December 11, 1995

Many young patients at Voorhees Pediatric Facility cannot leave the hospital because they depend on medical equipment for breathing and eating. On Tuesday, Voorhees is to celebrate the opening of a new school -- the first of its type in New Jersey -- specifically designed for such children. All five classrooms at the Bancroft School, which is adjacent to the hospital, are equipped with medical gas outlets, and each classroom is to have its own nurse. The school will be able to accommodate 65 students, hospital officials said.

Even in Mercer County, some people are not aware that their county operates a ski area. From time to time, there is talk of closing down the ski area in Belle Mountain, a perennial money loser that cost the county $145,000 last year. But when that happens, the public rises up in protest, said Frank Ragazzo, executive director of the Mercer County Park Commission. Last week, the Board of Freeholders voted 5 to 2 to reopen Belle Mountain, 18 miles north of Trenton on the Delaware River. "This is not the Poconos," Mr. Ragazzo said. "But it's good for kids and to learn on." The county hopes that weather conditions will allow snow-making by about Dec. 20. TERRY PRISTIN

Nearly 15,000 people crowded into Madison Square Garden yesterday to honor the memory of Yitzhak Rabin, braving a long, bone-chilling wait outside to accord the slain Israeli Prime Minister and his quest for peace the kind of unanimous mass tribute from American Jewry he never enjoyed while alive. So many Jews streamed in from Long Island and New Jersey, from Brooklyn and the Upper West Side, that several thousand were turned away at the arena's doors and missed sorrowful speeches by Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel, Vice President Al Gore and the widowed Leah Rabin.

French Leader Eases Stand

If Madison Square Garden had been a playground, someone would have yelled "Deuce," because that is what you say when the game is tied and proceeding too well for anyone to lose by only one basket. You had David Robinson's grace and muscle and the Knicks' improvisation and hustle. You had equal parts unreal and implausible mixed in with two parts impossible.

When Ima Proctor tried to help a friend who was being assaulted on an Elizabeth street on Thanksgiving, officials said it was just one of many selfless acts she was known for. It was her last. Ms. Proctor, 45, the sister of the disco diva Gloria Gaynor, died on Thursday after lapsing into a coma from injuries she herself received at the hands of Rasheed Wallace, 18, also of Elizabeth. Mr. Wallace is now a fugitive, and Superior Court Judge Ross Anzaldi has issued a warrant charging him with murder, said Edward M. Neafsey, acting prosecutor for Union County.

For Stanley W. Hill, executive director of New York City's largest and most powerful municipal employees union, this was supposed to be the year to shine. With the retirement of the charismatic titans who had long dominated municipal labor, Mr. Hill would have his star turn, a long-awaited chance to wrest a generous contract from City Hall and win the adulation of his union's 125,000 members.

The snow that quickly turned to a slushy mess was bad enough, but yesterday the region got more misery: a burst of cold air that sent temperatures dropping to the teens. The police in New York City were told to help homeless people in need of shelter, and forecasters expect the bad weather to stick around. Article, page B5.

There is no such thing as moderation in the Arctic. Russia learned that lesson well enough a few years ago, when the coal miners of this former penal colony, which is closer to the North Pole than to Moscow, helped bring Communism to its knees. Tired of cheap slogans and empty promises, the miners from this harsh outpost on the tundra led a national strike in 1989, and their undimmed fury two years later helped propel the reform leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, to the Russian presidency.

It is not exactly a secret that Representative Robert G. Torricelli of Englewood wants to run for the Senate seat to be vacated by Bill Bradley, a fellow Democrat. But today, at the Woodside Elementary School in Franklin Lakes, Mr. Torricelli is expected to make it official. Mr. Torricelli, a seven-term House veteran who represents parts of Bergen and Hudson counties, is to make stops along the shore at the Ocean Place Hilton in Long Branch and in southern New Jersey at the Sheraton Hotel in Cherry Hill.

Harry P. Kaufman, the subway token clerk who suffered devastating burns and lung damage two weeks ago when two men turned his Brooklyn booth into an exploding inferno in a botched robbery that replayed scenes from the movie "Money Train," died yesterday at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. His death -- the first of a city token clerk in a firebombing since 1988 -- came as two more fire attacks on token booths were reported, raising to seven the number of similar incidents since the Nov. 22 release of the film in which a pyromaniac sets token booths ablaze with flammable liquid.

Prudential Tells Plaintiffs A Deadline Has Passed Prudential Securities has informed many investors and brokers suing it for fraud that their cases have been settled in a class action that some of the plaintiffs said they had never heard of. The company said the plaintiffs failed to mail a note stating they did not want to be included in the settlement and that the deadline for opting out was Oct. 30.