August 18, 1998

After disappointing Wall Street in five of the six previous quarters, the Hewlett-Packard Company reported financial results today that exceeded analysts' estimates. But beyond the bottom line, there was little to celebrate in Hewlett-Packard's fiscal third quarter. New orders grew just 1 percent from the corresponding quarter a year earlier. In addition, company officials said further revamping efforts would probably result in a charge of about $100 million in the fourth quarter.

The stagger in his gait and pleading in his eyes said it all. Al had taken everything that a greyhound could be expected to, and then he had taken even more. Once he had been a racer, sleek and fleet. Then came abandonment on the beaches of Brooklyn. Mercy arrived in the form of a new owner and a home in the New Jersey suburbs, but at age 8, Al's back gave out. Two painful surgeries and more than $6,000 later, he still wasn't the dog he used to be.

To the relief of the business owners who were among the hardest hit by the July 21 scaffolding collapse at the Conde Nast building, the plywood gates that have sealed off 43d Street for several weeks were dismantled yesterday, and the street itself was scheduled to reopen this afternoon. For the Roundabout Theater, that means that its hit musical, ''Cabaret,'' can resume performances at the Kit Kat Klub on Thursday after missing 35 performances and losing more than $1.5 million in ticket sales, Todd Haimes, the artistic director, said yesterday.

With his grand jury testimony and his brief and defiant public admission of an inappropriate relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky tonight, President Clinton is hoping, as he has so many times in the past, that the public will respond with forgiveness and not disgust. The President, relying on polls and his own sense of the public's weariness with a sordid story of Presidential sex, took a calculated gamble that he can escape indictment by prosecutors or impeachment by lawmakers over what he declared was a private matter. In his testimony and his testy four-minute speech to the nation, he offered partial admissions but refused to answer many of questions that have swamped his Presidency since January.

MIGHTY and majestic, the river of ice snakes down to Prince William Sound between classically craggy mountains wreathed in clouds. Through the mist-streaked windows of a light plane, Columbia Glacier's huge mass and aquamarine-flecked desolation have an almost visceral impact. But like much of the rest of Alaska, the glacier is not what it used to be.