Another Zero-Tolerance Story

Sayreville, NJ (AP) - School district officials in Sayreville plan to review a zero-tolerance policy governing children's behavior after four kindergarteners playing cops-and-robbers were suspended for making threats. The pupils received the three-day suspensions after the March 15 incident, in which they pretended their fingers were guns and said they wanted to shoot each other. Classmates overheard this and reported it to a teacher, who told Georgia Baumann, the principal. She followed school district policy on threats and suspended the students.

"This is a no-tolerance policy. We're very firm on weapons and threats", said William Bauer, the district superintendent. "Given the climate of our society, we cannot take any of these statements in a light manner." Although he supported the principal's decision, Mr. Bauer said the district would review the policy.

And Some Good News, at Last

(The Daily Telegraph) - Protests from scholars have stopped plans by Britain's Ministry of Defense to break up its library, one of the greatest collections of military history in the world. The collection of around 500,000 volumes and periodicals dating from the end of the 17th century will instead be split into three parts in different areas of the country. Military historians say this is preferable to proposals to sell the books to dealers.

The library, housed at the Great Scotland Yard building in London, is accessible to researchers, but chief librarian Richard Searle said no more than 100 scholars use it. It was begun in 1698 and contains an unrivaled selection of biographies, books on battles and strategy, and military information from around the world. Although some volumes are duplicated elsewhere, the library holds foreign military journals, particularly from Russian, France and Germany, which are not held anywhere else in Britain.

It does not however, hold the Ministry's own declassified files, now in the Public Records Office. Keith Simpson, a former junior defense minister and lecturer, led the campaign to prevent the library being broken up. He said that when the Gulf War began, Ministry officials, uncertain of the territory they were dealing with, discovered much vital background information there.