March 2, 1992

From the pulpit of a Brooklyn Baptist church yesterday, Mayor David N. Dinkins announced a $28 million program to identify the 40 most dangerous public high schools and middle schools in New York City and to bolster security at them. Less than a week after two students were shot dead in a hallway at Thomas Jefferson High School in East New York, the Mayor responded to a plea from Schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez, who had asked on Thursday to expand the use of metal detectors at the city's 21 most troubled schools.

In the New York City neighborhoods where Rabbi Meir Kahane got his start 24 years ago, ideological successors to the slain rabbi's Jewish Defense League are once again seeking recruits for what they describe as militant Jewish self-defense. When a Soviet Jewish emigre was shot to death in January in a late night holdup in Brighton Beach, the Jewish Defense Organization was quickly at the side of his family. It held demonstrations and promised to create street patrols in an effort to reach out to Jewish Soviet emigres, insular and uncertain how to organize in America.

Led by a new generation of lesbians and gay men who view their homosexuality as a matter of pride rather than privacy, the gay press is emerging from the shadows to claim a place in the mainstream. After years of being distributed without charge in bars and being dependent on sexually oriented advertisements for revenues, gay publications are changing their images and aspirations.

Unbeknownst to most investors, many brokers complete trades of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange at other exchanges or in the over-the-counter market at terms slightly less favorable to investors. In return for shifting the trades, the brokers receive payments -- in effect, bounties -- for diverting the business.

Based on a combination of his performance and his salary, Frank Thomas of the Chicago White Sox was the biggest bargain in baseball last season. Thomas, playing his first full season in the major leagues, clearly provided the most production for the least pay, pairing a penchant for getting on base with power production while earning only $120,000. Using a formula that combines on-base percentage, slugging percentage and salary, Thomas emerges with a dollars-per-production point rating of 119 (the lower rating the better). That put him well ahead of the ratings of players who earned millions more than the White Sox first baseman.