January 10, 1992

President Bush left for home today with a Japanese agreement to buy more American cars and $10 billion more in auto parts, but the car makers he brought with him denounced the Japanese pledges as woefully inadequate. Even Bush Administration officials were saying the arrangements, worked out in the long and often bitter negotiations, fell far short of meeting the goals set by the White House for improving American exports to Japan and thus creating more jobs in the United States.

HE ordered carrot cake and a cappuccino. He asked for a small pot of tea. They squabbled briefly over who would call the baby sitter. By the time he got back to their table -- two, at most three, feet from mine -- she had already begun to cry. "You are not going to do this, David," she said softly, more as a question than an edict. "The girls need a father. You need to grow up."

Eight of 10 Americans say the economy is in bad shape, and President Bush is paying a clear political price for their discontent, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. But voters know little about the Democrats who would challenge him. The telephone survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday, shows an unpredictable terrain at the start of this election year: The President's approval rating is down to 48 percent, and voters are evenly divided when offered a choice between re-electing Mr. Bush or replacing him with a unspecified Democrat. But the real Democratic field has barely penetrated their consciousness, according to the telephone survey of 1,376 adults.

In the latest twist in the dispute over the future of the Soviet military, President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia flatly declared today that the Black Sea fleet belongs to Russia, not Ukraine. Disposition of the fleet is a crucial issue because it is one of the most valuable assets of the disintegrating Soviet military. Mr. Yeltsin's assertion underscores Russian sensitivity about the legendary fleet, which was the core of the Russian Imperial Navy beginning in the 18th century, and about its home port, Sevastopol, a historically Russian city that was besieged by the Turks and their allies in the Crimean War in the 19th century. The Crimea was made part of the Ukrainian republic less than 40 years ago.

Prices received by American producers fell two-tenths of 1 percent in December, another sign that the economy remained weak, Labor Department figures showed today. Prices also eased, although by the slenderest of margins -- one-tenth of 1 percent -- for 1991 as a whole, the first full-year decline in the Producer Price Index for Finished Goods since 1986, when oil prices collapsed.