November 29, 1995

The official logo of the Akef Egyptian Circus is the face of a large lion. But in Zimbabwe, it was the punched face of a tiny 60-year-old woman that stuck in the public mind. Stella Killick's black eye, plastered all over the daily papers after she and other employees of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals tried to seize three dying pythons, probably did more than anything else to get the Akef family's circus booted out of Zimbabwe, and to draw attention to one of this continent's oddest, and possibly criminal, business ventures.

LIBBY RICHMOND, a film production assistant, needed to organize a party -- fast. Her criteria were simple: a big spread of appetizers to celebrate the wrap of a movie she had just finished working on. The party for the cast and crew of 100 people was to be held in a week at a friend's apartment. "And, oh yes, we can spend about $600," Ms. Richmond said with an unquenchable optimism.

A Monmouth University student sent an "E-mail bomb" to get even with officials who had revoked his computer privileges, Federal prosecutors said yesterday. The "bomb," 24,000 computer messages sent in just three hours, temporarily disabled the university's electronic mail system. The student, Dominick S. LaScala, 21, of Bethpage, L.I., faces both felony and misdemeanor charges.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is pushing the use of welfare recipients to supervise students during lunchtime, at recess, in hallways when they change classes, and before and after school -- duties that teachers will no longer have to perform under a new contract worked out with City Hall. The Mayor's plan, which has yet to be endorsed by the city's Board of Education or Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, would place welfare recipients in the schools their own children attend. While Dr. Crew, through a spokesman, said the proposal was still in the preliminary stage, board officials already have begun talks with school unions about starting a test program involving 200 welfare recipients.

Three weeks after being named chairman of the Magazine Publishers of America, the most prestigious post in the magazine industry, D. Claeys Bahrenburg was ousted yesterday as president of the Hearst Magazines division, a unit of the Hearst Corporation, after five years at the helm. His successor is Cathleen P. Black, 51, president and chief executive officer of the Newspaper Association of America and former president and publisher of USA Today, which is owned by the Gannett Company.