April 25, 1994

The New York Rangers, a club bone tired of hearing about the disappointments of yesteryear and determined to make their Stanley Cup destiny happen this year, today continued to play as if there were no tomorrow in their series against the hapless Islanders. Because of the collective brilliance the Rangers crammed into a four-game package, there will be no tomorrow in this series: The Rangers completed their sweep of the Islanders with a convincing 5-2 victory this afternoon at Nassau Coliseum.

Mexicans call them Malinchistas after La Malinche, the Aztec, who married the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes and aided his triumph over Mexico. Today, Malinchistas are Mexican shoppers who cross the border into Texas seeking cheaper prices, better selection or cachet. They are the quarry in an intensifying battle between retailers in Texas, who are trying to keep their stores full of Mexican shoppers, and merchants in Mexico, who want them to shop at home. The Mexican side appears to have the edge, helped by none other than United States retailers like Wal-Mart and Sears. Those chains are lavishing Mexicans with more "Made in the U.S.A." products, sold in "Made in the U.S.A." settings.

Never internationally known for its wines, Brazil has bucked a worldwide slump in wine exports to the United States and has emerged as the fastest growing exporter to the American market. Brazilian wine shipments to the United States jumped 36 percent last year, thanks to Marcus James, a label with an American-sounding name but with roots deep in the vineyards of southern Brazil.

They hardly seemed made for each other. One was in his 80's, the other in his 40's, one a Republican, the other a Democrat. One was a straight arrow, painfully shy, a classic loner, conspicuously formal in dress and manner (though under pressure, as the Watergate tapes showed, he could swear like a stevedore); the other, a devotee of Elvis and the Beatles, gregarious to a fault, experimented with marijuana in his youth, developed a reputation as a lady's man and much prefers sweats to suits.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's approval ratings are at the same level that George Bush's were the week before he lost the 1992 election. They are where Jimmy Carter's were in 1980 immediately after an American helicopter crashed in the Iranian desert. And yet an improbable confluence of factors, ranging from the utter disarray in New York's Republican Party to the gradual recovery of the state's economy, is starting to make Mr. Cuomo look more and more like a front-runner.