July 30, 1992

THE housing market may rise or collapse, but television home shows seem to be recession-proof. And why not? Do-it-yourselfing has obvious appeal in tough times: not only does it save money, but it takes one's mind off matters less manageable than drywalls. And if you have no prospect of turning your shack into a mansion soon, the next best thing is to watch somebody else accomplish it in half-hour installments. A lot of people do. A spokesman for the popular "This Old House" put the weekly audience at about seven million. Whether or not such demonstrations hold more water than a leaky basement, here is a report on what the hammer-and-drill crowd is up to these days. 'This Old House' This PBS staple, around since 1979, is the "Masterpiece Theater" of home shows. Much of the work goes on downstairs, but most of the renovators, restorers and conservators who appear on the show plainly belong upstairs, despite the standard dark shirts and jeans. The man who will dig you a septic tank (for $15,000 or $20,000) talks like a professor.

A drug widely used in the United States to prevent premature births is ineffective and can have dangerous side effects that on rare occasions kill pregnant women, a study has found. The drug, ritodrine, made by Philips-Duphar of the Netherlands, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1980, after smaller studies indicated it might effectively halt premature labor. But the new study, the largest ever conducted on the suppression of premature birth, indicates that these studies may have been misleading.

Around midnight, just as the crowd of revelers started to thicken, three young women emerged from a bar and swayed carefree along the tree-lined sidewalk, explaining in inebriated giggles that when it came to night life, nowhere, not even Manhattan, compared to Bell Boulevard in Bayside, Queens. "You don't have the traffic, you don't have the drugs, you don't have the bums you have in Manhattan," one of them, Randy Schiffman, said. "It's a different class. You've got the suburbs coming here."

Bowing to pressure from Congress and City Hall, the Federal General Services Administration reversed itself late yesterday and said that it was suspending excavation on part of the site where a 34-story office tower is being built over a colonial-era cemetery for black New Yorkers. The decision was a clear victory for Mayor David N. Dinkins, who asked the General Services Administration last week to stop excavation and construction on a portion of the site, in lower Manhattan. The Mayor said he was concerned that the disinterment of bodies found there was being conducted without proper safeguards or an approved research design. A Local Rejection Three days later, William J. Diamond, the regional administrator of the General Services Administration, rejected the Mayor's request.

After weeks of bad news, President Bush's campaign manager went to Capitol Hill today to assure House Republicans that everything would be fine soon and received a round of harsh criticism for for painting what the lawmakers saw as an unbelievably rosy picture of the campaign. By the account of participants, the meeting changed from a cheerleading session led by Vice President Dan Quayle and the campaign manager, Frederic V. Malek, to the latest in a string of political bumps for the White House. This came on a day when the Bush team had planned to use a barrage of press releases and a revised campaign schedule to give the appearance of a reinvigorated campaign.