February 10, 1996

Gov. George E. Pataki vetoed legislation today that would have helped New York City's powerful police and fire unions win larger pay increases, agreeing with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani that the bill would cause huge financial problems for New York City. Mr. Pataki said he thought that New York City police officers were underpaid. But in his veto message he said, "While there is a strong state interest in seeing that New York City's police are fairly and appropriately compensated, this bill fails to achieve the proper balance between this need and the public employer's ability to pay."

Two silvery New Jersey Transit commuter trains carrying more than 700 passengers in opposite directions in the morning rush collided yesterday in a thunderous roar of sideswiping steel and grinding sparks at a junction on a lonely marshland in Jersey City, just over the horizon from New York City. Both engineers and a passenger were killed and 162 people were injured, at least 16 severely, in a crash that occurred after one train failed to stop at a signal and was struck by the other onrushing train. It was unclear, however, if human error or a problem with the signal or one of the trains was to blame.

THE VICTIMS -- The crash claimed the lives of a lawyer from Fair Lawn who was a regular passenger and of two New Jersey Transit engineers, both seasoned veterans of the railroad. Page 30.

Timing their protest with a meeting of the directors of Witwatersrand University, a group of black students and university workers gathered recently in the administration building on campus here. While they ululated and waved signs with slogans like "Stop Ethnic Cleansing at Wits Now," a group of white students leaned over a balcony high above and watched for a while. Then, indifferent, they walked away.

The battle for the loyalties of religious conservatives, as the Iowa caucuses approach, erupted today into a contentious showdown between Senator Bob Dole and his leading rival for the Republican Presidential nomination, Steve Forbes. Delivering the first attack, Mr. Forbes bitterly accused unnamed rivals of "engaging in desperate distortion" by organizing a telephone campaign to call thousands of Republicans anonymously and use his past comments on abortion, homosexuals in the military and other social issues to undermine his candidacy. His campaign manager, William Dal Col, later suggested that he suspected that the campaigns of Mr. Dole or Patrick J. Buchanan were masterminding the effort, which both camps denied.