February 15, 1994

At 9 P.M. Tuesday, a squadron of helicopters is to begin spraying the neighborhoods, parks, schools and farms of this Riverside County community 45 miles east of Los Angeles, with the insecticide malathion in a much-disputed effort to save California's $18 billion-a-year agriculture industry from the Mediterranean fruit fly. If the spraying is successful -- preventing the insect's return in this area -- it will represent a small victory in the state's 20-year war to eradicate the Medfly, which lays eggs in fruit and vegetables, causing them to rot and become unfit for sale.

A Long Island apartment referral service was sued today by the New York State Attorney General for systematically denying information to Hispanic people, blacks and Indians about apartments available in white areas. In what was termed one of the most blatant examples of housing discrimination in the New York area in recent years, John McDermott, the owner of Places to Live Inc., in East Meadow, was accused of having programmed his company's computer to indicate the ethnic background of prospective tenants and landlords, along with the biases of the landlords.

United Nations commanders here are developing a complex, ambitious peace plan, using NATO's advanced technology to strengthen the threat of air strikes on the combatants in Bosnia. As the ad hoc plan unfolds, Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Rose and other commanders said in a series of conversations during the last few days that they hoped first to restore besieged Sarajevo to the life of a normal European city and then to use the effort as a model to apply to Mostar and other battlegrounds throughout Bosnia.

"America's trade deficit with Japan is not very popular with the American people or the American Government," President Clinton allowed at the news conference with Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa of Japan in which the two agreed to disagree over trade. "It's hard to explain it, year in year out, always getting bigger," he added. Most economists would undoubtedly agree with Mr. Clinton that mega-deficits are not popular, nor easy to explain to the great majority of Americans who prefer their economics lessons in easy-to-swallow gel caps. But it is equally safe to say that few economists think the chronic trade deficit with Japan is a problem in itself worth much of a fuss -- or, for that matter, an economic problem at all. Individual Complaints This does not necessarily mean that individual American exporters don't have a legitimate gripe with the Japanese: Motorola may encounter a lot of static when it tries to sell mobile phones in Tokyo, and Chrysler may hit a brick wall when the company tries to sign up dealers for its nifty little Neon runabout. But there is no reason to believe that free trade nirvana -- an entirely open world trading system -- would balance the Japanese-American account or even change it measurably.

NEW YORK CITY BOMBING TRIAL NEARING CLOSE The World Trade Center bombing trial moved abruptly to closing arguments after three of the four defense lawyers declined to put on cases in defense of their clients. The lawyers in essence left it to the jury to decide the case entirely on the strength or weakness of the evidence presented by the prosecution. A1.