December 16, 1991

MAKING SENSE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CLAIMS Stunned by the growth of products making bold claims for environmental purity -- from "nuclear free" light bulbs and "environmentally safe" socks to botanically correct shampoos -- consumer advocates have begun to insist that words like "recycled" and "biodegradable" have meanings people can understand. B1. NEW YORK CITY A SAD CLASH OF MEDICAL MANDATES To administrators at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Dr. Salvatore J. Corso is a student and his patients are his textbooks. To administrators at Queens Hospital Center, however, he is, above all, an employee who must see thousands of patients, even if his training suffers. This dual view is the reason Long Island Jewish, a private hospital determined to be a major academic institution, announced it would end a long agreement to provide doctors to Queens Hospital Center, a public hospital struggling to meet patients' basic needs. A1. LAWYER FOCUS OF INFLUENCE QUESTIONS A top lawyer in New York City's Correction Department met with senior officials over a contract to electronically monitor released prisoners despite saying a month earlier that she would not because her former employer represented a company that was seeking the contract. Her actions are now included in an investigation of the awarding of the contract. B3. MUSLIM GROUP REFUSED USE OF SCHOOL A black Muslim group was barred from using the Harlem public elementary school for a speech titled "Are Jews Hiding the Truth?" B2. New York's cows may give Cuomo the candidate a boost. Metro Matters. B3. A library on wheels fills a gap left by budget cuts. Bedford-Stuyvesant Journal. B3. Gas explosion in Chinatown injures 15. B3. REGION NASSAU LOOKS TO CUT FRILLS Nassau County has earned its reputation as one of the country's best places to live largely through its expensive system of suburban amenities, like free concerts at the Eisenhower Park bandshell. And as long as there was money, the system helped keep the Republican party in power. But now that the economy has soured, Republicans are at a war with themselves as they scramble to scrap the same high-profile services, jobs and -- the Democrats say -- patronage that kept them in power so long. B1. NEW JERSEY TO DEBATE TAX PACKAGE The New Jersey Senate will take up the politically volatile issue of rolling back $2.8 billion in taxes today, facing options of ending all the taxes, only part of them, or none at all. The legislation that would let the taxes lapse next June is in five separate bills, each affecting part of the tax package enacted last year. B7. ALBANY MAKES A BUDGET, QUIETLY It is standard operating procedure for state budgets to be made in the dark. Historically, the Governor, the Assembly Speaker and the Senate majority leader meet behind closed doors to negotiate an agreement that is then quickly ratified in the dead of the night. But even by Albany standards, the current process of negotiating an unprecedented 15-month financial plan has been uncommonly private. B7. A MALL AS CHRISTMAS CONCERT HALL The Salvation Army trumpet player at a shopping center in West Paterson, N.J., performed a seamless medley of Christmas carols as shoppers dropped coins into the red kettle. Only three people -- his wife and their two children -- knew they were hearing something more than the usual street-corner performer. The musician, Philip Smith, was the principal trumpet in the New York Philharmonic. B1. LEUKEMIA VICTIMS APPEAL FOR HELP Two young men, one black and the other Jewish, are dying of leukemia. Yesterday, one went before the congregation at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, the other to the Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side to appeal to people who might be able to provide bone marrow for an operation to save their lives. They went to the churches because their best chance of finding someone compatible is within their own ethnic group. B7. The Traffic Map B4 The Neediest Cases B5

A fortress of a factory stands anonymously on the Pan American Highway here. Sawhorses have been erected to block car bombers from parking areas. Guards wearing bulletproof vests and toting shotguns search visitors. A concrete watchtower, dominating a perimeter wall, is equipped with gun slits, a steel trapdoor and a battery-powered radio system. Inside this top-security installation, lines of nimble-fingered women peel, wash and can asparagus and baby ears of corn.

Investigators, prosecutors and social service agency officials say there are signs that money and property are being stolen, by trickery and coercion, from America's elderly at a disturbing rate and that a large portion of the crimes are committed not by professional criminals but by neighbors, health aides, household workers and family members. Financial exploitation of the elderly, they say, is likely to continue growing as the number of older Americans who are most vulnerable to it, the lonely and those in poor health, rises. The recession and drug abuse are cited by law enforcement officials as the major motivation behind the rise in such crimes.

Investigators have located $65 million of the $75.4 million that they contend was missing from investment accounts controlled by a firm accused of fraud, a court-appointed receiver said today. But the search for money invested by scores of local governments, particularly from Iowa, was hampered, they said, by the absence of crucial documents from the firm's records. The receiver, Robert E. Carlson, a Los Angeles lawyer, said Steven D. Wymer, president and owner of Institutional Treasury Management of Irvine, Calif., transferred the $65 million from client accounts at Refco Securities Inc. of New York to Shearson Lehman Brothers. The transfer was made two to five days before the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained a court order on Wednesday freezing Institutional Treasury's assets.

To administrators at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, Dr. Salvatore J. Corso is a student and his patients are his textbooks. "I need multiple injuries, high-speed injuries, car accidents, gunshot wounds," says Dr. Corso, who is near the end of a five-year residency in orthopedic surgery. His education will not be complete, he adds, if he only sees "bread and butter" cases like "an 8-year-old with a thigh fracture."