April 18, 1995

A Federal appeals court yesterday threw out the settlement of a huge class-action lawsuit that would have given $1,000 coupons to owners of 5.7 million older General Motors pickup trucks that are suspected of posing a fire hazard in sideways crashes. In its ruling, the three-member panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, said the settlement was worth little to consumers and agreed with the arguments of opponents of the deal, who had called it a "sophisticated marketing program" aimed at selling more G.M. trucks.

The Mazda Motor Corporation is shutting its Japanese factories for two days this month and two next month to cut production of cars bound for the United States that it can no longer sell. Mitsubishi Materials is shutting a zinc smelter in northern Japan. Sumitomo Metal Industries, a steelmaker, is planning to eliminate 1,500 more people from its work force by March 1997. These measures, which are at least partly due to the sharp appreciation of the Japanese yen, is beginning to mount. Economists and even Government officials say the recent surge in the exchange value of the yen threatens to send Japan back into a recession from which it was just emerging after three years. The pressure is expected to worsen now that the Government's emergency economic plan, announced Friday, has failed to halt the yen's rise.

Panicky parents and bewildered students were summoned to an Ocean County school during spring break yesterday for a lesson about Neisseria meningitis. Students at Lake Riviera Middle School who rode a school bus, ate lunch or took gym class with a sixth-grader who came down with the acute bacterial illness were given a drug called Ripamfin. The boy's family has not been infected and he is expected to recover.

A Boston Marathon First In the 99th running, both the male and female winners of Boston's most famous race -- Cosmas Ndeti of Kenya and Uta Pippig of Germany -- repeated as champions. Page B9. 'I Didn't Kill My Babies' Waneta E. Hoyt took the witness stand in her own defense to recall the deaths of her five young children a quarter century ago and to deny that she had murdered them. Page B1. Of 2 Lengthy Court Battles The Supreme Court refused to review a ruling that race-based promotions are unfair to whites and heard arguments on protecting endangered species. Page A14.

A man who killed his parents 15 years ago was on the loose yesterday after walking off the grounds of the Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital. Manalapan police officials said William Jennings, 39, was last seen on Saturday. A spokeswoman for the State Department of Human Services said that Mr. Jennings had grounds privileges that permitted him to walk unattended on hospital property. The police said he used a deer rifle on Easter Sunday in 1980 to kill his parents, then called to his sister: "I've just shot and killed Mom and Dad. Call the relatives and tell them I've done it." He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.