March 16, 1993

Germany's political leaders reached a "solidarity pact" over the weekend, seeking to resolve questions of how to divide the huge financial burden of rebuilding eastern Germany. But the agreement's most immediate effect may be to open the way for the Bundesbank to lower interest rates to try to bolster the flagging economy. Many analysts expect two important rates to be lowered on Thursday at a meeting of the policy council of the Bundesbank, Germany's powerful central bank.

The New York City Sanitation Department encountered so many problems yesterday in clearing icy roadways and removing piles of snow that officials said a full cleanup from the weekend's blizzard could take up to two weeks and cost more than $10 million. Like ruins littering a battlefield, mounds of snow that had been molded by plows and then turned rock-hard overnight dotted the region's landscape, preventing parking on streets, blocking access to emergency shoulders on highways and turning routine walks into slippery, acrobatic ordeals.

The New York Post, which has survived the New York newspaper wars since 1801, sought bankruptcy protection yesterday under its current owner, Peter S. Kalikow, after failing to publish yesterday's issue. The missed issue came amid a battle between The Post's staff and the man who is taking over the newspaper from Mr. Kalikow, Abraham Hirschfeld.

Alfred C. Sikes, who, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, pushed to open the communications industry to new technologies, has been named to head the efforts of the Hearst Corporation to marry its journalistic resources with satellite, computer and other emerging technologies. Mr. Sikes, who quit as chairman of the F.C.C. the day before President Clinton was inaugurated, will be moving to New York to head Hearst's new Media and Technology Group, the privately held communications company said yesterday.

WHEN Dr. Joseph J. Jacobs started out as the director of the new Office of Alternative Medicine late last fall, he had a giddily adventurous way of describing his mission. He was an entrepreneur, he told everybody, out prospecting for fresh approaches to thwarting intractable ailments. He had come to the staid halls of the National Institutes of Health to explore the scientific worthiness of unorthodox practices often dismissed by conventional doctors as quackery or near it, from homeopathy to acupuncture, from the use of bee pollen for treating asthma to the laying on of hands to ease unbearable pain.