April 18, 1991

Few people would have guessed that the school desk, the old-fashioned office cabinet and the plain kitchen table would redefine and revive the ultrasophisticated Italian design scene. But from Friday's start of the 13th Salone Internazionale del Mobile -- the International Italian Furniture Fair -- the ordinary seemed extraordinary and the banal, sublime. Many foreign visitors expressed a sense of relief that the Italians had re-established themselves as stylistic leaders and returned with a strong new voice after a couple of years of floundering. It was a pleasant surprise to manufacturers and retailers from around the world who came here for the event, first started in 1961.

President Bush presented his plan to aid the Kurdish refugees as a straightforward and limited humanitarian operation, but it has raised the possibility of snaring Mr. Bush in just the kind of political and military tangle that he has been trying to avoid. Less than a day after the President said he would set up refugee camps in northern Iraq, the United Nations was questioning the legal basis for the effort, which seemed to be predicated on little more than the rights of a conqueror.

A 68-year-old Brooklyn man who had waged a campaign against drug dealers was run over and killed by a furious van driver this week, the police said. The man's family and neighbors said the killing was in retaliation for his persistence in ordering drug dealers, addicts and prostitutes off the block. The killing on Tuesday night crushed the spirit of a large, civic-minded family who had tenaciously stayed in their house in the Sunset Park section while crack dealing and prostitution drove many of their neighbors away.

CHILDHOOD was mostly a matter of survival. Many children grew up in the streets, begging for food. Those who were lucky enough to go to school usually dropped out after a couple of years, succumbing to the beatings of other students who taunted them with the charge, "You look American." That is what life was like in Vietnam for Amerasian children, the offspring of Vietnamese mothers and American soldiers. Most share a heritage of poverty, illiteracy and racial prejudice.

New York City reached an agreement yesterday with 22 present and former female correction officers who said they were forced to have abortions or to take brutal assignments to keep their jobs. But even as the $2.2 million settlement was being signed in court yesterday and Mayor David N. Dinkins was praising it, several of the officers denounced the city's Correction Department, saying that female officers were often harassed by their male counterparts.