THE WEEK

By KATHLEEN ADAMS, LINA LOFARO, BELINDA LUSCOMBE, ALICE PARK, MICHAEL QUINN, JEFFERY C. RUBIN AND SIDNEY URQUHART

NATION

The Search Continues

The burials in Oklahoma City began -- first for tiny Baylee Almon, the one-year-old whose photograph, taken as she was lifted out of the rubble, was used to symbolize the city's loss on front pages worldwide. By week's end the death toll from the terrorist bombing of the federal building had passed 120. Rescue workers redoubled their efforts as they approached "the pit," a huge mountain of rubble at the center of the explosion where the building's Social Security office and day-care center had collapsed together and where many more dead were expected to be found.

The Suspects

Evidence against bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh mounted as investigators learned he had boasted just days before the bombing that "something big is going to happen." At a hearing, held in the El Reno Federal Corrections Center for security reasons, a federal magistrate ordered him to be held without bail. Two other men, Terry and Joseph Nichols, who were taken into custody as material witnesses, continued to be held, but neither has been charged directly in the bombing. And there was still no break in the search for a second bombing suspect, known only as John Doe No. 2.

Presidential Response

In Minneapolis, President Clinton criticized "purveyors of hate" on the "airwaves" and was in turn attacked by many conservative talk-radio hosts, as well as some of their Republican critics, for appearing to use the Oklahoma tragedy to score points off the right wing. The next day the President backpedaled, saying he had attacked extremism "from the left or the right." He also said he would ask Congress for $1.5 billion to crack down on terrorism, outlining a plan that would include hiring 1,000 additional law enforcers, require explosive materials to be chemically "tagged" to make them easier to track down and make it easier for the FBI to trace and eavesdrop on phone calls.

The Unabomber Strikes Again

A package bomb, apparently intended for someone else, killed Gilbert Murray, an official of the California Forestry Association. With dozens of federal agents on his trail, the perpetrator, known as the Unabomber, taunted his pursuers with letters to the news media and to a former victim. His record to date: 16 bombs in 17 years, with three dead and more than 20 injured.

The Next 100 Days

The Senate returned to work last week as a battle broke out over G.O.P. plans for massive Medicare cuts as part of balancing the budget by 2002. House speaker Newt Gingrich told a seniors' group Friday that Medicare reform would be handled separately from the budget to keep the program from going broke, but G.O.P. sources said the health-care program for the elderly still will play a central role in the party's budget-balancing plans.

Not So Fast, Congress

The Supreme Court struck down a federal law intended to keep firearms out of local schools. In a 5-to-4 decision that could herald a new direction for the court, the Justices ruled that the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act could not come under the Constitution's interstate commerce clause and was thus an infringement of state power. An angry Clinton gave Attorney General Janet Reno a week to find a legal way around the ruling.

Top Spook to Clean House

President Clinton's designated CIA Director, John Deutch, vowed to replace top officials in the agency's troubled covert-operations division and reform what he termed its cold war mentality. Some agents, he said, were not "in tune with the current requirements" of intelligence work.

Ito Steps on the Accelerator

Having quelled a jury mutiny and narrowly averted a mistrial, Judge Lance Ito took heed of complaints about the turgid pace of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Ito told attorneys to speed up their questioning, tossed out some obstreperous spectators and even said the lunch break would be shortened. Testimony was largely taken up by the defense's exhaustive efforts to show that a police criminalist was both incompetent and an integral player in a complex police conspiracy against Simpson.

He Killed Michael Jordan's Dad

One month before his trial was due to begin, a North Carolina teenager pleaded guilty to the murder of James Jordan, father of basketball superstar Michael Jordan. Larry Martin Demery, 19, who agreed to testify against his alleged partner in the crime, faces a minimum sentence of life in prison. "You believe an eye for an eye until you're put in that situation," said Jordan. "If they kill those guys, it really doesn't mean much to me. My father is gone."

Pulp Nonfiction

A court-appointed investigator determined that tobacco heiress Doris Duke's death was hastened by stronger and more frequent doses of morphine, administered by her doctor, Charles F. Kivowitz. Duke, who died in 1993, left an estate of $1.2 billion and no natural heirs. The report also detailed Duke's butler and companion Bernard Lafferty's spending of hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate funds since he was named co-executor.

WORLD

Explosion in South Korea

Dozens of teenage schoolchildren were killed in Taegu, South Korea, when a spark from a subway construction site ignited natural gas leaking from a broken pipeline, creating a tower of flame 150 ft. high. An estimated 100 people were killed in the explosion; hundreds more were injured. President Kim Young Sam blamed the accident on "carelessness."

More Aum Leaders Arrested

Japanese police arrested two high officials of Aum Shinrikyo found hiding in a secret basement beneath one of the cult's compounds near Mount Fuji. Though the two were arrested on other charges, authorities believe they may have been involved in last month's nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Earlier in the week, an Aum official was stabbed to death as he walked through a crowd toward the cult's Tokyo offices; his confessed killer identified himself as a member of a rightist group and said he wanted to kill an Aum leader because of the sect's alleged part in the gassing.

Camp Massacre Raises Fears

In Rwanda, Hutu continued to return to their home villages from refugee camps-including Kibeho, where an estimated 2,000 were slain on April 22, most of them by Rwandan army soldiers from the Tutsi ethnic group. The violence erupted when the army began dispersing the Hutu refugees-some of whom were involved in the slaughter of more than 500,000 Tutsi and some Hutu last year-from several camps in southwestern Rwanda. About 2 million Hutu remain refugees in neighboring countries.

War-Crimes Arraignment

Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb former cafe owner, pleaded not guilty to charges of murdering, raping and torturing Bosnian Muslims in the opening hearing of the first war-crimes tribunals -- held in the Hague -- since the end of World War II. The war-crimes prosecutor also announced he was investigating three men-Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader; Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb army; and Mico Stanisic, the former Bosnian Serb secret-police chief -- on possible genocide charges. U.N. officials acknowledged that identifying the three as suspects complicates the job of trying to forge a settlement with Bosnian Serb forces. Meanwhile, the tattered four-month-old truce between Bosnia's warring parties was set to expire Monday despite last-minute attempts by U.N. officials to negotiate its extension.

Picking Mitterrand's Successor

Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin got a big boost in his run for the French presidency after winning 23.3% of the first-round balloting against Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac's 20.8%. Still, Chirac is favored to win Sunday's runoff and succeed two-term President Francois Mitterrand.

Confession from "Dirty War"

Argentina's army chief of staff, General Mart'n Balza, admitted that the country's military dictatorship tortured and killed political opponents in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The military, he said, "employed illegitimate methods, including the suppression of life, to obtain information." The announcement, the first official confirmation of such abuses during the so-called Dirty War, follows the recent confessions by two former military men that they took part in secret "death flights," in which sedated but still living victims were thrown from aircraft into the Atlantic.

BUSINESS

G-7 Rejects Boost for Dollar

Finance ministers for the Group of Seven industrialized nations (the U.S., Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada) met in Washington and rejected any specific action to boost the troubled dollar's exchange rate against other currencies. Still, the greenback rallied sharply against the yen, hitting 84.20 at week's end, its highest since April 6.

Counter-Intuition

The Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit to block Microsoft's proposed $2 billion acquisition of Intuit, Inc., maker of the hugely popular personal-finance software Quicken. The merger, should it survive the suit, would be the largest ever in the software industry.

SPORT

Stars & Stripes to Defend Cup

Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes overcame a huge 4-min. deficit to blow by Mighty Mary after a patch of dead air literally took the wind out of the sails of the first mostly female America's Cup team. Conner thus won the right to sail as an underdog against challenger Team New Zealand.

Baseball but Few Fans

Red Sox slugger Jose Canseco stood outside on the sidewalk and personally greeted fans at Fenway Park, while San Diego Padres players handed out free caps before the game. Despite those efforts-and incentives like cut-rate seats on opening day-major league players returned to work to find tough (and often sparse) crowds waiting. Said Brewers owner Bud Selig, baseball's acting commissioner who canceled last year's World Series: "We got a lot of work ahead of us." --By Kathleen Adams, Lina Lofaro, Belinda Luscombe, Alice Park, Michael Quinn, Jeffery C. Rubin and Sidney Urquhart