November 18, 1994

Opening the door to a lower-cost method for reducing "greenhouse" gases that contribute to global warming, two big electric utilities have made a first-of-its-kind deal to trade air pollution allowances. The agreement, scheduled to be announced today by Niagara Mohawk, serving upstate New York, and Arizona Public Service in Phoenix, is the first in which the right to emit one type of pollutant is being swapped for another.

IF ever a city was made for black and white, it's New York. The city is a place of harsh light, dark shadows, strong angles and violent extremes. The New York fashion magazines may dictate pastels or flaming reds to the rest of the nation. In downtown Manhattan, it's all black clothes and pale skin. The skyline itself, the city's most durable, seductive image, achieves full power, Lucifer-like, as darkness descends and a million cold white diamonds begin to glitter. New York is a noir city. It's no surprise to find that the Film Forum in the South Village has assembled more than 60 films (nearly all of them in black and white) in its series "NYC Noir," which begins today. The city's uncompromising landscape and the endless surge of its anonymous crowds make an ideal setting for pitiless moral dramas in which doomed characters move inexorably toward a violent end. In the classic New York noirs, the city's skyscrapers and streets simultaneously play the role of the gods and the chorus in Greek tragedy. They are the impassive observers, the iron enforcers, of a bleak moral code.

When Dennis C. Hayes, the man whose name was long synonymous with computer modems, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for his company on Tuesday, he exposed not only the deep problems of Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc. but also the extraordinary pressures that afflict the industry itself. The main problem for Mr. Hayes is that in the modem market these days, a name does not mean all that much.

Reversal on Courtroom TV? The judges who recently pulled the plug on television cameras in Federal courtrooms are having second thoughts. It now appears likely that cameras will be invited into Federal appellate courts next year. Page B9. Homeless in Subways In the first pilot program of its kind, the Federal Government is to offer vouchers for permanent housing to hundreds of homeless people living in the tunnels of New York City's subway system. Page B1. Democratic Resistance Democrats said Newt Gingrich's conservative political agenda smacked of extremism, and a House Democratic leader promised that it would meet resistance. Page A31. Israel and P.L.O. and Rancor Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization are struggling to keep their peace talks alive against a backdrop of growing mistrust and rancor. News analysis. Page A3. Shooting Suspect Is Indicted A Federal grand jury returned an 11-count felony indictment charging the man accused of firing an assault rifle at the White House with trying to kill the President. Page A18.

White House officials today sought to clarify President Clinton's position on school prayer but instead sent mixed signals that only intensified complaints among some Democrats that the President was too prone to shifting his positions. The issue arose on Tuesday, when Mr. Clinton said he would not rule out backing a constitutional amendment on prayer that Republican leaders said they would pursue. But stung by attacks from Democrats and civil liberties groups, who denounced the President's remarks as an "instant cave-in," White House officials today sought to recast the President's position.