May 3, 1995

A fifth man has died as a result of the explosion on April 21 at a Lodi chemical plant. Buster McKenzie, 44, of Paterson, had been in critical condition with burns over 95 percent of his body since the accident at Napp Technologies. He died on Monday night at Hackensack Medical Center.

Sixteen police officers, including three sergeants, have been indicted on charges of robbery, burglary, larceny, filing false police reports and insurance fraud in a sweeping corruption investigation of the 48th Precinct in the Bronx, senior law enforcement officials said yesterday. In addition, seven other officers assigned to the station house in the East Tremont section -- including one sergeant -- are to be suspended from the force today and could face dismissal. Although these officers were suspected of criminal wrongdoing -- in some cases witnessing a crime and not reporting it -- the Bronx District Attorney's office told police officials that sufficient evidence to obtain an indictment had not been collected.

In perhaps the most painful blow yet since Maurice Saatchi left the Saatchi & Saatchi Company, now called Cordiant P.L.C., British Airways, a client especially angered by his ouster as chairman, is meting out its worst possible punishment. The airline, which for 11 years has benefited from clever campaigns created by the London office of Cordiant's flagship agency, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide, said yesterday that it would withdraw its account after a review and award a one-year contract to the breakaway shop formed by Mr. Saatchi.

With a respectful nod to the marketing success of such products as Wheaties and Hamburger Helper, the newly named chief executive of the Times Mirror Company said yesterday that media companies need to "start from the consumer" as they wade into the new media world. Mark H. Willes, a vice chairman of the consumer products and cereal giant General Mills Inc., might seem like a surprising choice to run one of the country's most influential newspaper publishing companies.

It has been about a year since Fidelity Investments, the country's biggest and most powerful mutual fund company, announced to the world that it was on the way to becoming as big a force in bond funds as it was in the stock funds that had made it famous. And Fidelity said it was using the same method that had worked so well in stocks: spend lots of money to hire the best and the brightest money managers, do the most thorough research and use the considerable financial muscle of the company to dominate the markets in which it invests.