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)