August 10, 1991

In the last year or so, a small cable television company in the South Bronx quietly wired 1,200 homes and apartments for HBO, MTV, Cinemax and all the other programs on its 40-channel system. The only problem, city officials say, is that all of those hookups were illegal: the company, Urban Cable Systems, never had a franchise for them. It sent out bills every month, like other cable companies, but city officials maintain that it was a cable company like no other. It never bothered with city permits to dig trenches in the streets, snake cables through city-owned lampposts and run wires up the sides of buildings like the Bronx Criminal Courthouse. City officials say the company just went out and did the digging, snaking and running.

A Drop in Inflation Prices at the producer level fell two-tenths of 1 per cent in July, the fourth decline since February. Page 33.

Crammed into a church basement with few windows and no yard, the Bronx New School became the envy of its school district. Parents and teachers plastered mouse holes and painted walls. Administrators got grants to pay for extra staff members. The 85 students, picked by lottery, came from suburbanish Riverdale and the inner reaches of the South Bronx. Attendance was nearly perfect.

Salomon Brothers, one of the dominant buyers of Government securities, yesterday suspended the two executives in charge of trading these issues and admitted to violating Government rules. The violations, a big embarrassment for this prominent Wall Street firm, include exceeding the 35 percent limit on the portion of a Treasury issue any one buyer can purchase, and using the names of customers without authorization.

David and Susan Haggerty did not go on vacation last year, but this summer the Phillipsburg, N.J., couple rented a bungalow near St. Petersburg, Fla., to spend a week at the beach. They and their two young daughters visited Sea World in Orlando and Busch Gardens in Tampa, but they also took steps to economize: Instead of sleeping in motels on the way down and back, they camped, with a tent and sleeping bags. And instead of eating out each night, Mrs. Haggerty cooked many of their meals.

With hopes for the release of other Western hostages in Lebanon clouded by the kidnapping of a French medical worker, Israel came under pressure today to help break the stalemate by unilaterally freeing Arab and Lebanese prisoners. Officials of the British Foreign Ministry publicly urged Israel today to release some of the more than 300 mostly Shiite prisoners held by Israel and its allies in south Lebanon.

"People are traveling, but they're pinching pennies. This year they're just squeezing money." -- Alan Schafer, founder of a tourist attraction in South Carolina. [ 25:3. ]

Pavel Shelaputin was avidly spooning up the fare at the new Christian Democratic Union soup kitchen, where a new strain of this city's ever insurgent, endlessly schismatic political opposition movement has decided to go easy on the talk and heavy on the dole. Savoring the gift, the 88-year-old man made it sound as if he had missed the Revolution until this moment of dipping into his bowl of steaming bean soup. It was valuable and novel for having been extended as charity in this tough city by one of the scores of political movements competing, and hardly unifying, for a way to stand out with the voters.

International 2-4 Israel came under growing pressure to help break the hostage stalemate by unilaterally freeing Arab and Lebanese prisoners it holds. Britain called the move "an opportunity not to be missed." Page 1

Nelson Mandela, the president of the African National Congress, today offered details of his organization's demand that an interim government not based on race be created to guide South Africa through its transition to eventual majority rule. The congress has previously insisted upon the creation of an interim government. But it moved the call to the forefront of its negotiating agenda after revelations last month that Mr. de Klerk's white minority government secretly channeled money to the rival black political movement Inkatha.

An article on Thursday about the explosion aboard the battleship Iowa that killed 47 sailors misstated the dates when independent scientists first questioned the Navy's conclusion that the blast was a deliberate act and when the Navy reopened its technical investigation. The events occurred in May 1990, not June 1990.

As the money flows in and the grand invitations go out, relations between China and Japan are about to reach a two-year flourish, a virtual return to normality, with the three-day visit of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu beginning on Saturday. Mr. Kaifu will be the first leader of a major industrialized country to visit China since the army crackdown on the democracy movement left at least hundreds dead and thousands wounded two years ago.