News Currents

UNITED STATES

In primaries across the nation:

* Georgia Rep. Charles Hatcher, damaged by the bad-check scandal, became the 16th House member to lose his seat. He lost a Democratic runoff to a black state senator in a district redrawn to give it a black majority.

* Rep. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the only American Indian in Congress, won Colorado's Democratic Senate nomination Tuesday.

* Former Peace Corps director Paul Coverdell won a Republican Senate runoff in Georgia.

The school board in Providence, R.I., has narrowly approved a school desegregation plan aimed at improving the education of the city's black, Asian, and Hispanic students. Some parents vowed to fight the proposal in court.... Beginning Monday, women becoming second lieutenants in the Marine Corps will receive full combat training, corps officials said Tuesday. ECONOMY AND BUSINESS

Wholesale prices edged up 0.1 percent in July, the Labor Department said yesterday.... Excluding energy and food, the "core rate" of inflation at the producer level was up a modest 0.2 percent in July, the government reported yesterday. Analysts say this indicates an annual inflation rate of about 3 or 4 percent. AFRICA

The UN will send 500 troops to Somalia to guard the port at Mogadishu escort food supplies to starving refugees, UN sources said yesterday. ASIA

India will restrict the use of prenatal sex determination tests to stem the increasing abortion of unwanted female infants, a health minister said yesterday.