November 14, 1995

With Bosnian peace talks at a standoff over territory, Administration officials said today that Secretary of State Warren Christopher would begin a last-ditch attempt on Tuesday to prod the parties toward an overall settlement. "The Serbs and the Bosnian Government are taking irreconcilable positions on territory right now," said a senior official close to the negotiations. "So we're bringing Christopher in for as much as two days and my guess is we'll either close this thing down or come out with a success."

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman signed a bill yesterday that she said would ease state-mandated financial burdens on local governments by giving towns greater flexibility in setting police chiefs' salaries, publishing proposed ordinances and testing storm water runoff, among other changes. On Election Day, voters strongly approved a ballot question that requires legislators to provide municipal government with the money to pay for most state mandates, the A.P. reported.

Summer's last drought warning is over. With fall's heavy rains continuing through November, three Catskill Mountain reservoirs that serve 14 counties of southern and central New Jersey are back to healthy levels, and the Delaware River Basin Commission ended all drought measures, The Associated Press said.

Wells Fargo & Company raised its hostile offer for the First Interstate Bancorp to $10.7 billion in stock yesterday and took steps to take its offer directly to First Interstate's shareholders. After the San Francisco-based Wells Fargo made its initial unsolicited $10.2 billion bid for its Los Angeles rival last month, First Interstate's board decided to accept a white-knight offer from First Bank System of Minneapolis for $10.1 billion in stock, contending that the deal offered greater long-term prospects and would preserve more jobs in Los Angeles, despite its lower value.

Extortion, kickbacks, nepotism, padded payrolls, frauds ingenious and diabolical: the tradition of corruption in Jersey City has wiped out whole slates of officials and their "reform" successors in the gritty town across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. Yesterday, a new chapter in the Jersey City story came to light as local officials and New Jersey state police investigators disclosed "Operation Boneyard," aimed at a bizarre scam involving the city car pound. No malefactors have been arrested and many details and the extent of skulduggery are still murky.

President Clinton on Monday vetoed two bills intended to keep the Government in business as he and Republican leaders exchanged accusations of partisan irresponsibility and much of the Government prepared to shut down later today. A last-ditch effort to reach agreement ended shortly before midnight without any progress between Mr. Clinton and Republican leaders. While Bob Dole of Kansas, the Senate majority leader, called the 90-minute session "constructive," he said, "We went around and around, but we don't have an agreement." Senator Thomas A. Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, was even more emphatic, saying, "No progress was made."

GEOLOGISTS have known for decades about the cause of most of the planet's earthquakes, strings of blockbusters that release more than 80 percent of the destructive energy that shakes the earth. These convulsive jolts occur as the dozen or so ambulatory slabs that make up the surface grind past one another. Deep in the earth, this movement stores up stress energies that periodically explode along rocky fault lines to level cities and cleave mountains. The mystery has been why some plate movements produce so many earthquakes and others cause very few or none at all -- an enigma of no small importance to the millions of people who live near earthquake zones and are anxious to know the probabilities of future calamities.

Investigators say an American Airlines jet, landing in a storm near Hartford early Sunday, narrowly avoided catastrophe when it sheared off treetops on a ridge more than two and a half miles from the runway, jamming large branches into both of the plane's engines. Article, page B7.

Government Ready to Close As Clinton Vetoes 2 Bills President Clinton vetoed two bills intended to keep the Government in business. He and Republican leaders exchanged accusations of irresponsibility, and much of the Government prepared to shut down today. Mr. Clinton vetoed a two-week extension of spending authority and a four-week extension of the Government's authority to borrow money. He said that provisions attached to that bill would set back three decades of environmental and public health protection. [Page A1.]

The crisis the Government is facing this week -- doors locked, workers sent home, a financial default threatened -- has become standard procedure when Congress and the White House are controlled by opposing parties. To one degree or another, it happened when George Bush was President and Thomas S. Foley was Speaker of the House. It happened when Ronald Reagan was President and Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. was Speaker.

Police officers say that A.T.& T. wanted to reach out and touch the Police Department for $259 early Sunday, when heavy winds and rain knocked out the department's automated phone system, which handles police, fire and ambulance calls. An officer who called A.T.& T. Global Business Communications Systems for emergency repairs was told that a technician could not be dispatched until the department paid a $259 balance, Lieut. Sal DeSena said. Resourceful officers instead rigged an emergency line through a fax machine. An A.T.& T. technician showed up to fix the system nine hours later. The company said the delay was caused by the storms. A spokesman, Wes Dvorak, said the company is investigating the police description of events.

About 50 New Jersey Ramapoughs in full regalia protested outside the Bureau of Indian Affairs yesterday to demand that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt personally review their application for recognition. In 1993, the bureau rejected the Ramapough application; a final ruling on their appeal is due at the end of this week, said Linda Powell, a spokeswoman for the 2,500 Ramapoughs who live in northern New Jersey and Rockland County, N.Y. Opponents claim that the group is composed of descendants of immigrants, not aboriginal North Americans, and that they are seeking recognition to open a casino.