January 26, 1997

Lobbyists are paying big sums to Congressional campaign committees and political parties to spend time at ski resorts, other fancy places with key legislators; events skirt House and Senate rules barring members from accepting free trips; advocates of stricter laws on campaign financing and lobbying are troubled that members of Congress are still exchanging personal access for cash; photos (M)

Article profiles New York City hustler/vagrant Black Mills, chronicling his daily struggle to survive; photos (L)

Interview with restaurateur Danny Meyer, who comments on selection of his Union Square Cafe by 1997 Zagat Survey as New York City's top restaurant; drawing (M)

Apparent failure of Swiss banking community to give clear accounting of its dealings with Nazis has fueled increasingly angry exchange between Jewish groups and Swiss authorities as extent and fate of Holocaust victims' assets deposited in Swiss banks remains unclear; suspicion is also emerging that Portugal and Sweden profited from Nazi conquest and genocide and that their World War II neutrality was cloak for connivance; photo (M)

Sullivan County officials will acquire 37-acre field that was site of Woodstock festival of 1969 and turn it into shrine to fabled event and to era that made boundless freedom and love its icons; every summer since 1969, tens of thousands of people visit site, intent on communing with ghosts of that concert; they have not been deterred by blocked access roads or ditches dug around terrain; county officials are giving in to the pull of history; they envision amenities like modest concert stage and country's first museum to the 1960's; photo; map (M)