March 5, 1991

The long battle over the future of an office tower next to St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on the East Side of Manhattan ended today when the Supreme Court refused to hear the church's constitutional challenge to the designation of the church complex as a landmark. The case, growing out of a lawsuit the church filed against New York City in 1986, has received wide attention in New York and around the country as preservation-minded cities have increasingly sought to curb development on historic religious properties.

ADVANCES in molecular biology are breathing new life into research on monoclonal antibodies, genetically engineered copies of the immune system's front-line defenses. Once hailed as "magic bullets" to target microbes or other invaders while bypassing healthy cells, monoclonal antibodies lost their allure when researchers encountered stubborn problems in making and using them. Only two monoclonal antibodies have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in people, with approval of two more anticipated in the near future. Many biotechnology researchers and companies have turned their efforts elsewhere.

Don't you just hate it when you're in a real big metropolitan hurry and you pull into the little mall's parking lot and there's not one single space left -- except in the zone for the handicapped? Just sitting there. Empty. Going to waste. Crying out to passing motorists, "Take me. I'm yours." Well, if you're driving around this affluent coastal town, don't think about parking in a zone for the handicapped. Don't even look at the space. Turn up the radio. Drive right on by.

New-home sales plunged in January to their lowest level in eight and a half years, the Government said today, but analysts, saying buyers had become more active in recent weeks, forecast a modest improvement this year. "January was a month of high anxiety," with spending curtailed because of concern over the Persian Gulf war and the recession, said Richard Peach, an economist with the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The Economy Federal Reserve officials strongly oppose the part of the Administration's proposed bank legislation that would remove some of the largest banks from their supervision. [ Page D1. ] The Supreme Court will review a ruling that invalidated a policy the Fed has long relied on in regulating bank holding companies. [ D2. ] A worldwide bank convicted of money-laundering agreed to divest itself of any stake it has in First American Bankshares. [ D8. ]