April 26, 1991

Students and faculty members opposed to the CUNY budget protest that has shut Borough of Manhattan Community College ended the takeover by storming the building last evening, breaking through a glass door and angrily confronting the protesters inside. And as the pressure to end the protests mounted from students fearful of losing a semester's worth of classes, student leaders at City College, the center of the protests, said yesterday that they had begun discussions with administrators and other students about ending their three-week-old takeover and allowing classes to resume. Another sit-in also ended yesterday at the CUNY Graduate Center on West 42d Street.

An advertising battle between Hormel and Campbell Soup has taken an unexpected turn with the disclosure that the Minneapolis office of Campbell's ad agency, BBDO Worldwide, had created Hormel ads that criticized Campbell. BBDO said yesterday that it had worked out the conflict between the two accounts by allowing another advertising agency to finish its work. But the two clients, the Campbell Soup Company and Geo. A. Hormel & Company, are still battling over the fairness of the ads.

The Bush Administration said today that it would provide financial assistance to Hanoi for the first time since the Vietnam War, approving a small but symbolically significant aid package for Vietnamese disabled during the fighting. The announcement that $1 million would be made available for artificial limbs comes less than a week after the two nations agreed to open an office in Vietnam to resolve the cases of American soldiers missing since the war. It represents one more cautious step in a slow warming of relations that began two years ago. Ties Hinge on Cooperation Administration officials reiterated that an initiation of full diplomatic relations or the lifting of a 15-year trade embargo would hinge on Hanoi's cooperation in accounting for all missing American soldiers and in reaching a diplomatic settlement to the civil war in Cambodia.

For six years, Rick Manning has been a state legislative lobbyist for what is arguably the most uncompromising lobby in Washington, the National Rifle Association. But now Mr. Manning is backing a bill that he and his New Jersey constituents admit they despise. The bill that Mr. Manning supports is in fact a gun control bill, something that the National Rifle Association opposes on principle. But it beats what they have now in New Jersey -- an even more restrictive bill. "At least my members won't be put in jail if we get the substitute bill," Mr. Manning said.

Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born publisher whose wide holdings in the United States include New York magazine, 20th Century Fox and several television stations, agreed yesterday to sell most of his magazines in this country for more than $600 million, people involved in the talks said. The buyer is a partnership controlled by Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, the New York buyout firm that was also involved in the recent purchase of the Bank of New England.