May 14, 1985

The Delaware River Basin Commission today declared a drought emergency in parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The declaration, the first the Basin Commission has made since 1981, will mean a ban on nonessential uses of water similar to those already in effect in New York City, Westchester County, eastern Pennsylvania and 93 communities in northeastern New Jersey. The largest new area to be restricted is western New Jersey, covering a third of the state, from the New York border to Cape May at the southern tip. The other newly restricted areas are the Catskills region of New York and the northern half of Delaware. Delaware had been under a drought warning, which called for a voluntary, rather than mandatory, ban on such nonessential uses of water as washing cars, watering lawns and cleaning sidewalks.

Not too many years ago, a small start-up computer company with only $70,000 in seed money stunned competitors with an inexpensive, versatile machine that introduced computers to thousands of new users. But the company was not Apple, the place was not Silicon Valley, and the product was not the personal computer. Instead, the place was a suburb of Boston nearly 30 years ago, the runaway success was the minicomputer - a smaller, simpler, more economical machine than the expensive mainframes - and many thought that bigger, lumbering competitors would never catch up with the Digital Equipment Corporation. They were wrong. Now, after a painful four years in which Digital saw profit margins shrivel and the personal computer revolution largely pass it by, the world's second-largest computer maker is attempting a powerful comeback. One of the most important pieces of its strategy will fall into place Tuesday, when the company introduces its Microvax II, a computer that puts one of Digital's most successful minicomputers on a chip.

LAST year at this time, Carlos R. Caraballo was a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, where he was one of the most adept students at auto mechanics, especially chassis work. Today, even though he has graduated, Mr. Caraballo is still at Automotive High, but now he is an assistant teacher and shows others how to do such tasks as repair a front-end suspension or reline a set of brakes. Mr. Caraballo, who at the age of 18 is younger than some of his students, is participating in one of the country's most unusual ventures for producing new schoolteachers, the Substitute Vocational Assistance Program that has been mounted by the New York City Board of Education. The program is seen as a possible national model for coping with the teacher shortage that is starting to develop. Vocational education is a particularly critical area because skilled trades people can earn much higher salaries in industry than in the schools.

TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1985 International Sikhs plotted to kill Rajiv Gandhi during the Indian Prime Minister's visit to the United States next month, according to the F.B.I. William H. Webster, director of the bureau, said that F.B.I. agents had foiled a plan to ''train a group of Sikhs in the use of firearms and explosives'' to carry out ''guerrilla-type operations'' against Indian leaders. [Page A1, Cols. 2-4.] A strike protesting Sikh attacks in northern India last weekend closed markets and businesses throughout New Delhi. Sporadic violence was reported as shopkeepers closed their doors to protest what the opposition called the Government's failure to prevent Sikh terrorism. [A11:1-4.]

BY merely buying flower bulbs for their gardens, botanists warn, some Americans have unwittingly abetted the trade in endangered species. Conservation-minded consumers who would not dream of buying cheetah pelts or parrots may instead be depleting rare plants by planting cyclamens, snowdrops and anemones that were uprooted from fields in western Asia. A decade ago, when the international treaty governing trade in endangered species came into force, threatened animals received priority attention. Now scientists are shifting their sights to what many say is the equally worrisome commerce in endangered plants.