CNN Newsroom is a daily 15-minute commercial-free news program specifically produced for classroom use and provided free of charge to participating schools. This guide is designed to accompany the program for July 1997. Top stories include the following: Britain's hand over of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China; regulating business on the Internet; the PATHFINDER mission; the PATHFINDER landing on Mars; Mexico's election results which end decades of rule by the Industrial Revolutionary Party; the U.S. Senate's hearings into campaign financing during the 1996 elections; data on Mars' surface from SOJOURNER; the television ratings system; questions about NATO's role raised by the funeral of a Bosnian war crimes suspect; Demonstrations in Spain over the latest incidence of Basque separatist violence; problems with the Russian space station MIR; tensions on the Korean border and starvation in North Korea; more problems for MIR; a cease-fire called by the IRA to pave the way for Sinn Fein peace talks; European flooding and catastrophes in Poland and the Czech Republic; an abandoned attempt by one man to reach the North Pole; Swiss banks break their code of secrecy in an effort to find Holocaust victims' money; chemical weapons and Gulf War Syndrome; Eastern Europe floods; peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians; the President and Congress agree on a budget deal; and the bombing in an Israeli market. (AEF)