May 24, 1996

WILLIAM MORRIS is an eminent Victorian (his life roughly spanned Queen Victoria's reign) whom everyone understands to be a pivotal figure of modern times, though most people nowadays don't actually know much about him beyond his namesake chair or his chintz designs. He is like his hero Ruskin in that regard, a household name yet, oddly, obscure. Who today reads "Sigurd the Volsung," the Morris poem that George Bernard Shaw declared "the greatest epic since Homer"? With the possible exception of his utopian novel "News From Nowhere," his works go virtually unread.

Ever since he was elected, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has derided New York's public hospitals and vowed to turn some of them over to private hospitals, which he says will provide the poor with better care and save the city money. Three hospitals are on the auction block and the administration predicts a deal this summer. But as the Mayor and his advisers try to spin off large chunks of the system to the private sector, so far unsuccessfully, critics say they have so neglected the hospitals that patient services and building conditions are worse than at any time in recent years.

In a major victory for the beleaguered tobacco industry, a Federal appeals panel in New Orleans unanimously dismissed a giant class-action lawsuit brought against the nation's cigarette makers on behalf of millions of smokers. The three judges' ruling overturned a 1995 decision that would have permitted almost any cigarette smoker in the United States to join a suit that could have cost the industry billions of dollars in claims. The lawsuit, which would have been the largest class-action case in American history, accused tobacco companies of concealing evidence that smoking is addictive and of manipulating nicotine levels in cigarettes.

The state trooper who was critically injured when he lost control of his cruiser during a chase died yesterday, the State Police said. The trooper, Francis J. Bellaran, 32, was the 58th trooper to die in the line of duty in the 75-year history of the State Police, said John Hagerty, a spokesman for the department. Trooper Bellaran crashed into a clump of trees Monday while chasing a speeding motorcycle that may have been stolen, The A.P. reported. A suspect, Louis D. Goodman, 19, surrendered Wednesday and was charged, before Trooper Bellaran's death, with aggravated assault, a Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutor, Alton Kenney, said.

Vinik Quits as Manager Of Fidelity Magellan Fund Jeffrey N. Vinik, the embattled portfolio manager of the Fidelity Magellan fund, the country's largest mutual fund, resigned, sending some tremors through the mutual fund industry.