February 24, 1992

Guns have always been Izhevsk's business, even when this city on the western edge of the Ural Mountains was a ramshackle outpost of the czar's empire. In 1947, the city produced the first AK-47 rifle, which became perhaps the world's most popular automatic and arguably one of the best known products of the Soviet Union's vaunted and secretive military-industrial complex. Today, nine months after officially opening its doors to the outside world, Izhevsk finds itself on the edge of an economic void. Military contracts, which once accounted for more than 70 percent of local production, have been cut back to practically nothing, leaving factories that produce guns, rockets, anti-aircraft systems and other sophisticated equipment to fend for themselves in an empty marketplace.

ALBERTVILLE, France, Feb. 23 The XVI Winter Olympics ended today, just about the way they opened, with a curious but entertaining, tres Francaise ceremony celebrating the Games, the Savoy region of France and the Olympic spirit. Amid hundreds of local children, singers, dancers and Olympic athletes, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee, beckoned the youth of the world to reconvene in Lillehammer, Norway, two years from now for the start of the Winter Olympics' new quadrennial cycle. - And wouldn't it be a treat if those Games turned out as successfully as these? For all the anxieties associated with organizing Winter Games spread across 600 square miles of mountainous terrain and holding a 16-day party for a reconfigured world, the Albertville Olympics worked. The glorious French Alps became a warm and welcoming maitre d' in sight, sound and emotion. So often, the French get a bad rap beyond their borders. Maybe in Paris, the reputation is justified. Not here. There was not a hint of haughtiness in the Haut Savoie. As the Games unfolded, the organizers and their volunteer staff of thousands could not have been friendlier or more accommodating. For that, they deserved to celebrate themselves. "We delivered what we promised," Jean-Claude Killy, the 1968 Olympic ski champion who served as co-president of the 1992 Winter Games organizing committee, said today in a final news conference. He was ebullient, proud, even jocular, admitting that "we still have not found our Colombian athletes." Colombia became the running joke of these Games. That country's athletes were on the entry lists but never appeared to compete. Anyway, 2,174 athletes did compete, a record for the Winter Games, and so did 64 countries. That was a record, too. In the grandest way, friendliness and accommodation became the themes of these Games. With the recent melting away of political philosophies that used athletes as propaganda tools, the Albertville Olympics became the first devoid of any major "us-versus-them" mentality. There were new divisions, like separate teams from Slovenia, Croatia and Yugoslavia -- and something called a Unified Team, a combination of athletes from five former Soviet republics, and separate teams from three other former Soviet republics, independent Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Not that it all made much of a difference in practice. The Unified Team finished second in the overall medal standing, with 23 to Germany's 26, and the independents won none. Nor did Yugoslavia or any of its former republics. A World Turned Upside Down

Slowing sales of consumer electronics goods and shifts in computer chip technology are cutting profits at Japan's electronics giants. Page D1.

Everything was bright orange. The horses were orange. The sky was orange. The other jockeys were orange. The stands and crowd and track were orange. Then everything went black. "For five nights in a row in the hospital, I had this nightmare," Angel Cordero, the jockey, said last week. "All I could remember was orange, because I was wearing orange silks when the spill happened, and I went somersaulting through the air. I don't remember anything else for days afterward, not being hit by the horse, not slamming into the pole, but later I was told that I kept calling out, 'Doctor, give me something for the pain.' "

In a quiet courtyard in the Bronx Saturday night, a German exchange student's adventure in New York City came to an abrupt end with a fatal knife wound to the chest. The student, Stefan Groppel, was killed by a would-be robber who did not give him a chance to resist, the police said. A second man had grabbed Mr. Groppel's girlfriend seconds earlier and had tried to rob her as the couple walked to a party at a nearby apartment.