September 27, 1994

The laborious process of finding 12 citizens who can try O. J. Simpson fairly and impartially on murder charges, despite the torrent of fact, rumor and falsehood that has inundated them over the last three months, began today before Judge Lance A. Ito. This afternoon, 15 weeks after Nicole Brown Simpson and a friend, a waiter named Ronald L. Goldman, were slashed and stabbed to death in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles and Mr. Simpson was charged with the killings, Judge Ito and the lawyers in the case began reviewing the first jury candidates, culled from lists of drivers and registered voters in Los Angeles County. Of utmost concern at this stage were not attitudes toward guilt or innocence, but whether jurors could serve -- including some amount of sequestering, the judge said -- for what could be a six-month trial.

The Economy The Clinton Administration and the Federal Reserve proposed to require banks and savings institutions to collect data on the race, ethnicity and gender of small-business loan recipients. But regulators also planned to abandon proposed formulas for measuring the proportion of loans issued in poor communities. [ Page D1. ]

Warning that Sarajevo again stands in danger of strangulation, President Clinton called on the United Nations today to show its resolve by enforcing its peacekeeping efforts there with additional force if necessary. Mr. Clinton's appeal was a veiled reference to the reluctance of United Nations commanders in recent weeks to call for punitive air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces.

In a surge of activity not seen in years, at least seven big pharmaceutical companies are pressing for Federal permission to sell some of their most important drugs without a doctor's prescription. With profit margins on prescription drugs already squeezed by the growing pressure to lower health care costs, the companies are scrambling to win Food and Drug Administration approval for over-the-counter versions of prescription drugs. This strategy is especially attractive for drugs whose patents have expired, making them vulnerable to brutal price slashing as generic copies come on the market.

EVER since explorers at the turn of the century surmised that the emperor penguin must breed during the coldest part of Antarctica's deadly winter, this charming but peculiar species has inspired wonder and curiosity. But after 83 years of penguin watching, scientists are still encountering surprises, including a recent discovery made with a night-vision device that revealed emperor penguins to be even hardier than had been supposed. Knowledge of the winter behavior of emperor penguins has come slowly because it is hard for human beings to survive under such conditions, much less conduct scientific research. High winds, temperatures around minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, round-the-clock darkness and frequent sudden blizzards make the Antarctic habitat of the emperors, the Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound, dangerous places in winter.

With a deadline looming on Friday in trade talks with the United States, Japan's trade minister will leave for Washington on Tuesday in a last-ditch effort to avert sanctions against his country. Ryutaro Hashimoto, the Minister of International Trade and Industry, is expected to meet on Wednesday with Mickey Kantor, the United States trade representative, and probably with Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, officials here said today. Mr. Hashimoto and Mr. Kantor spoke by telephone this morning.

The Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island was once a prosperous shipping hub, but since 1986 it has been virtually abandoned. Every so often, a maintenance crew cleans and powers up the cranes that used to hoist containers on and off freighters. The multilegged machines are put through a lonely pantomime of the chores that they once did, in the hope that someday New York City will again be a world-class port and they will be needed. That day may now be coming. Howland Hook is scheduled to reopen by December, giving the city perhaps its last chance to win back some of the shipping business that fled en masse across New York Harbor to New Jersey in the 1960's.

High Court Docket In an usually early announcement, the Supreme Court said it would take up a long-running Missouri school desegregation case and seven other cases in its new term beginning next Monday. Page A23. The Vote That Counts A Pennsylvania Representative, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, is finding that her re-election is turning on one fateful vote: the one that passed the Clinton budget. Page A22. A Revitalized Port With the Howland Hook Marine Terminal on Staten Island reopening, New York has a chance to win back some of the shipping business lost to New Jersey in the 60's. Page B1. Disclosing Mutual Fund Risks The Securities and Exchange Commission recommended that mutual funds provide some quantification of risk, in a move aimed at investments in derivatives. Page D1

At the height of the evening rush hour today, two young men moved with faltering steps through the dense crowd at Victoria Terminus, the railway station here. When they reached the medical table in front of platform 9, they seemed on the verge of collapse. In the register kept by the duty doctor, Prashan Nayak and S. K. Jainuddin, textile workers from the pneumonic plague-afflicted city of Surat, were listed as the 23d and 24th patients of the day.

Concerned about the increased riskiness of certain mutual fund portfolios, the Securities and Exchange Commission recommended today that fund sponsors be required for the first time to provide shareholders with some quantification of that risk. The commission also suggested a tighter limit on portfolio investments that cannot easily be sold. The proposals, which the commission could carry out on its own, are aimed specifically at investments known as derivatives, because their value is derived from an underlying security, but one result would be a new dimension of disclosure by the entire fund industry.

Mexico's President-elect, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon, does not take office for two months, but the renewal of a crucial agreement among the Government, business and labor already provides clear evidence of how he plans to run the Mexican economy for the next six years. The pact, which the incumbent President, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, signed on Saturday, sets an inflation goal of 4 percent for 1995 and holds wage and price increases to the same level. It leaves the exchange-rate policy alone, and offers modest tax breaks and financial incentives to get the economy moving.

Citing his "invaluable" aid in the war against the Mafia, a Federal judge yesterday rewarded a once-powerful mob figure who became a major Government informer by sentencing him to just five years in prison, despite his admitted involvement in 19 murders. The sentence meant that the informer, Salvatore Gravano -- who had faced up to 20 years in prison under his plea deal and who has already served almost four years -- could be released in eight months or less, his lawyer and prison officials said.