Leaders in both parties responded to the darkening economic outlook by exploring possible compromises on additional tax cuts, and the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee suggested that such a deal could involve the politically perilous step of tapping temporarily into the Social Security surplus. 

Pressure mounted on President Bush to drop his cautious approach to dealing with the weakening economy, much of it from within his own party. 
For the most part, fashion isn't the place to turn for life lessons a great-grandmother could impart -- you will find no one handing out the manual on the virtues of humility, civility or largesse. But every now and then from the world of the mink purse some wisdom manages to leak. Fashion is just the place to learn, or be reminded, that those in possession of the most prodigious egos are generally those in possession of the fewest actual gifts. The designers who truly merit the name genius, the Hussein Chalayans, say, are never the ones who turn up in movie cameos or channeling George Clooney in ads for Absolut. 

To the Editor: 

Re ''Scholar Sets Off Gastronomic False Alarm'' (front page, Sept. 8): 

It may be easy to criticize the personal judgment shown by Frank Flynn, a Columbia Business School professor who sent a fictitious letter alleging food poisoning to 240 restaurants as part of a study to determine how they responded to complaints. But his error may suggest a broader problem within segments of academia. 


Have we really come to the point where a professor at one of the country's top business schools is so apparently ignorant of the daily workings of businesses that he would believe that his letter of complaint would cause anything less than the upheaval that ensued? 

Mr. Flynn's case contributes to an uncomfortable suspicion that a number of today's leading academicians lack what is called real-world experience. 

The six major candidates running to succeed Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani ranged across the city yesterday in the final burst of politicking before the polls open today. 

Dodging late summer downpours, the candidates hit neighborhoods where they thought they might be able to eek out just a few more votes. Crossing and crisscrossing the boroughs -- sometimes missing one anothers' campaigns by just minutes -- it seemed as though the six candidates were out to shake every hand in the city. 

And shake hands they did, in Bay Ridge and Pelham Bay, in Stuyvesant Town and on the Lower East Side, in Staten Island and Flushing. Most ran late, racing to overcome traffic and, in one case, a computer glitch, but all managed to finish this last frantic lap around the city they hope to govern. 

Interview with Dr Lawrence E Gilbert, professor of integrative biology at University of Texas, on combating South American fire ants, one of most troubling pest infestations in American environmental history; Gilbert was among first to notice that Brazilian phorid flies appear to keep fire ants in check in South America, and he is hoping that they will do same in United States; photo (L) On a recent morning, Dr. Lawrence E. Gilbert, a professor of integrative biology at the University of Texas and director of its Brackenridge Field Laboratory, was standing over a glass tank at in his office, watching a swarm of Brazilian phorid flies make buzzing attacks on some very unhappy South American fire ants. 

''The flies are really cool, being able to fly backward, flying rings around these ants,'' Dr. Gilbert said with enthusiasm. ''They are wonderful acrobats -- just torturing those ants! You feel sorry for the ants when you see the flies attack them. Or at least, I do. But not too sorry.''