August 27, 1992

METRO DIGEST NEW YORK CITY 12 PEOPLE WOUNDED AS GUNMEN OPEN FIRE In what the police called one of the most violent shootouts in recent years, gunmen drove up to a Bronx apartment building and opened fire, wounding 12 people, many of whom crawled frantically for cover because they feared being shot again. The gunfire, which apparently stemmed from a dispute between drug dealers, touched off minutes of terror as residents poured from their buildings to look for friends and relatives among a tangle of bodies, victims and witnesses said. A1. SANDBLASTING HALTED AGAIN ON BRIDGE After suspending maintenance on the Williamsburg Bridge amid complaints that sandblasting was spewing dust and paint chips with elevated levels of lead into Brooklyn, New York City's Transportation Department has allowed the work to resume this month -- on the Manhattan side of the bridge. The new work was halted after residents and elected officials on both sides of the East River expressed outrage that the department had allowed sandblasting on five occasions in Manhattan this month. B3. QUEENS MAN SURRENDERS IN SHOOTING After nearly six weeks on the run, a 25-year-old Queens man surrendered himself to face charges that he shot and killed an off-duty Housing Authority police officer and another man after a brawl on a Bayside street. B3. DINKINS GETS HIGH PRAISE Felix G. Rohatyn, the chairman of the Municipal Assistance Corporation who endorsed Mayor David N. Dinkins in the 1989 mayoral race and who has frequently criticized the Mayor's handling of New York City's severe budget problems since then, lavishly praised Mr. Dinkins for engineering a fiscal turnaround. B3. PROJECT GAINS AN APPROVAL To win approval for his Riverside South development project from Borough President Ruth W. Messinger, Donald J. Trump agreed to contribute $5 million to renovate the 72d Street subway station, set aside at least 10 percent of the apartments for subsidized housing and insure there would be no net increase of sewage to the North River treatment plant in Harlem. B2. A sign on Maiden Lane raises a furor. Lower Manhattan Journal, B3. REGION AN AGREEMENT IN NASSAU The Nassau County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved enough borrowing today to pay county salaries through the end of October, but not without an acrimonious debate over who was more fiscally responsible, Democrats or Republicans. B4. IN A SEASIDE TOWN, DEADLY GAS Deadly gas produced by decaying vegetation, buried under sand years ago in the New Jersey resort community of Sea Isle City, was released by a construction crew, killing one police officer, leaving another officer in critical condition and sending 38 people to the hospital. B5. YEAR OF THE WOMAN TURNS NASTY The political Year of the Woman took a decidedly unsisterly turn as two prominent New York feminists who support Geraldine A. Ferraro for Senate attacked the feminist credentials of the other woman in the race. They accused City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman of betraying the hope of the feminist movement that women in politics would behave differently, and with more principle, than men. B4. Chronicle B7

After the light knock, Bella Goldschmidt opened her apartment door cautiously to an elderly man with a kind, round face and bewildered eyes. "I wanted to see Julie," the man said softly, the words almost buried by his German accent.

Even in the cradle, babies as young as 5 months have a rudimentary ability to add and subtract, according to a study being published today. The study seems to show that infants know when simple calculations like one plus one or two minus one are done correctly or incorrectly. The infants in the study indicated awareness that a wrong answer was given by staring longer at the unexpected results.

Almost as powerful as the love of the vine in Burgundy is the rivalry with, and mistrust of, France's other great wine region, Bordeaux. So when a large delegation of Bordeaux chateau owners was recently greeted here in the heart of Burgundy wine country for the first time, it indicated that a fundamental shift had taken place in the French wine business. "Before this visit, we had been much closer to New York than to Bordeaux," said Bertrand DeVillard, the director of Antonin Rodet, a producer and distributor of Burgundy wines. "But now that times are tough, we have to start learning things from each other. When a threat exists, unity is sacred."

The Iran-contra trial of Clair E. George, once a top official at the Central Intelligence Agency, ended in a mistrial today after the jurors said they were deadlocked on all nine counts. Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court immediately granted a motion for a mistrial made by Mr. George's lawyer, and prosecutors just as quickly vowed to retry the case.