  Seagram Agrees to Buy 80% of MCA for $7 Billion     Seagram has agreed to pay $7 billion to Matsushita for 80 percent of MCA.  Matsushita is agreeing to cede control after failing to master the vagaries of Hollywood and a disgruntled American management team. A1.

BUSINESS DIGEST

  There are 107 members of the Wayne Police Department. Not one is black. That may change after a settlement the township reached with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, over a local law giving local residents preference for police jobs.

All-White Police Force Settles

  Did a Camden woman take in four foster children "out of the milk of human kindness," as her lawyer says? Or did she routinely abuse them, once forcing a 7-year-old girl to eat a dead rat, as prosecutors charge?   Gioconda Rivera, 33, is on trial here, charged with endangering the welfare of the children who were put in her care by the state. SUSAN JO KELLER

Foster Mother's Trial Opens

  D'AMATO APOLOGIZES AGAIN FOR REMARKS    In barely audible tones, a chastened and visibly nervous Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato delivered a rare apology on the Senate floor, calling his heavily accented remarks about the Japanese-American judge in the O. J. Simpson case, made Tuesday on a radio talk show, "totally wrong and inappropriate." A1. NEW YORK CITY

METRO DIGEST

  Rutgers University officials said tuition must go up next year but added that the proposed increase would be the lowest in a decade. The university's Board of Governors is to vote today on increasing tuition 4 percent -- an extra $145 a year for most in-state, full-time undergraduates. Tuition is now $3,640.

Rutgers Tuition to Rise, but Less

  Ending three weeks of intense speculation that it might renege on promises to make sweeping changes to its board, W. R. Grace & Company provided details yesterday of who would stay and who would go.   Big institutional shareholders, who hold huge chunks of Grace stock, had pressed the company for the changes after the sudden resignation on March 2 of J. P. Bolduc as president and chief executive.   Yesterday, the board voted to reduce the size of the board and announced which directors would be staying. While the changes on the surface meet the demands of the shareholders, other conflicts have become evident since the board agreed to the changes on March 17.

Grace's Board Votes Changes Meant to Satisfy Big Investors

  The dialogue between the two Senators on March 24 was practically incomprehensible: Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, the Illinois Democrat, and Senator Bob Packwood, the Oregon Republican who is chairman of the Finance Committee, were discussing "material terms" and "binding contract exceptions."   Nobody mentioned any names or explained any issues. No outsider could have understood what they were talking about. Indeed, no one could have heard them anyway -- both sides of the dialogue were inserted into the Congressional Record without ever having been spoken out loud.

Little-Noted Tiptoe Through a Closing Loophole

  NOW THAT one of the great musical masterworks written for the Easter season, Handel's "Messiah," has been firmly appropriated for Christmas, what is left? Well, plenty, as can be seen in the listings of seasonal musical events that are to take place in New York over the next 10 days, on page C32.   Handel was good enough to supply another timely masterpiece, "Israel in Egypt," on the subject of Passover. Bach poured some of his most inspired music into his "St. Matthew Passion." Haydn's Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross proved one of his most versatile creations. Even opera composers got into the act, albeit at some remove from traditional piety: Richard Wagner, with "Parsifal," and Bohuslav Martinu, with "The Greek Passion."

CD's in the Spirit of the Season

  Investigators suspect arson caused the biggest forest fire here in almost 25 years, with almost 20,000 acres scorched in the Pinelands.   They are focusing their inquiry on the Greenwood Forest Fish and Wildlife Management Area, where the fire began on Tuesday. Noting that there were no lightning strikes or other obvious causes, Lieut. Bernard Snyder of the Lacey Township Police Department said, "The only other conclusion you can draw at this time is that it's manmade or man-started."

Arson Suspected in Pinelands

  People who live and work near the post office where four people were fatally shot last month are urging the Postal Service not to close it. Helping them are New Jersey's two Senators, Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg, and Representative William Martini.

Postal Branch Is Backed

  A construction worker was killed yesterday when part of a building under demolition on the West Side of Manhattan collapsed, dragging down scaffolding he was on and flinging him 60 feet through the air onto a Lincoln Tunnel access road in front of horrified motorists.    Officials had not determined last night what caused the collapse of the building, an apartment building that had been vacant for years. A spokeswoman for the owner said he had decided to tear it down after a recent inspection indicated that the structure was unsafe.

Worker Dies When Building On West Side Suddenly Falls

  Seagram has agreed to pay $7 billion to buy 80 percent of the movie and entertainment company MCA Inc. from the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company, people close to the deal said yesterday.   Matsushita acquired MCA in 1990, during the heady days of Japanese investment in the United States, but has agreed to cede control after failing to master the vagaries of Hollywood and a disgruntled American management team.

SEAGRAM WILL BUY 80% OF BIG STUDIO FROM MATSUSHITA

  For all the tough talk around the country about cutting the Gordian knot of welfare dependency, Iowa is the only state that has cut off cash benefits to families because a parent refused to go to work or take other steps to get off welfare.   Even here, the state started removing parents and their children from the rolls only six months ago. Iowa has been unable to determine what became of most of the 881 families who have lost benefits so far. Some recipients say the new rules have prodded them to work, while others seem to have been pushed off a precipice.

Rethinking Welfare: Time Limits -- A special report.; Iowa Plan Tries to Cut Off the Cash

  Near the West 85th Street entrance to Central Park, a spring trickles through rolling hills thick with white oak trees. The occasional woodpecker hammers overhead. It would seem that this spot was always this way.    But before the park was built, 250 people lived there. Residents of Seneca Village, mostly working-class blacks, traveled to their jobs in laundries or inns in bustling lower Manhattan. Like other communities in the northern reaches of Manhattan, they impatiently waited for proper streets of cobblestone. There were multistory frame houses, gardens, three churches and at least one school.

Before Park, Black Village; Students Look Into a Community's History

  Nobody was in danger when radiation escaped from the Hope Creek nuclear plant on Wednesday, Federal officials said. But they are concerned that the small release went undetected by an alarm that should have been the first line of defense.   Instead, operators were alerted by monitors on the reactor's roof.

Detector Was Silent at A-Plant

  In barely audible tones, a chastened and visibly nervous Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato delivered a rare apology on the Senate floor today, calling his heavily accented remarks about the Japanese-American judge in the O. J. Simpson case "totally wrong and inappropriate."   Following three days of criticism of Mr. D'Amato's remarks about Judge Lance Ito on Don Imus's radio talk show -- the controversy picked up more momentum after a terse and perfunctory initial apology on Wednesday -- some Asian-American groups and others were still saying the damage done by his mocking rendition of a Japanese accent circa 1940's Hollywood could not easily be forgotten.

D'Amato Gives A New Apology On Ito Remarks

  The trial of O. J. Simpson appeared to come unglued today, as the topic shifted from contaminated gloves and blood to a possibly contaminated -- and maybe even endangered -- jury.   Three jurors reported sick today, halting testimony in the case. But illness was only one of the jury's problems. There were also questions, prompted by the comments of a juror excused on Wednesday, about whether jurors lied to serve in so celebrated a case, were prematurely discussing the case among themselves and were circumventing sequestration by making unsupervised phone calls.

A Day of Problems In Simpson's Trial, And New Questions

  THE most provocative and entertaining family play to reach Broadway in a long time has a cast of two, a single set and a time span of something less than two and a half hours. Yet it contains dozens of characters, represents six generations and embraces nearly 200 years of black American life, which is also white American life.   It's Emily Mann's adaptation of "Having Our Say," the best-selling memoir by Sarah (Sadie) L. Delany and her sister Annie Elizabeth (Bessie) Delany, written with Amy Hill Hearth. The play, which opened last night at the Booth Theater, stars two enchanting actresses: Gloria Foster, who plays Sadie at the age of 103, and Mary Alice, as Bessie at 101.

A Visit With Two Indomitable Sisters

  Testifying in the trial of a woman charged with killing her five young children, the chief forensic pathologist of the New York State Police said that all five had been deliberately suffocated and were not, as was originally believed, victims of crib death. One after another, Dr. Michael Baden read aloud from the original death certificates of Waneta E. Hoyt's five children, who died between 1965 and 1971, then questioned the cause of death listed in each case.    Article, page B5.

Questions Raised In Babies' Deaths

  After a week of grueling debate that had reduced it to a crawl, the Senate late tonight unanimously approved cuts of $16 billion in Government spending in the current fiscal year.   In doing so, it shifted hundreds of millions of dollars back to welfare, education and other social programs that were among the targets of a $17 billion budget-cutting bill that the House approved last month after only two days of debate. The two versions will now be reconciled by a conference committee.

SENATE APPROVES A $16 BILLION CUT IN CURRENT BUDGET

  The first new supermarket in more than 25 years is coming to town. The store, a 43,000-square-foot Thriftway, will be the heart of a $13 million downtown shopping center, Renaissance Plaza. Ground was broken yesterday and stores are expected to open in time for year-end holiday shopping.

A Supermarket for Atlantic City

  The Pentagon has sent a classified cable to the American Embassy in Haiti, warning that over two dozen political opponents of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide may have been selected for assassination, senior Defense Department officials said today.    American military officials compiled the list in the last several days from intelligence information and after analyzing supposed "hit lists" that have circulated in Haiti and in the Haitian-American press.

Pentagon Lists 27 Who Face Threat Of Death in Haiti

  A state judge said yesterday that convicted sex offenders could be required to give local police their names, addresses and other information. Twelve offenders from Passaic County had argued against the provisions in New Jersey's notification law for sex offenders who are released from prison.

'Megan's Law' Wins a Round

  Gov. Christine Todd Whitman was in town yesterday for parties at Union Station for the New Jersey Republican State Committee and the Atlantic City Convention and Visitors Authority. Waiting to greet her were protesters from the United States Public Interest Research Group, upset because Mrs. Whitman signed a bill that could cut student donations to the group in New Jersey.

Whitman Protested in Capital

Honest Scottish clansmen vs. corrupt bluebloods. Best for local color and hearty, hot-blooded stars.

Liam Neeson: Man in Kilts


Philip Vincent Belloc Jebb was a British architect and Liberal Party politician.

Philip Jebb, English architect and politician (born 1927)

Philip_Jebb

The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a struggle for independence waged by the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria against the invading Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. After a mutually agreed on treaty and terms, the Russians withdrew until they invaded again three years later, in the Second Chechen War of 1999–2000.

First Chechen War: Russian paramilitary troops begin a massacre of civilians in Samashki, Chechnya.

April 7, 1995

Headlines from April 7, 1995

BUSINESS DIGEST

All-White Police Force Settles

Foster Mother's Trial Opens

METRO DIGEST

Rutgers Tuition to Rise, but Less

Billboard 200

Me Against The World

Greatest Hits

Cracked Rear View

Hell Freezes Over

The Lion King

Notable Deaths

Historical Events

Historical Context for April 7, 1995