November 20, 1990

Handcuffed by a lack of money for plant expansion, the Chrysler Corporation is trying to become the first auto maker to squeeze extra production from a United States assembly plant by operating it nearly nonstop. The plan moved a step closer to reality today with the ratification of a national labor contract that permitted three-shift or other near-continuous operations at Chrysler's St. Louis mini-van plant.

Federal environmental regulators said yesterday that a barge owned by a New York family that operates companies accused of polluting New York Harbor holds as much as 50,000 gallons of oil contaminated by a toxic substance, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCB's. The officials said the owner of the barge tried to dispose of the oil through a Camden, N.J., company that specializes in waste oil, but that the company, Remtech Environmental Group, conducted tests and found levels of PCB's too high for reusing some of the waste oil.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have said from the beginning that the criminal trial of a prominent lawyer and some of his colleagues on charges of wholesale corruption would provide an unsavory glimpse behind the curtains of a large personal-injury law firm. In a week of testimony in the case of the lawyer, Morris J. Eisen, two other lawyers from his firm, their office manager and three private investigators, the jury has become acquainted with such things as brown-bag payoffs to a witness and a shrunken ruler used to exaggerate the size of photographed potholes.

Vanishing Louisiana Habitat Wetlands are sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at an alarmingly rapid rate. Scientists are struggling to save the habitat, which is vital to fish and birds. Science Times, page C1. Milli Vanilli Loses Grammy The pop music group was stripped of the Grammy Award for the hit album it did not sing. Page C15.

With occasional talk of death, grimly realistic chemical warfare drills and the explosion of 81-millimeter mortars being zeroed in, the Second Battalion of the Seventh Marines is palpably preparing for war in its third month here in the Saudi desert. Although no one knows if the time for killing and dying will come soon, or even come at all, the young men here and their more grizzled noncoms and officers seem to have drawn their conclusion from the news that there will be no rotation home and that as many as 200,000 reinforcements are on the way to join them.

SHEA PENLAND, associate director of the Louisiana Geological Survey, eased a 22-foot skiff out of its slip in this small settlement deep in the bayous of Terrebonne Parish. He nudged the throttle forward and the boat picked up speed, clearing the harbor and skimming over the light chop of Terrebonne Bay toward the barrier islands that protect the estuary and its fragile marsh from the Gulf of Mexico. From the boat, the marsh seemed vibrant, a sea of green and golden grass punctuated by occasional clumps of bushes and trees. Fish and even an occasional porpoise jumped in the water, egrets and herons fished at the its edge and flights of pelicans soared overhead.

Boris N. Yeltsin, the President of the Russian republic, today rejected President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's plan for overhauling governmental powers but invited a compromise conditioned on the Kremlin's recognition of the republics' full sovereignty. The negative reaction of Mr. Yeltsin, leader of the nation's dominant republic and chief adversary of the Soviet leader, heightened the pressure on Mr. Gorbachev to yield further in the current political crisis.

Nearly six months after the only nationwide passenger-bus system entered Federal bankruptcy protection during a bitter drivers' strike, Greyhound Lines Inc. filed a financial reorganization plan today that calls for the company to repay much of what it owes its largest creditors. The plan would take all equity away from the current owners, including the senior executives who spent $350 million in 1987 to buy Greyhound and a large piece of the Continental Trailways system.

The trust set up by the Manville Corporation to compensate victims of asbestos poisoning, which is out of cash and will be unable to pay seriously ill people for decades, announced a plan yesterday for a quick settlement of tens of thousands of asbestos personal injury cases. Under the proposal, the Manville Corporation would provide an additional $520 million over seven years to the trust and lift restrictions on the trust's ability to sell a $1.8 billion Manville bond. In addition, fees for plaintiffs' lawyers, which had consumed tens of millions of dollars, would be cut to a maximum of 25 percent of what their clients recover.

ANDRE PREVIN has it; Willie Nelson does not. Nat King Cole had it; Vladimir Horowitz did not. About 10 percent of students at the Juilliard School of Music have it but most musicians don't. "It" is perfect or absolute pitch -- a cluster of abilities relating to identifying and recalling musical notes from memory, without hearing another note as a reference.

With the New York Giants off to a 10-0 start as they await a game Sunday against the Eagles in Philadelphia, they have the opportunity to become one of the National Football League's memorable teams. But they already reflect the importance of the player-coach relationship, which transcends sports. "Coaching," Bill Parcells, the team's head coach, likes to say, "is giving your players a good design and getting 'em to play hard."

The allure of the auction market in the high-flying 80's, when collectors not only paid high prices but also could be seen doing so, is increasingly being replaced by more discreet buying and selling through dealers. The sharp decline in prices at auctions in the last few weeks has brightened the outlook for dealers in everything from Old Master paintings and Chinese porcelains to contemporary art and jewelry.