  Europe's Rivers Rage   The Netherlands faced its greatest natural catastrophe in more than 40 years as flood waters continued to rise. Page A10. Giuliani to Monitor Police    Defying the City Council's creation of an independent agency to monitor police corruption, the Mayor said he would create his own panel. Page B3. Airport Rail Plan in Jeopardy    Plans to build a 22-mile railway between Manhattan and Queens airports may be abandoned because of rising costs and criticism. Page B1. Coming: the Absolut Bunny?    Chiat/Day, the creator of the Energizer bunny, will merge with TBWA, the ad agency that made Absolut a household name for vodka. Page D1.

INSIDE

  NANCY SMITH has a two-line telephone, right by her bed, that can handle conference calls. She has a laptop computer. She has a boss who leaves anxious-sounding voice-mail messages. She also has the flu.   So she compromised: she stayed home one day last week, but took part in a meeting on the phone. The problem was, the conference-call connection had the fidelity of a subway public-address announcement.

Kleenex, Juice (Sniff), Aspirin, Fax

  George F. Abbott, who opened on Broadway in 1913 and didn't close for more than 70 years, died yesterday at his home in Miami Beach, Fla. He was 107 years old.   He died of a stroke in his sleep, said his wife, Joy, who was at his side. "He died a beautiful death," she said in a telephone interview.

George Abbott, Broadway Giant With Hit After Hit, Dead at 107

  As always, Nina Fue starts the day by checking parental signatures. Anyone who forgot to show his homework to Mom or Dad risks a sweetly stern reminder and a little black mark in Mrs. Fue's book.    "I bet you didn't forget to eat dinner last night," Mrs. Fue tells a sheepish Korey Sickler. "Well, this should be like that. Happens all the time."

Curriculum or Not, Teachers Teach Values

  The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is considering scaling back its plan to build a 22-mile railway between Manhattan and its two airports in Queens by 2003 because of rising costs and criticism of the project's effects on traffic congestion, authority officials said yesterday.   Such a move would be a blow to an ambitious proposal that was intended to address longstanding complaints that one of the world's biggest cities relied on a patchwork of inconvenient or expensive options to transport travelers to and from its airports.

Port Authority May Scale Back Airport Rail Line

  It is one of those hoary musical anecdotes that, no matter how preposterous, survive and even find their way into college classrooms: With an operatic premiere looming, the notoriously laggard composer Giaocchino Rossini was spirited off to a tower by his noble patron to complete the overture, long overdue. His guards were instructed to drop the pages from a window as completed, for copying; if production stalled, they were to pitch out the composer himself.   As the hours dragged on in the largely deserted studios of Minnesota Public Radio here one Sunday, the tale seemed oddly appropriate, the more so in relation to Peter Schickele, that master of preposterous anecdotes. For there in the next room was the bearded, bearlike Mr. Schickele, amiable composer and unrepentant perpetrator of the mercifully mythical P. D. Q. Bach, scribbling a radio script long past the appointed hour.

AT WORK WITH: Peter Schickele; When P. D. Q. Meets P. D. Slow

  First things first: Michael Katen remembers how cold it was when he bivouacked outside the Lincoln Tunnel for four days and four numbing winter nights. The macaroni and coffee he had brought along froze. Someone shook his hand and said it felt like an icicle.   It was 1945, and Mr. Katen's goal was to be the first motorist to pay a toll when the new north tube of the tunnel opened. After all, he and his brother say that separately or together, they were first at hundreds of things: Mr. First and Mr. Second.

Women and Children First?; For More Than Half a Century, Two Brothers Have Begged to Differ

  Gov. George E. Pataki said today that his proposed budget for the next fiscal year would freeze two of the largest forms of state aid to local communities. But he said that over all, his budget, to be released today, would not shift costs to local governments, and would actually save them more than $1 billion in programs mandated by the state.   He said he would freeze school assistance, the largest block of money that localities receive from the state, at $9.7 billion, and revenue sharing at $529 million. Given the huge cuts that the Governor has proposed in Medicaid and welfare spending, many local officials said they had expected Mr. Pataki to cut local assistance.

Pataki Budget Would Freeze Aid to Schools

  UNTIL fairly recently, Atlanta's major contribution to American gastronomy was Coca-Cola. Today, however, there is a vibrant and growing restaurant scene on all fronts, offering everything from haute French to homey Southern fried chicken.    The steady growth in restaurants -- the number has increased 40 to 50 percent in the last five years, according to industry estimates -- is often attributed to the 1996 summer Olympic Games, which will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to Atlanta. But restaurateurs point out that the Olympics haven't arrived and that their places will have to stay in business when the games are just a memory.

Cooking Up a Storm in Atlanta

  On the eve of releasing his first budget, Gov. George E. Pataki said he would freeze two of the largest areas of state aid, schools and local governments, but that his overall budget would save them money.    Article, page B1.

Pataki to Freeze Aid

  MAYOR SEEKS TAKEOVER OF FISH MARKET    Acknowledging that Federal intervention had failed to eradicate Mafia influence and business abuses at the Fulton Fish Market, Mayor Giuliani is proposing new laws to permit New York City to take control of the market. A1. TEACHERS GIVE LESSONS IN VALUES    Teachers of the year across the nation say the heated national debates over values curriculums and school prayer overlook the obvious: that quietly, in their own classrooms, good teachers teach values every day. A1.

METRO DIGEST

  Acknowledging that Federal intervention had failed to eradicate Mafia influence and business abuses at the Fulton Fish Market, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is proposing new laws to permit New York City to take control of the market.   Under the proposals, the city for the first time would investigate, license and regulate all businesses and employees at the market, in lower Manhattan. And in an attempt to sever suspected Mafia ties to merchants and companies, the city would also have the power to conduct background investigations of companies and their employees and bar those involved in wrongdoing.

To Fight Mob, Giuliani Proposes Takeover of Fulton Fish Market

  Specialty Chains Merge    Hay Day Markets, the Connecticut-based group of five fancy food stores, merged last week with Sutton Place Gourmet, the country's largest chain of specialty food shops. The merger gives Sutton Place Gourmet, based in Washington, a foothold in the New York region.    "We're hoping that basically our customers will not know the difference," said Alex Van Rensselaer, who started Hay Day Markets with his wife, Sallie, in Westport 17 years ago. "Our aim is to preserve the specialness and noncommercial, cottage-industry aspect of what we do."

Food Notes

  An article on Monday about the awards ceremony at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, misstated the surname of the film maker who was honored posthumously for the documentary "Black Is . . . Black Ain't." He was Marlon T. Riggs, not Briggs.

Corrections

Edward S. uses his lunch hour every day to deliver mail at a home for the elderly in Brooklyn. He works at the home wheeling residents to exercise classes.

Edward is preparing for a job in a mail room so that he can earn a living and move out of a housing project in East New York, where the landscape is desolate with drug addicts and battered tenements.

The Neediest Cases;
Looking for a Job and Self-Sufficiency

  An article in Business Day on Wednesday about the quarterly financial results of three health care companies misstated the reason for a payment by Merck & Company to E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. The $499.6 million charge, which will be paid over several years, is Merck's obligation based on the favorable performance of pharmaceutical products that Du Pont contributed to a joint venture, the Du Pont Merck Pharmaceutical Company. Merck said the payment was not caused by the withdrawal of the drug Cozaar from the venture.

  International A2-11  CHINA FAULTED ON HUMAN RIGHTS  A State Department report on international human rights has concluded that China failed to make progress in all major areas of human rights in the past year. A1  EUROPE'S RIVERS RAGE  The Netherlands faced its greatest natural catastrophe in more than 40 years as floodwaters continued to rise, forcing more than 100,000 people from their homes. A10

NEWS SUMMARY

  DEAR DIARY:   A New York native, I was here for a visit with my girlfriend, a Midwesterner. We were going to see "Pulp Fiction" at a Manhattan movie theater. We were a few minutes early and my friend found an usher reading a newspaper and asked him where the restrooms could be found.   Without lifting his eyes from the paper, he replied, "Girls around the corner to your left."

Metropolitan Diary

  Seven news articles between Jan. 13 and Jan. 26 and an Op-Ed page article on Jan. 27, all dealing with Federal charges that Qubilah Shabazz tried to hire someone to kill Louis Farrakhan, misidentified the location of the former Audubon Ballroom, where Ms. Shabazz's father, Malcolm X, was killed. It was in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, not in Harlem, to the south.

  A New York City police officer was convicted yesterday of second-degree assault in striking and seriously injuring a Brooklyn man with his nightstick and police radio.   Officer Gerard Pitti, 31, an eight-year veteran of the force, was found guilty by a jury in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn after six hours of deliberations in a two-week trial. Prosecutors told the jury that in February 1992, the officer struck the victim, Victor Medina, in the head, face and body, causing injuries that led to a month in the hospital.

Officer Convicted of Hitting Brooklyn Man

  "I don't see how I can be value-neutral. If you don't stand up for what you believe in, who's going to stand up for it? NINA FUE, a fourth-grade teacher in New Jersey.  [ B7:1. ]

No Headline

  Judging from defense lawyers' opening statements, the defendants in the terrorist conspiracy trial will argue that the "war of urban terrorism against the United States" that they are charged with planning was actually an entrapment scheme engineered by the F.B.I., using a shadowy Egyptian double agent who will be the Government's main witness.   "This case is about one of the biggest and most embarrassing moments in the F.B.I.'s history," said John H. Jacobs, the lawyer for Mohammed Saleh, who is accused of providing fuel oil for the manufacture of bombs in the alleged terror plot.

Defense Charges Entrapment in Terrorist Conspiracy Trial

ORANGES and tangerines are the beacons of winter produce markets, beckoning customers with their brilliant colors. Now is the time to find them at their best. Although familiar oranges like navels and Valencias have dominated sales for years, shoppers can find many new varieties, from Cara Caras to Sunbursts to ortaniques.

Most new varieties are crosses of oranges with members of the mandarin family, which include tangerines, clementines and satsumas. Perhaps the most intriguing newcomer is the Cara Cara navel, a mutant that has been grown in Florida for two years. This spectacular orange, large, thin-skinned and rather watery, resembles other Florida navels except that its flesh is pinkish-red.

Variations on an Orange With a Bit of Mandarin

  IT'S Dodge City in cyberspace. Myth and rumor fly as fast as bullets, and the sheriff is nowhere in sight. Much misinformation is not shot down. Some of it is harmless, but a lot is dangerous to health and well-being.   There are very few restrictions on the kinds of information that appear on the bulletin boards or in the forums of the three commercial on-line services -- America Online, Compuserve and Prodigy -- or on the Internet. Combined, they have more than 30 million subscribers. The anonymity of communicating this way makes it possible for people to provide false information with little fear of the consequences that might occur if someone offered erroneous advice in a newspaper or magazine column, or on radio or television.

Eating Well

  Edmanuel's Auto Collision looked like any other grimy body shop in the Bronx, a dark garage full of late-model sedans and mechanics with grease-blackened hands.    Federal authorities said yesterday that Edmanuel's, at 1300 Cromwell Avenue, was the headquarters for a sophisticated ring that stole more than $8 million worth of luxury cars from New York streets over two years.

February 1, 1995

Headlines from February 1, 1995

INSIDE

Kleenex, Juice (Sniff), Aspirin, Fax

George Abbott, Broadway Giant With Hit After Hit, Dead at 107

Curriculum or Not, Teachers Teach Values

Port Authority May Scale Back Airport Rail Line

Billboard 200

The Hits

Dookie

Hell Freezes Over

II

Vitalogy

Historical Context for February 1, 1995