June 16, 1994

The Knicks raced to a big early lead and then the Rockets caught up. At halftime the Stanley Cup appeared at center court. An omen? The game see-sawed after intermission with each team trading basket for basket. The Knicks' star player, Patrick Ewing, fouled out in final minutes but New York held on to tie the series 2-2. SportsThursday, page B11

For more than 40 years, American tobacco executives followed a two-track approach to the health dangers of cigarettes, saying in public that there was no proven risk, while privately debating how to deal with the very risk they were denying. That is the picture that emerges from more than 4,000 pages of documents from the archives of the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. The documents, obtained by The New York Times, include memorandums, indexes, chronologies and minutes of research meetings attended by company executives and researchers.

The number of abortions performed in the United States dropped to 1,529,000 in 1992, the lowest level since 1979, according to a newly released study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that studies reproductive issues. And it is not only the number of abortions that has fallen. Both the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion and the number of abortions for every 1,000 women ages 15 to 44 are at their lowest levels since 1976 -- three years after the United States Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, established a constitutional right to abortion.

ON a cool, gray afternoon this spring, Germaine Loc Swanson stepped down from the van that had carried her from the airport to the Thu Do Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam. Her aunt, Vu Thi Nga, 72, who had cared for her as a child, had been sitting in the hotel lobby since early morning. She didn't want to miss this meeting. As the women wrapped their arms around each other, the older woman rubbed Mrs. Swanson's cheek and cried. They had not seen each other in 40 years. Tears welled up in Mrs. Swanson's eyes but few escaped. She does not cry easily.

FOR Proust, it was the scent of lime-flower tea. For Flaubert, it was the musk of Louise Colet's slipper. For Walt Whitman, it was the tang of a working man's sweat. What sends Lorraine Moore into raptures is Peaches and Dreams potpourri by Claire Burke. "Child, it smells good, just like a bowl of peaches," said Mrs. Moore, a private-duty nurse's aide who lives in Neptune, N.J. The memory of its powerful, fruity aroma brings a beatific smile to her face. "Open the bag, and it smells up the whole house," she said. "And it makes me happy."