July 12, 1991

Pan Am, the nation's pioneer in commercial aviation, all but gave up its long fight for survival yesterday by agreeing to sell the European, Asian and African routes that helped make it famous, as well as its East Coast shuttle. The buyer is Delta Air Lines, the nation's third-largest carrier behind American and United. If the $260 million deal is completed, Delta will join a handful of other carriers with vast international route networks that are expected to dominate the industry in the next decade.

Despite last-minute appeals from the White House, the Senate Intelligence Committee indefinitely postponed its hearings on the nomination of Robert M. Gates to head the Central Intelligence Agency. The hearings had been tentatively scheduled for Monday. The panel said it wanted more information about what Mr. Gates knew of the Iran-contra affair. Members will convene Tuesday to decide when to begin the hearings. Article, page A10.

The Congressional Black Caucus voted 19 to 1 today to oppose the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court nominee who would be the second black to serve on the Court if he succeeds the retiring Thurgood Marshall. Representative Edolphus Towns, the Brooklyn Democrat who heads the caucus, said that after members reviewed the nominee's civil rights record, the feeling was that "he was not the person to carry on the legacy of Thurgood Marshall."

In a striking effort to cut costs, NBC said yesterday that it was closing its New York bureau, which has a news staff of 11. That announcement comes a day after NBC said it planned to close its Miami news bureau, which has a total staff of 13. The closings in New York and Miami will reduce the number of NBC news bureaus in the United States to seven.

FROM the MTV program "120 Minutes" to the alternative departments at major record labels to the New Music Seminar, an annual music-industry conference that begins this weekend at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Manhattan, new music has grown to be a serious business over the past few years. For the next six days, the seminar and its live-music branch, New Music Nights, will bring more than 400 bands and 8,000 music-industry delegates into New York; this year, the "new music" umbrella includes metal, rap, dance music, pop, Latin, reggae, funk, African, house, rave, avant-garde jazz, techno-pop, folk-rock, punk, Mexican, Spanish, Irish, Russian, rockabilly, calypso, Eastern European and various recombinations of all of the above. Seminar panels include "The Americanization of World Radio" and "Rap, Metal, Alternative: We're All in the Same Gang." One showcase is titled "The History of Our Future."