September 1, 1993

A BOY'S WISH GROWS ON ITS OWN A very sick little boy recovered, but his request for cards lives on through a flurry of chain letters making the rounds of offices in Manhattan and other cities around the country. And as thousands of cards continue to pour in, those who publicized the boy's appeal have replaced "Thank you" with "Enough already." A1. COSTLY CABLE-RATE REDUCTION Cable television rates change under Federal formulas intended to save consumers more than $1 billion a year. But some cable customers in the New York metropolitan region are discovering that their bills are going up, not down. A1.

This week, the Mashantucket Pequot Indians will open a new building that will double the size of their Foxwoods casino. But even before the expansion, the tribe has become the region's clear center of gravity, with influence that extends from town halls to the State Capitol in Hartford. In a small town used to small business, the casino's numbers speak for themselves. The Pequots made $26 million in gross profits in July, just on slot machines. By year's end, they expect to be one of the largest employers in the state, with 9,000 workers. Their new building will give the tribe 139,000 square feet of gambling space. They say this will give them the largest gambling operation in the Western Hemisphere, edging out the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which claims to be the largest casino in the world. The power of all that money to buy up land has non-Indian residents worried.

CURRY is the chameleon of the table. It not only comes in assorted colors -- yellow, red and green -- but also can transform an ordinary dish into something aromatic and exotic. Shuffle the seasonings and an Indian dish can take on a Thai, Burmese or Caribbean personality. It can even taste French. Now, as Americans hanker for ever-spicier foods, curries of all sorts are becoming more common here. Since 1987, according to the American Spice Trade Association, sales of cumin and turmeric, the two main components of curry, have risen strikingly, up 65 percent for cumin, which gives curry its aromatic, slightly bitter intensity, and 40 percent for turmeric, the dried root that gives yellow curry its color. Curry's heat comes from pepper and chilies, and their sales are also skyrocketing.

With eight days to go before classes in New York City's public schools are scheduled to resume, officials said yesterday that they could not complete the emergency inspection program for asbestos in time to open all schools. The officials, who insisted on anonymity, said that at best they would be able to declare only some of the city's 1,069 schools free of asbestos hazards and ready to open on the first day of school, Sept. 9.

Cable television rates change today under Federal formulas intended to save consumers more than $1 billion a year. But some cable customers in the New York metropolitan region are discovering that their bills are going up, not down. Who saves and who pays depends on where a customer lives and what cable services he or she uses. Cable industry analysts say that in most cases, customers with several television sets will get the biggest price breaks. Subscribers who take basic service -- in most places, broadcast channels and a package of services like C-Span and the Arts and Entertainment Network -- are more likely to get higher bills.