February 27, 1991

On the eve of the New York City Board of Education's vote on a condom-distribution plan, the Dinkins administration, a key actor in the drama, shifted its position several times yesterday. After supporting a possible compromise, it backed off, then seemed to say it could live with one. The compromise would give parents the right to exclude their children from the condom program.

CNBC, General Electric's cable news service, said yesterday that it had agreed to acquire the troubled Financial News Network for $105 million in cash. The surprise bid, which CNBC made privately on Friday and was approved by the two companies late Monday, is reported to be $15 million higher than a joint offer made two weeks ago by Dow Jones & Company and Westinghouse Broadcasting.

The Federal Reserve Board chairman, Alan Greenspan, is attempting to combat the leading threat to an economic recovery -- a shortage of credit -- with less stringent reserve requirements for banks, the prospect of relaxed accounting rules for shaky loans and lower interest rates. "Washington is launching a frontal attack," said Richard Fredericks, a bank analyst at Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. "It's worked every time."

SUMMERFIELD FARM sits in the rolling Virginia hill country that climbs slowly to the Blue Ridge escarpment. Since the guns of the Civil War ceased 126 years ago, the landscape has been peaceful and bucolic, made more so by an abundance of small farms like Summerfield, where Jamie and Rachel Nicholl raise dairy cattle, veal calves, sheep and lambs, along with several hunting dogs, a couple of barnyard cats and one very active baby, Emily Deveren, born in February 1990 here in her parents' home.

Consumer confidence, which has become the most widely watched indicator of when the recession might end, rose slightly in February -- the first improvement since September -- but the rise was not enough to foster optimism that the economy might begin to recover soon, the Conference Board reported yesterday. The board's overall confidence index, based on a survey in mid-February of 4,000 households, rose to 57.1, from 55.1 in January. The index was still a half-dozen points below its lowest level in the 1981-82 recession. And a major component, confidence that jobs are plentiful today, deteriorated.