1.   Utility officials said the blackout was unrelated to small power failures in San Francisco neighborhoods Monday and Tuesday.

2.   Blair said he had urged Clinton to settle the case and, according to a participant, informally met with utility officials to prepare the ground before talks began.

3.   Across New England, other electric utility officials also asked customers to shut off unnecessary appliances to help conserve energy.

4.   But by the weekend, the outage was being described by utility officials as the worst act of sabotage of a power system nationwide in at least a decade.

5.   But the power failure was described by utility officials as the worst act of sabotage of a power system in at least a decade.

6.   But utility officials say existing technology can remove less than half of mercury emissions before costs start to soar.

7.   But utility officials say the regulations are often applied to even minor changes at power plants.

8.   By late this afternoon, utility officials said, power had been restored at all but a few hundred homes.

9.   City and utility officials insisted that they had removed most of the asbestos from the two sites, adding that they were doing everything possible to contain it.

10.   Critics and other utility officials say the cost to Los Angeles would not have been so high had the city planned for deregulation.