July 21, 1994

Armed with increasingly sophisticated snooping tools, unauthorized computer programmers operating both in the United States and abroad have gained access to hundreds of sensitive but unclassified Government and military computer networks connected to the global network Internet, computer security experts said. "There is no information to indicate that command and control systems were affected by these intrusions," a spokeswoman for the Defense Information Systems Agency said Wednesday. Classified Government and military data, like those that control nuclear weapons, intelligence and other critical functions, are not connected to the Internet and are believed to be secure.

Matilda Raffa Cuomo surveyed the parade of anniversary cards atop a mantelpiece in New York's Executive Mansion and feigned disbelief at the durability of her marriage. "Forty years," she said. "One man." The last 12 of her 40 years with Mario M. Cuomo have been spent on Eagle Street in the 40-room mansion that the state has lent its governors since 1877. It is easy to understand why the Cuomos might want to avoid eviction.

The hairman of the Federal Reserve said today that the four increases in interest rates this year might not have been enough to keep inflation under control. His remarks caused a drop in American stock and bond markets as investors concluded that a further increase was more likely than many had thought. Alan Greenspan, the chairman, stopped short of actually declaring that he would raise interest rates, saying that Government economic indicators were not currently providing a clear signal of future inflation.

From 1984 to 1991, environmental regulators allege, Consolidated Edison illegally discharged oil and other contaminants into New York City waterways, failed to clean up scores of leaks and spills properly and ignored the state's demands to stop those activities. The regulators, from the State Environmental Conservation Department, brought the charges two years ago but did not make them public as they tried to prod the utility into a settlement. The state is seeking a fine of $20 million, the largest the department has sought in an administrative action.

A half century after the about-to-be victorious Allies of World War II put in place bold plans for a global financial system and two decades after that system was formally abandoned, a high-profile group of economists, bankers and diplomats is trying to put it back together again. But the privately sponsored Bretton Woods Commission, which meets today in Washington amid dramatic erosion in the value of the dollar, is sure to meet resistance from a host of sources. To some, the effort led by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, to invent a more effective form of economic super-government to coordinate currency exchange rates, is ideologically offensive. "It's against the trend of the times," said Ian Vasquez, the director of the Cato Institute's Project for Global Economic Liberty.