April 9, 1994

Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa's announcement today that he would resign sent his governing coalition scrambling to form a new government and to salvage at least some of the economic and political reforms Mr. Hosokawa promised when he took office last year. Mr. Hosokawa's sudden resignation nonetheless appeared to usher in a new period of political instability that Japanese and American officials feared could slow, and possibly derail, his program to empower consumers and urban voters and deregulate a country choking on bureaucracy.

A Federal grand jury has accused a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of using university computers to distribute more than $1 million worth of pirated software over the Internet, the global computer network. In announcing an indictment on Thursday, the United States Attorney in Boston, Donald K. Stern, called it the nation's largest single case of software piracy to date.

Kurt Cobain, the ragged-voiced product of a Pacific Northwest timber town who helped to create the grunge rock sound that has dominated popular music for the last four years, was found dead today at his home here. The police said they believed that Mr. Cobain, the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter for the influential band Nirvana, killed himself with a single shotgun blast to the head. A note was found next to Mr. Cobain's body, which was discovered by an electrician who had gone to the house this morning to do some work, said Vinette Tichi, a spokeswoman for the Seattle Police Department. Mr. Cobain was 27.

Ramon C. Cortines, who became Chancellor of the New York City schools seven months ago, said yesterday that he was resigning because Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was interfering in the management of the school system. He announced his resignation, effective July 1, an hour after the Mayor appointed a political ally as an outside monitor of Board of Education finances. The Chancellor said Mr. Giuliani, in a midnight confrontation Thursday at Gracie Mansion over the school budget, had given him a choice: dismiss two of his top employees or accept the supervision of the fiscal monitor. Mr. Cortines said the terms amounted to "nothing short of blackmail, and obviously I could not succumb."

In a city of disconnected lives and romantic possibility, it was hardly a remarkable beginning: a wine tasting on a spring evening, a swirl of Beaujolais and conversation, a lovely separated woman and a lonely divorced man, strangers with savoir faire and talent, bruised but still open to a relationship. She was Sarah Auerbach, 35, and she owned an apartment in Brooklyn Heights and was an executive with a Wall Street investment banker. He called himself Rick Varela, though his name was Ricardo; he was 46, a recent arrival from Chicago, a management consultant with a big accounting firm who lived in a luxury building in Manhattan.