For the first time, Federal civil rights charges have been lodged in a cemetery desecration case, prosecutors say. Kevin Coombs, 18, of Garfield, and Christopher E. Talbot, 19, of Lodi, were charged in Federal court yesterday with vandalizing 18 graves last Halloween at a Jewish cemetery in Saddlebrook.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Charges in Vandalism Case

The New Jersey housing market has reached "advanced middle age," a new report from Rutgers University says.         Housing construction was in a "virtual depression" in 1990-91 and "the recovery so far has been extraordinarily modest," according to James W. Hughes,  dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. The report said 27,746 new housing units were approved in 1993. The 1991 low was 14,777 units, the fewest approvals since 1945.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Housing Market Ages

State corrections officers who seized control of the Hudson County Jail uncovered an escape route built by prisoners.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Jail Escape Route Discovered

Seeking time to avert collapse, Fokker N.V., the Dutch aircraft maker, said tonight that its main subsidiaries had been granted one month's protection from  creditors after the cutoff of financial support from Daimler-Benz A. G., its German benefactor.         The decision appeared to be little more than a stopgap measure, with the announcement on Monday by Daimler-Benz, which holds a controlling stake in Fokker, that it was effectively abandoning Fokker after several years of heavy losses.   

Creditors Give Fokker a Month To Plot Survival

A 19-month-old girl was killed and her baby sitter seriously injured on the Upper West Side yesterday when an out-of-control car turned a leisurely stroll into a journey of horror, dragging them across the sidewalk and slamming them into the plate-glass window of a health food store.         The police filed no charges against the driver, saying that he had passed drug and alcohol tests and had a clean driving record. He was identified as Larry Reddick, 60, of West 95th Street.   

Veering Car Kills Girl and Injures Sitter on Upper West Side

Newark International Airport opens a $120 million international arrivals hall today, a move that aviation experts say puts Newark in position to become the region's busiest airport. The addition to Terminal B is designed to handle 3,000 passengers per hour when it is fully operating by year's end. [Page A1.]   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;New Airport Arrivals Hall

When the Ford Motor Company introduces the redesigned F-150 XLT pickup on Thursday, the truck will not have simple steel bumpers. Instead, its rear bumpers will glisten with chrome -- an option for which customers used to pay $150.         Other popular options, like power mirrors, dual air bags and air-conditioning, will also be standard on the XLT, the most popular version of  the nation's best-selling vehicle. And that's just the beginning. Many features, previously unavailable on the truck, will be standard, such as a more powerful engine and a new front suspension that gives a much smoother ride.   

Ford Tests the Price Barrier;Auto Maker Takes a Risk With Fancy Redesigns

BARBARA KAFKA, now 62 and as opinionated, articulate and elegant as ever, is  on the telephone.         "Listen dear," she says, "I'm coming over to your house and we're going to roast six turkeys until we get it right."   

Some Like It Hot: Roasting at 500degrees

Japan's giant overall trade surplus shrank in 1995 for the first time in five years, led by a substantial narrowing in the politically sensitive gap with the  United States.         Many analysts say the decline is likely to continue, and help ease tensions with the nation's trading partners and help keep the dollar strong.   

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS;Japan Trade Surplus Shrinks For the First Time in 5 Years

Millions of people participate in health plans that use managed care for their mental health benefits. A growing number are complaining that in the name  of saving money, managed care companies are denying essential mental health services, and as a result patients are suffering.         The consumer affairs agencies in California and Rhode Island take such complaints seriously enough that they have begun investigations of how managed care companies handle psychiatric claims.   

Patients Challenge Mental Health Plans

I DIDN'T tell Ilene Beckerman about my prom dress. But if I had drawn it for  her, it would have looked like this: an ivory scoop-neck gown with long, full sleeves, an Empire waist -- very Juliet -- and down around the hem, three red stains where Romeo sloshed his sloe gin fizz.         I also didn't tell her about the brown velour top I was wearing years later,  when my relationship with this Romeo began its torturous decline. If I had drawn that, she would have seen the ubiquitous cowl neck of the late 1970's being carelessly worn well into the mid-1980's. I caught a reflection of it in the mirror that day -- drab color, bundling material -- and along with the guy, resolved instantly to dump it.   

SHOPPING WITH: Ilene Beckerman;Wearing Her Life on Her Sleeve

Newark International Airport formally opens a sprawling, $120 million international arrivals hall on Wednesday, a move that aviation experts say positions Newark to become the region's busiest airport.         The light-filled addition to Terminal B is designed to double the airport's capacity to take in international passengers, to 3,000 passengers an hour when it is fully operating by year's end.   

Newark Airport Is Pressing to Surpass Kennedy

It's a typical day in the year 2006. After a hectic afternoon of negotiating  contracts with business partners in Hong Kong, London, Moscow and the Bronx, you step from your office and into your kitchen. What's for lunch? You press a hand  on your personal diagnostic machine, and quicker then you can say Michael Jackson does Sinatra, the unit checks your blood pressure, cholesterol and weight-fat ratio and reads out your nutritional requirements. Up pops suggested  menus.         Kitchen robots quietly go to work moving ingredients from a "smart" refrigerator that is built into a microwave oven. A minute later, out rolls a garden salad with dill dressing and an open-face pork-roast sandwich on wheat -- no crust. After lunch, you return to your home office to finish some business in South Africa. If you're done early, maybe you can squeeze in a movie: "Gone With the Wind" you reconfigured with Bruce Willis as Rhett Butler.   

In a Cashless Future, Robots Will Cook

ALEX SALONOV eked out a living in Moscow selling his deep-hued cityscapes --  where else -- on bustling streets and in parks.         "No problem," he said.   

About New York;Street Art: Free Speech Or Just Stuff?

INSIDE

Texas Instruments reported disappointing earnings today, and then compounded  the letdown by forecasting that the entire computer chip industry was facing slower growth and sagging prices.         Several analysts who were already chopping their estimates for future earnings said the company's showing confirmed that the technology industry's current boom, not to mention the technology investing boom, was over.   

COMPANY REPORTS;Net Up but Texas Instruments Disappoints

President Clinton gave a front-runner's speech tonight, the speech of a candidate confident that he is ahead.         In a State of the Union Message that proposed an agenda not only for this year but also for the second term that Mr. Clinton hopes to win in November, he  dwelt only briefly on the protracted struggle over the budget. He sounded almost as if the fight was over, telling Congress and the nation that only one more push was needed to "make permanent deficits yesterday's legacy."   

STATE OF THE UNION: THE ASSESSMENT;Talking Like a Front-Runner

It was another muttering, fatigue-fogged midnight in the sour-aired waiting room of the homeless shelter at Bellevue Hospital. Fifty men in dingy parkas slumped awkwardly on chairs, staring or snoring, the murmur broken every few minutes by the blare of a bus announcement.         "Flushing!" came the call, offering a bed in the city-run shelter in Flushing, Queens, and a way out of spending the night on a chair. "Let's go! Flushing!"   

Shuttling Through the Night: The Overnighters' Odyssey;Homeless People Living Between Shelter Visits

A former president of the New Jersey Association of Public Accountants admitted yesterday in Federal court that he failed to declare $67,000 in income  on his tax returns from 1990 through 1992. Philip M. Shore, 49, of Midland Park, said that he sometimes put money in safe deposit boxes after clients paid  him. Officials say he owes $21,000 in taxes on the unreported income.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Tax Evasion Admitted

Personal incomes edged up just two-tenths of 1 percent in November, the Commerce Department said today, providing another sign that the economy was slowing.         The report also said consumer spending jumped a surprising nine-tenths of 1 percent in November, its biggest monthly gain since early 1994. But some economists discounted that gain, saying the scant rise in personal incomes, and  reports of poor holiday retail sales, suggested consumer spending had weakened since then.   

Incomes Rose Only Slightly In November

A battle is shaping up in the Democratic Party for the Congressional seat being vacated by Robert Torricelli, who is running for the Senate.         Steve Rothman, 48, of Ridgewood, who recently resigned as Bergen County surrogate, will make his formal announcement today at a senior citizen center in Fort Lee. Robert Gordon, 45, a Fair Lawn councilman who is a health care consultant, plans his formal announcement on Saturday in Rochelle Park. Joseph Mariniello, 52, a municipal attorney who lives in Fort Lee, has announced his candidacy in a mailing to members of the Bergen County Democratic Committee.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Prospects Line Up for House

Delivering the Republican response to President Clinton's State of the Union  Message, Senator Bob Dole tried tonight to take from the President the mantle of "change," deriding Mr. Clinton as an elitist and "almost the last public defender of a discredited status quo."         Mr. Dole, the Senate leader and the front-runner for his party's Presidential nomination, said earlier in the day that he viewed Mr. Clinton's speech as "a signal that the race is on," and Mr. Dole used his response time to lay out far  more forcefully than he has on the campaign trail the main themes of his own candidacy.   

STATE OF THE UNION: THE RESPONSE;Dole Says President Defends Old Elites Seeking Largesse

Hartford school officials said today that they intended to end the nation's largest experiment in private management of public schools, leaving the contractor, Education Alternatives Inc., once the leader in private management,  with no contracts in public school systems.         The Board of Education voted tonight to inform the company that it intends to terminate the five-year contract, which was signed in 1994. The decision follows a similar early cancellation in November of a contract under which Education Alternatives managed 11 public schools in Baltimore. And earlier in the year, Dade County, Fla., declined to renew the company's contract to manage an elementary school there.   

Hartford Plans to End the Private Management of Its Public Schools

Both political parties got big money from the tobacco industry and police unions in the last quarter of 1995, when the Legislature was debating cigarette  taxes and police contracts.   

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Parties Gain From Lobbies

    Clinton Declares That 'Era Of Big Government Is Over' In his State of the Union address, the President offered his ideas of limited government to compete with the Republican vision, but said "we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves." He added, "I am convinced we will balance the budget and make permanent deficits yesterday's legacy." [Page A1.]   

January 24, 1996

Headlines from January 24, 1996

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Charges in Vandalism Case

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Housing Market Ages

New Jersey Daily Briefing;Jail Escape Route Discovered

Creditors Give Fokker a Month To Plot Survival

Veering Car Kills Girl and Injures Sitter on Upper West Side

Billboard 200

Waiting To Exhale

Daydream

Jagged Little Pill

Cracked Rear View

Sixteen Stone

Historical Context for January 24, 1996