October 15, 1996

Treasury market is closed in observance of Columbus Day; stock and commodity markets, however, are open (S)

Archer Daniels Midland Co agrees to plea guilty to conspiring with competitors to fix prices of agricultural products and to pay $100 million in fines; plea bargain agreement will bring end to almost four years of investigation that began when former senior executive Mark E Whitcare agreed to act as Government informer and secretly tape hundreds of conversations at highest reaches of company; will push company and chairman Dwayne O Andreas into unusual new position; after decades of being run as virtual family fief under Andreas's control, company will be forced to provide evidence in continuing investigation of Andreas, his son and former heir apparent, and other executives; fine is by far largest ever obtained by Justice Department in criminal price-fixing case, eclipsing next highest by almost seven times; charges against company reviewed (M)

Sandra Blakeslee describes how bacteria come to live in and on infant from moment of birth; in first few months of life, infant is colonized by successive invasions of microbes; Dr Jeffrey Gordon, microbiologist, notes that at least 400 species of bacteria begin to set up housekeeping in baby's gut and many more reside on skin, mouth and elsewhere; only a few bacteria out of thousands of known species are virulent threats to human health and welfare; ones that colonize human bodies are, for most part, working on their hosts' behalf; photos of some common bacteria that inhabit healthy human body; drawing (L)

Steel service centers, plants that cut, shape, harden and otherwise transform raw steel into form that user of products like automobile companies can work with, have become darlings of Wall Street; for service centers, low steel prices mean lower costs for basic raw material, while price increases can be absorbed in higher markups; investors have come to recognize companies like Olympic Steel, Gibraltar Steel and Worthington Industries and other major service centers have evolved from simple distributors to complex technological wizards, both in terms of processing and information technologies; photos of high-tech steel service center (M)

Operators of Salem Nuclear Generating Station are investigating possibility that three radiation monitoring control cabinets were tampered with (New Jersey Daily Briefing) (S)