May 12, 1995

Rockefeller Center, a symbol of wealth, commerce and power the world over, was forced yesterday to file for bankruptcy protection by the Japanese company that controls it. The bankruptcy filing will have few, if any, tangible effects on the 12 Art Deco buildings that make up the center in midtown Manhattan, the home of bastions of American enterprise like NBC and its parent company, General Electric, the publisher Simon & Schuster and The Associated Press, as well as Radio City Music Hall.

The budget committees in the House and the Senate today approved separate fiscal plans that would bring the Federal budget into balance over the next seven years and change the face of much of American government. Over the last two days, the Senate committee rejected, on party-line votes, dozens of Democratic attempts to restore spending for health, education, agriculture, welfare and other areas of government the Republicans want to shrink. The plan was approved this evening on a vote of 12 to 10, with all Republicans for it and all Democrats opposed.

City Councilman Gary Harris, convicted six weeks ago on a charge of accepting bribes, said yesterday that he had resigned from office, as requested by the State Attorney General. But the Attorney General's Division of Criminal Justice begs to differ.

A bomb scare at the Hudson County Administration Building and Courthouse, set off by an anonymous caller, forced the evacuation of 700 workers and 70 prisoners for nearly two hours yesterday. They were let back in at 1:30 P.M. after searchers found nothing.

An F.B.I. affidavit released today suggested that planning for the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building began as far back as September 1994, when Terry L. Nichols began buying thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and rented the first of several storage sheds in small towns in Kansas. Mr. Nichols was accused of accumulating two tons of ammonium nitrate and, just a few days before the April 19 bombing, purchasing unspecified quantities of diesel fuel, another major ingredient in the bomb.