July 24, 1996

New York City and state officials yesterday outlined their most comprehensive approach yet to rebuilding Columbus Circle, home to some of the city's most valuable real estate and some of its most reviled architecture. Besides seeking developers to build a 59-story complex, including street-level stores and two slender towers, on the site of the New York Coliseum, economic development officials said they were also trying to sell 2 Columbus Circle, a 10-story, city-owned architectural curiosity that houses the city's Department of Cultural Affairs and the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A Bahamas company run by a South African gambling executive, Sol Kerzner, has joined the stampede to build in Atlantic City. Sun International Hotels Ltd., which owns 32 hotels, casinos and resorts in South Africa, the Bahamas, France and elsewhere, applied to the Casino Control Commission yesterday for a casino license. The company said it wanted to build a $700 million resort with 2,000 rooms in the city's South Inlet. MGM Grand Inc., based in Las Vegas, Nev., has announced plans to build a $700 million resort in the same part of town. A hearing on MGM's license application is set for today.

SUSAN COHEN watched the mourners toss single roses into the sea, heard a reporter talk about "a sense of closure," and turned off her television, shuddering with sadness and disgust. Of all the hard times in the week since T.W.A. Flight 800 blew up, seeing Monday's seaside memorial to the 230 victims had to be one of the worst. "I couldn't stand to watch those people," she said. "It was just too much. And to hear the talk about closure just made me want to throw up."

Responding to a plea from the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Federal judge yesterday struck down a series of legally binding agreements that have governed living conditions in New York City's jails for nearly two decades. The decrees address myriad aspects of prison life -- from access to telephones to the number of bunks in a cell -- and stem from a series of lawsuits brought on behalf of inmates complaining of overcrowded, unsafe and unsanitary conditions at Rikers Island and other jails.

The Walt Disney Company may be the world's most famous producer of animated films, but in Japan, it is Hayao Miyazaki who reigns supreme. The full-length movies produced by Japan's greatest animator routinely outdraw Disney films like "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" at the box office here. Now, in what might be an example of "if you can't beat them, join them," Disney announced today that it had gained the worldwide rights to distribute Mr. Miyazaki's films on videocassettes.