January 15, 1992

Sales of domestically made cars and light trucks remained at recessionary levels in early January, declining 4.1 percent from a dismal period a year earlier, the auto makers reported today. The seasonally adjusted annual selling rate for the period was 5.3 million -- among the lowest figures reported in 1991 -- reinforcing a bleak outlook for the industry.

For years people regarded raccoons as cute and furry black-masked creatures that roved by moonlight across suburbia's lawns and wooded hills. Their greatest offense was ripping into bags of trash. Now, as rabies outbreaks sweep the metropolitan region, raccoons have replaced pit bulls as four-legged objects of public fear.

In the American newspaper industry, the right hand, at long last, is about to grasp the left. The two largest associations in the industry, one representing its business and editorial interests, the other its advertising sales efforts, announced yesterday that they intended to combine forces after more than four decades of separate operations.

NEW YORK CITY FOR THE POLICE, A WOUNDED SYMBOL

In a new disclosure about President Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, Iraq has admitted buying large quantities of German components for a previously unknown uranium enrichment complex that could have produced enough explosive for four or five weapons a year, officials said today. The admission was made in Baghdad on Monday to a team of United Nations nuclear inspectors assembled by the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, the United Nations officials said. The inspectors had flown to Baghdad on Saturday after learning that German companies had sold Mr. Hussein some of the parts needed to build up to 10,000 uranium gas centrifuge enrichment plants and after receiving a tip-off about where those parts might be concealed. Special Magnets The United Nations team drew a blank when they raided the suspected site just north of the Baghdad area on Sunday, officials say. But Iraqi nuclear officials later admitted under questioning, the team reported, that they had bought enough special magnets and housings from German companies before the Persian Gulf war to build up to 10,000 centrifuges, although they asserted that these were all destroyed immediately after the cease-fire.