July 6, 1994

Even as cable television and telephone companies clamor to provide the main information pipeline into American households, another industry is quietly looking for an opening. Electric companies, which already have wires running to virtually every home, are devising ways to send bits and bytes along with the kilowatts that course through those circuits.

To get into the college of his choice, Lyndon Allin knew that he needed good grades, high scores on his college entrance examination and a lot of financial aid. He also needed some gamesmanship. Mr. Allin, one of the nation's top-ranked high school graduates, was accepted by some of the nation's leading institutions. Northwestern University, which costs $24,283 a year, offered him $8,700 in scholarships and loans; Vanderbilt University offered $13,000, about half its annual costs.

For eight years now, Mary L. Landrieu, the 38-year-old Louisiana State Treasurer, has been attacking the good-old-boy network that allowed politicians to steer lucrative municipal finance business, often at taxpayer expense, to their families and friends. Her record is impressive. No longer are tax-free bonds issued by cities and towns here for no reason other than to generate fat fees for a coterie of local lawyers and bankers. No longer are small-town banks propped up by cheap deposits courtesy of the state. And no longer does Louisiana borrow money without professional oversight and without competitive bids from dealers selling its bonds.

After a sharp increase in the number of Haitians seeking asylum, the Clinton Administration abruptly shifted policy today and said it would no longer allow refugees intercepted at sea to be resettled in the United States. Instead, Haitians fleeing by boat who qualify for asylum will be taken to Panama or other Caribbean countries until the political crisis in their country is resolved.

To make good neighbors again of Fordham University and the New York Botanical Garden, you might need a fence 480 feet high. For that is the intended height of a radio tower under construction on Fordham's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. What infuriates Fordham's neighbor is that the tower is directly across Southern Boulevard from the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the lacy Crystal Palace that serves as symbol and centerpiece of the garden itself.