January 10, 1996

A few years ago, when Elizabeth Carr's class was learning how an egg combines with sperm in the mother's body to create a child, she felt compelled to interrupt. "I piped up to say that not all babies are conceived like that and explained about sperm and eggs and petri dishes," said Elizabeth, now 14, the first child in the United States born through in vitro fertilization.

PASS the jampacked evasions and refried platitudes. It's time for another Sperling Breakfast, the symbiotic feast of question and answer shared for decades here by politicians on the make and political reporters on the make-and-break. "Of course it's self-serving," said the breakfast host, Godfrey (Budge) Sperling Jr., a genteel Beltway legend impervious to suggestions that any one of the 2,800 breakfast interviews recorded thus far with politicians is as likely to find the attending columnists, bureau chiefs and reporters being had for breakfast on the half shell by the visiting politician as vice versa.

First Fidelity Securities Settles Kickback Charges First Fidelity Securities of Newark agreed to pay $2.3 million to settle charges by the S.E.C. that it paid secret kickbacks to a former New Jersey county official to get lucrative bond underwriting business. The firm neither admitted nor denied any wrongdoing. The action is the first S.E.C. case brought against a broker-dealer firm rather than individuals for such payoffs.

President Clinton and Republican leaders in Congress suspended their talks on the budget again today with a promise to resume bargaining next week. But it seemed less certain than ever that there was much left to talk about. Having warned earlier that their session today was a climactic, do-or-die face-off, both sides instead haggled for four hours, then took to television to declare that they were marooned at loggerheads and needed a week's rest.

THE blizzard entrepreneurs started arriving before sunrise, much to John Stachewski's unhappy surprise. By the time he made it, just after 8, six fellow shovelers-for-hire were already circling some of the worst cases of cars-stuck-in-snowdrifts in downtown Hoboken. "Like vultures," Mr. Stachewksi said.