March 24, 1996

THEY were among the real estate industry's household names in the 80's, the ones on the buy or build side of almost every New York City deal. And then the recession came, and the old-time entrepreneurs -- dealmakers like Francis Greenburger, Dick Berry, Joe Newman, Larry Silverstein, Joe Bernstein, and his brother, Ralph -- seemed to simply stop doing deals here. Some, like Joseph Newman, lost the real estate empires they had so painstakingly built over the prior decades. Others, like Stephen Green, held onto what they had, but turned their energies to lower-profile activities like third-party management. Others, like Bernard Mendik, spent most of their time refinancing and refurbishing buildings. Still others, like Richard Berry, set their sights outside of beleaguered New York, and snapped up land in the Sun Belt, in Philadelphia, even overseas.

The Kentucky Wildcats returned to a familiar position this afternoon, with their feet on the opponent's throat for 40 minutes and their team perched among the cream in college basketball. Kentucky is in the Final Four for the first time since 1993.

WHEN this year's crop of American Presidential candidates dies and goes to heaven (an assumption some may question), pretty much the whole lot of them might end up here in Japan. It has just about everything they might want: *Law and order! Some prisons are so strict that inmates are virtually never allowed to speak to each other. No coddling here; one woman prisoner who simply said "good luck" during an exercise session got eight days of solitary confinement, where prisoners must spend the entire day seated on the floor, motionless, eyes closed.

President Lee Teng-hui swept to an election victory today that exceeded all expectations and served as a forceful rebuke to mainland China. This island's voters gave Mr. Lee a strong mandate in their first democratic balloting for President. Final results showed that 54 percent of the nearly 11 million Taiwanese who cast ballots voted for Mr. Lee. His tally was more than double that of his closest challenger in a field of four candidates.

It looks like a piece of abstract modern art: A long, rectangular slab of light-gray split-face concrete block, with a large square on one side that has a window in its middle and that is, appropriately, fire-engine red. It is, in fact, the newest fire station in North Bergen, N.J. The $680,000 firehouse sits on a 25- by 200-foot lot next to a playground on busy Tonnelle Avenue, between 43d and 44th Streets. "It serves as a backdrop for the playground and allows the two uses to work together and enhance each other," said Dean Marchetto of Hoboken, its architect. To that end the firehouse sports a long glass band along the side that, Mr. Marchetto said, turns it "into a museum, a gallery," so children can peer inside to see the fire trucks.