February 6, 1995

DESPITE MANY RULES, SWEATSHOPS THRIVE Sweatshops still exist all over New York City 104 years after Jacob Riis chronicled dangerous physical conditions and exploitative labor practices in apparel factories on the Lower East Side. In fact they are flourishing, despite a host of laws that have accumulated since Riis's days -- rules on labor, health, safety and immigration designed to flush them out and, if necessary, shut them down. The shops continue to thrive because of dramatic changes in the apparel industry, which in New York has shifted from the large factories that once replaced sweatshops back to the small shops themselves. A1. BRONX ZOO AVIARY COLLAPSES UNDER SNOW The gracefully arched 19th-century aviary at the Bronx Zoo -- home to a colony of 100 South American sea birds and a landmark to generations of New Yorkers and visitors -- collapsed in a gust of wind under the weight of a foot of snow during Saturday's storm, and dozens of exotic gulls and terns flew away, zoo officials said. But no birds were killed, and only one was known to have been injured. A1. NEW YORK CITY SHOVELING OUT OF DIRE STRAITS The ice, snow and frigid temperatures that made yesterday a mess in the New York metropolitan region after the winter's first big snowstorm was nothing but a blessing for Betty Smith. An unemployed mother of four children, Ms. Smith bundled up and found work yesterday helping shovel the city out of its misery. But the consequences of the storm were not the same for everyone. B3. OFFICER HELD IN ATTACK ON PROSTITUTE It may be unusual that a prostitute calls the police for help. And it is not every day that a police officer is arrested after the prostitute calls him her "john." But that is apparently what happened early yesterday in the Chelsea section of Manhattan. The officer was charged with attempted murder after the prostitute said he fired his gun at her. B2. WOMAN MAKES NAME AT PINBALL PINNACLE In her first appearance in the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association tournament, at the Park Central Hotel in midtown Manhattan, a 26-year-old graduate student in Judaic studies and business racked up the highest score in the opening round of the women's division. The performance by Alysa Parks earned the glances, gestures and whispers of reverent opponents. B2. YOUTHS WAGE ANTI-VIOLENCE CAMPAIGN The violence that is a part of New York City life came to the front steps of the Hudson Guild Settlement House late one evening last June, when a shootout erupted outside. The gunfire gave added immediacy to an anti-violence project that kept youths at the guild busy last spring and summer. As members of a program called Students Against Violence, they produced three public-service announcements that were shown on local cable television channels and distributed to other youth organizations. B2. BUILDING'S PROPERTY TAXES TO BE REPAID A State Supreme Court justice has ordered New York City to repay millions in property taxes on a once-proud 1920's office tower in lower Manhattan that has had virtually no tenants since 1991 and, in the depressed state of the downtown real estate market, no prospect of attracting any soon. B6. REGION CUOMO ASSAILS PATAKI TAX CUTS The last Governor of New York sounds outraged. Disgusted. Cut services to the poor so everyone else can get a small tax cut? Risk hurting the homeless and the elderly? Let the sickly fend for themselves? Not if Mario M. Cuomo were still in charge. Those who wonder what Mr. Cuomo would have done if he had won in November need wonder no more. He claims he would have denied New Yorkers an income tax cut as proudly as Governor Pataki offers it. Metro Matters, B3. WHERE THE DEAD CHRISTMAS TREES GO Valentine's Day, Shmalentine's Day. It's still Christmas in the suburbs. Here and there, trees linger on long past their due, testaments to spirit or inertia. "I just keep procrastinating," said Jim Rice, a solid-waste consultant who works in Scarsdale, N.Y., and lives in Mount Vernon. Putting up a tree is "fun and festive," he said; taking it down is a "sad, dull job." B5. Chronicle B5

A 4-year-old girl plays with a cloth doll in an aisle of a small, dingy garment factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, while her mother sews thin cotton sweaters nearby. A 44-year-old immigrant from China works 12 hours a day, seven days a week, in a windowless garment shop in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, earning $200 on a good week -- or less than $2.50 an hour.

After 15 months of robust growth, the American economy is beginning to slow. But no one can know yet from the scant emerging evidence whether the slowdown will turn out to be only a lull -- followed by another stretch of strong growth -- or the beginning of a slide toward much slower economic growth, if not recession. Auto sales and home construction, the two pillars of growth, remain mostly intact. But once built, the new homes now sell less quickly. Many retailers find they must offer bigger discounts to keep people buying. Manufacturers say that while they are still very busy, new orders are not as numerous. And last month, for the first time since 1992, the unemployment rate rose.

The fierce winter storm that dumped more than a foot of snow on parts of the New York City region has actually left some people better off: the hundreds of people hired by the city to shovel snow from the five boroughs.

Yesterday was a day Jose Lopez will surely remember, if not fondly. The police said his misadventures began shortly before noon, when he was spotted breaking a car window with a brick and removing a cellular phone. Chased by three officers and cornered at the Hudson River's edge, he climbed down a piling and into the water, where he tried to pull himself across an inlet using a cable strung just above the surface. He didn't get far before the cold stopped him. (No surprise here; the temperature was 20.)

Harris Hill rises steeply from the Chemung River Valley just north of this striving industrial city, tucked in the palm of rolling farmlands along New York State's Southern Tier. On balmy days, when the white carpets of winter are distant memories, gliders sling-shot off that ridge, soaring on the lift of warm northwesterly winds.

The number of people receiving public assistance in the New York region has begun to level off in recent years. Welfare experts say that the number of people qualifying for assistance under the two largest welfare programs - Aid to Families With Dependant Children, and General Assistance (Home Relief) -- has fallen as the economy has recovered. Benefit amounts per case have held relatively steady since early in the decade. To help save the $5 billion needed to balance the state's budget and pay for an income tax cut, Gov. George E. Pataki of New York last week proposed the deepest cuts in the history of state welfare programs.

Profit margins at most hospitals across the country declined or stagnated last year, reflecting the growing pressure on them to reduce costs. And health care executives said many hospitals would be under even greater pressure in 1995 if Congress enacted proposals that would slash spending for medical care for the elderly and the poor. At investor-owned hospitals, the outlook is brighter, because many of them have moved aggressively to merge and cut costs. Profit at these hospitals has risen in the 1990's.

The Knicks ruined a terrific comeback today with a terrible overtime. This was a game the Knicks needed badly, a chance to take another bite out of the Orlando Magic's division lead. And after trailing by 15 points late in the third quarter, New York showed character and determination, storming back to tie the game and starting the extra period with momentum.

The price of newsprint, a commodity that is usually uninteresting even to newspaper publishers, has climbed faster in recent weeks than ever before -- and faster than newspaper executives had predicted. A metric ton of newsprint that cost $469 in 1994 was up to $552 in January. If announced price rises hold up, the price will jump to $600 in March and $675 in May, for a total increase of 37 percent this year. Newsprint often accounts for 20 percent or more of a newspaper's costs.

It is said by Cambodians that anyone who doubts the truth of what happened here in 1975 must make the pilgrimage to this tiny village. Because in what was once a fertile rice paddy on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the capital, there is today a grisly and convincing memorial to the frenzied slaughter that erupted across Cambodia 20 years ago this spring. One visitor needed no convincing at all.

International A day after the United States imposed trade sanctions against China, some American companies said that they were preparing to switch production from China to sites in other Asian nations, while others waited and said that they expected a resolution of the dispute. [ Page A1. ]