December 7, 1994

A strongly worded opinion from the Justice Department has posed a fundamental legal challenge to the ways that State Supreme Court justices are selected in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan. The opinion raises the possibility that New York's judicial system may have to be revamped to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The opinion, handed down late Monday, pushes the future of the state's courts into the hands of the Federal courts in what could become a lengthy battle. The outcome of that fight will determine whether state lawmakers and the incoming Pataki administration have to decide how the state should pick its trial judges, a question that has remained mired for years in a quagmire of racial, geographic and clubhouse politics.

Webster L. Hubbell, a trusted friend of Bill Clinton and former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton who became one of the nation's top law-enforcement officials, admitted today that he stole at least $394,000 from his law partners and more than a dozen clients, including the Federal Government, before he arrived in Washington last year. In a Federal district court here, Mr. Hubbell pleaded guilty to two felony counts of mail fraud and tax evasion. His head bowed, he confirmed that on more than 400 occasions he submitted bills to cover personal expenses from 1989 to 1992 and concealed the theft with phony expense vouchers and inflated accounts of the hours he worked for clients.

Mutual fund experts expressed confusion -- and some investors expressed concern -- yesterday about what caused Fidelity Investments to make a huge clerical error in estimating payments that shareholders in its Magellan Fund were to have received on Friday. And Fidelity did not help clear the air, refusing to provide details about how the mistake occurred, except to say that it was caused by a "manual mathematical error."

After almost three years as the leading figure in Italy's anticorruption drive, the crusading magistrate who came to symbolize Italy's quest for renewal resigned today, complaining that political maneuvering had made his work impossible. Antonio Di Pietro's resignation, even more than his decision last month to investigate Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stunned Italians, many of whom regarded him as what one television commentator called "the symbol of justice."

Orange County, Calif., plagued by disastrous losses in its investment fund, announced today that it had filed for bankruptcy protection to keep nervous lenders and investors from draining the fund and compounding its problems. The filing by Orange County, one of the wealthiest in the country, is by far the largest bankruptcy case involving a unit of government and the first involving a large American county.