September 20, 1995

Daily water demand has dropped about 15 percent since mandatory water restrictions were imposed in seven northeastern New Jersey counties, environmental officials said yesterday. Since the drought emergency was declared last Wednesday, water consumption has dropped from 321 gallons a day to 274 million gallons a day. Concerns about the drought led two Democratic Assembly members from South Jersey to introduce a bill yesterday to prevent Gov. Christine Todd Whitman from diverting ground or surface water from the Pinelands to North Jersey.

Growing up on Long Island, the grandson of Russian immigrants, Boris Jordan was fascinated by his family's native land and dreamed of returning to it, perhaps as an American diplomat. He never imagined becoming one of Russia's most powerful financiers and one of the most influential players in its economic transformation. Sent to Moscow three and a half years ago by the CS First Boston Corporation, Mr. Jordan and a small group of colleagues built the securities firm into the dominant investment bank in Russia and played a big role in the development of the country's financial markets.

AS she flipped through a rack of skirts at Saks Fifth Avenue the other day, Jozie Emmerich reflected on how much life has improved for the size 20 woman. "The selection is 10 times what it was 10 years ago," said Ms. Emmerich, a television producer, as she surveyed the offerings at Salon Z, the store's department for women who wear sizes 16 and up. "And it just gets better and better every year."

The National Association of Securities Dealers said today that it would radically overhaul its management structure and that of the Nasdaq stock market, giving investors and companies traded on Nasdaq much greater influence on an operation now largely dominated by Wall Street firms. "This is a sea change," said Warren B. Rudman, the former Republican Senator from New Hampshire who headed the committee that recommended the changes. "We are totally restructuring the governance, which is, I think, the fundamental problem."

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has many chauffeurs at his disposal, but during the elections on Sunday he chose to drive himself to the polls. He used his car, a heavily bulletproofed blue Chevrolet sedan provided by the United States, to teach a civics lesson to Haitian voters. "Just as I held the wheel of my car to take me here, these elections are the wheel of the machine of democracy that will take Haitians where they want to go," he said in the Creole tongue of Haiti's poorest people. His statement was quickly broadcast across the country by radio.