January 4, 2000

State Senator Efrain Gonzalez Jr. of the Bronx decided to open a Washington office for a Hispanic legislators' association a few years ago, figuring that he would have little trouble raising the necessary $40,000. Following something of a tradition among black and Hispanic members of the New York Legislature, Mr. Gonzalez called a lobbyist for Philip Morris, and came away with the entire amount. A colleague from the borough, Assemblywoman Gloria Davis, receives $5,000 annually from Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company, for a Thanksgiving meal for the poor in her predominantly black district. Seeking aid for a program to teach nonviolence to young people, Ms. Davis said that she raised $22,000 from another cigarette giant, R. J. Reynolds.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announced yesterday that Bruce Teitelbaum, the man he has relied on in recent years to defend his administration and carry out many of his political orders, will manage his campaign if the mayor runs, as expected, for the United States Senate this year. His afternoon announcement coincided with a carefully worded statement issued by Mr. Teitelbaum's lawyer saying that, according to federal prosecutors and the Brooklyn district attorney's office, Mr. Teitelbaum is ''presently neither a target nor a subject'' of a criminal investigation into the collapse of a Brooklyn building that killed a construction worker in November. The accident has stirred questions about City Hall's influence over building practices in the Orthodox Jewish section of Williamsburg.

With his commitment of credibility fulfilled, with his personal legacy secure, all that was left for Bill Parcells to do today was to honor Bill Belichick's service, and Leon Hess's trust. All that remained was for Parcells to let the clock run out, without fumbling the handoff of the Jets. Parcells said, ''I coached as hard as I could, right to the end,'' and that included his giving Belichick the ball with the best chance of breaking away from Parcells's intimidating presence. Super Bowl musings aside, the timing on this play was perfect, after an 8-8 season that should not be difficult to improve on, and before the detested Robert Kraft could lure Belichick back to New England to replace the fired Pete Carroll.

Trying to repair some of the damage to Coca-Cola's public image, the company's incoming chairman and chief executive, Douglas N. Daft, has been negotiating intensely with Carl H. Ware, the company's lone black senior vice president who in November announced his intention to leave the company, in hopes of persuading him to accept a high-profile job. A person close to the situation said yesterday that Mr. Daft began the talks soon after he was named to succeed M. Douglas Ivester, who shocked the company and the business world last month by abruptly announcing his own resignation. The jobs under discussion for Mr. Ware, who is president of the company's Africa division, include ''expanded responsibilities,'' the person said.

At first glance, Natalia Sarygina doesn't look like much of a glass-ceiling smasher. She wears a sequined minidress to work, is pleased with her $25,000-a-year salary and has a conventional take on gender roles, in Russian-laced English. ''I think man is a man, he's more strong,'' she says. ''A woman? It's a woman,'' she shrugs, applying thick makeup in her stamp-size trailer in Manhattan.

As scientists look back at all the discoveries made in the 1990's, the so-called Decade of the Brain, one finding stands out as the most startling and, for many scientists, the most difficult to accept: people are not necessarily born with all the brain cells they will ever have. In fact, from birth through late adolescence, the brain appears to add billions of new cells, literally constructing its circuits out of freshly made neurons as children and teenagers interact with their environments. In adulthood, the process of adding new cells slows down but does not stop. Mature circuits appear to be maintained by new cell growth well into old age.

Stocks began the new year with a topsy-turvy performance yesterday, as technology and Internet shares bolted to new records even as broad swaths of the market slumped in the wake of a sharp rise in long-term interest rates. Observers who only note the closing quotes for major market averages would probably comment that the Nasdaq composite index continued to perform as it did throughout much of December, when it rose in what seemed like a straight line.

Two Algerians, one in Brooklyn and the other in Seattle, have been arrested in the continuing investigation of a terrorist bomb plot. The new arrests came amid indications that federal authorities are focusing their efforts on a network of Algerians in New York, Seattle and Boston, officials said yesterday. The Brooklyn man, Abdelwaheb Hamdouche, was taken into custody Saturday night at Kennedy International Airport as he was preparing to leave for Paris on a KLM flight, officials said. Mr. Hamdouche, 34, a naturalized French citizen, was held as a material witness in the bomb plot investigation, and it is believed that he was ordered to remain in custody after a closed hearing yesterday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

IF you were away for the holidays, you might have missed the avalanche of outrage over xenophobic remarks about New York City made by John Rocker, a young man blessed with a golden arm but cursed with a tin brain. Mr. Rocker, who makes his living as a pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, gave a bile-drenched interview to Sports Illustrated that appeared just before Christmas. In it, he denounced New York for having, among other things, too many foreigners.

Even though some Year 2000 computer glitches began appearing as much of the world headed back to work after the New Year's holiday, they remained scattered and, for the most part, trivial. Business Day, Page C1.

The year 2000 has come, but not Armageddon. All is quiet at the battleground the writer of the Book of Revelation may have had in mind for the millennial clash between good and evil, a place in northern Israel known as Megiddo. Archaeologists are familiar with almost every inch of this mother of all battlefields. They have known for a century that a 25-acre mound 18 miles southeast of modern Haifa is the site of Megiddo (meh-GEE-doh), an ancient city mentioned eight times in the Bible. The word ''Armageddon,'' appearing in Revelation 16:16, is thought by many scholars to be a corruption of the Hebrew ''Har Megiddo,'' meaning the hill or mound of Megiddo.

Just the mention of this city conjures up images of drug cartels, guerrillas and gangs of kidnappers and hired killers. But Medellin is also the hometown of Fernando Botero, 67, Latin America's most celebrated living artist, and he is now putting the full force of his renown behind a wide-ranging effort to overhaul the city's reputation and skyline.