News Currents

UNITED STATES

Health officials declared a city water ban Tuesday in Pawtucket, Central Falls, and southern Cumberland, R.I. after high bacteria levels were detected Monday.... Two key senators urged Vietnam Tuesday to let the US comb its Defense Ministry compound for an alleged underground prison purported to have held American POWs as recently as the late 1980s.... Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh has told former President Ronald Reagan that he is not under investigation in connection with the scandal, the New Y ork Times reported yesterday. Reagon will be regarded simply as a witness.... Massachusetts Gov. William Weld reportedly will extend the same bereavement and family-leave benefits to gay and lesbian state employees that heterosexuals have. ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

President Fidel Ramos, denouncing some 3 million tax dodgers and branding corrupt tax collectors as "scallywags," said yesterday the Philippines was losing up to $1.4 billion-a-year in uncollected revenue. Ramos has been in office less than five weeks.... Japan's coast guard seized six Greenpeace campaigners for questioning yesterday after they displayed a huge "Stop Plutonium" banner at a shipyard to protest Japan's plans to transport plutonium.... Meanwhile, Japan plans to launch energy-saving projects

worth $12 billion that will help cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 10 percent over the next 30 years, a government official said yesterday. EUROPE

Cardinal Frantisek Tomasek, a symbol of the struggle for religious freedom in Czechoslovakia under communism, died Tuesday in Prague.