EVENTS

WOMEN-IN-COMBAT BAN REVISED

Defense Secretary Les Aspin is expected today to order the United States military to end its ban against female combat pilots, paving the way for women to fly fighter jets and attack helicopters in front-line units, defense officials said yesterday. In addition to that order, Mr. Aspin will ask Congress to drop a longstanding prohibition on women serving in warships and tell the Navy to study the matter for practical reasons, said the officials. But the secretary is expected to move more carefully toward

possible service of women in Army ground combat, the officials said. Warnings on Bosnia

President Clinton met for about three hours on Tuesday with Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate and House, but failed to find a consensus on whether the US should take tougher steps to end the war in Bosnia. Instead, the president heard warnings that he should go slow and that military action risks dragging the United States into another Vietnam. Administration officials said Mr. Clinton still was considering bombing strikes against Serb artillery sites and lifting the embargo on arms for bes ieged Muslims in Bosnia. Brown to be drug czar

Clinton was scheduled to announce yesterday that former New York police Commissioner Lee Brown is his choice to lead the nation's war on drugs. The drug czar's post will be elevated to Cabinet status but will have reduced staff, officials said. The appointment comes as lawmakers are clamoring for administration action on the drug issue and just a few weeks after Clinton unveiled a drug-control budget little changed from former President Bush's program. California indictments

Two Republican state lawmakers one of them a former Assembly minority leader and a former Senate aide in California were indicted on corruption charges after they allegedly were videotaped taking payoffs from an FBI agent posing as a businessman. The indictment Tuesday marks the first time GOP legislators have been charged in the long-running federal probe of statehouse corruption in the Golden State. Waco hearings open

The House Judiciary Committee opened hearings yesterday on the federal role in the Waco, Texas, standoff that ended in the deaths of most cult members. FBI director William Sessions, in testimony prepared for delivery, said the FBI did not understand cult leader David Koresh and that agents probably should have moved earlier to use tear gas. `Take Daughters to Work'

From the Johnson Space Center in Houston to IBM in suburban New York, employers around the country encouraged parents to take their daughters to work yesterday. The Ms. Foundation organized the "Take Our Daughters to Work" campaign to draw attention to allegedly low self-esteem among teen-age girls and to introduce them to opportunities in the working world that they might not otherwise consider. The foundation hoped as many as 500,000 girls ages of 9 to 15 would participate. East Timor troop pull-out

Indonesia will end its special military command in East Timor this week and pull troops out of the former Portuguese colony, a senior military official said yesterday. Indonesian troops invaded East Timor in 1975 after the departure of the Portuguese and annexed the territory the next year, a move which is not recognized by the United Nations. East German strike

Workers in east German metal and electronics industries voted overwhelmingly to strike for higher pay in their first major Western-style labor conflict since Germany's reunification, union officials said yesterday. The vote to authorize a strike next week attracted more than 95 percent of the members of the IG Metall union in eastern Germany, where employers have unilaterally broken a 1991 deal to phase in west German pay scales.