February 25, 1994

Interest rates surged again yesterday as traders and investors continued to worry about the steady pace of economic growth and inflation. But the Federal Reserve tried to play down their concerns. Long-term interest rates jumped to an eight-month high, with the yield on the 30-year bond finishing at 6.73 percent. Shorter-term rates also shot higher, with the yield on the three-year note at 5.07 percent, its highest since December 1992.

A robber shot and killed the owner of a Manhattan bodega yesterday, then the man's son grabbed a gun from behind the counter and shot down his father's killer. People who live near the bodega, Gonzalez Grocery on the corner of Manhattan Avenue and 103d Street near the Douglass Houses, said that the store had been robbed before, about 10 years ago, and that the earlier robbery had also involved a shooting. Yesterday, when two masked men entered the bodega about 1 P.M. and demanded money, the owner fought back, the police said.

In a surprising admission, the head of a Federal agency examining the failure of an Arkansas savings and loan at the center of the inquiry into the Clintons' real estate investments said he held a briefing three weeks ago for senior White House aides on the agency's progress. Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger C. Altman, who is also the acting head of the Resolution Trust Corporation, acknowledged today under questioning by Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee that he had met with the White House counsel, Bernard W. Nussbaum, the deputy chief of staff, Harold M. Ickes, and Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret A. Williams.

After Brazil's stock markets more than doubled last year, analysts warned investors to proceed with caution in 1994. So much for the experts.

Aiming to put rampant and persistent speculation about its financial stability to rest, Barneys New York yesterday released for the first time sales and earnings figures and some balance-sheet information that indicated the family-owned retail business is doing well. Sales in the five months ended Jan. 2, four months after it opened a 270,000-square-foot store on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, climbed 69.3 percent, to $150.5 million, compared with $88.9 million in the corresponding period last year, according to audited figures provided yesterday. And profits in that period more than doubled to $5.9 million, compared with $2.8 million in the comparable period of 1992.