May 13, 1994

FOR the art collector who has everything, why not a $22,000 knockoff of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, modified in the distinctive Cannes fashion? Adam's loins are draped with a strip of celluloid, and he clutches an Oscar. The figure reaching out to him is Marilyn Monroe's, and the ghosts of John Wayne, James Dean, Elvis Presley and Humphrey Bogart look on in approval. The hilltop Hollywood sign glitters in the background. A couple of cherubs are thrown in for good measure. The same art gallery, just across the street from the Palais du Festival, also features Marilyn as Venus on the half shell, Marilyn on Mount Rushmore and Marilyn holding court at the Last Supper. For this last bit of sacrilege, there are hamburgers, Heinz ketchup and a Jim Beam bottle on the table. Laurel and Hardy are two of the Twelve Apostles. Really, there ought to be a law.

The Clinton Administration's recent warnings that force may be needed to settle Haiti's long-running political crisis have quickly stirred strong opposition in the Southern Hemisphere, clouding the prospects for international approval of any American-led intervention. During a discussion of the Haitian crisis at the Organization of American States in Washington on Wednesday, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay rejected the use of force under any circumstances.

Lawyers for the insurance industry charged today that the Florio administration knew that the state-run auto insurance pool it had created was running at a deficit from its inception, but hid that reality from the public for political reasons. That accusation, documented in a lawsuit by insurance companies against the state, emerged as the insurance industry and the Whitman administration appeared close to an agreement to pay off the $1.3 billion debt of the insurance pool, known as the Market Transition Facility.

On weekday mornings, buses like the No. 60 weave through the fraying urban neighborhoods of Mount Vernon, New Rochelle and Yonkers and fill up early with women who are heading out to clean the homes and care for the babies and tend the frail in the more prosperous villages farther north in Westchester County. The passengers sit in cocoons of silence, gazing dreamily at the scene reeling film-like out the tinted windows, their bodies swaying gently as the bus rounds a curve or halts a little too suddenly. Some leaf through The Daily News or listen to radios or chat with other regulars. A few take naps, knowing their journey will be a long one.

I.B.M. scientists demonstrated a new optical disk technology today that would expand more than tenfold the storage capacity of digital disks used in playing back music, video or computer data. I.B.M. has not yet created a product from the technology. But the technique could lead to such consumer-product improvements as putting several feature-length movies on a single disk the size of today's music CD's or computer disks known as CD-ROM's. Currently, it typically takes two such disks to hold the average movie.