Clinton Predicts More Cuts in U.S., Russian Arsenals
Page A02
President Clinton said today it is "quite possible" that the United States and Russia will agree to deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals and that he would support a missile defense system if it could reliably block weapons from striking American soil.

Consultant Praises Progress of HUD Management Reform
By Judy Sarasohn, Page A02
A consultant's follow-up assessment of the HUD 2020 management reform plan highly praised the Department of Housing and Urban Development's progress.

Old Texas Mercury Mines Attract Tourists, Danger; Fatal Falls, Dynamite, Rattlesnakes--and Still the Visitors Come
By Esther M. Bauer, Page A03
Some of the hundreds of abandoned mercury mines honeycombing this part of the Chihuahua desert are gaping holes that endanger tourists and other unwary humans.

Quaker Oats Weighs Buyout Options
Page A04
Quaker Oats Co. reportedly has held extensive buyout talks with Coca-Cola Co. and Danone SA just two weeks after rejecting a $14.8 billion offer from PepsiCo.

NATION IN BRIEF
Page A05
SEATTLE--Federal investigators believe a critical part of the tail-control mechanism of an Alaska Airlines MD-82 broke off in flight, making it impossible to pull the jet out of its fatal dive, the Seattle Times reported yesterday. Flight 261, en route from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to San Francisco and then Seattle, crashed into the Pacific Ocean in January, killing all 88 aboard.

Varied Legal Opinions Vie for Court Time
By Peter Slevin, Page A07
The ballot-by-ballot recount of presidential votes in South Florida should end immediately if the rule of law and standards of fundamental fairness are to be honored, lawyers for Texas Gov. George W. Bush wrote today in pleadings filed with the Florida Supreme Court.

Gore's Sunday
By Ceci Connolly, Page A07
Vice President Gore and wife Tipper, after canceling a trip to Nashville, visited Washington National Cathedral yesterday as their battalion of lawyers gird for today's crucial hearing before the Florida Supreme Court.

GOP Protests Closing Of Miami-Dade Recount To Members of Media
By Howard Kurtz, Page A07
From dueling news conferences to televised court hearings, each twist and turn of the Florida election saga has been chronicled by the press--until now.

For Bush, Each Day Has Brought New Trials
By Mike Allen, Page A07
Lured back from the tranquillity of his ranch when aides believed this would be his weekend of triumph, Texas Gov. George W. Bush was sleeping at the governor's mansion for the first time in eight nights when five shots rang out outside the iron gates.

An Angry GOP on Hill Would Confront Gore If He Won
By Eric Pianin; Juliet Eilperin, Page A08
Growing GOP anger about the recount in Florida could make it much more difficult--if not impossible--for Vice President Gore to forge consensus on Capitol Hill even if he were to gain the presidency, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

New Insights on Space's 'Extreme Physics Lab'
By Kathy Sawyer, Page A09
John Heise, a lanky astrophysicist with a shock of white hair, gestured westward over the sunwashed Pacific as he tried to describe how this scene might change if we were, instead, hanging out on a neutron star.

SCIENCE NOTEBOOK
Page A09
An international team of scientists has discovered three previously unknown species of primates in the forests of Madagascar.

Analysis; Clinton Witnesses 2 Sides of Vietnam; Leaders Indifferent, Youth Enthusiastic
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Page A11
President Clinton's historic journey to Vietnam ultimately turned into a visit to two very different countries, one run by Communist Party stalwarts loath to change their ways and another teeming with restless young people yearning for a more open economy and political system.

Turkey Struggles to Bring Order to Lawless Prisons; Controversial Amnesty Plan Could Free 25,000
By John Ward Anderson, Page A11
First came the prison riot, in which 28 guards and officials at a Turkish jail were taken hostage. Then came the horrifying deaths of inmates thrown from prison windows. Next was a 10-hour standoff between police and a leader of the uprising, who inexplicably was allowed to keep a gun, drugs and two cell phones during his transfer to another institution.

India Announces One-Month Cease-Fire in Kashmir; Unilateral Move Aimed at Opening Talks With Rebel Groups
By Pamela Constable, Page A11
The Indian government tonight announced a one-month unilateral cease-fire in Kashmir, the mountainous region bordering Pakistan where Indian troops have been fighting Muslim separatist rebels for the past decade.

Yemen Detains Possible Accomplices in Cole Bombing
By Karl Vick, Page A12
Authorities have detained some alleged accomplices, all Yemenis, in the Oct. 12 suicide bombing of the USS Cole, a Yemeni security official said today.

Barak, Arafat Show Signs Of Restraint
By Keith B. Richburg, Page A12
An Israeli diplomat was slightly injured in an apparent assassination attempt in Jordan today, and Israeli troops shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian stone-thrower in Gaza. But overall, the level of violence seemed sharply lower than it has been for the past seven weeks as both sides cooled their rhetoric and appeared to step back from a full-scale confrontation.

ASIA JOURNAL; Indians Cash In on Kashmir With Blockbuster Film, Novel
By Pamela Constable, Page A15
The decade-long guerrilla conflict in Kashmir has all the ingredients of an action thriller: horrific violence set against a backdrop of scenic lakes and mountains, daring men in uniform pitted against determined insurgents, families wrenched apart by turmoil and suspicion.

WORLD IN BRIEF
Page A16
MADRID--The Basque separatist group known as ETA claimed responsibility yesterday for 17 attacks since July that killed eight people in Spain, but said it regretted the death of a Madrid bus driver during an Oct. 30 car-bomb attack on a judge. ETA has now claimed responsibility for all 20 assassinations that the government has blamed on the outlawed group this year.

Clinton Urges Vietnam to Open Its Markets; In Ho Chi Minh City, President Extols Foreign Investment
By Clay Chandler, Page A18
On the final day of his historic visit to Vietnam, President Clinton stood today at a container port on the Saigon River and urged the heirs of the communist revolutionaries who chased out U.S. soldiers 25 years ago to "liberate" their children by throwing open the country's markets to foreign trade and investment.

Meissner Ends Embattled Tenure as Head of INS; Immigration Wave Tested Her Reshaping of Agency
By Dan Eggen, Page A19
For five long months, Doris M. Meissner was engulfed by the Elian Gonzalez case.

Competition for Data From Satellites Rises
By Walter Pincus, Page A19
Military requests for data from U.S. spy satellites are limiting the intelligence that can be provided to the White House, State Department and other policymakers throughout the government, according to a blue-ribbon congressional commission.

Goodbye Florida, Hello Gen. Services
By Al Kamen, Page A19
Add one more name to the Pantheon of Powerful People You've Never Heard Of. First we discovered the critical power of Katherine Harris, the Florida secretary of state.

Knotting the Tie
Page A20
THE COUNTING of votes in Florida's disputed presidential election continued yesterday, and continued to generate escalating disputes of its own. George W. Bush's campaign organization mounted a PR offensive against the slowly progressing hand recounts in three Democratic-majority Florida counties, charging that they were in danger of being rendered useless by error and bias. Spokesmen for Al Gore said the Bush people were mainly hyping hearsay in an effort to undercut a process established by law to provide an accurate count whose results they feared.

Capital Cases in Virginia
Page A20
AROUND THE country, states have begun looking anew at their rules concerning capital punishment. Few are more deserving of close examination than Virginia's. The commonwealth has executed more people in the modern era than any state other than Texas; for the size of its population, Virginia ranks first. Until recently, Virginia's leaders expressed no doubts about the fairness of their death-penalty law. But this week, the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, a fact-finding arm of the state legislature, announced a study of capital punishment in the state. The bipartisan state Crime Commission already is examining the death penalty. The state Supreme Court has proposed a significant relaxation of Virginia's rule against admitting new evidence of innocence more than 21 days after a conviction. These are encouraging developments, if belated.

James Russell Wiggins
Page A20
ALMOST THE minute he took over as managing editor of this newspaper in 1947, James Russell Wiggins jolted the city room staff with his passion for rectitude and integrity. No more freebies, he decreed, not even movie passes for copy aides. No more fixing of tickets at police headquarters. These were not the crotchety preachings of a fuddy-duddy; Russ Wiggins, who died yesterday at the age of 96, was a vigorous and engaged editor who cared deeply about ethical standards, old-fashioned honesty and the importance of a free and independent press. During his 21-year stewardship here, his enthusiasm for the competitive pursuit of information was girded by an insistence on fairness.

Counting Votes (Cont'd)
Page A20
With respect to the vote counting in the Florida presidential contest, it is asked, rhetorically, "If you don't accept the current (certified) count, when do you stop counting?"

No Asteroids Dropped
Page A20
We at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration were astonished by the charge that we may be "dropping the ball" in the search for asteroids that may threaten earth [news story, Oct. 16].

The Priest and the Bumper Stickers
Page A20
As a Catholic for more than 60 years, I must say that the Arlington priest who scolded the woman for having pro-Democratic bumper stickers [Metro, Nov. 11] was guilty not only of poor judgment and bad manners but of political naivete as well.

Elk and Their Ilk
Page A20
Deer are now a major nuisance and roadway danger in suburban areas. Even beavers are a threat to the public safety because they disrupt storm-water-retention management.

Mixing Bowl Mess
Page A20
The "mixing bowl" is a monument to the incompetence of Virginia governors and their transportation departments. It is an eight-year traffic nightmare for already abused Norther Virginia residents.

Will Our Cultural and Political Space Survive?
By Cathy Hughes, Page A21
When the first African American-owned electronic media outlet was acquired, who would have predicted that in 20 years' time the value of the company could rise from zero to nearly $3 billion--especially in light of the fact that African Americans did not achieve substantial media ownership until 60 years after the broadcast industry was put into motion (because they were denied access to credit, broadcast training and broadcast employment).

The Evocation of Excellence; Russ Wiggins, good steward, farseeing guide of The Post for 21 years.
By Katharine Graham, Page A21
Russ Wiggins's death yesterday leaves a large hole, so great was his embracing personality and a life lived vigorously until five months ago, when his brave heart started to weaken and then gave out.

Bedsheets, Butterflies And Ballots
By Sebastian Mallaby, Page A21
Over at the International Foundation for Election Systems in Washington, they can tell you about ballots. They've got a "bedsheet ballot" from Ecuador: In order to display photos of some 250 candidates, it's got to be bed-sized. They've got Peru's notorious multiple-preference ballot: It's so complicated that in one parliamentary election, nearly a third of the votes were disqualified as spoiled. They've got Benin's crazy slips of colored paper, each one representing a different party: The voter was supposed to take a set of 35 slips into the voting booth and destroy all except one.

. . . Ready for Gore to Go
By William Raspberry, Page A21
Just so you'll know, I voted for Al Gore.

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