May 19, 1993

It was warm, so the front door was open. Trinity Wamah, a 34-year-old student from Liberia, sat in a Staten Island social club chatting about his homeland and the civil war he left behind. Then he looked to the doorway. He saw a young man with a pistol. He saw the man firing at the crowd of Liberians, his face silent and grimacing. A man to his left fell. Then a bullet struck Mr. Wamah's arm.

The Hewlett-Packard Company, propelled by its revitalized computer business, reported second-quarter earnings yesterday that surpassed Wall Street's highest expectations -- no small feat given the computer industry's recent financial doldrums. Investors flocked to the company's shares, which rose $5.125 to close at $84.75 yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange, where Hewlett-Packard was the third-most-active stock.

Three years after the Board of Regents banned Channel One from New York State public schools, Whittle Communications is once again seeking entree to the nation's second-largest student audience, this time through a combination of silk-glove lobbying and classic end-run politics. Rejected by the Regents because of the two minutes of commercials contained in Channel One's daily 12-minute newscasts, Whittle has now taken its case to the Legislature, asking it to give local school districts the right to circumvent the ban. The Assembly and Senate Education Committees are considering bills that give each of the state's 718 school districts the freedom to show Channel One, which is aimed at high-school students.

In the life cycle of airlines, the season is changing from winter to spring. After a decade that saw far more airline deaths than births, 15 new airlines, including Kiwi International and Reno Air, have begun flying. Conditions are fertile for the upstarts largely because of the demise of Pan American World Airways, Eastern Airlines and Midway, among others, and cutbacks by majors like American, Delta and United. Laid-off pilots, mechanics and flight attendants are eager to get back to work -- even at a fraction of their former pay. Planes sitting idle in the Arizona desert can be leased cheaply, underused hubs and routes are available and passengers are eager to buy cut-rate tickets. New Federal Policy And importantly, Secretary of Transportation Federico F. Pena has warned the industry that anticompetitive practices will not be tolerated, and his department has been working with the Justice Department to make sure that new carriers -- in addition to the 15 already flying, 11 more are planned -- are not knocked out before they have a chance.

A Federal jury ordered officials of the City University of New York to pay Dr. Leonard Jeffries $400,000 for violating his free speech rights by removing him as chairman of the black studies department at City College after he made a 1991 speech widely criticized as anti-Semitic. The jury assigned damages individually to each of six officials who were found to have violated Dr. Jeffries's rights. He had named 15 officials in his lawsuit.