December 13, 1995

Their town's most famous son was celebrating in Los Angeles, but that didn't stop fans in Hoboken from wishing Frank Sinatra a happy 80th birthday yesterday. Mayor Anthony Russo cut the cake at a noon party held by Sparky Spaccavento, owner of Piccolo's Clam Bar. "Mr. Sinatra," the Mayor toasted the absent singer, "your experience and your success actually mirror the experience and success of the city and its people. You came from humble beginnings, you had a dream, and you realized that dream." TERRY PRISTIN

The current attraction at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx is six toy trains that chug circuitously among vegetation and hand-carved evocations of the Brooklyn Bridge and Grand Central Terminal. At Halloween, 45 dancers in skeleton costumes tapped along a haunted walk. Periodically, there are wine tastings, not to mention the new line of souvenirs, from floral calendars to stationary, with garden tools and seeds to be out shortly. A catering facility capable of handling large weddings is in the works.

IT is one of those cold, rainy after noons a hot tea, mystery-novel-by-the-fireplace kind of day. So why does it feel like the Fourth of July in Barbara Smith's kitchen?

Mark J. Finkelstein, president of the New Jersey School Boards Association, testified yesterday that some students would lose vital services under the State Department of Education's proposal to cut special-education aid to districts that classify more than 10 percent of their students as having special needs. But Deputy Education Commissioner Richard A. DiPatri told the joint Senate and Assembly Education Committee hearing that some students are placed in costly special education programs for the wrong reasons.

Hundreds of thousands of French demonstrators filled the streets of cities around the country today, while union leaders, sensing that they have caught the wind of revolt, hardened their demands. The demonstrators demanded not only a total abandonment of Prime Minister Alain Juppe's comprehensive welfare reform plan but also his resignation, a day after he backed down on several aspects of the austerity plan.

The Bank of Boston Corporation said last night that it would buy Baybanks Inc., the leading consumer bank in New England, for $2 billion in stock. The combined bank, with assets of $55 billion, will be the largest bank in Massachusetts and the 15th largest in the nation.

Giving their official endorsement to a deal quietly struck last week, House and Senate conferees agreed today to require television manufacturers to include in all new television sets a computer chip that would enable parents to block out violent programs. The so-called V-chip measure, which had been opposed by House Republicans, would also require the broadcasting and entertainment industries to devise a rating system for violent shows within one year. If they failed to do so, "guidelines" would be drawn up by the Federal Communications Commission.

More than 7,600 decks of playing cards from the gambling tables of Atlantic City will soon be in the hands of United States servicemen traveling to Bosnia, an American Red Cross official said yesterday. Seven casinos responded after the organization's Atlantic County chapter requested the cards on Friday, said Debbie Van Sant, the executive director.

For seven long years, the steelworkers here say, they stood by the LTV Corporation as it fought its way back from the brink of collapse. Thousands lost their jobs, and the survivors made numerous wage and benefit concessions to ease LTV's load. Today, with the company prospering again, the workers say they are reaping the fruit of their collaboration: betrayal.

A section of a 50-year-old wharf at a power plant on the East River collapsed yesterday morning, apparently after its pilings were eaten away by wood-boring marine organisms, city officials said. The collapse led divers to discover that about a dozen adjacent pilings supporting the shoulder of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive just south of East 15th Street were also "either deteriorated or missing," forcing the closing of the outer northbound lane for several hours, a city Transportation Department spokesman said.

Four days after a fiery attack on a Harlem clothing store left eight people dead, officials began to take a closer look yesterday at the community leaders who organized a racially charged boycott of the store in recent weeks, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, senior police officials said yesterday. While there was no indication that the community leaders had anything to do with the attack itself, the officials said they were looking at statements made by Mr. Sharpton and two other leaders of the protests against Freddy's clothing store, Morris Powell and Sikhulu Shange, in the weeks before last Friday's attack, to determine whether they said anything to fan racial or anti-Semitic emotions.

Prosecutors, tipped off that a couple indicted in October for bribing Newark city and school officials might try to flee the country, unsuccessfully tried to have their combined bail increased above $446,000, a state official said yesterday. After a trip that prosecutors said took them to Indonesia and New Zealand, the couple, Roger C. Day Jr. and his wife, Christine Day, were arrested in Italy on Nov. 24 for using doctored passports. "We didn't believe the amount of bail posted was sufficient to insure they would appear in court," said Andrew L. Rossner, chief of the state Attorney General's Official Corruption and Antitrust Bureau.