February 14, 1995

To an obscure criminal defense lawyer, it looked like the career-making catapult of a lifetime: a nationally known case, trial coverage in major newspapers and on Court TV, the chance to represent a beleaguered fellow alumnus of Calabar High School in Kingston, Jamaica. But nearly a month into the trial of Colin Ferguson, who is charged with the Long Island Rail Road shootings, his legal adviser, Alton G. Rose, is seen by many lawyers as having the most miserable legal job in America.

Like most big cities, Newark has some century-old works of architecture to be proud of. It is not proud of its 19th-century sewers. An incident a decade ago, when a bus fell into a hole caused by a sewer collapse, is remembered here the way the plunge of a truck through the crumbling West Side Highway two decades ago is recalled in New York.

Wall Street is not exactly in a loving mood these days, and two investment firms underscored that yesterday by letting some employees know they are more likely to be getting pink slips than Valentines. In separate announcements, CS First Boston and Salomon Brothers said they were closing down business lines and would lay off employees. Analysts said the moves were the latest manifestation of an industrywide effort to cut costs and shed unprofitable businesses in the wake of very poor financial results last year, Wall Street's worst since 1990.

ON this, the authorized day of passion and romance, when one tries hurriedly to spark a new flame or fan an old one back to life, when a wooer would prefer not to beat around the bush of love but rather dive right into it, the best Valentine's gifts may indeed be the staples: a dozen fragrant roses, a box of fine chocolates, a bottle of French perfume. After all, these items became shorthand for love by appealing shamelessly to the second-sexiest organ of the body -- the nose. Seeing may be believing and hearing may be music to the ears, but a good smell sails express nonstop to the deepest, warmest, happiest and most voluptuous sector of the self. And nothing can evoke a time, a place, an emotion past better than an aroma.

Early last month, Texas began a program to help reduce smog by 15 percent in its biggest cities. Auto-exhaust inspections were to be required during the next two years for nearly every car and truck in the Houston and Dallas areas. If Texas did not clean up the air, it stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal money. The state signed a contract with a company that invested $127 million in private money to set up test stations. "The skies of Texas are upon you," proclaimed bright blue billboards, informing motorists of the new $23-a-car inspections.