Eight men were awaiting arraignment on charges they took part in attacks on at least 44 women in Central Park in New York following the Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday. Six of the men were arrested yesterday, a day after police culled their photos from amateur videotapes of the attacks and made the pictures public. Two more were arrested early today. In all, 10 men have been arrested, including two who were taken into custody minutes after they allegedly attacked three British tourists. One victim was only 14 years old, another a French tourist on her honeymoon. All the attacks occurred in broad daylight.

After a crowd ripped away her top and groped her on Sunday afternoon, Ashanna Cover says she staggered out of Central Park, found a police officer and told him what happened. Instead of summoning help, the officer told her to file a report elsewhere. She went to another police officer. He said the same. Ashanna Cover and her Howard University roommate were in New York for the parade. They filed notice yesterday of their intent to sue the city over the ordeal, particularly because of police inaction.

South Korea’s finance minister said today the historic joint declaration signed by the two Koreas this week could lead to government-level cooperation beginning next month. Li Hun-jai told reporters at the ministry that Seoul plans to resume contacts between government officials on economic matters as a follow-up to an agreement signed by leaders of the two Koreas on Wednesday. Success could mean far greater aid for the impoverished North from the South Korean government, which currently offers modest assistance indirectly.

This news from Yugoslavia: An unidentified gunman shot and wounded Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic in the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro. A statement from his Serbian Renewal Movement in Belgrade called it an assassination attempt. Several volleys were reportedly fire through the window of his house. The statement goes on to say Draskovic was hit by two bullets. He was treated in a hospital and later discharged from the hospital at his own request. Draskovic’s shooting follows a string of mysterious assassinations of officials and underworld figures in Belgrade. Earlier this month, the security adviser to Montenegro’s pro-Western president was also gunned down.

The Illinois Supreme Court has overturned the sentence of a man on death row since 1982, ruling his attorney failed to present evidence that may have spared his life. The court-appointed attorney, who’s now a judge, was so deficient that it probably meant the difference between a prison term and a death sentence for Willie Thompkins, this according to the Illinois Supreme Court. Thompkins was sentenced in 1982 for the deaths of two men two years earlier in suburban Chicago. His attorney, Patrick McGann, failed to call as witnesses people who could have described Thompkins as a good son, husband, father and worker. He delivered food to poor families and repaired toys for needy children during the holidays, and doctors said he was a conscientious paramedic. The court heard none of this.

Al Gore and his senior advisers are scheduled to meet in Washington today, one day after a big change at the top of the Gore campaign. Commerce Secretary William Daley is replacing Tony Coelho as chair of Gore’s presidential campaign. Gore also plans to meet this weekend with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who reportedly had an angry telephone conversation with Gore yesterday about Daley’s appointment. Organized labor has long thought of Daley as an enemy because of his championship of free trade deals. A spokesman for the Teamsters calls the Daley appointment a “slap in the face of labor.” Meanwhile, both Gore and Daley are indicating there will be no major changes in the campaign. Daley says he plans to “execute the game plan that’s already in hand,” while Gore says the campaign won’t miss a beat.

The U.N. Security Council is hoping a two-day meeting of the warring factions in Congo’s two-year-old civil war will boost the prospects for peace and cement the withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan forces from the northern city of Kisangani. The council is negotiating a French-sponsored draft resolution that would demand the two former allies withdraw immediately from the city, where they exchanged intense fire earlier this month, killing an estimated 300 civilians. But the draft also calls on Rwanda and Uganda and the three other foreign armies fighting in Congo to withdraw from the country as a whole, as called for by a peace agreement signed last year in Lusaka, Zambia, and threatens possible sanctions if they don’t.

One of Mexico’s six presidential candidates formally withdrew from the race yesterday, throwing his support behind the leading opposition candidate. The move by Porfirio Muñoz Ledo came as the campaign continued to heat up ahead of the July 2 election, with opposition candidates accusing the party that has governed for 71 years of pressuring voters. Most polls show Vicente Fox of the opposition National Action Party, known as the PAN, and Francisco Labastida of the ruling PRI in one of the tightest races in Mexican history.