March 23, 1994

Magic Johnson will return to the National Basketball Association today, as coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, the team confirmed last night. Johnson, 34, will replace Randy Pfund, who compiled a 108-119 record in two full seasons plus 63 games this season. The Lakers (27-37) are in a rebuilding mode and are headed toward their first season not in the playoffs since the 1975-76 season.

A prominent Manhattan lawyer was ordered disbarred yesterday for unethical conduct that included making false statements after a Federal judge accused him of improperly slipping a piece of evidence to the jury, then trying to blame his co-counsel when the judge found out. A panel of five judges from the New York State Supreme Court's Appellate Division based its decision to disbar the lawyer, Theodore H. Friedman, on what it identified as 13 instances of unethical conduct growing out of two personal injury cases. The panel decided the instances "were not simply inadvertent or solitary peccadillos" but "consisted of a pattern of professional misconduct."

President Clinton is almost certain to reject a petition for clemency by Jonathan J. Pollard, the American convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, senior Administration officials said today. The Government's national security agencies and the Justice Department are unanimously opposed to clemency for Mr. Pollard, a view conveyed to the White House today by Attorney General Janet Reno, the officials said.

They went their separate ways on a sleeting, wintry afternoon last month, walking out of the 44th-floor conference room of a midtown Manhattan office tower, after a final two-hour meeting that went nowhere. It was the end of a sobering journey that began last summer in exhilaration and finished in frustration for Raymond W. Smith and John C. Malone, who tried to forge one of the biggest corporate mergers in history.

The former Gulf and Western Building -- which has stood for 24 years like an oversized, silver-and-black gatepost at the southwest corner of Central Park -- would be emptied of office tenants, stripped to its steel skeleton and turned into an extravagant apartment tower under plans announced yesterday. From 200 to 300 apartments would be created in the upper part of the 44-story skyscraper, with the lower floors serving perhaps as a hotel or as offices, said Donald J. Trump, a member of the redevelopment team. The plaza, notable for the yawning circular pit that leads to the Columbus Circle subway station, would also be rebuilt.