February 12, 1992

IF the billion Valentine's Day cards that are expected to be sold this week are any measure, love in the United States is robust and healthy. But Cupid might throw away his arrows if love were measured by the highly publicized cases that have pitted men against women in recent months. A kiss may still be a kiss, a sigh a sigh, but the fundamental thing that applies today when two lovers woo is, "Can I trust you?"

Not since the cold war ended has this city been so intently bombarded as this week, with foreign food and medicine raining down in a daily fusillade of charity. As comforting as the badly needed goods are, Muscovites say the deeper value of the gifts is that they are priming scores of new self-help neighborhood groups to create the sort of private charities long forbidden across decades of tattered Communist parsimony.

Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. sued hundreds of its former employees yesterday in an attempt to recover more than $250 million in bonuses paid shortly before the company filed for bankruptcy in early 1990. The bonuses have been at the heart of some of the biggest controversies resulting from the collapse of the Wall Street powerhouse. Indeed, the size of Drexel's bonuses was long a legend on Wall Street, but yesterday's lawsuit for the first time provides details of how rich those payments were, showing that many executives got between $100,000 and $1 million each month.

Elbows were flying in the Democratic primary race today. In a rough new phase of the New Hampshire campaign, there were sharp attacks, emotional radio and television ads, last-minute image shaping and in every camp a keen recognition that unpredictable New Hampshire was living up to its reputation as the days ticked down to the Feb. 18 primary.

A gubernatorial task force concluded today that New York's method of electing State Supreme Court justices probably violated the Voting Rights Act because of its "uniformly poor" record of placing black, Hispanic and female lawyers on the bench. By warning that the state's judicial system would not survive a legal challenge, the report sent a message to state officials that the Federal courts would reorganize the state's judicial system if the Legislature and the Governor did not do so first.