December 15, 1993

Spending heavily for big-ticket goods, shoppers kicked off the holiday gift-giving season by sending retail sales in November up briskly, a preliminary tabulation by the Commerce Department showed today. Consumers shoved $178.93 billion across counters last month, four-tenths of 1 percent more than in October, despite severe wintry weather that curtailed activity in much of the country toward the end of the month.

Despite the jokes, warnings and lukewarm endorsements that greeted its approval by the Government, the condom for women is quietly gaining interest and often acceptance among the women who have been the first to try it in the United States as a weapon against H.I.V. Many of the family planning and AIDS clinics in New York City and other areas of the country that have given out or sold the condom in recent months said it remained to be seen whether the product would be a success when it hits store shelves, but that their clients and staff workers have been willing to try it and many said they would use it again. Based on informal discussions with clients, they estimate that half or more of those who have tried it say they like it.

New York State has two distinct types of school systems -- one urban, minority, poor and failing, and the other suburban, white, affluent and successful, the State Education Commissioner, Thomas Sobol, said yesterday. Mr. Sobol's remarks followed the release of a new study on Monday showing that New York's schools are among the most segregated in the country, with more than half of all black and Hispanic students attending schools where at least 9 out of 10 students are from minority groups.

Free trade means growth. Free trade means growth. Free trade means growth. Just say it 50 more times and all doubts will melt away. Those who dutifully followed the debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement and are now struggling to figure out what the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade has to do with the price of peas in Peoria may be excused for a dash of skepticism about a link that is more often asserted than explained. It is, in fact, one of the most widely held yet most difficult to prove ideas in economics.

The sparsely furnished West Side apartment contained little furniture and few signs of being lived in, but as the police raiders snapped open five suitcases they discovered a small mountain of evidence and a fortune in illegal drugs -- 424 pounds of pure heroin worth an estimated $240 million in street sales. Culminating an intricate two-year investigation that spun from the sidewalks of Hell's Kitchen to Europe to Asia and finally to a luxury Manhattan apartment building, law-enforcement officials said yesterday that they had found the hideaway of an international drug importer. The heroin, authorities said, could have been diluted and divided into at least 12 million packets selling for from $10 to $20 each.