May 10, 1995

Contractors Seek Reprieve As Congressional budget cutters seem poised to trim virtually everything, contractors took to the Mall to show off their electric-powered vehicles, but annoyed the Park Police as they plowed up the grass. Page D20. Mysterious Disease in Zaire International teams of medical researchers are being sent to Zaire to investigate an outbreak of a mysterious disease that has killed at least 56 people and put 100 others in hospitals in the last month. Page A14. A Twist in Terrorism Trial In a setback for prosecutors at the trial of a Muslim cleric, an informant testified that he delayed telling Federal agents for a year about instructions he said the sheik gave him to kill Egypt's President. Page B1. New Zealand Breezes On Three down, two to go. That's New Zealand's position after its boat, Black Magic 1, beat Dennis Conner's Young America for the third straight time in the five-of-nine-race America's Cup finals. Page B13.

A YEAR after the Federal Government required detailed nutrition labels on food, Americans now know more about nutrition than ever before, but they don't seem to be altering their food choices based on what they have learned, a new report finds. The study, which is ongoing, is being conducted by the NPD Group, a market research company in Park Ridge, Ill. It is looking at the eating habits and attitudes of 2,500 households over a 15-month period, starting three months before the new label laws went into effect and ending in a few months.

SCHOOL OFFICIALS FIND CUTS AFTER ALL New York City Board of Education officials conceded that they are likely to find a way to cut the school bureaucracy by hundreds of millions of dollars next year without affecting classrooms very much. A1.

The price at the pump is only 99 cents a gallon. The catch is that what's on sale at a Shell station just outside the Holland Tunnel is compressed natural gas. An estimated 500 vehicles, most from company or government fleets, will be able to use the station, a joint venture of Shell Oil and Public Service Electric and Gas. Everybody else will have to keep filling 'er up with regular unleaded gasoline -- which Shell was selling yesterday for $1.15 a gallon.

If "the apparel oft proclaims the man," as Polonius declaimed to his son Laertes, what about kitchen utensils? Or a barbecue? Do these say anything about the person who owns and uses them? Christian Boltanski, a French conceptual artist, may not be Shakespeare, but these are among the questions raised by his new work, "Inventory," which is being installed this week at the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.