December 23, 1992

CONNIE CHUNG, the CBS News correspondent, and her husband, Maury Povich, the syndicated talk-show host, are having a spirited argument right in the middle of the stone-washed jeans and turtleneck sweaters at the Gap at 76th Street and Columbus Avenue. Bystanders are trying to seem nonchalant, even as they crane their necks to hear what provoked this popular power couple into a public spat. Well, for inquiring minds, it's the fit.

New York State's highest court ruled yesterday that law firms cannot dismiss lawyers for doing what their professional disciplinary rules require -- blowing the whistle on a dishonest colleague. The court, the State Court of Appeals, has almost uniformly protected the rights of employers to dismiss almost any worker for almost any reason, at least when anti-discrimination laws do not apply. But given the role of lawyers as self-regulated officers of the court, the court held, in a 5-to-0 decision, that the rights of law firms must be read more narrowly.

A Federal appeals court in Manhattan yesterday removed what is expected to be the last legal hurdle blocking Mortimer B. Zuckerman from buying The Daily News. In a decision released late yesterday afternoon, the court said that Mr. Zuckerman can dissolve lifetime job guarantees won by the paper's typographers 18 years ago. But the court ruled that to do so, he must abide by the last offer he made to the typographers when negotiations broke down on Dec. 17. Under that package, some of the union's 167 members would not have jobs.

The bond market continued its holiday rally yesterday, with the price of the 30-year bond jumping more than half a point and the yield dropping to 7.34 percent, its lowest since Oct. 5. In the last two days, the price of the long bond has risen a point, and the yield has fallen almost a tenth of a point. The rest of the market followed, with Treasury notes up a quarter-point to a half-point.

After 23 years away, it is the parting image of prison, not the first glimpse of freedom, that lingers now with Eddie Ellis, a pioneer Black Panther and convicted murderer, as he labors back home in Harlem on his hard-won new appreciation of a criminal and his community. The sight that haunts him came on a day last summer when Mr. Ellis was finally being processed back to freedom and walked past a huge hall filled with hundreds of incoming prisoners, all neatly leg-shackled, manacled and seated in two long files of benches, as orderly and sad-eyed, he recalls, as fresh oarsmen on a galley ship.