June 29, 1993

MAN CONFESSES TO SERIES OF KILLINGS A 34-year-old unemployed Long Island landscaper, arrested after the New York State police discovered a body in the back of his pickup truck, has confessed to killing at least 15 prostitutes, many from New York City, and burying their bodies in remote areas, the state police said. The discovery came after a chase that began with a traffic violation. A1. NEIGHBORS OFFER CLUES TO SUSPECT Neighbors of the suspect, Joel Rifkin, who lived in East Meadow, L.I., question how little they really knew about him. Several described him as "quiet" and "pleasant." Others called him a "loner" who, when angry, would leave in his pickup truck. B5. NEW YORK CITY

Facing a crisis of soaring enrollments and declining finances, the trustees of the City University of New York yesterday unanimously approved a complex plan to streamline the 21-college system and lay the foundation for growth into the next century. After months of intense, often bitter debate in and outside the university, the trustees voted 13-to-0 for a plan that makes all academic programs subject to a regular efficiency review and gives the university's Chancellor, W. Ann Reynolds, the authority to set the criteria for passing and failing those reviews.

For three years, many Americans put off new car and truck purchases, sending Detroit into a deep funk and contributing to the layoffs of tens of thousands of workers. Now 37 percent of cars and light trucks in the United States are 10 years old or older, compared with 23 percent in 1981. And as many Americans find they have little choice but to replace their old standbys, sales of cars and light trucks have steadily accelerated. Since April, hundreds of thousands of buyers have marched into showrooms to the great relief of auto makers and dealers -- and the United Automobile Workers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission today accused four former officers of Financial News Network, the defunct cable television operation, of fraud and other securities violations for exaggerating FNN's financial results in 1989 and 1990. By manipulating the revenues from two of FNN's related companies, United Press International and International Research Network Inc., the officers consistently inflated the revenues of the troubled enterprise, according to a complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

DR. ANDREW WILES is a quiet, diffident man with a shy smile. Yet he summoned the courage to invest seven years working in secret on the world's most famous math problem, a formidable challenge that has baffled the best mathematicians for more than 300 years. Last week, despite all odds, he was able to announce that he had solved it. It was a feat that, if sustained, will catapult the 40-year-old mathematics professor at Princeton University into the ranks of his subject's giants, assuring that the pinnacle of his career had been reached and making him, instantaneously, a sort of icon.