WASHINGTON

SENIOR ECONOMIC BUSH ADVISER TO RETURN TO PRIVATE SECTOR Stephen Friedman, one of the President Bush’s top economic advisers, is leaving the White House to return to the private sector in New York, a senior administration official said yesterday.

Mr. Friedman, who served as the behind-the-scenes coordinator for the administration’s economic policies, is to leave by the end of the year. There is no imminent announcement on his replacement, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Friedman replaced Larry Lindsey, who resigned with former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill two years ago in a shake-up of Mr. Bush’s economic team.

The senior administration official said that while there has been wide speculation that Mr. Friedman might become treasury secretary in Mr. Bush’s second term, Mr. Friedman had never been considered for the job because he had expressed no desire for the post. Mr. Friedman had expressed his intention to return to New York after the presidential campaign, the official said.

Mr. Bush named Mr. Friedman assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council in December 2002. Mr. Friedman had spent 28 years with Wall Street investment giant Goldman Sachs & Company, where he served as co-chair from 1990 to 1994, sharing the job at first with Robert Rubin, who left in 1992 to join the Clinton administration.

– Associated Press

TESTS COME BACK NEGATIVE ON SUSPECTED NEW MAD-COW CASE A cow the Agriculture Department had suspected of carrying mad-cow disease was declared free of the illness after follow-up tests, officials said yesterday. The announcement was a relief to the American beef industry, which is still trying to recover from the nation’s first case of the disease last December.

Initial screenings last week had raised the possibility of a new case of the disease in America. But a more definitive test at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, came back negative, the officials said. They did not say where the cow came from or why it was suspected of being diseased.

– Associated Press

DEMOCRATS WILL BLOCK QUICK HOUSE REPEAL OF TAX-RETURN PROVISION

Democrats said yesterday they will block quick congressional withdrawal of a provision that would give more lawmakers access to income tax returns because majority Republicans won’t first promise to stop rushing bills through Congress.

Members of both parties say they object to the tax provision, calling it an infringement of taxpayers’ privacy. But it has been caught up in a larger fight over Congress’ habit of passing massive bills with lightning speed, giving lawmakers little time to learn precisely what they are voting on.

“This extraordinary invasion of privacy did not have the majority support of either chamber,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat of California, said in announcing her plans to block House passage today. “It was a ‘Saturday night massacre’ on Americans’ privacy made possible only by the Republicans’ willingness to abuse the rules of the people’s House.”

Ms. Pelosi’s decision means the House will not vote to repeal the tax-return bill today, as was scheduled.

Under an agreement the two parties worked out late yesterday, the full House will vote on it when it returns on December 6.

– Associated Press