January 29, 1994

Economy Grew Strongly In Final Quarter of '93 The economy surged at a 5.9 percent annual pace in the final quarter of 1993, the best performance in six years. The broad advance was driven mainly by gains in sectors of the economy that are responsive to low interest rates. Page 35. Studying Dying Patients When patients join experimental research protocols, the potential for cure may be outweighed by the possibility of exploitation. Page 7. Leading Law Firm to Close One of New York's most prestigious law firms, Shea & Gould, will close because of irreconcilable differences among its 80 partners. Page 35. Earthquake Largesse Some poor people whose lives were upended by the earthquake last week received windfalls when the Government cut red tape. Page 8.

After weeks of blizzards and brutal cold, the fickle Winter of '94 played another diabolically nasty trick on the New York region yesterday, delivering springlike temperatures and a pounding rain that melted snow, flooded roads and homes, delayed travelers and made life a muddy, miserable mess. As roller-coaster temperatures that had plunged below zero soared into the 50's, the rains came down in steady drizzles and driving torrents that, with an efficient silken lash, reduced piles of snow and ice, and formed running rivers. The flooding closed highways and schools, disrupted subways, caused hydroplaning and car accidents and had pedestrians hopping through puddles on every corner. Requests for Pumping Fire departments and plumbers across the region were swamped with calls from homeowners begging to have basements pumped out. In White Plains, so many fire trucks were running about on water-pumping duty that the wail of sirens sounded like an air raid. In Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., the front wheels of a Metro-North train derailed in a mudslide, injuring two trainmen and inconveniencing 300 passengers, who had to change trains.

Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa saved his job and the reform movement he has come to symbolize early today, announcing that he and his political opponents had reached an eleventh-hour compromise on a broad realignment of Japan's electoral system. The agreement, reached after a frantic day and night of negotiations, culminated a six-year effort in Japan to pass a framework of anti-corruption measures. It will also force a redrawing of Japan's electoral map, giving greater representation to urban residents and creating, for the first time, a system in which only one representative is elected from each of 300 districts in the country.

Under enormous pressure from the Clinton Administration, China faces a series of decisions that could result in greater freedom of expression and guarantees of basic human rights that Chinese leaders have long considered a potential threat to the survival of Communist Party rule. Already there seems to be a new surge of democratic activity.

The six-month trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez for the murder of their wealthy parents ended today in a mistrial with fragmented juries, leaving a tangle of legal, emotional and moral questions. The jury in the case of the older brother, Lyle, 26, deadlocked today, two weeks after a separate jury deadlocked in the case of 23-year-old Erik. Both juries agreed that a crime had been committed when the brothers shotgunned their parents to death as they watched television. But both juries remained divided over whether that crime was murder.