Former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, convicted in May on Whitewater-related charges, received a four-year suspended sentence yesterday, following testimony by a transplant surgeon who said Tucker would likely die of liver disease if he was sent to prison. Tucker was ordered to pay $294,000 in restitution and interest to the U.S. Small Business Administration, as well as a $25,000 fine, and perform community service.

Domestic law enforcement specialists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation are planning to nearly double their presence overseas during the next four years, opening offices in 23 foreign cities to cope with what they say is a dramatic expansion of international terrorism, organized crime and narcotics trafficking that affects U.S. citizens.

Jack Kemp, the number two man on the Republican ticket, that has made much of Robert Dole’s military service, was excused from active duty in the early 1960s for a shoulder problem, but continued playing pro football. Kemp, in the Army Reserve, received a medical exemption after Army doctors who examined him in October ’61 determined that a shoulder injury he suffered playing football a month earlier made him unfit for active duty.

According to the Census Bureau, children make up nearly half of Americans living in chronic poverty. Child welfare advocates said the report paints a grim picture for poor children, as President Clinton says he will be signing the welfare repeal bill that will toughen work standards for welfare recipients and shorten the length of time families could receive assistance.

E. Digby Baltzell was thinking about saving space when he squeezed the abbreviation ”WASP” into the tables of his 1964 book, “Protestant Establishment.” In so doing, the University of Pennsylvania sociologist coined a term that caught on and has become a permanent addition to our language. Baltzell, himself a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, was one of America’s foremost authorities on the ruling elite. He died at a Boston hospital this weekend of a heart attack at the age of 80.