May 15, 1995

On the last morning of his life, Peter Tiscione frantically telephoned his wife from his hotel room in downtown Guatemala City to confide his terror: "Sweetheart, you must be brave. I don't think I'll be allowed to leave." "Are you sure?" Bernice Tiscione pressed him. But by the last time she called back that August night in 1992, he was dead, slumped in a bathtub fully clothed, his neck stabbed four times, his valuables untouched and his documents strewn across the floor.

History is against the Knicks. Momentum is against them. And the Indiana Pacers are definitely against them. The Knicks have been backed into the darkest corner of their season, and it has happened for a variety of reasons. In one game, they lost a 6-point lead in the final 18.7 seconds. In another game, they lost a 10-point lead in the final five minutes of regulation. And in another game, they were badly outplayed.

New Jersey Transit will be saying "thank you" all this week to the 307,000 people who ride its trains and buses each day. Like many other transit agencies across the country, New Jersey Transit is taking part in "Try Transit Week 1995." The agency's executive director, Shirley A. DeLibero, will greet customers at Long Branch, Newark and Hoboken, urging people who have never used New Jersey Transit to "give us a try," she said. "This year, we will spend a lot of time with children, telling them about the environmental and cost benefits associated with public transportation."

For the insurance industry, it is the $64 billion question: What if a monster hurricane wreaks havoc on downtown Miami or the Big One flattens Southern California? It is no idle fear. Two of the most destructive natural disasters in American history have occurred in the last three years: Hurricane Andrew, which blew through southern Florida in 1992, cost insurers $16 billion, and last year's Los Angeles earthquake set them back more than $11 billion. The size of the damage claims shocked insurance executives and set them to worrying about worse to come.

President Carlos Saul Menem won a second term in Argentina's elections today, according to official preliminary results that showed the President with a big lead over his closest opponent. Mr. Menem's victory followed a week of heated campaigning in which his main rival, Senator Jose Octavio Bordon, who ran on a platform of ending corruption and creating jobs, surged in opinion polls and seemed poised to force the President into a runoff.