January 20, 1992

Not very long ago, a West Coast drugstore chain told Brown & Haley, maker of fancy chocolates, that the chainwould probably stop selling boxed chocolates because they were not profitable. The news did not surprise Mark T. Haley, president of the Tacoma, Wash., candy company founded by his grandfather.

NEW YORK CITY BABY'S DEATH RAISES QUESTIONS A 5-month-old Harlem boy who had been badly burned more than a month ago died early Friday at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center. The case has become the focus of an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York City Medical Examiner, who said that the child was abused and that they were also looking into the possibility that mistreatment at the hospital contributed to the child's death. A spokesman from the medical examiner's office said the autopsy showed that a feeding tube had been misplaced in the boy, puncturing his heart. B3.

Little-noticed legal decrees handed down last month by Japan's Fair Trade Commission may have finally offered a partial answer to the most persistent, unresolved question from last year's securities scandals: Is the Japanese stock market rigged? The decrees show how Japan's leading securities houses created bogus trades at will to generate profitable stock trades for selected clients, largely in an effort to win their highly lucrative securities underwriting business. Well over $1 billion in such improper profits was created from this trading over a period of at least four years.

From the majestic pulpit of Riverside Church, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. scanned the diverse faces that showed his congregation to be one of the city's most racially mixed. He urged them to look at one another. "We are not integrated because we are shoulder-to-shoulder," he declared to the hundreds of worshipers. "We are integrated because we are heart-to-heart."

The seduction began with a flower, one perfect red silk rose. Then there were telephone calls, lots of telephone calls, and sweet notes. Chocolates followed, expensive, delicious chocolates, dragees dipped in gold flakes and luscious truffles. There were invitations to fancy parties, spur-of-the-moment visits and glossy you-can-trust-me photos. All that you would expect in a storybook courtship can be found in the way that Eileen Goudge and her publisher, Viking, have been trying to romance reviewers, bookstore managers and readers to turn her into a commercial fiction writer with the stature and sales of Danielle Steel.