February 9, 1999

House prosecutors and White House lawyers at Senate impeachment trial of Pres Clinton deliver closing statements; Repr Henry J Hyde concludes case for prosecution by accusing defense of resorting to 'theater of distraction and misdirection;' says prosecution's most formidable opponent has been cynicism regarding politics and politicians; speaks bitterly of indignities he and House prosecutors allegedly have endured; compares his team of prosecutors to Henry V's 'band of brothers' at Agincourt; again expresses strong opposition to censure; says failure to convict will send message that lying under oath, while unpleasant and to be avoided, is not very serious; statements by other House prosecutors noted; chief White House counsel Charles F C Ruff urges senators to focus on voices of 'greater eloquence' than on minutiae of lawyers' arguments by heeding those of framers of Constitution, of American people and of generations to come; concludes by reiterating statement made at outset that Pres Clinton is not guilty of charges brought against him; photo (M)

New York State Gov George Pataki administration has quietly built up $500 million surplus in Federal welfare money over last two years as result of dramatic decline in number of people on public assistance, and expects that sum to grow to $1.4 billion in next budget year; administration acknowledges existence of surplus in text of budget that Pataki proposed two weeks ago; budget calls for spending $1 billion of welfare money on range of programs to help people make transiton from public assistance to work; it also proposed to keep nearly $400 million in reserve fund (M)

World's leading cosmologists meet in Chicago to assess their theories, and they conclude that wealth of new research that at first seemed puzzling turns out to support inflationary Big Bang theory; say data show that expanding universe will not collapse or thin out into infinity, but should maintain a gravitational balance between the two alternatives through coasting expansion; feel close to determining age of universe, somewhere between 13 billion and 15 billion years old; say latest measurements have also put to rest the possibility that oldest stars could be older than the universe; some advance the bold idea that anthropic principle be applied to determining nature and properties of forces and matter in the universe; cosmologists at symposium include Dr Andrei Linde, Dr Stephen Hawking, Dr Alan Guth, Dr Michael Turner, Dr Martin Rees, Dr Allan Sandage and Dr Wendy Freedman; photos (L)

Salt Lake City, Utah, Olympic officials prepare for watershed week in which they will present details of improprieties involved in securing 2002 Winter Olympics and perhaps name leader who can begin to repair tarnished image of Games; official who saw report by internal ethics panel says that it will primarily target Tom Welch and Dave Johnson and accuse them of hidden payments and deceptive practices that kept other members of committee from knowing what was going on; photo (M)

Ben Brantley reviews Nicky Silver play The Eros Trilogy, at Vineyard Theaer; David Warren directs; photo (M)