February 17, 1995

International Whether or not the United States and China settle their dispute about intellectual property rights, trademark piracy is unlikely to stop soon at factories in Shanghai and hundreds of small towns in China, where counterfeit versions of everything from Lux soap to Kellogg's cornflakes to Shell Oil lubricants are made. [ Page A1. ] The Economy Hours before his arrest by the F.B.I., Kevin D. Mitnick, the fugitive computer hacker, erased the accounting records for the Well, an on-line service, investigators say. The move underscored the vulnerability of any computer on the global Internet network to a sophisticated computer criminal. [ D1. ] The House Commerce Committee approved a bill overhauling the rules governing securities fraud litigation, a key part of the House Republicans' Contract With America. [ D1. ] Construction starts on new homes fell in January and new unemployment claims jumped last week, signs that rising interest rates were slowing the economy. [ D2. ] Companies Grigsby Brandford, the country's largest black-owned municipal bond firm, appears headed for one of its best years ever. But as the firm advances, it has also become a lightning rod for attacks from detractors on Wall Street. [ D1. ] Microsoft and the Justice Department appealed a Federal judge's decision to reject their antitrust settlement. [ D1. ] Responding to a move by airlines to limit travel agents' commissions, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and American Express said they would charge customers for assorted agency services. [ D2. ] Hewlett-Packard shares soared nearly 10 percent after it posted first-quarter results far exceeding Wall Street's estimates. [ D4. ] Shares of Lin Broadcasting plummeted after investment bankers put radically different valuations on the company. [ D4. ] Gillette named a president who is now considered to be the heir apparent to its chief executive. [ D4. ] Chrysler is seeking a court injunction to silence a former product planner who helped to evaluate the company's new mini-vans and now says they do not meet Federal safety standards. [ D4. ] Donald J. Trump, who has a 50 percent interest in the Empire State Building, has filed an eviction lawsuit against the building's management company and others. [ D4. ] In a move that would end its monopoly on residential phone service in the New York area, Nynex said it would cooperate with Cablevision Systems' efforts to enter the market. [ B5. ] Markets The dollar fell against the German mark and Japanese yen on fears that U.S. financial institutions could be hurt if President Clinton's $50 billion rescue package for Mexico did not restore confidence in that country's battered economy. [ D1. ] The Dow Jones industrial average failed again to break through the 4,000-point threshold. But the index still closed at a record high. [ D6. ] Prices of short- and intermediate-term Treasury issues rose after a Fed official raised hopes among traders that the central bank would not raise interest rates again soon. [ D5. ] Lumber futures plunged their daily trading limit. [ D15. ] Today's Columns Sara Lee makes desserts and sells hosiery. But analysts say there is more to it than cheesecake and thin thighs. Market Place. [ D6. ] While the global marketplace has become almost a cliche, a less-noted trend is the growth of multicultural marketing. One agency is finding success developing campaigns to reach ethnic groups in the U.S. and consumers abroad. Advertising. [ D16. ]

With critics of William F. Gibson claiming that nearly half the board members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have turned against him, the group's former executive director, Benjamin L. Hooks, has added his voice to those who would like to see Dr. Gibson step down as chairman. Mr. Hooks termed Dr. Gibson an "inept leader" who allowed the debt of the civil rights organization to soar. His comments, the first time he has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Dr. Gibson's leadership, come at a time when the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization is $ 4.5 million in debt, faces an audit of its top officers' spending and is being torn apart by internal bickering.

Inside a bare, dimly lit concrete building on the outskirts of town, five workers at the Huaxing Razor Blade Factory sit hunched over noisy machines that spit ordinary razor blades into a row of blue kerosene cans. Upstairs, lounging in an oversized black leather chair, Yin Jiande, the factory manager, snorts at accusations by the Gillette Company that he had made more than 50 million counterfeit copies of razor blades produced by Gillette's joint venture here and sold them in look-alike packaging.

The Justice Department today appealed a Federal judge's decision on Tuesday to strike down its antitrust settlement with the Microsoft Corporation, saying that the judge was "squarely wrong" and had overstepped his authority. Within a few hours, Microsoft announced that it was joining the Justice Department appeal, a move that now officially places the former adversaries on the same team.

FOR children growing up in France before World War II, memorizing fables of the 17th-century poet Jean de La Fontaine was a ritual as familiar as daily afternoon snacks of bread and bitter chocolate, placing report cards under the tree for Father Christmas's perusal, or searching for the tiny white china Jesus buried in our Epiphany cake on the sixth day of the New Year. Such classics as "The Fox and the Raven" and "The Cricket and the Ant" were our equivalents of Winnie the Pooh and Mother Goose: the earliest tales with which we were read to sleep, the first verses we read and recited in school. The obligation to memorize La Fontaine's poems, made all the more enticing by Grandville's illustrations of woodland creatures in hilariously formal antique garb, never lay heavily on us. It was, in fact, a source of constant delight because these fables embodied the rhetorical device to which children are most drawn: the attribution of human thought and discourse to members of the animal kingdom. But La Fontaine's cautionary verses, the theme of a beautiful little show at the New York Public Library, stamped our consciousness far more deeply than Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail affected children of the English-speaking world. They were composed according to the central agenda of 17th-century French literature -- "To Please and to Instruct" -- and instruct they did, relentlessly. Continually cited in the classroom or at the family dinner table, they became a code of conduct, a delectably ironic secular catechism programmed toward character building and self-improvement.