February 26, 1992

Consumers' confidence in the economy plunged in February to the lowest level since 1974, when the nation was gripped by a severe recession, a business research group said today in its widely followed survey. The Conference Board said its index for February dropped four points from January to a reading of 46.3, the lowest level since December 1974.

METRO DIGEST UNEMPLOYMENT AND UNCERTAINTY The New York region faces the prospect of at least 40,000 employees losing their jobs during the next few years. This comes on the heels of the more than 500,000 jobs lost in the region since employment peaked in February 1989. But there is a new and, in many ways, more disruptive element to the latest round of layoff announcements. As companies reveal that thousands of people will be laid off but provide scant details as to when, where or who will be affected, they are creating heightened uncertainty, and causing even those whose jobs are not directly threatened to cut their spending. A1. NEW YORK CITY

Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska kept his Presidential campaign alive today with a substantial victory in the South Dakota Democratic primary, an outcome that imperils the candidacy of Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. President Bush was not opposed on the Republican slate after Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator, lost a court bid to have his name added to the ballot. But in what may have been a message of dissatisfaction with the incumbent, about a third the Republican primary voters chose a slate of uncommitted delegates.

The Economy Consumers' confidence in the economy plunged in February to the lowest level since 1974. The sharp drop surprised economists, who expected continued weakness, but not a dive. [ Page D1. ] The New York City region faces the prospect of at least 40,000 employees losing their jobs during the next few years. And those are just the layoffs that have been publicly announced. [ A1. ]

The Department of Energy said today that the dismantling of much of the nation's nuclear arsenal would require it to store tons of plutonium at a Texas weapons plant where warheads were once assembled. But critics of the Energy Department's proposal, including a prominent nuclear scientist and the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental and disarmament group, contended that the plan could contaminate soil, air and water as well as make the plant a target for a terrorist attack.

Once Intermediate School 218 opens in Washington Heights on Monday, it will hardly ever close. Fifteen hours a day, six days a week, 52 weeks a year, its doors will be open not only to its 1,100 students, but also to their mothers and fathers and other children in the neighborhood, offering dental treatment, drug counseling and dozens of other social services along with the three R's.

There are as many candidates as there are voters in an unusual election here, the vote to fill the vacant mayor's office in this city where politics is the chief preoccupation. The eight City Council members who must choose an interim mayor are supporting eight different candidates, and the prospect that one of them will round up the five votes needed for victory seems dim at best.

They leave Brooklyn in the dead of night with little more than bus fare, a change of clothes and a reputation on the streets. Their destination is Buffalo. Their job is to sell drugs. Bands of young New York City drug dealers, skilled in the use of guns and terrorist tactics to take over neighborhoods, are being recruited to hustle the streets of Buffalo and surrounding cities and towns, according to local and Federal law-enforcement officials. Lured by higher-level dealers' promises of a safer and more lucrative trade, these teen-agers have become the migrant workers of the drug world.

Viewed in hindsight, the General Motors Corporation's assembly plant in North Tarrytown, N.Y., was probably doomed the moment the company decided in 1987 to manufacture its plastic-bodied mini-vans there. Although mini-vans were an America original in the 1980's, G.M.'s adaptation, with its wide stance and sloping, futuristic nose, was far less popular than G.M. hoped. The auto maker expected to sell 150,000 to 200,000 mini-vans annually, which would have kept the North Tarrytown plant humming at capacity and might have assured that subsequent mini-van models would be built there.

Responding to China's human rights record, soaring trade surplus and continued arms exports to the Middle East, the Senate voted today to impose conditions on the renewal of China's favorable trade status with the United States in June. The vote sends the legislation to President Bush after nearly three years of political maneuvering. The Administration has repeatedly threatened to veto the legislation, and the 59-to-39 vote today fell 8 votes short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to override a veto if all senators voted. But the margin was wider than in last summer's vote on the same issue, when the Democrats also prevailed, 55 to 44.

In a surprising climax to its agency review, Mercedes-Benz of North America Inc. yesterday dismissed McCaffrey & McCall, its shop since 1979, and hired Scali, McCabe, Sloves, which lost the Volvo account 15 months ago in auto advertising's most notorious and costly scandal. "Vindication," Marvin Sloves, Scali's chairman and chief executive in New York, exuded in a telephone interview. "All I said was that we wanted to get back into the automobile business, and we have."

For the second time in two years, the New York City Council voted yesterday to extend a tax break for developers that both Council leaders and Mayor David N. Dinkins have said should be revamped. With the administration's urging and blessing, the Council voted 44 to 6 to extend the industrial and commercial development incentive program, which expired on Dec. 31, through July. In the meantime, the State Legislature and the Council are to consider new bills that would channel the tax incentives into poorer neighborhoods and encourage more renovation than new construction in Manhattan.