October 21, 1994

Yitzhak Razimor had one overwhelming concern today as he rode the No. 5 bus down Dizengoff Street, past the stores selling books and fashion boots and jewelry, past the fast-food outlets and past the little makeshift shrine of candles and flowers where at least 21 people died in a suicide bomber's attack on the same bus line on Wednesday. "Fear," said the 29-year-old Mr. Razimor, who works in the marketing section of a big bank, "I feel fear. I'm sitting in this bus and I'm not sure I'll get off again alive."

Panicked investors dumped shares of the General Motors Corporation today after the company announced that despite strong car and truck sales and overall profitability, its core North American automotive operations fell back into the red during the third quarter. G.M., which was the most-actively traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange, fell to a new low for the year, $42 a share, before recovering somewhat to close at $43.125, down $3.75 on the day. Amid fears that the company's cost-cutters had lost their edge, nearly 16.8 million shares traded hands. The sell-off accounted for 10.4 points of the 25-point decline on the Dow Jones industrial average.

For nearly 50 years, from the West German border to the Pacific Ocean, the Soviet Union ruled its imprisoned republics and satellites with brutal, calculated imperialism backed by fearsome military strength. But when the Soviet regime began to evaporate five years ago, in the biggest geopolitical event since the end of World War II, no one had planned for it -- least of all Russia's small band of democrats.

Seeking to improve air quality, New York City has bought hundreds of cars, vans and trucks that can run on natural gas or methanol, paying up to $5,700 extra a vehicle. Still, the city admits the cars are running mostly on old-fashioned gasoline, or not running at all.

Elizabeth Murray'S works are smart, animated and sensuously painted. Contained within the curves and angled planes of her oddly shaped canvases are figures and objects: hands, babies, tables, coffee cups, palettes, brushes. It can take a while to decode them. They are nominally abstracted forms in flux, props in mostly domestic dramas of a psychological intensity and tenderness sometimes belied by the jazzy colors that Ms. Murray prefers. Her works suggest motion, fluidity. They're full of demotic shapes drawn from the comics (she thought of becoming a commercial artist when she was young). But they're also linked with painters like Cezanne, Miro, Klee, Johns and de Kooning. Ms. Murray is a trim woman with frizzled white hair. She is warm, down to earth and modest. Her voice is soft. But her attitude, though gentle, is energetic and assured. She's tireless. On a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her eye is arrested by one unexpected thing or another, and she becomes rapt. She moves while looking at a work, so the act of seeing is physical and alive. She speaks with conviction, despite her solicitousness. She talks reverently about the craft of painting, about the transformative ability of pigment on canvas.