October 30, 1991

They don't eat, they don't sleep and their feelings never get hurt when people curse them or hang up on them. They just call and call and call -- each one up to 1,500 times a day, together delivering millions of recorded telephone sales pitches for everything from "free" vacations to cemetery plots. They are automated telephone dialers, a growing army of robot sales representatives that can systematically call every number in a telephone exchange -- listed and unlisted numbers, cellular telephones, pagers, corporate switchboards and unattended answering machines. By one industry estimate, at least 20,000 machines are likely to be working full tilt on any given day in the United States and will call some 20 million numbers around the country.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo yesterday denounced the decision by the trustees of the City University of New York to reappoint Dr. Leonard Jeffries Jr. as chairman of the black studies department at City College, even as Dr. Jeffries complained that he had not been given a chance to defend himself before the decision was made. The appointment was to an eight-month term rather than the standard three years. The Governor, who appoints 10 of the university's 16 voting trustees, had previously condemned racially charged remarks by Dr. Jeffries about Jews and other whites and had called on the university to take action. But he had never spelled out what action he favored, saying as recently as Friday that it was "very much up to" the trustees to decide what to do.

Britain and Vietnam signed an agreement today opening the way for the forcible repatriation of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees now being detained in Hong Kong. The agreement comes one week after Hanoi agreed to accept the return of 222 Vietnamese "doublebackers," people who had come to Hong Kong once before, been paid a cash incentive to return to Vietnam and then re-entered Hong Kong illegally a second time.

Underneath the subway tracks on a Bronx street corner, three volunteers stood holding packages of syringe needles, alcohol pads and condoms. For the next two hours, a steady trickle of intravenous drug addicts -- prostitutes, scrawny men in jeans, a couple with a baby boy, a man in suit and tie -- exchanged fistfuls of used needles and picked up supplies. That exchange of dirty needles for clean ones last Saturday morning, meant to curb the spread of AIDS, was illegal. But when a police car stopped by the site, an officer stuck his head out the window to yell, "Get out of here, rapido, rapido!" and then drove off without making arrests.

WANT to scare someone? Really give them the creeps on Halloween? Chances are there is a food they will find more fearful than any wandering Frankenstein monster or Madonna clone. Try serving them some liver, or lima beans, or maybe just a fried egg.