August 8, 1998

Clinton Administration officals say attacks on two US embassies in East Africa only minutes apart probably were carried out by one of a small number of sophisticated terrorist groups presumed to have attacked American installations in the past; Pres Clinton orders teams of FBI agents, medical specialists and explosives experts to scenes of bombings; Under Sec of State Thomas Pickering says it is too early to single out suspects or to speculate about why embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had been targeted; Sec of State Madeleine Albright is reported to be rushing home from Italy; senior US intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says investigators are focusing on Osama bin Laden, multimillionaire Saudi-born financier who has sworn to wage holy war on United States; Administration officials say there are also suspicions that attacks may have been carried out by Islamic Holy War group in Egypt; photos (M)

Japan's Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, in his first major policy speech since taking over as Prime Minister a week ago, proposes cuts in individual and corporate taxes and additional spending for public works while making less-concrete promises to deregulate economy and trim Government budget; Obuchi offers little in the way of shock therapy for Japan's ailing economy; chart; photo (M)

Stock market rallies for third day; Nasdaq composite index finishes up 17.26 points, or nine-tenths of 1 percent, at 1,846.77, while Russell index of 2,000 smaller-company stocks ends at 415.80, up 9.18, or 2.3 percent; Dow Jones industrial average finishes up 20.34 points, or two-tenths of 1 percent, at 8,598.02; Standard & Poor's 500-stock index ends off 0.18 point at 1,089.45; graphs; charts (M)

Study determines that since state lawmakers scaled back rent regulations last summer, at least three times the number of apartments in New York City have been deregulated under the new laws as under the old ones; rise, from 1,000 a year to more than 3,500, has occurred almost exclusively in Manhattan; survey by city's Rent Guidelines Board also finds that while rents have risen steeply for newly occupied apartments south of 96th Street in Manhattan, the new laws appear to have had only small impact elsewhere (M)

The bulls stumbled badly on Tuesday and they failed to stampede back to Wall Street by week's end, as they had after other recent market drops. A new market psychology seems to be settling in. Money & Business.