August 24, 1985

The South African police shot and killed six black protesters, detained at least 18 prominent political activists and rounded up 500 black schoolchildren today. The police said the children were boycotting classes. On Thursday, 300 children were seized under similar circumtances in a police effort to force children to halt the boycotts. Township residents said many of the children were under 13 years old.

Brushing aside ''technicalities,'' a state appellate court yesterday ordered Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr. reinstated to the Sept. 10 Democratic primary ballot for mayor. It also reinstated four candidates for City Council president. Mr. Farrell, the four Council president candidates and several candidates for other offices had been ordered off the ballot by a state judge because of numerical errors in the cover sheets of their nominating petitions. Council President Carol Bellamy, who had challenged Mr. Farrell's petitions, said late last night that she would drop her effort to force Mr. Farrell off the ballot.

The large leak of toxic gas from a Union Carbide factory near here two weeks ago resulted from violations of plant procedures and other failures left uncorrected by plant workers for up to 10 days before the accident, company officials said today. They accepted full blame for the incident. In a news conference and in subsequent interviews characterized by strong self-blame, top corporate and plant officials pinned the fault for the leak at its factory at Institute directly on failures of management, operations and equipment solely under the company's control. High-pressure alarms were repeatedly shut off and ignored. A high-temperature alarm was out service. A level indicator in the tank that leaked and was known to be broken was not fixed. Meanwhile, the unit's computer, which silently recorded the rising problems for days, was never asked for the information by operators, the company's chief investigator said in an interview. #2 Breathing Masks for 6 People Company officials painted a grim picture of the chemical unit's six operators huddled together in the control room on the morning of the accident, enveloped by a thick cloud of toxic gas and forced to share the only two breathing devices in the room.

Once forced to rely on others to read, write or speak for them, about 20,000 people across the country are now using specially adapted personal computers to help make up for their disabilities. The technology has the potential to allow about four million Americans to compete in mainstream employment and education, according to experts in the field. For the visually impaired, a voice synthesizer can be attached to a computer to read words that appear on a video display terminal. A similar device can be programmed to speak for people who cannot talk. Software can translate the text appearing on a computer screen into printed Braille. The same text can be displayed on a VersaBraille, which has plastic pins that can be raised and lowered to form a line of Braille.

New York City's reservoir levels are expected to fall steadily over the next two months to as low as 30 percent of capacity, water officials said yesterday. Unless exceptional rainstorms produce runoffs, most rainfall will be absorbed by plants and dry ground, and will not help fill the reservoirs, the officials said. But for now, they said, there are no plans for new restrictions on consumption. They expressed hope that existing curbs and increased voluntary measures would reduce consumption enough. Waiting for a Turnaround The officials said they expected the reservoir levels to reach their low point in November, but a spokesman for the city's Department of Environmental Protection said there was no way to predict when the refilling of the reservoirs would begin.