April 27, 1993

After years of trans-Pacific trade frictions over telephone equipment, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company announced today that it had tentatively agreed to sell a dozen of its most advanced central office telephone switches to Japan's main telephone company. The deal is the first instance of A.T.& T.'s selling telecommunications equipment to the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Company, which is the world's largest local telephone company and is two-thirds owned by the Japanese Government. Today's transaction came after years of pressure applied by the United States to get N.T.T. to break its traditional reliance on Japanese suppliers. Under Washington's Eye In recent weeks, American officials had let N.T.T. and the Japanese Government know that they were closely watching the talks.

Scott, Jake and Chrissy Mabb, ages 11, 9 and 7, watched on television last week with their father in South Dakota as fire destroyed the Branch Davidian compound that had been their entire world. William Mabb, their father, said he was shocked by their eerily calm response. "Mom said a year ago they might have to burn it down," the two boys told their father. The three were among the 21 children who were allowed to leave the compound in the first five days after the deadly shootout with Federal agents on Feb. 28. Twenty-four other children remained behind and died in last Monday's inferno, which arson investigators said today was set by cult members. [ Page A18. ]

They insist that the timing was coincidental, but officials at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis ordered the removal of two portraits of a young midshipman named Ross Perot from an alumni display earlier this month only days before President Clinton paid a visit. If only Mr. Clinton could so easily remove the specter of the Ross Perot of today. His grinning presence seems to be hanging over the White House these days like an annoying, uninvited visitor.

President Boris N. Yeltsin's victory brought expressions of relief from the White House, the State Department and Congressional supporters of aid for Russia. "This is a very, very good day, not only for the people of Russia, but for the people of the United States and all the people of the world," President Clinton said. Article, page A8.

Molten metal still flows in a handful of buildings on the seven-mile stretch of the Ohio River bank here where a sprawling Jones & Laughlin steel complex once employed as many as 17,000 workers. But if the nation had a hospital for communities, this struggling town 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh would have been sent to intensive care. The LTV Corporation, which bought Jones & Laughlin in 1968, has only 600 employees here now. They work in a tin mill that coats steel made elsewhere. Farther north, in a former LTV building, a machine maintenance and repair concern shares space with a small steel finishing company. Then there is J & L Structural Inc., a private concern that in 1987 acquired an LTV mill that makes 14-inch steel bars used primarily in mobile home construction, and a dock facility for shipping and receiving goods by water. It employs about 130 people.