August 23, 1995

When Elton Bryan, then the director of the West Virginia state lottery, decided to award a lucrative state contract to a company, he first bought stock in the company. That sounded like insider trading to the Justice Department and to a Federal court. But in a little-publicized opinion that has alarmed the Securities and Exchange Commission, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit threw out Mr. Bryan's conviction on securities fraud earlier this summer. In doing so, the panel issued a broad opinion that if adopted by other circuits and the Supreme Court, could substantially reduce the number of possible insider trading cases.

Mesa Inc., besieged by dissident investors demanding that the company be sold, bolstered its defenses yesterday by guaranteeing T. Boone Pickens and other top executives at least twice their annual salaries if they lost their jobs under new owners. This so-called golden parachute, approved by Mesa's board today, would allow Mr. Pickens, Mesa's chairman and chief executive, to walk away with $2.2 million and provide another five officers with about $3.8 million more.

Edna Lewis said she was glad to be home with her family, her friends and about 100 strangers who had come to welcome her back to Virginia. Ostensibly, the group that gathered on Sunday at the Willow Grove Plantation Inn intended to further the cause of Southern cooking, considered by many to be the finest regional cuisine in the country but arguably an endangered species.

At least 35 people remained homeless after a fire swept through five apartment buildings on Stone Street early yesterday, fire officials said. Three buildings were demolished.

Tearful and furious, Dortha Word slammed a clenched fist down onto the bridge's gray steel railing on Monday night as she pictured her daughter clinging to it desperately, before falling to her death in the broad Detroit River early Saturday morning. Then Mrs. Word turned and looked back across the bridge, across the lanes where the police said traffic had been backed up as her daughter, Deletha, 33, was pulled from her car after a minor accident, stripped of some or all of her clothes, and beaten before she jumped into the river to escape. All the while, about 40 people were looking on.