Travelers Group, after weeks of negotiations with TriBeCa community leaders, agrees to shut off four-story-high neon umbrella on its Greenwich Street building for four hours after sunset and to dim it overnight; residents complained that logo cast so much light it could be seen for miles; photo (M)

Drying Out The Red Neon Umbrella

 A Plan on Social Security  A bipartisan commission will propose a plan for Social Security calling for personal investment accounts and a gradual increase in the retirement age to 70. Page A17.

INSIDE

India's claim that it set off hydogen bomb stirs an emerging debate among experts over whether India has evidence to back up its claim and, if so, what implications may be for weapons, politics and the world; for Pakistan and China, and stablity in tense region, H-bomb issue is crucial; but already, scientists and weapon experts say that India's announcements are rich in mysteries, and that evidence it has so far presented is insufficient to clear them up; questions about India's claims about size of its blasts discussed; photo (M)

Experts Greet India's H-Bomb With Suspicion

Giant mutant lizard wreaks havoc on New York. Big beast, little movie.

So, How Big Is It Again? Sizing Up the Lizard King

Eight people are wounded when gunman, apparently fighting with acquaintance, bursts out of clothing store and begins shooting in Fulton Mall, Brooklyn; it is unclear whether any of victims are involved in dispute or are merely bystanders; police are looking for gunman and two other men who might have helped him; map; photo (M)

Eight People Are Wounded by Gunfire at a Downtown Brooklyn Mall

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column contends that David Wells perfect game against Minnesota Twins, first at Yankee Stadium since Don Larsen's in 1956, strengthened his belief that Yankees belong in Bronx, not in New Jersey or Manhattan (M)

Sports of The Times; After an Exit In 7th Inning, A Lost Gem

New York-New Jersey Trail Conference updates New York Walk Book; sixth edition describes history, geology, flora and fauna of over 1,000 miles of hiking trails within two-hour driving distance from Manhattan; first edition was published by National Geographic Society in 1923; later editions were published by Doubleday; photos (M)

Hiker's Bible Changes With God's Country; Latest 'New York Walk Book' Chronicles Nature's Losses and Surprising Gains

New York Yankees, with 28 victories in their first 37 games, are tied for second-best start in franchise history and are on pace to eclipse 1927 team record of 110 victories in season; photo (M)

A Master Stroke to the Yankees' Masterful Season

Francois Pinault, French takeover investor and art collector who bought 29.1 percent of Christie's for $243.2 million two weeks ago, announces that he intends to buy rest of it in deal that values entire company at $1.2 billion; acquisition will pass ownership of eminently British company to a Frenchman for first time in its 232-year history (L)

Frenchman Seeks the Rest Of Christie's

Cornell University food scientists are working at developing tasty, appealing, nutritious dishes for consumption on the Moon, Mars, Jupiter--anywhere that astronauts might set up long-term housekeeping--using only about two dozen foods from crops that can be grown hydroponically in space; ingredients and dishes made from them must be relatively easy to prepare by people whose primary training is in space, not kitchen, science; and whole creative process has to be cheaper than shipping ready-made supplies from Earth, which take months to years; examples of somes potential space foods noted; volunteers sample menus that food scientists put together from crops that can be grown in space; photos (L)

What to Serve for Dinner, When Dinner Is on Mars; Menu Is Vegetarian-Only -- If You Can Get a Table

Study provides first evidence that routine screening can substantially cut deaths from prostate cancer; Dr Fernand Labrie says his study with Laval University colleagues of 46,000 men in Quebec found apparently healthy men who underwent screening had death rate from prostate cancer less than one third that of men who were not screened, American Clinical Oncology Society meeting, Los Angeles; some experts question study's methods (M)

Routine Screening For Prostate Cancer Is Said to Cut Deaths

New Jersey Legislature gives final approval to bill requiring auto insurers to cut rates by 15 percent for most drivers; bill, which seeks to cut costs by limiting frivolous and fraudulent claims, covers drivers who have accepted limits on their ability to sue after accident; insurers, trial lawyers and consumer advocates hold changes will not provide long-term savings for drivers; lawmakers delay for two more years issue of removing rate caps for urban drivers; table; photo (M)

New Jersey Legislators Vote To Overhaul Auto Insurance

New York Yankees pitcher David Wells plays in celebrity golf tournament in Connecticut and appears on David Letterman's television show day after pitching perfect game against Minnesota Twins; photos (M)

After Perfection, He's Toast of the Town

Mayor Rudolph W Giuliani orders immediate layoff of 600 public hospital workers, ending tense confrontation in which American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Local 420 pres James H Butler defied Giuliani and other union leaders by refusing package of benefits that was intended to soften blow of impending cutbacks (M)

600 Laid Off In Hospitals As Deal Fails

Federal and state agencies are considering major changes in rules governing psychiatric research on mental patients and others who might have trouble giving valid consent; act following reports of abuses of patients in research projects; National Bioethics Advisory Commission, appointed by Pres Clinton, today begins considering proposals that would require researchers first to test potential research subjects to see if they are capable of giving consent, in addition, they would have to justify high-risk experiments to local review board that approve research, and they would have to name legal and medical monitors to whom patients could appeal during experiments; review boards, proposals say, would have to have patient advocate as well as someone familiar with psychiatric research; many drug trials seeking to put new psychiatric medicines on market use dummy pills and take patients off their medicines; Federal ethics officials estimate that there have been 100 to 300 experiments in which patients were taken off their medicines when no new medicine was being tried; rather, they were taken off their medicines to observe patients as they relapsed in order to study the illnesses; among those experiments were some in which potentially toxic drugs like PCP and ketamine were given to provoke patients into relapses; terrifying experience of Andrew Brownstein, severe manic-depressive who agreed to become research subject at National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md, described; photo (M)

Psychiatric Researchers Under Fire

Crucial challenge for Microsoft Corp may lie in more traditional task of getting and keeping consumers on its side as world focuses on new legal battle between Microsoft and various governmental entities; as public sensitivity to Microsoft is heightened by intense coverage of the Government action, industry observers say company is at particularly vulnerable moment not just in courtroom but in the marketplace; some computer consumers comment on Microsoft's role in computer industry; charts; photos (L)

U.S. V. MICROSOFT: THE REACTION -- A Goliath Needs the Little Guys; Microsoft Faces Challenge of Image Among Consumers

Analysis of Justice Department's carefully honed antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp, which is likely to be watershed in setting ground rules of competition in digital age and guidelines for Government intervention in high-technology economy; Government sees case as key test of how antitrust enforcement can be applied swiftly and 'surgically' to protect innovation and competition in computer software business; Microsoft holds Government misunderstands economic facts of life in industry and that its business practices result in improved products that benefit consumers; photos (M)

Where Fine Lines Blur

MCI Communications Corp, trying to placate regulators who are weighing its $37 billion sale to Worldcom Inc, has quietly solicited bids for part of its fast-growing Internet business; unit should fetch around $500 million, and British Telecommunications PLC is among companies expected to be involved in bidding (L)

MCI Said to Be Soliciting Bids For a Division

NBC moves to defend its longtime stronghold of hits on Thursday night by replacing most popular comedy of past five years, Seinfeld, with most award-winning comedy of past five years, Frasier; important programming decision is part of carefully reconstructed fall prime-time schedule that will add four comedies, two dramas and a fifth day's edition of network's ever-expanding news magazine, Dateline NBC; NBC's prime-time schedule for fall season listed (M)

NBC Shifts 'Frasier' To Defend Thursdays

Romanian writer Herta Muller is named winner of Impac Dublin Literary Award for her novel The Land of Green Plums; The Guardian in England reports that British prosecutor who decided in 1922 that James Joyce's Ulysses was obscene read only a few pages at end of novel; newspaper, in an excerpt from Govt documents supposed to be held for 100 years, also reports that Govt successfully warned Cambridge University against permitting literary critic F R Leavis to lecture on Ulysses in 1926; photo of Joyce; French film star Gerard Depardieu suffers minor injuries when his motorcycle skids in village outside Paris; Rolling Stones are forced to postpone start of their European tour after their lead guitarist, Keith Richards, injures his chest and ribs in fall from ladder at his home in Connecticut; photo; 80th birthday of Swedish conductor Sixten Ehrling will be observed on May 20 when American Scandinavian Society honors him in ceremonies at New York Genealogical and Biographical Society by presenting cultural grant in his name to Swedish director Johan Molander (L)

Footlights

Profile of and interview with Richard Price, whose new novel, Freedomland, treats subject of race in America; photo (M)

The Birth Of a Novel: Up North, Down South

A Federal grand jury in Los Angeles charged three Mexican banks and 26 Mexican bankers with laundering millions of dollars in drug profits, culminating a huge three-year sting operation.   

A Drug-Money Sting Nets Mexico Bankers

Article on how some marketers have created 'holidays' to promote their products; some of various companies that sponsor these special days and weeks discussed; chart (Advertising column) (L)

This Is We Want More of Your Money Day

Utah Jazz defeats Los Angeles Lakers, 99-95, and takes 2-0 lead in Western Conference finals; photo (M)

Savvy Jazz Takes Command in the West

Dreamworks, movie studio created in October 1994 by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in blaze of publicity, has seemed slow off the mark and, to many studio execs and talent agents, has been a disappointment; not because four films it has released on its own have been commercial losers--three have earned money--but because Dreamworks promised it would do things differently and better than other studios, and it reallly has not; new Spielberg World War II drama, Saving Private Ryan, to be released on July 24 and made by Dreamworks and Paramount, has stirred some of strongest buzz of summer season; photos of Katzenberg, Spielberg, Geffen, Tom Hanks, who stars in Saving Private Ryan, Djimon Honsou in Amistad, which was a disappointment, and Nathan Lane in Mouse Hunt, which did far better (L)

Reel 1, Dazzling Hope; Reel 2, Dimmer Results; Dreamworks Disappoints Hollywood by Being Merely Successful

Sōsuke Uno  was a Japanese politician and former Prime Minister of Japan.

May 19, 1998

Headlines from May 19, 1998

Drying Out The Red Neon Umbrella

INSIDE

Experts Greet India's H-Bomb With Suspicion

So, How Big Is It Again? Sizing Up the Lizard King

Eight People Are Wounded by Gunfire at a Downtown Brooklyn Mall

Billboard 200

Before These Crowded Streets

City Of Angels

Titanic

One Step At A Time

Capital Punishment

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for May 19, 1998