June 22, 1993

The Supreme Court will decide whether ash from municipal incinerators is hazardous waste needing special, costly, treatment. Page A19.

For four decades, Japan Inc. has been supported by a triad consisting of a single political party, a powerful bureaucracy and wealthy business organizations. Now, one leg of the stool, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, is on the verge of splintering and perhaps losing power, ending a period of political stability widely believed to have been conducive to business growth. Reflecting the concern about this, the Tokyo stock market today suffered its sharpest drop this year, with the Nikkei average plummeting 592.11 points, or 3 percent, to 19,212.43. Yen Is Also Weaker The Japanese yen was also pounded in Tokyo trading today, closing at 110.48 yen to the dollar, about 3 yen weaker than it closed on Friday, before legislators approved a no-confidence vote against Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa that will almost certainly drive him from office.

Even as real income rose in all but three of New York's neighborhoods in the 1980's, one of the city's poorest places -- Hunts Point in the Bronx -- grew poorer by 30 percent. On Staten Island, the most suburban borough, the number of foreign-born people increased four times faster than in the city as a whole. And the number of New Yorkers with college degrees increased more than 44 percent. Fleshing out a stark profile, a new portrait of New York City drawn from the 1990 census reveals broad demographic changes along with striking contrasts in neighborhoods that have reinvented themselves to accommodate newcomers.

Robert A. G. Monks, the shareholder activist who shook up the Eastman Kodak Company and Sears, Roebuck & Company, is finding that the public pension funds he led into battle are now forsaking him in his new role as a money manager. Nearly two years ago, Mr. Monks decided that investors could make money from shareholder activism -- the belief that aggressive shareholders can unlock hidden corporate values. So he started a fund named the Lens Fund to test that concept, hoping to raise around $400 million to buy stakes in troubled companies in which management changes could be sought -- and a company's stock price increased. 'Relationship Investing' The concept gained the moniker "relationship investing," and Mr. Monks flew around the country calling on more than 60 pension funds to put their money where his mouth was. But so far, he has not raised a dime. And in a stunning blow, his closest ally in many of his celebrated corporate battles, the California Public Employees Retirement System, an investment behemoth with more than $70 billion in assets, turned Mr. Monks down just last week.

THE bulldozers are scooping out the yellow earth along the Yangtze River in preparation for the world's largest hydroelectric project, a dam that will create a lake 350 miles long, fuel China's industrial revolution and save millions of people from the constant threat of flooding. Or perhaps the project will simply create the world's most colossal mud pie.

With casinos spreading across the country like stacks of chips at a hot roulette table, two things are clear as this aging resort celebrates the 15th anniversary of legal gambling here. First, Atlantic City has demonstrated the money to be made in casinos and other games of chance.

ELECTROMAGNETIC fields, linked for more than a decade, however tenuously, with cancer in children, have become the stuff of nightmares. Entrepreneurs have been doing a brisk business selling devices to measure EMF's, as they are known, in the home or office. And utility companies are quietly spending $1 billion a year nationwide to reduce exposures from their power lines and facilities, while preparing to face a barrage of lawsuits holding them responsible for childhood cancers. But in a recent lawsuit in San Diego, the first such case to go to trial, a jury rejected a couple's claim that their 5-year-old daughter's rare form of kidney cancer had been caused by the tangle of power lines hanging ominously above their home. The San Diego case raised the question of just how strong the scientific evidence is linking electromagnetic fields and cancer, and whether the public's anxiety is valid.

EMPIRE SAYS IT DID NOT VERIFY ALL CLAIMS Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield has routinely paid claims from doctors, hospitals and pharmacies without any attempt to determine whether the claims had already been paid or were fraudulent, company officials acknowledged. A1. NEW YORK'S COMMUTER TAX LEFT TO STAND New York State's method of setting tax rates for nonresidents was allowed to stand by the United States Supreme Court. A1. The New Jersey Legislature passed a $15.4 billion budget for fiscal 1994 that includes $25 million in anticipated revenue from a retaliatory commuter tax on New Yorkers. B5. NEW YORK CITY DEFENSE IN BOMB CASE CALLS EVIDENCE FALSE A lawyer defending one of the prime suspects in the World Trade Center bombing contends in court papers that the Federal Bureau of Investigation relied on an agent's "deliberately or recklessly false" sworn statement to search a storage locker. B3. SCHOOLS CHANCELLOR FINALISTS NAMED The top 10 candidates to succeed schools Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez include the current superintendents in Detroit, San Francisco, Washington and Fairfax County, Va., two senior aides to Mr. Fernandez, New York's deputy education commissioner, Connecticut's former Education Commissioner, a foundation head and the chief executive officer of a California software company. B3. INDICTMENTS IN SMUGGLING OF IMMIGRANTS The captain and a 10-member crew of the Golden Venture, the ship that ran aground off Queens two weeks ago with nearly 300 illegal Chinese immigrants aboard, were indicted yesterday on conspiracy and smuggling charges. B2. REVIEW MISREAD, HOUSING OFFICIALS SAY New York City housing officials adamantly denied a report charging that more than a billion dollars in Federal aid was at risk because the agency's spending plan was behind schedule. B2. DINKINS AND GIULIANI GO TO LEGISLATURE Mayor Dinkins and his Republican opponent, Rudolph W. Giuliani, took their mayoral campaigns to Albany, shadowing each other through the State Capitol as they lobbied legislators to maintain existing rent regulations on New York City apartments. B3. REGION IF D'AMATO WERE GOVERNOR Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, saying he would decide this fall whether to run for governor next year, told a luncheon meeting in Jericho, L.I., that if he were elected, he would sell the World Trade Center, the New York City airports and the state's Offtrack Betting system. B4. PRIVATE POLICE FACE COURT CHALLENGE New Jersey state lawyers plan to go to court to try to force tiny Sussex Borough to disband its uniformed security force. B4. APPEALS COURT RULES AGAINST KILLER A New Jersey appeals court upheld the conviction of John List for the murders of his mother, wife and three children in their home in Westfield, N.J. B4. Chronicle B4 Our Towns by Kirk Johnson B5

The Supreme Court today upheld the Bush and Clinton Administrations' policy of intercepting fleeing Haitians at sea and returning them to Haiti without asylum hearings. The 8-to-1 decision, written by Justice John Paul Stevens with a dissent by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, concluded that the policy was permitted under Federal immigration law and an international treaty to which the United States is a party.

When Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri, seated in an ornate room with lacy curtains and a panoramic view of Teheran, was asked a few days ago about the killings of Iranian dissidents abroad, he condemned the dead rather than the living. "How many terrorist activities and explosions inside Iran have these people confessed to?" the Minister asked, referring to such opposition leaders as Mohammed Hussein Nagdi, a former Ambassador to Italy, who was gunned down in Rome.

As Western companies spend less time searching Eastern Europe for new deals and more time scrambling to make existing investments pan out, Volkswagen A.G.'s acquisition of the Skoda automobile plant here suggests that with a clear strategy, attention to detail and some political support, the region can be profitable for the determined. With high-profile investments like the General Electric Company's acquisition of Tungsram, the Hungarian light-bulb maker, and Phibro Energy's involvement in the Russian oil industry floundering, Volkswagen after two years is already turning a modest operating profit building Skoda cars. Gains From Cheap Labor The German auto maker's plans to invest nearly $5 billion in Skoda by the end of the decade make the deal the largest firm corporate commitment in the former Soviet bloc. VW is capitalizing on low labor costs to build low-priced cars not just for the Czech Republic but for export to Germany, Britain, Greece, Turkey and other nations.

A confidential report on nuclear energy in the former Soviet bloc says it would be economically feasible to close 25 of the most dangerous nuclear reactors during the next few years and replace them with gas-fired power plants. But the report says the former Communist countries oppose such a plan and want to keep their nuclear plants going as long as possible, a choice that could prove more dangerous and costlier for the West.