March 20, 2002

Dave Anderson Sports of The Times column contends that New York Rangers will need more than newly acquired Pavel Bure to be Stanley Cup contenders; photo (M)

Supreme Court justices indicate willingness to approve extension of school drug tests as they hear arguments on program in rural Oklahoma school district that requires middle school and high school students to pass drug tests as condition for participation in extracurricular activity that includes interscholastic competition; Pottawatomie school district is challenging appeals court ruling that its testing program was not reasonable because it had not shown that there was specific problem for which drug testing is solution (M)

Goldman Sachs Group says earnings in its first quarter fell 32 percent, to $424 million, above analysts' expectations; investment banking revenue was $893 million, down 22 percent from quarter year earlier but up 12 percent from fourth quarter of 2001; Goldman's outlook for its business does not bode well for rest of steadily shrinking Wall Street (Market Place column) (M)

Virtually every major military contractor since Sept 11 has assigned senior executives to help reshape its marketing strategies, repackage its products and reorganize its bureaucracy to compete in fast-growing business of domestic security; Wall Street analysts are less enthusiastic, noting that military contractors are accustomed to dealing with well-defined budget being spent by familiar and centralized bureaucracy at Pentagon; domestic security is divided among many departments and spending plan is not clear; arms makers assume rapid build-up in spending on domestic front will include opportunities too lucrative to ignore; military contractors involved in such undertakings include Raytheon, Boeing Co, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman; chart; photos (M)

Canada's trade surplus climbed to its highest level in nine months in January, with exports rising at almost twice pace of imports; surplus with US widened to 7.61 billion Canadian dollars ($4.8 billion) from 6.76 billion in December; overall surplus in January was 5.1 billion Canadian dollars, up from 4.5 billion previous month; exports grew to 33.01 billion Canadian dollars from 32.01 billion (S)

Anthony Tommasini Critic's Notebook column, in light of current New York City Opera production with three rosters of singers who rotate solo roles, explores issue of whether Gershwin estate should continue or end stipulation that Porgy and Bess be performed by all-black cast; bass-baritone Simon Estes, in telephone interview, considers all-black cast stipulation a disservice to the opera and cause of integration; photos (M)

People close to case say SEC was demanding that Arthur Andersen pay $500 million to settle claims stemming from Enron investigation but that negotiations broke down after firm was indicted by Justice Department on charges of obstruction of justice; say that two sides were as much as $150 million apart on amount of financial settlement but were making progress and that Anderson would readily have accepted other terms of deal; indictment caused Andersen's client base to shrink rapidly and raised likelihood that overseas offices would be sold to competitors, erasing chances for large-scale financial settlement; SEC hoped to use leverage over Andersen both to obtain money for victims and to create firm that could serve as model for accounting industry; Justice Department, seeing series of cases of accounting fraud involving Andersen's clients, decided that destruction of Enron documents amounted to corporate crime that merited prosecution of entire firm (M)

Comment on conflict between publishing magnate William B Ziff Jr and Putnam County, NY, over Ziff's move to cut rock out of little-known preserve, Walter G Merritt County Park, for his new estate on 1,000-acre hilltop in Pawling; county officials, after investigating, find heavy machinery on park's edge, roads cut, boulders sliced apart and trees and shrubs missing; Ziff and his sons send $9.25 million to county treasury in compensation (M)

Profile of Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, area that is experiencing economic renewal, luring new businesses and stirring new sense of pride; Prospect Heights, largely black and Latino neighborhood, now attracts middle-class refugees of all races from higher-rent neighborhoods across city; photos; map (L)

Nation's major credit-rating agencies are expected to try to explain at Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing how they failed to detect more quickly problems at Enron, with at least one firm saying that Enron executives explicitly lied about three partnerships that helped hide debts that were instrumental in company's collapse; Moody's analyst John Diaz is expected to tell lawmakers that Enron, in response to specific request to provide details of all its off-balance-sheet debts and liabilities, produced disclosure that Enron executives referred to as 'kitchen sink'; Diaz is expected to say that materials did not include information about at least three major off-the-balance-sheet partnerships that Enron used to keep debts or losses off its financial statements; hearing will be first public forum at which agencies have opportunity to explain in detail reasons for their evaluations of Enron (M)

Trade negotiators from US and 15-nation European Union make their first formal effort to negotiate settlement addressing European complaints that Bush administration's new tariffs on imported steel are impermissible under World Trade Organization rules; Europeans reject arguments of Pres Bush, who says tariffs are needed to give struggling American steel industry time to restructure itself to compete bettter against cheaper imported steel; Americans say tariffs are legal, and they reject European claims for compensation for expected losses from them; envoys from two sides meet in Geneva and make no comments to reporters afterward; photo (M)

Vancouver Canucks defeat New York Rangers, 3-1; photos (M)