November 22, 1999

When it comes to cyberspace, the mantra of politicians vying for the title of most e-friendly, Republicans and Democrats alike, has been ''Hands off and go slow.'' Yet lawmakers have already passed a laundry list of bills that leave the federal government's fingerprints all over the Internet, and more are in the pipeline. The efforts include inventing rules against the peddling of Internet addresses, granting legal standing for digital contracts, proposing bans on the Internet programming known as Webcasts, prohibiting online gambling and regulating ''spam,'' the junk mail of cyberspace.

Five months after NATO forces moved in to take absolute control of Kosovo, there is little electricity and an inconstant water supply, the streets are full of garbage, traffic is in chaos without working stoplights or police direction, few cars have license plates, and no one has new identity papers. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians driven out by the Serbs have returned from refugee camps, and the Serbian and Gypsy minorities continue to be harassed and attacked. The United Nations government here, starved of funds by the countries that fought and won the war, is unable to pay salaries even to the public employees it is supposed to control.

Pierre Boulez's first stint in the Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall last week was brief but busy. Inside four days he spent several hours talking in public, rehearsed a group of young professionals for an all-Schoenberg program at Weill Recital Hall and presented a concert with the Ensemble Intercontemporain in the main auditorium. Those who went to everything, including about 80 young conductors, players and composers chosen to attend the Schoenberg preparations, had a blast of the Boulezian spirit, which, like sharp winter air in sunlight, is exciting and challenging and lets you see clearly. As for Mr. Boulez himself, he seemed happy, cordial and relaxed. It was not always so. But when, in the discussion sessions in Weill Hall that broke up the rehearsals, he was asked about his combative past -- a subject relevant in a forum for young musicians -- his responses were blithe or humorous. ''Is Schoenberg still dead?'' one brave man inquired, referring to the brutally frank obituary, ''Schoenberg Is Dead,'' that Mr. Boulez published in 1952. ''No,'' the reply flashed back, ''but he needs strong medicine now.''

Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel offered an unprompted defense of Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday, telling a group of American Jewish leaders in New York that her recent trip to the Middle East had been ''highly successful'' and had advanced the peace process. Mrs. Clinton had been criticized by some Jewish groups in the United States for her handling of the trip, particularly for sitting silently during a visit to the West Bank while Suha Arafat, the wife of the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, accused Israel of using toxic gas in the region.

It's too soon to tell whether the Jets' 17-7 victory over the Buffalo Bills today will have any significance, but the Jets continue to surprise everyone but themselves. Who believed a few weeks ago that a punchless team with a 1-6 record would put together a three-game winning streak that at least mathematically keeps their playoff possibilities alive?

On a recent Monday, 11,000 fans gathered in Conseco Fieldhouse here to watch World Championship Wrestling's ''Monday Nitro,'' a live wrestling match with more plot twists than an Italian opera. Behind a silver curtain near the ring, the scriptwriters, Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara, stood with earphones clamped to their heads, staring into television monitors, following the action as 3.5 million people watched on Turner Network Television, a unit of Time Warner Inc. On a screen above the ring, videotaped scenes played of a wrestler stalking a woman through a parking garage. (''Kimberly, I'm going to find you no matter where you hide!'') On stage, the Nitro Girls dance troupe mimicked sexual intercourse on stage to rap music by House of Pain. Three-hundred-pound men with stage names like Sid Vicious, Lex Luger and Sting shouted threats at one another. (''How about a game of hide and seek? You hide. I seek. Then I destroy!'') A wrestler named Jeff Jarrett broke an acoustic guitar to pieces over the head of a fellow wrestler -- a woman with 19-inch biceps and as much body fat as a strip of beef jerky -- named Midnight.

Even before New York's police commissioner pledged last week to arrest homeless people who persist in sleeping on sidewalks, a homeless Army veteran who has improvised a bed on the city's streets for a decade was quietly trying to stop him through the courts. In some ways the veteran, Augustine Betancourt, 33, is an unlikely legal adversary. But nobody knows better that the announced police tactic is not new. Nobody more clearly illustrates its mixed results.

After scrambling to adopt a technical standard for sales of music online, record companies and hardware makers last summer said they had paved the way for Christmas sales of portable digital players. But the holidays are ringing in a reality: neither the tunes nor the players will be in place to make this the first big ''digital music Christmas.'' Underscoring the delay, Sony Electronics, a consumer electronics bellwether, last week introduced its digital music player, the Memory Stick Walkman, but said it would not be for sale until January. Meanwhile, major music companies say that the delay in adopting standards -- along with logistical challenges -- has forced them to abandon their one-time goal of making much of their music available over the Internet by Christmas.

As he tries to fend off the biggest hostile takeover attempt in history, the chief executive of Mannesmann A.G. insisted today that he was not looking for a rescue by either a ''white knight'' investor or by German political leaders. ''This is a matter that should be left to the markets and to shareholders,'' the executive, Klaus Esser, said in an interview today. ''There should be freedom to make offers. If the offer is not attractive, the shareholder can decide.''

For the years she ruled as the queen of television variety shows, from 1967 to 1978, Carol Burnett was a warm spot in the seas of medium cool. At a moment when comedy kept turning darker and angrier, Ms. Burnett offered brilliant clowning without bile, satire without a sneer. Few contemporary comedians have commanded such undiluted good will, and even today this actress can't appear on a stage or screen without inspiring an instant flood of affection. Now all this warmth is being put to the cause of removing the chill from the songs of Stephen Sondheim, a composer whose talents are as intellectual as Ms. Burnett's are instinctive, in the misconceived revue ''Putting It Together,'' which opened last night at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. And as experiments in thermodynamics go, this one is a nonstarter. It's not that Ms. Burnett, who became a star on Broadway four decades ago in ''Once Upon a Mattress,'' doesn't have what it takes anymore to seduce a live audience; she does, in spades.

Acting on Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's declaration that a civilized city should not tolerate people sleeping on its streets, police officers arrested 23 homeless people over the weekend, all for disorderly conduct, and referred 127 others to shelters after sweeping through 850 locations across the city that are known as havens for the homeless, city officials said. Until this weekend, only about 100 homeless people had been arrested all year, a city official said.

By passing the hat among its neighbors, who happen to be America's most densely packed bunch of rich people, Central Park has harvested the largest haul of private dollars ever raised for a public park. As is obvious to the 20 million people who enter the park every year, this bumper crop of philanthropy, $233 million so far, has done a world of good. The graffiti-smeared ruin that was an international embarrassment two decades ago has been reborn as a meticulously restored greensward where bronze-preservation specialists each year polish and wax all 50 of the park's statues.