Army Pledges Disclosure On Biological Tests in US

STOCKYARDS in Kansas City, wheat fields in North Dakota, and sites from central Alaska to the Georgia coast were used for cold war-era research on biological warfare, according to Army documents. The Army promised on Wednesday to release all the documents it has about the program.

In tests conducted from 1953 to the mid-1960s, the Army sprayed zinc cadmium sulfide, a fluorescent chemical, over parts of Minneapolis, including an elementary school, central Alaska, St. Louis, the Georgia coast, Corpus Christi, Texas, San Francisco Bay, and areas identified only as north-central Texas and east of the Rocky Mountains, according to a report the Army made to Congress in 1977. The program also involved spraying deodorant on stockyards in six cities and dousing some Midwestern wheat fields with a fungus. Researchers were testing ways of killing livestock and crops in Soviet bloc countries.

Number of abortions drops

THE number of American women getting abortions has dropped to its lowest level since 1979, a decline researchers say shows no sign of ending.

``I think it's not a blip on the screen,'' said Stanley Henshaw of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which released the results of its survey on Wednesday.

US women received 1.53 million abortions in 1992, the lowest number recorded since the 1.49 million counted in 1979. The numbers had been inching down since the late 1980s, but the new data, the latest available, confirm a clear trend, Mr. Henshaw said.