December 16, 2000

EToys, online retailer, says sales this holiday season are substantially lower than expected; fails to attract additional investment, and may run out of cash by March, 2001 (M)

Johnson & Johnson subsidiary LifeScan pleads guilty to criminal charges it sold defective blood glocose monitoring devices to diabetics and then submitted false information about the problems to federal regulators; company agrees to pay $60 million in fines; two defects within LifeScan's SureStep monitors sold between May 1996 and late 1997 caused registration of inaccurate readings, effecting diabetic users' safety and possibly causing the deaths of at least three (M)

New York City Schools Chancellor Harold O Levy, in move that could significantly reduce enrollment in bilingual education program, proposes that Board of Education end automatic assignment of students with limited English skills to such classes and have parents choose whether they want their children in programs where English is emphasized; proposal comes two months after study found several problems with city's bilingual education program, including substandard teaching and children who stay too long in program (M)

Oil patches like Woodward, Oklahoma, devastated by collapse in prices nearly decade ago, are coming back to life and feeling cautiously optimistic as rest of country suffers under soaring natural gas prices; in boom days of late 1970's and early 1980's, more than 4,500 drilling rigs operated in United States, most searching primarily for oil; now, many of those same rigs are drilling again, this time for natural gas; with some experts predicting that production will need to increase by 25 percent to meet demand, number of operating rotary rigs has more than doubled in past 18 months, to 1,090, more than 800 of them in search of natural gas; map; photo (M)

Cooper Union, arts and engineering college in New York, dropped physical education program 26 years ago, but with resourcefulness of Steve Baker, associate dean of students, teams have become competitive; Baker has put together programs in basketball, tennis, baseball, volleyball and soccer with limited financial resources and using some of his own money; players show enormous commitment to programs, maintaining exceptional averages; photo (M)