NEWS LITE : JFK JR. DROPS BY DAD'S OLD OFFICE.

When John F. Kennedy Jr. popped into his father's old office at the White House, a few onlookers wondered jokingly: Is Kennedy being considered for a Cabinet post?

Apparently not - at least not that presidential spokesman Mike McCurry knows. But there were ``a number of people who seemed to be standing outside the Oval Office considering him - in a number of different ways,'' McCurry said with a grin.

Indeed, female presidential aides were all smiles Wednesday morning when word got around that the handsome JFK Jr. was in the house. Kennedy is a member of the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, which submitted its annual report to President Clinton.

The ceremony was closed to reporters, but McCurry reported: ``We had a number of people who were there - excited about the moment.''

The panel has ties to President Kennedy, who formed a committee on mental retardation that continued after his death. In 1966, President Johnson made it a permanent panel.

Exner claims she had abortion

Judith Campbell Exner, who's maintained for two decades that she was President John F. Kennedy's mistress, says she aborted his child 10 months before his assassination. Exner, 62, who's dying of bone and breast cancer, says it in January's Vanity Fair mag and on Friday's ``20/20.'' She adds that at Kennedy's urging the abortion was arranged through Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana at the city's Grant Hospital and that she holds receipts for a surgical procedure.

She also says she carried election bribe money to Giancana from Robert F. Kennedy. She claims Giancana told her: ``If it weren't for me, your boyfriend wouldn't have been elected.''

Exner also says she's been debriefed by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, who's doing a book on the Kennedys and who told her it ``is going to be a bombshell. . . . It isn't going to be about their sex lives. That will be a mere footnote.''

Exner says the Kennedys sought mob help in dealing with Fidel Castro because JFK ``didn't trust the CIA to eliminate Castro.''

Son tardy, mother gets probation

A woman who said her ``night owl'' son doesn't like to go to bed early was placed on 90 days' probation because the boy was repeatedly late for kindergarten.

Caroline Edens was charged with truancy in what the Plano, Texas, school system called a last-ditch effort to make her get 5-year-old Sam Bundy to school on time.

In addition to being put on probation, Edens was ordered by a judge last month to put Sam in bed at a ``proper time,'' wake him and escort him to class. She was also ordered to take a parenting course.

``They want to come into your life and tell you how to be as a parent,'' grumbled Edens, an underwriter for an insurance company.

She said her son was late no more than 10 times and usually was there less than 10 minutes after the 8 a.m. bell.

Albright in red still formidable

The more Madeleine Albright speaks, the more she makes Margaret Thatcher look like Little Bo-Peep. But what do you really know about the first female nominee for secretary of state?

Time magazine's thumbnail sketch: She knits, cooks and goes hunting for antiques with Barbra Streisand. She keeps in her office a tiny broom sent to her by a critic. She wears red suits, and lets nothing get in her way.

``When I work, I really work. I rub my eyes and my makeup comes off, and I stick pencils in my hair. So I've given up. If some days my hair doesn't look great or some days I look overdone, so be it. Or if I wear a red suit and one of the female reporters says I look like a fat little red ball, that's her problem.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1) John F. Kennedy Jr. smiles as President Bill Clinton speaks at the White House.

Associated Press

(2) Judith Exner

Says JFK was the father

(3) Madeleine Albright

Shakes off criticism