August 7, 2000

House Republican leaders, intent on revenge against Rep Michael P Forbes of Suffolk County, NY, who became Democrat in 1999, weigh running television advertisement against him using outtake of embarrassing horseplay from ad he made as Republican; Forbes and opponent, Felix J Grucci Jr, focus on local issues, while Washington power brokers engage in trash talk; Congressional Republicans have pumped $45,000 so far into Grucci's campaign from their personal political action committee funds and have sent Sen John McCain to stump for him; Pres Clinton held fund-raiser for Forbes that raised $500,000; several cabinet secretaries plan to visit his district; photos (M)

Three separate developers working with three different Indian tribes are battling to bring casino gambling to New York's Catskills Mountain area as pro-gambling forces fear lost opportunity; St Regis Mohawks, which won Interior Department approval for Monticello, NY, casino to be built with Catskill Development, now seek approval for different site with different developer, Park Place Entertainment chief executive Arthur M Goldberg; Crescent Heights Investments reportedly is in talks to build casino-resort in Mamakating (M)

Cultural events due this week include exhibition of works by N C Wyeth and James Wyeth in Rockland, Me, a performance of a forgotten Vivaldi opera in London, New York Grand Opera's production of Don Carlos in Central Park and Pure Pop 2000 Festival; photo (M)

Thousands of telecommunications workers form picket lines at Verizon's facilities along East coast as negotiators press efforts to end strike by 86,000 members of Communications Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers; strike has disrupted operator-assisted services, repairs and installations for 25 million residential customers from Maine to Virginia; job action, over issues including outsourcing of work and unionization of workers in wireless industry, may help define role of organized labor in some of most rapidly growing high-tech industries; company has limited its impact by deploying about 30,000 managers to cover tasks normally performed by striking employees; photo; charts; maps (M)

Community groups are working to educate Asian-Americans, particularly recent immigrants, about prevention of treatment of HIV and AIDS; task is particularly hard because of wide range of languages involved and cultural beliefs that discourage talk about sex and death, let alone sexually-transmitted diseases; lack of knowledge about HIV is of particular concern in New York, which has highest number of Asian-Americans with AIDS of any metropolitan area in nation; photo (M)

Allan Kozinn reviews Santa Fee Opera's productions of Rossini's Ermione and Strauss's Elektra; photos (M)

Former commerce secretary William M Daley has significantly revived once flagging morale of Democratic campaign six weeks after taking charge of Vice Pres Al Gore's presidential drive; has curtailed infighting and imposed badly needed discipline on campaign's strategy and message; has freed Gore to focus on essential decisions rather than on power struggles back home, and has reassured Democratic partisans that campaign is back on track; photo (M)

Map of Mexico City's 70,000-odd streets, with plethora of esoteric and surreal street names, is like literary masterpiece; many streets have same names, and guide reads as if mapmakers translated encyclopedia, cut work into confetti and sprinkled it over city; maps; photo (M)

Gines Serran-Pagan, artist and gallery owner who keeps variety of livestock at his Southampton, NY, home is battling neighbors and village officials who claim he violates ban on barnyard animals within village boundaries; he holds law lets people keep livestock if they own barn; insists he is preservationist; complains Mayor Joseph P Romanosky Jr fines him because he feuds with mayor's in-laws over animals; photos (M)

Hugo Dixon will publish daily column in European edition of Wall Street Journal that mimics column he used to write for the rival Financial Times and is based on content from his new Web site, BreakingViews.com; Dow Jones, parent of Wall Street Journal, takes a 7 percent stake in BreakingViews.com, which offers quick financial commentary online about breaking news subjects; Dixon rejects accusation made by former colleagues at Financial Times that he may have conflict of interest because his company is being partly financed by people and companies that he and his team of journalists are supposed to be writing commentary about; photo (M)

American Assistance for Cambodia, nonprofit group run by Bernard Krisher, creates permanent Internet connection to Robib, Cambodia, rural village where average per capita income is about $37 a month; project will provide computer education and Web access to a village school attended by 400 children and support creation of small woven-silk industry in the village; selling silk scarves and table runners over the Internet might generate $2,000 a month in revenue; project shows potential of Internet to foster economic development in rural areas, narrowing disparity between urban and rural incomes and perhaps reversing migration of rural poor to cities; photos (M)

Bread and Roses cultural program of 1199, New York's union of health care workers, keeps up its decades-old mission of bringing art to working people and keeping alive the nation's left-leaning cultural traditions; program, headed by Moe Foner, 85, has critics on left and right; photos (M)