supreme Court refuses to hear arguments in asylum bid for the six-year-old by his Miami relatives; is greeted at airport in Havana by grandparents and hundreds of flag-waving students hurriedly bused in from his home town of Cardenas; Cuban officials do not plan any news conferences or rallies for boy, who is met by National Assembly Pres Ricardo Alarcon, who guided drive for his return; photos (M)

New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission to begin enforcing new rules to make taxicabs more accessible to handicapped (M)