February 13, 1995

After months of trying, the nation's manufacturing companies, in a growing number of cases, are managing to increase the prices of some of their products, although rarely by as much as they would like. The reports of price increases were much more frequent at the winter meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers, which ended today, than they had been at the fall meeting, in September. In many cases, the manufacturers passed along their higher costs for materials. But strong demand in a robust economy made the price increases possible, and the manufacturers expressed concern that the Federal Reserve, by raising interest rates, might kill off the demand.

The White House today angrily defended its nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. as Surgeon General and sought to paint his critics as right-wing extremists, even as it coped with new questions about his having performed a handful of hysterectomies on severely mentally retarded women more than two decades ago. With some prominent Republicans vowing to oppose the nomination and many Democrats openly contemptuous of initial missteps by the Clinton Administration in explaining how many abortions Dr. Foster had performed, the White House unleashed its most vigorous support yet for the nominee and prepared to escort him to courtesy calls on Capitol Hill on Monday.

The Economy The American International Toy Fair is in danger of having its scope and influence reduced. The biggest threat is the fundamental evolution in retailing patterns in the United States toy industry, in which many toy orders are placed well before the toy fair offers itself as a showcase. [ Page D1. ]

Their celebration began understandably prematurely. Near the end of a taut afternoon in the Carrier Dome, with an important and possibly historic milepost of this Connecticut basketball season within sight, Travis Knight and Donny Marshall embraced. There were still 29 seconds remaining, and the Husky lead of 5 points over Syracuse, as wide a margin as there had been to that point in the second half, could still have been undone by two flicks of Lawrence Moten's wrist. But that never happened today. Once more, a sense of togetherness and passion overcame a potential Husky flaw.

The majority leader of the United States Senate, the early front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination, sat by a fire in his Capitol office on Friday afternoon, wondering if he could carve out time for an important engagement: to be guest host of "Saturday Night Live." It was not a question of whether Bob Dole should do it, but whether he could afford four nights of rehearsals and posing for promotional spots with the comedian Dan Aykroyd, whom he would want on the show. "I like Aykroyd," he said. "He plays me. I think he's great."