June 22, 1991

In a dramatic comedown for the world's largest brokerage house, the Nomura Securities Company admitted today that it had discriminated against the majority of its customers by improperly compensating some of its biggest clients for stock market losses. In its stunning announcement, Nomura reversed a heated denial that it made just one day earlier and confirmed reports that it had made nearly $120 million in such payments.

The Supreme Court ruled today that while nude dancing is a form of expression entitled to a measure of First Amendment protection, states may ban it in the interest of "protecting order and morality." The 5-to-4 decision upheld a public-indecency law in Indiana as applied to nude performances in a nightclub and adult bookstore in South Bend. The law, similar to laws in effect in some two dozen other states, requires female performers to wear at least pasties and a G-string.

Confronted with competing economic plans from left and right, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said today that he was preparing to combine them to present to the leaders of seven major industrial nations next month. His decision not to support in its entirety the radical plan worked out by a liberal economist, Grigory A. Yavlinsky, in collaboration with Harvard economists and instead to seek to merge it with a somewhat more conservative "anti-crisis" reform favored by Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, underscored Mr. Gorbachev's continuing efforts to keep a centrist policy, in the face of competing pulls and tugs.

The Dinkins administration's separate decisions to roust homeless people from Tompkins Square Park earlier this month and from Columbus Circle within the next week represent a more aggressive approach to a growing problem that is trying the patience of many New Yorkers, including the Mayor. City officials say there is no new blanket policy of removing all homeless people from all the public spaces they now occupy. But they acknowledge that they are responding, if sometimes reluctantly, to rising anger over permanent encampments by the homeless in public spaces. Several recent crimes and disturbances have also heightened the public's frustration with government's failure to reduce the homeless problem after more than a decade.

The Supeme Court ruled that the Federal law regulating the production, sale and use of pesticides permitted municipalities to impose more stringent regulations of their own. The 9-to-0 decision overturned a ruling by a Wisconsin court that Federal law pre-empted efforts by local governments to impose their regulations. Article, page 9.