February 23, 1994

Conceding in effect that the cable television regulations it adopted last year were inadequate, the Federal Communications Commission today ordered cable rates cut once again, this time by an average of 7 percent. The F.C.C. chairman, Reed E. Hundt, said the additional rate cuts would force 90 percent of all cable systems to reduce at least some of their prices.

The Economy The F.C.C. ordered additional cuts in cable television rates. The cuts, which average 7 percent, are the commission's second attempt to reduce cable rates in response to the 1992 cable television act. The move is expected to force 90 percent of cable systems nationwide to lower at least some of their prices. [ Page A1. ]

In a surprise move intended to speed R. H. Macy & Company's emergence from Chapter 11 bankrupcty protection, Cyrus R. Vance, the former Secretary of State, was appointed yesterday to mediate negotiations on a reorganization plan. Judge Burton R. Lifland of the United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, who has presided over the Macy case for more than two years, gave the company until March 8 to submit an outline of a plan to Mr. Vance. "This case is one that should be out of the court's clutches by the end of the year," Judge Lifland said.

The temperature is rising in Hell's Kitchen. After nearly a decade, its main thoroughfare, the stretch of Ninth Avenue between 35th and 55th Streets, is emerging from the gray chrysalis of economic woe to beckon diners and shoppers back to its crumbling sidewalks, its venerable groceries and a new generation of restaurants. Former hardware stores have been reincarnated as fancy bakeries, former smoke shops have become Afghan and Caribbean restaurants, and mom-and-pop cafes have been reborn as -- is it possible? -- trendy restaurants.

Behind the self-congratulation and assertions of victory in the Clinton Administration over the military respite in Sarajevo lie two stark realities: fighting still rages in parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and any peace settlement that emerges may very well give the Muslims less territory than they could have gotten a year ago. The NATO allies can plausibly take credit for finally giving the Bosnian Serbs an ultimatum that worked, proving that the credible threat of force can get at least short-term results. But their very success raises the question of why it took the United States and the rest of NATO so long: the Serbs have been seizing territory, after all, for nearly two years.