December 20, 1991

With only five days left before Christmas, retailers' gloomy assessment of their latest sales results has forced them to scale back their already meager expectations for the critical selling season. While merchants are hoping for a last-minute flurry of shoppers, many are now conceding that sales will be even worse than they feared. "Time is running out," said Kenneth A. Macke, chairman and chief executive of the Dayton Hudson Corporation, the Minneapolis department and discount store chain. Mr. Macke said he still expected a burst of activity this weekend, but added, "The big question is whether there will be a big enough pickup to make up for the disappointment of the first couple of weeks" of the season.

Seeing it as a magnet for drug dealing, homelessness and vandalism, New York City parks officials want to tear down Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell, whose classical limestone dome has reverberated for generations with some of the stateliest -- and noisiest -- music ever heard under the trees. The demolition plan, advanced by the Central Park Conservancy and endorsed by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, has inflamed the descendants of Elkan Naumburg, the man who donated this "Temple of Music" in 1923. Given the officials' reasoning, said one, you might as well raze Manhattan.

Sematech, the controversial American semiconductor industry consortium, today formally opened what could be a difficult battle to continue to receive Government funding for five more years. Its initial charter expires at the end of this fiscal year. The consortium, based in Austin, Tex., outlined a proposed strategy for the next five years that will mainly carry on the work it started in its first five, with two significant changes.

Job losses have been so severe over the last two years in Manhattan that they have completely erased all the private-sector growth of the booming 1980's, according to an annual year-end review by the region's Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are now fewer private-sector jobs in Manhattan than there were in 1980, with the total back to its 1979 level, according to the figures released by Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, the regional commissioner of the bureau.

Dallas via Stone, claiming conspiracy of just about everybody. Dizzying, brilliant mosaic.