May 27, 1996

Minding Africa's Affairs

From the window of his small stationery supply store at the Avenue of the Americas and 18th Street in Manhattan, Michael Jacobs saw his world transformed as giant retail stores, one after another, moved into the once vacant and grimy strip of warehouses where he had operated his store since the mid-1970's. The new stores, with their employee uniforms and their emphasis on smiling, suburban-style service and vast selection, changed everything -- the buildings, the neighborhood and, in the end, Mr. Jacobs himself. He recreated his 2,800-square-foot shop in the megastores' image. He bought uniforms and name tags for his employees, and walkie-talkies so they would not have to shout to one another over customers' heads. He began accepting returns. He extended his hours, opened on Sunday for the first time, and last Christmas hired his 14-year-old son, Andrew, as doorman. Every new touch, Mr. Jacobs admits, was borrowed from the bigger players across the avenue.

When the air grows still and heavy here in this pretty village far from any paved road, people say they sometimes hear the sun-bleached skulls of Cambodia's holocaust, piled nearby in the ruins of a schoolhouse, talking to one another. "Sometimes we hear them crying," said Sim Than, a farmer. "You can hear the voices of women and children and men, just as if they were alive."

What are they listening to in Tokyo? What are they watching in France and reading in Russia? A survey of the most popular movies, TV shows, magazines, books and CD's in nine countries. BUSINESS DAY, PAGES 32-33

After years in the political wilderness, while official Washington focused on deficit reduction, Republican proponents of deep tax cuts are once again getting a serious hearing within their party. They no longer call themselves supply siders, preferring the designation "pro growth," because of the perceived failure of their policies in the Reagan Presidency. And they have updated their 1980's approach for the political realities of the 1990's, seeing their best opportunity since 1980 to make their ideology central to the Republican agenda. They are arguing that both the condition of the economy today and the political fight faced by Senator Bob Dole in his Presidential campaign now make the time right to commit to the sweeping tax cuts they advocate.