December 26, 1995

What catches the eye in Bob Dole's otherwise generic Presidential campaign headquarters here is a huge black-and-white photograph of the candidate as a fresh-faced G.I., his visored dress hat set at a jaunty 1940's "can-do" angle. At first, the picture seems a throwback to an era that the campaign might prefer to ignore, a poignant reminder that Senator Dole, at 72, whom Kansans have been sending to Washington since 1961, is now old enough to be the father of some of his rivals, and that his campaign is the last Presidential outing for the generation of World War II.

On any given weekend, 5,000 citizen-soldiers from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's 28th Infantry Division assemble at this sprawling base to fly Cobra attack helicopters, fire M-1 tanks and train for a war that many Army officials say they will never fight. Because of that, the Defense Department wants to eliminate roughly half of 110,000 Army National Guard combat troops, which includes the 28th Division, and save hundreds of millions of dollars in such training and equipment. The remaining National Guardsmen would be trained to drive trucks or manage supplies, support skills that are lacking in the active-duty Army.

For four days, with ice clinging to their window sills and no heat in their apartment, an elderly couple in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, resorted to a space heater to survive the winter chill. Early yesterday, fire officials said, that Hobson's choice killed them. Florian Teraskiewicz, 75, and his wife, Irene, 69, died when a three-alarm fire raged through their apartment, burning their bodies so badly that at first, firefighters said, it was impossible to tell their age or sex, much less who they were. Inspectors said the blaze began about 2 A.M. with a faulty wire in the electrically powered oil-filled heater that the couple were using to ward off the raw cold.

DWELLING in darkness, little known or understood, the animals of the deep sea are traditionally thought of as mysterious or monstrous. But that is changing. Increasingly, commercial fishermen are scouring the global deep to catch them by the ton. Creatures of the abyss, frequently grotesque by human standards, are being carefully prepared and marketed to hide their murky origins when sold in stores and restaurants. Scientists worry that the rush for deep-sea food is beginning to upset the delicate ecology of some of the sunless regions that cover more than half the planet, threatening to tip the evolutionary balance. But chefs and fishermen are eager to probe the new frontier. Deep harvesting, they say, can be prudent and the results quite tasty.

A 46-year-old Newark man spent Christmas Day at University Hospital after being shot three times from a moving car, the police said. The man, Abdul Bashir, tried to make a left turn to get away from three men in a black Acura who were following him yesterday, the A.P. reported. Mr. Bashir was wounded twice in the arm and once in the leg before the Acura sped away, said Detective Daniel Collins, a spokesman for the Newark police. The police had no motive for the shooting.