March 24, 1993

A suspect in the World Trade Center bombing has been arrested in Egypt, law-enforcement officials in Washington said last night. He is the fourth man to be arrested in the case, and authorities have described him as a possible ringleader in the bombing. The suspect, Mahmud Abouhalima, was to be flown to New York later today to face a Federal court hearing based on a sealed indictment, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.

The chairman of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation reversed his position yesterday and agreed to testify at a House subcommittee hearing on the military contractor's troubled C-17 cargo plane program. John F. McDonnell, chairman and chief executive of the nation's largest military contractor, had refused last week to go before the legislation and national security subcommittee of the House Government Operations Committee, which wants to question the executive about his role in what Pentagon investigators say was, in effect, an illegal Government bailout of the company.

CREAM of Wheat, dried beets, chicken jus: this is not the stuff of mouth-watering meals, lovingly recalled. Until they have been in the hands of Michel Richard, one of the most exuberant and creative French chefs in the United States today. Mr. Richard spends most of his waking hours running from his French-California restaurant, Citrus, in Los Angeles, to his three less-ambitious French-California restaurants in Santa Barbara, Calif., Washington and Baltimore -- all called Citronelle. He knows he should take a little time for a diet and exercise regimen, but says he's too busy conjuring up ways to make French food more accessible, more casual and more in keeping with what Americans say they want to eat.

Rupert Murdoch, who transformed The New York Post into the nation's most flamboyant daily before selling it five years ago, has called Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and at least two United States Senators in recent days to determine whether he would have the political support to buy back the teetering newspaper. While the Governor yesterday did little more than acknowledge receiving a call from Mr. Murdoch, the Senators, Alfonse M. D'Amato, Republican of New York, and Ernest F. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina, said they would provide crucial support to Mr. Murdoch if he was deemed the only viable buyer for the paper.

The United States pressed on Tuesday for continued improvement in sales of foreign-made computer chips in Japan, even though Tokyo had already met the main goal of a semiconductor trade agreement. At a meeting in Hawaii, United States Government officials told the Japanese that it would be a "reasonable expectation" for foreign chip makers to average 20 percent of the Japanese market for all of 1993, according to one American official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.