February 16, 1993

The Economy President Clinton used plain language to appeal directly to the American public to support the tax increases and spending cuts he proposes. In his first televised address from the Oval Office, Mr. Clinton seemed to be preparing millions of viewers for the speech he will deliver tomorrow, when he will lay out to a joint session of Congress his often painful remedies for the economy. [ A1. ]

Although Americans are more judgmental about President Clinton's performance than they were about his two predecessors at this early stage, most remain open to the prospect of dramatic changes in taxing, spending and the way the White House is run, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. While the new President irritated many Americans by giving a lot of attention after his inauguration to the issue of homosexuals in the military, he still has the confidence of most people, who seem ready to make some sacrifices to fix the bedeviling deficit.

One of the infants in the sterile hospital room wailed disconsolately, frantically flailing its tiny arms and legs as children born to crack-using mothers often do. Next to her, at the Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, another child slept peacefully, her face sculpted in an angelic expression. The contrast seemed to confirm what everyone knows about cocaine-exposed babies. But contrary to such assumptions, hospital officials said it was the peaceful child, not the cranky one, whose mother had been using the potent drug.

Even the front-runners in the personal computer industry can't impress Wall Street these days. Profits are surging at the Dell Computer Corporation, one ofthe nation's fastest-growing companies, and at the Compaq Computer Corporation, which has engineered one of the most adept turnarounds in corporate America. And analysts say the prospects are for more of the same.

Like the city it is supposed to serve, the Los Angeles public school system is a stricken giant, hobbled by financial problems, a threatened teachers' strike and racial and ethnic strife. Overcrowded classrooms, leaky roofs, outdated textbooks, metal detectors and police officers patrolling schools are common in America's inner-city schools.