WASHINGTON ANKARA As NATO leaders gather for this week’s Madrid summit, Turkey is rated the most vulnerable member of the alliance in a new U.S. assessment of world flashpoints. Critics of NATO expansion fear the summit’s addition of at least three East-Central European states will further dilute and disperse the alliance’s command structure, already weakened by Turkish/Greek hostility.

PARIS France’s military plan oversteps the nation’s foreseeable financial means and requires a more realistic procurement policy, according to a French oversight agency. Although the French Defense Ministry’s current goals are expected to require a revised procurement schedule, imposing additional delays to weapon production programs would not be sufficient to meet increasingly tight budget constraints.

WASHINGTON To help contractors meet the Pentagon’s ambitious price goals for the Joint Strike Fighter, program officials have assembled a package of reforms they say could save 12-25% in inventory and manufacturing costs alone without major new investments.

WASHINGTON The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has given the go-ahead to two more ventures that plan international mobile telephone services via small satellites in nongeosynchronous orbits. Constellation Communications Inc. and Mobile Communications Holdings Inc. (MCHI) hope to begin commercial service in 2000, on the heels of the Iridium and Globalstar “Big LEO” mobile satellite systems, which are under construction.

Kennedy Space Center Astronaut Michael Foale, who was on Mir when the 125-ton space station was struck and depressurized by a Progress vehicle, radioed a description to Earth about what the collision was like for him and Russian cosmonauts Vasily Tsibliev and Alexander Lazutkin.