OLYMPIC UPDATE / 2 DAYS TO THE GAMES

The first Palestinian team in Olympic history will compete under the name Palestine despite objections from Israel’s new hard-line government.

The International Olympic Committee rejected Israel’s request to block the team from using the name Palestine. Israel officials suggested that the team be called Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Autonomy or Palestinian Delegation.

IOC Director General Francois Carrard, in rejecting the request, said, “These sorts of requests to change the name we have already approved are purely last-minute political moves.”

The IOC recognized the Palestinian Olympic Committee in 1993 following the peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

The team has three runners, a boxer and eight officials.

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IOC members could be set to endorse Juan Antonio Samaranch as president into the next century.

Although Samaranch’s latest mandate doesn’t expire until September 1997, there is strong speculation that the IOC session will move today--his 76th birthday--to back him for a fourth term.

Tuesday was the 16th anniversary of Samaranch’s election as IOC president. Last year, IOC members voted to raise the retirement age from 75 to 80 to allow Samaranch to seek another four-year term that would keep him in office until 2001.

Marketing chief Dick Pound, a Canadian lawyer long considered a potential successor to Samaranch, faces a challenge from India’s Ashwini Kumar in elections today for a vacant post as IOC vice president.

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The forecast for Friday’s opening ceremonies is an Atlanta classic: high in the 90s with scattered afternoon and evening thunderstorms.

Despite what Atlanta Olympic chief Billy Payne told the IOC years ago--that the average temperature in July is in the mid 70s--the actual forecast is standard for this time of year.

The forecast says the weekend outlook is for more of the same.

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The United Nations is calling for a worldwide cease-fire during the Olympics.

“I solemnly appeal to all states to observe the Olympic truce . . . and to strive toward building lasting peace,” Diogo Freitas do Amaral, president of the 185-member General Assembly, said Tuesday.

In November, the General Assembly approved a resolution calling for the truce during the Atlanta Games.

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Fear of terrorism has increased in Atlanta on the eve of the Olympics but it is still far below concerns about issues such as traffic jams and crime, according to a poll released Tuesday.

A survey by Georgia State University’s Applied Research Center said worries about terrorism and civil unrest during the Games were running at an all-time high.

Terrorism came away with a rating of 5.3, far below the level of concern expressed over traffic jams, which stood at 8.9, and profiteering, which came in at 7.9.

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Hungary’s Olympic team has asked Olympic organizers for a $69,000 refund after refusing rooms assigned to 23 of their officials because they were not up to standard. . . . David Woobay, the head of Sierra Leone’s national Olympic committee, has been denied an official identification card for the Atlanta Games because of allegations of padding his team’s roster with bogus athletes.