Hasbro

Does new always mean improved? Or is it better not to mess with a classic? Our kid reporters - Jon B., Allison R. and Aisha T. - had a party to play andOperation CD-ROM ($30, Hasbro Interactive) has five hospitals to visit (like Haunted Hospital and Dino Hospital), with truly interesting patients. Players operate using virtual tweezers or select a game, like when a stranded frog must be taken out of a patient's throat. Though it has more choices than the classic, the CD-ROM game gets old quickly.

Who said home cooking is a dying art? Not the toy makers. If they have anything to do about it, a whole new generation is learning to stir, measure and, best of all, enjoy making what it eats, even if the recipes do have names like Foaming Drool and Deflating Potion. Some of the most popular toys this holiday season are ones that let kids play with their food. Three of Family Fun magazine's top 10 toy picks of the year are cooking toys. Hasbro has come up with the Queasy Bake Cookerator, a spinoff of its long-popular Easy Bake Oven.

A weekly briefing on the economic calendar Monday * Leading indicators for March. Earnings reports Earnings: 3M, Charles Schwab, Eli Lilly, Fannie Mae, Hasbro, Manpower, Wachovia, American Express, Cendant, Kraft Foods, Washington Mutual. Tuesday Earnings reports Earnings: America West, Ameritrade, Bank One, Blockbuster, Boise Cascade, General Motors, Illinois Tool Works, Lucent, Northern Trust, RadioShack, Sprint FON, Sprint PCS, US Bancorp, Viacom, Allstate, DeVry, Motorola. Wednesday * The Fed releases its Beige Book.

BUSINESS +DOW +72.28 11,613.19 +NASDAQ+30.52 2,252.89 +S&P+6.87 1,325.18 +SUN INDEX+2.46 334.25 NATIONAL Anti-terror bills gain steam House Republicans handed President Bush narrow victories yesterday on two broad anti-terrorism measures, sending them to likely votes next week. pg 4a WORLD Chavez calls Bush `the devil' Bringing his verbal war against the White House to the United Nations, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez yesterday branded President George W. Bush "the devil" and the United States an "imperialist empire" on the verge of collapse.

Chicago schools chief to be education secretary WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan to serve as education secretary, according to sources with knowledge of the decision. Duncan has run the country's third-biggest school district for the past seven years. He has focused on improving struggling schools, closing those that fail and getting better teachers. Obama has not indicated how he will try to fix the country's ailing schools. A transition official for Obama also says Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar will be named interior secretary later this week.

NEW YORK -- With toy sales nearly flat last year, 1,500 toy makers descended on Manhattan yesterday to drum up interest in their evergreen offerings of games, dolls, bicycles and video games.But before they opened the doors of the 91st American International Toy Fair, the manufacturers released some sobering statistics for 1993.Shipments of toys increased just 1.6 percent to $11.73 billion last year, although video games continued to corner more of the market, with shipments to stores jumping 18.1 percent to $3.97 billion.

A new Monopoly-style board game based on racial stereotypes has sparked an uproar among African-Americans and others nationwide, with the NAACP calling this week for production and sale of the game to stop. Hasbro Inc., the maker of Monopoly, threatened yesterday to sue the game's creator if he didn't immediately stop selling "Ghettopoly." The game includes among its board pieces a rock of crack cocaine, a pimp, a basketball and a 40-ounce bottle of beer. Advertised on a Ghettopoly Web site, the game was the brainchild of David Chang, an Asian-American who has been marketing it through Urban Outfitters, an international chain based in Philadelphia that sells mostly apparel but also has a line of toys.

It's summertime.I know because my mailbox suddenly is filled with missives from skin care companies and dermatologists' organizations offering dire warnings about unprotected sun worship.The decision to tan or not is a personal one and probably because I still lust in my heart for a golden tan -- I try not to judge hard-core tanners too harshly.I figure part of being an adult is having the right to make our own decisions, even if they're bad for us.(Despite the current hoo-ha over the return of the pale complexion, tans are hardly out of style; only the actual tanning is. Our collective lingering desire to go for the gold is why self-tanning creams are selling so well.

'Tis the season for colorfully wrapped presents and freshly cut Christmas trees. But much of the packaging amounts to decking the halls with boughs of garbage, environmentalists say.Yesterday, environmental groups, including Clean Water Action of Baltimore, presented some of the worst offenders in the stores this year with their annual "Wastemaker Awards" at news conferences across the country.The products -- mostly toys -- ranged from Matchbox cars packaged in cigar-box sized containers to an "Obsession" perfume set obsessively packed in a heavy cardboard designer box and held in place with a plastic insert.

Some of this Christmas season's hottest computer games are being crafted right in your own back yard. Here are a few titles to look for in the coming months from local game makers (all are written for Windows 95/98):One of the most anticipated is Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri from Firaxis Games. Meier and collaborator Brian Reynolds, the duo responsible for best-selling historical strategy games such as Civilization II and Gettysburg, are quickly establishing themselves as the Lennon-McCartney of the strategy gaming world.