April 8, 1995

Pushed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Schools Chancellor Ramon C. Cortines said yesterday that he wanted to break the lifetime job guarantees for school bus drivers, even if the drivers carry out their threat to strike. Both the Chancellor and the Mayor say the lifetime job provision has made New York City's school transportation costs the highest in the nation.

Jobless Rate Inches Up The Government reported that unemployment rose one-tenth of 1 percent in March, confirming that the economy is slowing. Page 39. Action on Global Warming Delegates at a United Nations conference agreed to open negotiations to fix new limits on gases thought to contribute to global warning. Page 4. Challenge to DNA Fails The defense lost a challenge to the admissibility of DNA evidence in the O. J. Simpson murder trial. Page 6. Shipments to Serbia Oil rigs shipped from Iran to Serbia violated sanctions against Belgrade, western officials say. Page 5. 2 Arts

They put their uniform pants on, like players in baseball's 28 other training camps, one leg at a time. They ran laps and sprints, did calisthenics, threw, took batting practice. The only difference in this 29th camp was that the players who began the belated version of spring training did so without jobs. "We're going to call ourselves the Homestead Homies, the team of the misfits," Randy Velarde, formerly of the Yankees, said at the end of the 1-hour-50-minute workout.

After three months of ceding the initiative to the Republicans and their Contract With America, President Clinton today threatened to veto a host of major bills, already passed by the House, unless they were substantially altered by the Senate. Mr. Clinton, defining the limits of his willingness to compromise, said he would reject House-passed versions of bills dealing with the legal system, Government regulations, crime, the use of American troops in United Nations operations, and compensation for property owners whose land loses value as a result of Federal regulations.

Congress today approved legislation to create a financial control board for the District of Columbia, a measure that would effectively end home rule for the city for at least eight years. President Clinton is expected to sign the bill into law shortly. Like similar boards established to guide New York, Philadelphia and other cities through earlier fiscal crises, the five-member financial control panel, whose members are to be appointed by Mr. Clinton, would have vast authority over municipal spending, financial planning, borrowing, hiring and contracts.

Almost a year after the slaying of a reform-minded police chief in the northern city of Tijuana sent shock waves across Mexico, officials said today that federal police agents working for drug traffickers had carried out the killing. The slaying of the police chief, Jose Federico Benitez, came after several weeks in which he had publicly questioned a federal inquiry into the assassination in Tijuana of a former presidential candidate of the governing party, Luis Donaldo Colosio.

House Republicans are angry that Representative Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey revealed C.I.A. links to the killer of an American in Guatemala. But, not wanting to make the Democrat a martyr, they decided not to throw him off the House Intelligence Committee. Article, page 25.

Speaker Newt Gingrich celebrated the first months of the Republican-controlled Congress by addressing the nation tonight and setting out what he said would be a bipartisan map for the future. "We're going to open a dialogue because we want to create a new partnership with the American people," he said, perched on his desk in the deserted Capitol. He said it would be a plan "to remake the Government and balance the budget that is the American people's plan -- not the House Republican plan, not the Gingrich plan, but the plan of the American people."

Harvard University has rescinded its offer of early admission to what had seemed to be a perfect candidate after learning that she had killed her mother five years ago. The candidate, Gina Grant, 19, a high school senior, is a straight-A student, captain of her school tennis team and has taught biology to underprivileged sixth- and seventh-graders in Cambridge, Mass. But in 1990, in what Ms. Grant said was an attempt to defend herself from an alcoholic parent and what prosecutors called a vicious murder, Ms. Grant bludgeoned her mother to death in Lexington, S.C.

A picture caption on Wednesday with an article about new approaches to teaching history in high schools misstated the subject of a student discussion in a hallway of Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The students were debating whether the word "holocaust" should apply to the experiences of African-Americans; they were not discussing the American Revolution.

The House Proud column in The Home Section on March 16 about the renovation of a tiny Greenwich Village apartment credited the design and contracting incompletely. Much of the design was by Earl Culberson, the apartment's previous owner, and the contractor was Lee Bush.

A picture caption yesterday about the orchid show at the World Financial Center in lower Manhattan misstated the closing date. Its last day is tomorrow, not today.