May 16, 1992

At 11 P.M., or 1 A.M. on the many nights she must work overtime, Allison McClure stops at her mother's house to retrieve her 3-year-old daughter, Mia, take her home and put her back to bed. Then she packs Mia's bag for nursery school, does the ironing, cleans house and takes a shower. "I'm in bed by 3 or 4," she said during her 9-to-9:30 P.M. "lunch" break at a mail processing center. Then she gets up at 6:45 A.M. "I get her up. I fix her breakfast, I feed her and I take her to school. I'll lie down for about an hour and a half, and then I'm up. Any business I have to do, I try to fit in between then and the time I have to be at work at 3."

Mayor David N. Dinkins yesterday effectively rejected the sweeping overhaul of the city's troubled shelter system recommended by a mayoral commission, saying that his administration would study its major proposals. He allowed the commission to claim partial victory by endorsing some of its ideas, including a pilot rental subsidy program for 200 homeless families and a heavier reliance on nonprofit groups to develop and run shelters.

The death knell rang for another big New York City retailer yesterday as Alexander's Inc. closed its 11 stores and filed for bankruptcy protection. The budget department store company, merchant to successive waves of struggling immigrants since 1928, said it would reopen the stores for a close-out sale, then cease operations. The company, which has not turned a profit on its retail operations since 1987, will continue to try to sell or lease its stores, some of which occupy prime real estate locations like the one occupied by the flagship store at 58th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

Negotiations on South Africa's future deadlocked today, prompting President F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, to meet to try to devise a solution. After the two leaders met with their advisers and then for more than an hour with each other, Mr. Mandela said they would report the outcome on Saturday. He described their meeting as "substantial," the South Africa Press Association reported, but did not say what they had decided.

Haitians have suddenly resumed the flight from their country aboard small boats in numbers that surpass the surge seen in October in the aftermath of a violent military coup. With an average of almost 250 people a day being plucked from the seas off Haiti in recent weeks, the number being temporarily housed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba has risen to about 8,500, from a low of 2,000 in March. On Wednesday, one of the busiest days yet, 903 Haitians on 11 rickety vessels were plucked from the seas.