March 4, 1991

Official Iranian and Syrian reports and the accounts of travelers from Iraq today reinforced Western intelligence assessments that civil commotion and possible anti-Government unrest in Iraq had spread from the southern city of Basra to a string of other towns in southeastern Iraq. Reuters quoted travelers arriving at the Iraq-Kuwait border as saying that Government forces in Basra were facing a Shiite Muslim uprising led by supporters of a Teheran-based cleric and longstanding adversary of President Saddam Hussein, Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim.

Vermont is the only New England state that has not had a bank failure in the current economic downturn, and its strict environmental laws -- not shrewd Yankee banking -- are widely credited with saving the state from the worst excesses of the Northeast's real estate boom. "There are still problems here, but nowhere like those in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts," said Thomas Menson, a former chief operating officer of the Bank of Vermont. Mr. Menson also spent the last five years as the top banking and financial adviser to Madeleine M. Kunin, who recently stepped down as Governor.

As China's trade surplus with the United States rises sharply, diplomats and business executives say relations between the two countries could worsen because of China's import restrictions, software piracy and other issues. "The tremendous growth in the trade deficit, and the proliferation of Chinese measures to restrict access to the market for imports, taken together, constitute a meaningful, significant trade problem," Joseph A. Massey, assistant United States trade representative, said at a news conference Friday night after two days of talks with Chinese officials on intellectual-property issues. A Soaring Trade Surplus China's trials of pro-democracy demonstrators seem to be largely completed, and so the human rights issue is expected to subside after two years in which it was the focal point of contention between the two countries. But since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, China has enjoyed a soaring trade surplus with the United States.

Despite their satisfaction with the coverage of the Persian Gulf war, the three broadcast networks face serious economic consequences from the war's costs, and one or more news divisions may be compelled to cut budgets and staff. The Cable News Network, however, says it plans to increase its budget and its international news coverage.

Donald J. Trump has agreed to shrink his long-stalled plans for a huge development on the Upper West Side nearly in half and to give New York City land to reroute the West Side Highway to allow for a waterfront park -- if the Dinkins administration backs the compromise Mr. Trump reached with civic groups that had fought the project. The agreement would break a logjam on Trump City, one of the most criticized real-estate proposals in the city, at a time when both the city and the developer, who has had recent financial setbacks, could use the economic benefits it would provide. In turn, the agreement would give civic groups the open space they have fought for, would allow for the rerouting of the West Side Highway to make way for the park and would leave Mr. Trump's plan for a 150-story tower no more than a dream abandoned.