December 15, 1995

GERMAN CUT OF 2 KEY RATES COULD AID AN EASING BY FED The Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, cut its main lending rates to their lowest levels in more than seven years, a step that could help sputtering European economies and make it easier for the Federal Reserve to lower rates in the United States.

In somber silence, the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia signed a peace agreement today, even as scattered violence in Bosnia made clear that real peace was not yet at hand. Today's ceremony, presided over by President Clinton and other international sponsors, cleared the way for the deployment of 60,000 NATO peacekeeping troops and the commitment of hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the country after nearly four cruel years of war.

Jurors in the trial of six men accused in the May 1993 quadruple murder that destroyed the leadership of a Chinatown gang informed a Superior Court judge in Bergen County yesterday that they had reached a verdict. But Judge William C. Meehan ordered the verdict sealed until today, court officials said. During the four-month trial, the defendants were depicted as members of a rival faction who ambushed the leaders of the Fuk Ching gang in a "safe house" in a quiet Teaneck neighborhood in order to wrest control of the organization's smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants.

The Samuelson family, visiting from Boston, had set aside an entire week to see friends in New York and go to the theater. But they were not able to get reservations for either of the weekends they planned to be in the city. So they have been splitting their time between the Marriott Marquis in Times Square on the weekdays and hotels in Stamford, Conn., on the weekends. "It wasn't a big deal," said Robert Samuelson, a 25-year-old graphics designer who is in town with his parents, about the inconvenience. "We know people in Connecticut. I probably wouldn't do it again, though."

Consumer prices remained unchanged in November, the first time since the end of the 1990-91 recession that American households suffered no inflation, Labor Department figures showed today. The report, in contrast to one earlier this week that showed producer prices surging last month, helped restore the confidence of a number of economists that the Federal Reserve would relax monetary policy next Tuesday at its final meeting of the year.