December 31, 1993

Law-enforcement officials said yesterday that they have identified a new suspect in the killing of a Hasidic scholar during the Crown Heights disturbances two years ago. The officials said they believe that it was this suspect who joined a crowd attacking the man, Yankel Rosenbaum, and delivered the stab wounds that killed him. The Brooklyn District Attorney is trying to persuade United States Attorney General Janet Reno to bring a broad civil rights case against the suspect, who is now in prison for unrelated crimes and to include in that case charges against Lemrick Nelson Jr., who has been tried in state court and acquitted of the slaying of Mr. Rosenbaum.

A genetically engineered drug made by Genentech Inc. that is the first new treatment for cystic fibrosis in 30 years was approved today by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug, called Pulmozyme, was developed and approved in about half the usual time because, in part, Genentech and the F.D.A. cooperated. The company received input from the F.D.A. during clinical trials and expedited approval of manufacturing and packaging even before today's approval.

Irving (Swifty) Lazar Dies Irving Lazar, the agent for Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter, among many other celebrities, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. Page A25. Rabbi Marshall Meyer Dies Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer, a critic of the Argentine military and a major voice of American Jewish liberalism, died at age 63. Page A24. New Demjanjuk Strategy The Justice Department still believes John Demjanjuk was a war criminal, if not one of the most barbaric Nazis of the Holocaust. Page A13.

AS of February, the I.B.M. Gallery of Science and Art will present shows from its permanent collection, and will no longer offer the loan exhibitions that have made it a vital presence in New York City during the last decade. With such scholarly shows as "Corot to Monet: The Rise of Landscape Painting in France," the splendid Tibetan showcase "Wisdom and Compassion" and highlights from several of America's treasurable smaller museums to its credit, the gallery's track record has been honorable, and sometimes a good deal more than that. It ends, happily, in a literal blaze of glory with the filigreed, gilded altarpieces that constitute "Sardinia: Sacred Art of the 15th and 16th Centuries," organized by the Italian Ministry of Cultural and Environmental Assets and the State Archives of Cagliari, among others. No doubt the light, reflective gold paint that covers these objects lends them a mysterious, numinous glow in dark churches and monastic interiors. But at least as mysterious for the visitor is the distinctive but hard-to-define collective flavor they project, a flavor that has much to do with the rocky Mediterranean island from which they came and where they still reside today.

Formally recognizing each other after decades of diplomatic aloofness and centuries of frequent Jewish-Catholic rancor, Israel and the Vatican signed an agreement today to establish diplomatic relations. But at the dawn of a new epoch of reconciliation, many Israelis were unable to shed their memories of pain and bloodshed that they associate with the church.