January 27, 1991

Saudi officials readied barriers and dispersal chemicals today to try to contain an enormous oil slick flowing south from Kuwait, but they held out little hope of keeping the sludgy pollutant away from vital desalting plants. The oil slick was more than 40 miles long and 8 miles wide, and an American military spokesman said it grew rapidly all day. At a briefing today, the Pentagon spokesman, Pete Williams, said that as many as 250 million gallons of Kuwaiti crude oil may have been dumped into the gulf. The White House announced that it was sending a team to help the Saudis minimize damage to the environment. [ Page 12. ]

At a time when commercial builders throughout the Northeast are struggling with high vacancy rates and scrapping new projects, developers in Bedminster, N.J., are completing a new office complex that they hope will beat the odds. The project, Crossroads Business Center, is scheduled for completion by the end of April on a 10-acre site near the intersection of Routes 287 and 78 in the historic Pluckemin section of the community. No leases have been signed yet. The developers, the Lincoln Property Company of Parsippany and the Foster Wheeler Real Estate Development Corporation of Clinton, N.J., said they are asking rents of $26 to $27 a square foot and are hoping to attract pharmaceutical and data-processing concerns or others serving Fortune 500 companies with offices in central New Jersey. The 135,000-square-foot complex consists of two buildings, one with three stories and one with two. Antigue brick, cast stone copings and other exterior materials have been selected to conform to the historic character of Pluckemin, where several 18th- century homes and churches have been restored. The buildings' interiors have nine-foot ceilings to allow raised computer floors and have access to a fiber-optic cable. O'Brien & Associates of Parsippany is the architect.

Alfred Fenaughty is the president of Information International Inc. in Culver City, Calif., a publicly traded company that makes advanced computer equipment for the publishing industry. When a pleasant analyst showed up one day in 1987 saying he was from the Boston-based Kelso Management Company, which provided investment recommendations to "the Fidelity group," Mr. Fenaughty was pleased and proud. Who did Mr. Fenaughty think was at his door? "Fidelity -- the mutual fund people," he said. "In all their communications, they were presenting themselves as advisers to Fidelity. They came in under the same cloak. And their thoroughness, their studiousness -- it all suggested a long-term investor. So we did what we could to encourage them."

Flush with oil money gained since the start of the Persian Gulf crisis, Alaskans are once again dreaming aloud of grand schemes to extract riches from the nation's largest and least developed state. Leading the charge is Alaska's new Governor, 71-year-old Walter J. Hickel, who was elected in November as an independent representing a party whose platform called for seceding from the Union.

IN what looks more like an Army barrack than a classroom, 13 adults took turns the other day reading an article about Charles Drew, a medical researcher who devised a method for extracting plasma for blood transfusions. Some read well; others stumbled. When they finished, the teacher, Sara McLendon, asked the students to define some words and summarize the text. Then she told them what she thought the message was: "When you try and do your best, you are a winner."