March 22, 1993

In the bankruptcy court hearing on the day that Abraham Hirschfeld first beat out Steven Hoffenberg for the right to sit in the publisher's chair at The New York Post, there was an exchange between a lawyer and the judge that taught two lessons. It showed the power that courts have over troubled businesses that make the trip to the debtors' court.

FAR FROM TRADE CENTER, FEW RECALL SHEIK Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman has become an object of great interest to American officials since three men who worshiped at a mosque where he preached in Jersey City have been arrested in connection with the bombing of the World Trade Center. According to Egyptian and Western security officials, the sheik commands a limited following of about 10,000 to 15,000 young supporters in his native Egypt. But in the dusty streets surrounding the Hadqa area in the lush oasis town of Fayoum, where Sheik Abdel Rahman's family members live, neighbors and merchants claim they have never heard of the sheik. B4. SUSPECTS SEEN TOGETHER ON EVE OF BLAST Witnesses have told Federal investigators that they spotted two of the suspects in the World Trade Center bombing together on the night before the blast, Federal officials said. That account, if true, could add another important piece to the puzzle as it helps investigators into the bombing fill in the critical hours and events between the afternoon of Feb. 25, when they believe a van, rented by one of the suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh, was seen near a Jersey City storage building where the authorities say the bomb was mixed, and on Feb. 26, when the bomb, inside the van, exploded inside the trade center garage in Manhattan. B4.

Drive through the gates of the state college here, and the woods and hills of the old Ambrose F. Clark estate recall a New England prep school. It seems an ideal home for a college with a special mission: to be the flagship of racial diversity for the SUNY system. But this is a troubled campus, where the buildings are deteriorating, the president is embattled and the college's commitment to minority students is being questioned.

As demonstrators gathered by the Russian Parliament building today on the banks of the Moscow River, President Boris N. Yeltsin got his first set of early returns from the Russian people, who will be asked in a month to break the country's political stalemate. By midafternoon, two opposing crowds had formed, facing off across barricades reinforced by rows of parked jeeps and buses. One was rallying under a forest of red Soviet flags, symbol of the Communist-nationalist opposition to Mr. Yeltsin's Government; the other, across the street, was waving the white, red and blue of the Russian tricolor, which has become Mr. Yeltsin's emblem.

The farmers of tobacco country wear worried expressions these days. Their concern is not their harvest prospects or even the campaigns of anti-smoking groups, whose efforts they have weathered for years. Instead, this time the adversary perceived by the farmers, as well as the tobacco industry's manufacturers and brokers, is a far more potent one: the Clinton Administration.