May 6, 2001

Landmarks Preservation Commission designates two town houses on East 55th Street in Manhattan 'rare survivors' (S)

Article on why recent short-term interest rate cut by Federal Reserve has had little or no effect on reducing long-term mortgage rates; notes fixed mortgage rates and Federal Funds Rate do not always move in parallel; graph; photos (M)

IF there were condemnations coming, one might expect them to come from this crevice of the city, filled with yellowed memorabilia denouncing the Vietnam War and home to an equally yellow cat named Rusty, after the pacifist and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. But at the offices of the War Resisters League at Lafayette and Bleecker Streets in Greenwich Village, there were neither pointed fingers nor easy answers the other day about the anguished revelations of wartime killings by former Senator Bob Kerrey, now the president of New School University in the same neighborhood.

Ford's new F-650 Super CrewZer is largest truck available to noncommercial customers; photos (M)

Article in series examining third-world production for first-world markets focuses on plight of Mexico's migrant farmhands, who abandon homes for part of year to harvest crops, exported mostly to US, and endure dangerous and unsanitary conditions; about 200,000 who settle in nearly 150 work camps across Sinaloa state are among poorest of Mexico's 40 million poor; half are women and girls, and at least 30 percent are children under 15; they travel mostly as families or entire communities, and almost 40 percent are Indians who do not speak Spanish well; even though Pres Vicente Fox has been outspoken advocate of Mexican laborers in US, pressing Washington to improve their working conditions, he has not devoted attention in five months in office to cares of migrant workers at home, even following recent discovery that young children work at his family's plants packing vegetables; photos; map (M)