Uzi Keren/AP Israeli border policemen arrest an Arab resident of Umm Al Fahm in northwest Israel yesterday. The man was suspected of participating in stone throwing.

BONN, Germany - After ousting Chancellor Helmut Kohl in national elections, a beaming Gerhard Schroeder declared yesterday he will try to forge a coalition between the Social Democrats he led to power and a small environmentalist party that never before has been in government.

Germans voted for sweeping political change Sunday after 16 years of conservative rule, but pairing the pragmatic Social Democrats with the ecologically minded Greens presents unique challenges for Europe's largest nation.

At his first post-election news conference, Schroeder kept his message broad, offering assurances to his country and the world that his government will continue the stability that Kohl, the West's longest-serving leader, secured during his four terms.

''Nobody needs to be afraid. We will ensure continuity in foreign policy,'' Schroeder said. ''The international community can rely on Germans to remain good partners.''

The center-left leaning Social Democrats won 41 percent of the vote, compared to the 35 percent won by Kohl's Christian Democrats. The Greens got 6.7 percent of the vote. If they join a coalition, they would give Schroeder's government a 21-vote majority in the 669-seat parliament.

Arafat asks support of statehood from leaders

UNITED NATIONS - In a historic speech to the General Assembly, Yasser Arafat asked world leaders yesterday to support Palestinian statehood, but refrained from a unilateral threat to declare a state next May.

Arafat apparently heeded U.S. pleas to tone down his first speech to the assembly's general debate - a move welcomed by Israel's U.N. ambassador, Dore Gold.

''Clearly he has preferred the option of negotiations over the option of a unilateral act,'' Gold told reporters. ''And in that sense, we have something we can express our satisfaction with.''

But Arafat said repeatedly in his speech that statehood was not a debatable issue and concluded by announcing that he looked forward to speaking to the assembly once more ''when Palestine has taken its natural place in the community of nations as an independent state.''

Arafat reminded the leaders that the Oslo peace accords expire May 4.

Policy-makers expected to reduce interest rates

WASHINGTON - Federal Reserve policy-makers are expected to cut interest rates for the first time in nearly three years today, acting on Chairman Alan Greenspan's alarm about a deteriorating world economy.

The question, private economists said yesterday, is how much success any cut would have in containing a financial crisis that so far has proven unstoppable and now threatens more countries, including Brazil.

''A Fed rate cut will help undergird a deteriorating global economic situation. But it isn't a magic bullet,'' said Sung Won Sohn, chief economist at Norwest Corp. in Minneapolis.

Emphasizing the urgency, international authorities were busy working behind the scenes on a rescue package for Brazil. The largest economy in South America is being hit by the same panicked rush to the exits by foreign investors that has already flattened many Asian countries and Russia.

Officials in Washington said discussions were centering on emergency loans of around $30 billion assembled by the International Monetary Fund with contributions from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and individual countries, including the United States.

Clinton finalizes schedule for ending accord

WASHINGTON - President Clinton set up a compressed schedule for concluding a West Bank accord after surveying progress in Mideast peacemaking yesterday at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Netanyahu said he and Arafat had achieved a breakthrough on a long-elusive deal over West Bank territory. Clinton said after the three leaders met, ''I believe that we all agreed that we have made progress on the path to peace.''

Clinton also said there was ''a significant narrowing of the gaps between the two parties across a wide range of issues.''

The new timetable calls for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and U.S. mediator Dennis Ross to go to the region for further talks with the two leaders next week and for Netanyahu and Arafat to return to the White House for a meeting with Clinton in mid-October.

''This process needs to be speeded up,'' Albright said after the three-way, 90-minute meeting in the Oval Office. Netanyahu then returned for a separate meeting with Clinton, and Arafat was due to see the president today.

While Albright steered clear of any claims of breakthroughs, she told reporters ''we are very close on a number of subjects,'' acknowledging that an accord on how much land Israel was willing to relinquish was among them.

Anti-impotence cream makes drug easy to use

WASHINGTON - Researchers are turning anti-impotence pills and injected medicines into rub-on creams and gels - part of a broader effort to make many drugs safer and easier to use by literally dissolving them through the skin.

Early testing shows the impotence cream Topiglan is a leading candidate in this effort to give patients targeted relief for many ailments, with fewer side effects.

''It's a no-brainer,'' said Dr. Irwin Goldstein of Boston University, a urologist leading studies of the impotence cream who expects many of today's medicines eventually to be applied to the skin. ''It has a lot of use in lots of drugs.''

Topiglan needs more studies, Goldstein cautions, and is not for sale. It might become a good alternative for men who can't take the popular impotence pill Viagra - which sometimes causes dangerous side effects in men with heart disease, Goldstein said. Or, severely impotent men could use both treatments together.

Topiglan is made from a longtime impotence drug called alprostadil that works very well, but has a problem: It must either be injected into the penis or inserted as a suppository, both painful.

A company based in Lexington, Mass., MacroChem Corp., invented a ''skin enhancer,'' a chemical that lets potent drugs seep through the skin by opening a temporary window in skin's normally impenetrable barriers. That means patients can get much-higher drug doses delivered straight to the site of disease.

Voucher program debated in Ohio Supreme Court

COLUMBUS, Ohio - With school children crowded into the Ohio Supreme Court chambers yesterday, lawyers argued about the constitutionality of providing state tax money for some Cleveland-area students to attend private schools.

''There's no more fundamental choice a parent makes than where or how a child is educated,'' State Solicitor Jeffrey Sutton said in his opening remarks to the seven-member court.

The $8.7 million experimental program, now in its third year, provides grants of up to $2,250 for 4,000 children from low-income families.

Proponents say it provides hope for students stuck in the troubled Cleveland school system, and the competition will help the public schools improve.

Opponents say voucher programs hurt the public school system by diverting students and public money to private schools. Opponents suing to stop the program include two past presidents of the Ohio PTA, two ministers, a Cleveland public school student and the Ohio Federation of Teachers union.

Sutton asked the court to overturn a state appeals court decision that said the program violates the constitutional separation between church and state.

Sutton said the voucher program gets around the constitutional problem by sending money to the parents and letting them decide where to send their children.

Radioactive materials removed from plant site

MIAMISBURG, Ohio - A radioactive gas used for decades to make bomb triggers at the former Mound nuclear weapons plant soon will be a memory at the site, the U.S. Department of Energy announced yesterday.

The final bulk amount of tritium will be shipped to the department's Savannah River, S.C., plant later this week. It caps a nearly three-year effort and leaves only residues of the substance remaining to be cleaned up.

Tritium was one of the most widely used radioactive materials at the plant. The government phased out production after the Cold War ended, and radioactive materials now are being removed from the site.

''We've reduced the risk to our community,'' Leah Dever, manager of the Energy Department's Ohio field office, said during a ceremony in front of a concrete bunker on the 306-acre site where the tritium had been stored.

Tritium is radioactive hydrogen gas used to make triggers for nuclear bombs and increase their power. The plant has a history of accidental tritium releases.

In 1989, an accident during an experiment caused the heaviest discharge of tritium from the plant in 20 years and contaminated four workers. No evacuations were necessary.

In 1994, some tritium-contaminated soil was washed into the Great Miami River after a water line broke. And in 1996, a small amount of tritium was released into the air after a pipe broke.

Couple goes to trial on conspiracy drug charges

CINCINNATI - A husband and wife accused of overseeing a ring that smuggled cocaine and marijuana into a suburban county for at least four years went on trial yesterday, with alleged accomplices testifying against them.

Randall R. Neuhausser, 44, and his wife, Sheila Neuhausser, 33, both of Lebanon, were among six people indicted in April on charges of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and marijuana. If convicted, they could face a sentence of up to life in prison and a $4 million fine.

James McCarty, one of the defendants who pleaded guilty to drug charges in the case and awaits sentencing, started the government's case yesterday by telling jurors that he bought cocaine and marijuana from the Neuhaussers between 1993 and 1997.

McCarty, 39, owner of a Lebanon construction business, said he first started buying drugs from Randall Neuhausser to supply his employees for after-hours parties. James McCarty said he regularly bought Neuhausser's marijuana for about $1,000 to $1,200 per pound.