December 22, 1994

As people left the crowded Brooklyn-bound subway train at the Fulton Street Station in lower Manhattan, Denfield S. Otto, an off-duty transit officer, heard popping sounds like gunfire. Then the car went black except for flashes of orange and crimson flames. What Mr. Otto did next earned him a call from President Clinton and made him a hero to a city unsettled by a firebombing that injured more than 40 passengers.

With steel and plastic costs rising and demand for vehicles still strong, the General Motors Corporation said today that it would raise the prices of almost half its cars and nearly all its light trucks on Jan. 3. Although the increases varied by vehicle, they averaged seven-tenths of a percent, or $151, on base models, G.M. said. When it announced 1995 prices in June, G.M. said they would be 2.5 percent, or $494, higher than prices of 1994 models.

The Board of Education reached an agreement yesterday with Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines on a new two-year contract, offering Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani only the smallest concession on his demands that the Chancellor be held to specific performance goals. After originally trying to force Mr. Cortines to resign, Mr. Giuliani backed down over the weekend and called for a one-year contract with strict conditions on the Chancellor's performance in four areas. But the board refused to change the wording of the contract, although it issued a statement calling on the Chancellor to make several of the administrative reforms urged by the Mayor.

THE young entrepreneurs who created the personal computer industry have always shown a flair for the evocative hyperbole of salesmanship. In the late 1970's, when their smaller computers started to appear, they deftly called them personal computers. It made the infuriating machines sound friendly. The latest clever label in computing is "multimedia," and it is a big reason personal computers are going into American homes this year as never before. This may be the first year that as many PC's will have been sold to homes as to businesses.

FIREBOMB EXPLODES IN SUBWAY CAR, INJURING AT LEAST 40 PASSENGERS A crude firebomb engulfed a subway car that had just pulled into a station in lower Manhattan, burning more than 40 passengers in a horrifying second and disrupting subway service to and from Brooklyn for hours. A1. A SUSPECT: A JOBLESS COMPUTER WORKER Within an hour of the explosion, a badly burned man identified by the police as Edward Leary, 49, was being investigated in the blast and a similar incident last week in Harlem. A1.