October 4, 1994

The Rev. Charles L. Norris, a black Baptist preacher, has endorsed Gov. Mario M. Cuomo from the pulpit of the Bethesda Missionary Baptist Church in Jamaica, Queens, in each of his three previous gubernatorial campaigns. He says he may not do so this year. The Rev. Calvin O. Butts 3d at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem is considering even greater heresy: he says he may support Mr. Cuomo's Republican opponent, State Senator George E. Pataki.

It might have been any botched highway robbery in a land where highway robberies are not rare, except that the one who died when masked hoodlums opened fire on the car was an American, and only 7 years old. The killing last week has inspired a remarkable display of soul-searching among Italians seized by what one newspaper called "our shame."

Given their reputation for durability, the boxy station wagons and sedans rolling off the Volvo Group's production lines here these days may well be shuttling suburban families and other loyal buyers reliably around for many years, even decades to come. The question now is whether Volvo itself can last as long.

South Africa won a long-sought prize from Wall Street yesterday: an investment-grade rating from a major credit-rating agency that is certain to make it less costly for the country to borrow money to build roads, provide electricity and create jobs for millions of poor black citizens. Moody's Investor's Service, one of the two major firms that judge the ability of corporations and governments to pay back what they owe, awarded South Africa a rating just above subinvestment, or junk bond, status.

EVER since James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, one thing seemed perfectly clear. DNA or its relative RNA had to be at the core of any infectious agent, whether fungi, bacteria or viruses. Without DNA or RNA, these organisms could not multiply, and without multiplying in the body they could not cause diseases. So it was nothing short of astounding when some researchers began claiming that they had found another kind of infectious agent, a tiny protein devoid of genes that could proliferate in the body and make people ill.