October 27, 1994

George E. Pataki's tenure as Mayor of Peekskill, and the years afterward as a dominant presence there, offer insight into the politician's priorities as he seeks the governorship of New York State. In many ways, it provides a clearer picture than his Albany record as a four-term minority-party Assemblyman and one-term Senator. For it was in Peekskill that Mr. Pataki tapped his pitchman's skills, luring several major developers to a shabby Hudson Valley town of barely 20,000 people, igniting a real-estate boom that built more than 1,100 new middle-class homes during the 1980's.

Already, they call him Mr. Speaker. And he answers.

The most accurate measurement yet of the distance to a remote galaxy has yielded a refined estimate of the rate at which the universe is expanding, bringing scientists much closer to determining one of the most fundamental and elusive numbers in cosmic theory: the age of the universe. Astronomers who made the measurement, announced yesterday, called it a critical milestone in establishing a scale for calculating cosmic distances. While they cautioned that it would take more observations to be sure, their findings provided persuasive support for earlier studies that, taken together, suggest that the answer may already be at hand. The universe, they estimate, is 8 billion to 12 billion years old.

With car and truck sales climbing in the United States and manufacturing costs falling in Europe, the Ford Motor Company today reported that its earnings had more than doubled to $1.12 billion for the three months ending Sept. 30. Vigorous demand for products like the Windstar mini-van, Mustang sports coupe and four-wheel-drive Explorers enabled Ford to cut marketing costs in the quarter, fattening its profit on every vehicle sold.

Mario Buatta, the New York society decorator, strolled from one cocktail party to the next with a gag toupee on his head. In front of the La-Z-Boy showroom on Main Street, a crowd of button-down business people waiting for the light watched a bevy of suspiciously well-endowed young women promote the Tiki Club topless bar. And across town, in the parking lot of the National Guard Armory, a 5,000-pound African elephant named Laura gently lowered her wrinkled gray flanks onto a specially built daybed to test the strength of a new laminated lumber product made from aspen saplings. It's business as usual at the International Home Furnishings Market, equal parts theme park, trade show and Robert Altman film.