January 21, 1992

GAS PIPELINE SET TO OPEN After a decade of planning and construction that has provoked fierce opposition from environmentalists, homeowners and oil executives, the Iroquois natural gas pipeline from Canada is to begin operation this month, providing the largest single new source of energy to the New York region since the 1950's. With the pipeline nearing completion, experts in the energy industry say it may lead to a historic shift in a region that is far more dependent on oil from the Middle East to heat its homes and fuel its power plants than other sections of the nation are. A1. NEW YORK CITY SEEKING REFUGE FROM THE COLD The cold spell that has dropped temperatures to as low as 11 degrees since last Tuesday has been especially hard on the city's homeless. And this year, their options for shelter are even fewer, as the Port Authority and the Transit Authority eject people from the bus terminal and the subways and try to persuade them to enter city shelters. B3. L.I.R.R. SHELVES TRASH PLAN

SEVERAL times each day, a normal cell in the body mutates into a cancerous one but is knocked out by the body's defense mechanisms. Occasionally, however, the mutant cells take hold and grow uncontrollably into a malignant tumor. Uncontrolled growth is distinguishes cancerous cells from normal ones. But precisely what goes awry in the cell and the defenses to permit the cancerous cells to take over is one of the great mysteries of science.

The overnight trading of American stocks on Nasdaq began yesterday with a clear warning to brokers of the risks of global trading, as one trader apparently managed to sell shares in a small American company at an unrealistically high price. While the losses to an unidentified market maker from that trade were small in total dollars, they served to highlight one risk of global trading, that of foreigners being blind-sided by local traders who often learn important information before overseas traders do.

On Nov. 6, 1986, General Motors delivered a body blow to this city of 24,000. To cut costs, the auto maker said it would close its 64-year-old plant here that assembled Chevrolet Camaros and Pontiac Firebirds. Residents feared that G.M.'s departure would mean the end to life as Norwood had known it for generations. G.M.'s taxes afforded this small city its independence from neighboring Cincinnati and spawned a wealth of services, including free paramedic services, and generous budgets that had allowed the city to buy a $750,000 incinerator and a $110,000 fire truck, both for cash.

To close the gap of nearly $5 billion in next year's $31 billion budget, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo proposes authorizing sharp tuition increases at SUNY campuses, eliminating more than 5,000 state jobs, cutting Medicaid spending by about $1 billion and deferring more than $1 billion in tax cuts. Most of the biggest elements of the plan, which the Democratic Governor is to present to the Legislature on Tuesday in his annual budget message, have been discussed for some time. The tuition increases, of $200 at some campuses and up to $800 at others, were disclosed today by Cuomo administration aides. If they are enacted, the cost of attending some State University schools will have doubled over the last two years. Major Stumbling Block In addition, the new budget would eliminate between 5,000 and 10,000 state jobs on top of the 20,000 cut in the last year. It would also pay for about $500 million in borrowing that the state will likely have to undertake this spring because of the failure of the Governor and the Legislature to agree on any plan for closing the gap in budget for the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31.

In a move to reduce the amount of metal pollutants dumped in New Jersey, Gov. Jim Florio today signed into law a bill that he said imposed one of the toughest standards in the nation on the manufacture and disposal of dry-cell batteries. The measure will ban most of the house hold batteries now in use because of their high mercury content and require manu facturers to redesign rechargeable prod ucts like hand-held vacuums so that the batteries can be removed.

TO biologists, the Galapagos Islands are very special places, not least because their distinctive wildlife prompted Darwin to hit upon the theory of evolution. But the islands, off the coast of Ecuador, have long posed a troublesome evolutionary mystery: geologically, they are far too young for evolution, operating at its usual pace, to have produced the many unique life forms that now inhabit the islands. A team of oceanographers and geologists has now happily resolved the mystery. They have found evidence that the first plants and animals to colonize the Galapagos chain probably landed on ancient islands that are no longer visible because they long ago sank beneath the waves. Their inhabitants were presumably forced to move on to the younger islands that exist today.

In the mire of the savings and loan mess, T. Timothy Ryan Jr., the nation's top savings and loan regulator, has gotten remarkably little mud on his clothes. The 46-year-old regulator has won so many political points for his swift seizure of faltering institutions and his crackdowns on industry scoundrels that his name has come up as a possibility for the next Comptroller of the Currency. He has successfully calmed a worried Congress, and his personal ties to President Bush and Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady have brought him into the Administration's inner circle.

In a case that raised far-reaching political and moral questions, two former East German border guards were convicted today of having shot and killed a fleeing refugee in February 1989. The verdict set a legal precedent, establishing that officials from what was once the Communist state of East Germany could be punished for actions that were not only legal under East German law, but which were compulsory for them to carry out.

DISCONTENT with the way the heavens have arranged its rivers and rainfall, China is embarking on a program to build huge waterworks that could have a colossal impact on the nation's development in the 21st century. The Yellow River, so thick with silt that it sometimes seems a flowing yellow mud pie, courses past timeless villages in northern China whose peasants are constantly threatened by floods from the same waters that sustain them in irrigating their fields.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has agreed to buy half of the Executive Life Insurance Company of New York, a move that should greatly ease the concerns of the 100,000 policyholders in limbo since insurance regulators seized Executive Life and its sister company in California last spring. Details of the agreement were disclosed yesterday by people working on the deal, who insisted on anonymity.

One of Japan's most senior politicians said over the weekend that America's economic troubles were rooted in a work force "too lazy" to compete with Japan, and argued that one of the biggest problems of the United States was that nearly a third of its workers "cannot even read." The harshly worded assessment by Yoshio Sakurauchi, the 79-year-old Speaker of Japan's powerful lower house of Parliament, seemed bound to fuel the trans-Pacific arguments over the causes of America's trade and competitiveness difficulties with Japan. Though Japanese politicians rarely speak publicly in such direct and confrontational terms about the United States, Mr. Sakurauchi's comments seemed to amplify themes that have appeared in the Japanese press and on television since President Bush and his entourage of business executives left Japan 10 days ago.