March 30, 1999

200 gold and silver objects excavated from ancient Thrace, and considered greatest Thracian treasures ever unearthed, go on display at Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on March 31; photo; actor Jerry Orbach, playwright Harold Pinter and composer-lyricists Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt will be honored when Bea Arthur and Ossie Davis play host on May 3 at presentation of 14th annual Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Achievement Off Broadway; expressive art of Sigmar Polke goes on display at Museum of Modern Art; photo; first completely researched and annotated edition of Gershwin musical is published, score of George and Ira Gershwin's 1927 satire Strike Up the Band (M)

NATO officials say Yugoslav Pres Slobodan Milosevic's goal in Kosovo is to carve out Serb-only enclave in province that he can keep after fighting ends; say campaign is under way to ethnically re-engineer Kosovo to achieve solution more acceptable to him; say Milosevic has proven adept over past eight years at creating 'facts on the ground'--territorial conquests that end in cease-fires and are presented to West for ratification through peace deal; concerns are heightened by visit of Russian Prime Min Yevgeny Primakov and Foreign and Defense Ministers to Belgrade; NATO officials fear Russians may try to broker agreement well short of allies' stated goal of autonomous Kosovo protected by NATO troops; photo; map (M)

NATO warplanes hunt for Serbian troops in embattled province of Kosovo as Clinton Administration claims evidence of genocide is growing to include abhorrent and criminal action on vast scale; language is strongest yet by State Dept in denouncing Yugoslav Pres Slobodan Milosevic; reports persist of assassinations of ethnic Albanian leaders and of scorched-earth torching of Kosovo's villages by Serbian forces; tens of thousands of refugees continue fleeing in terror; pour into Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, compounding region's profound refugee problem; military officials acknowledge hunt for Serbian forces is complicated by fact that they are operating in small and dispersed groups; new attacks are aimed at barracks, headquarters and other bases, rather than tanks, artillery pieces and small mobile infantry units deployed in field against Kosovo villages; more US warplanes are earmarked for NATO operation, including bombers carrying antitank bombs and aircraft designed to confuse enemy radar systems; Belgrade claims forces shot down second NATO warplane; claim is denied by Pentagon; officials continue withholding information on what brought down F-117 stealth fighter over Yugoslavia days ago; map; photo (M)

Web site, entitled HillaryNo.com, created by Mayor's Friends of Giuliani fund raising committee, seeks to raise money and enlist volunteers by capitalizing on what Giuliani's advisers sense is untapped world of inveterate 'Hillary haters'; photo (M)

Article discusses Connecticut's victory over Duke in NCAA championship basketball game; performance of Connecticut players Richard Hamilton and Ricky Moore discussed; photo (M)

Dow Closes Above 10,000, Reflecting Strong Economy After nearly two weeks of thrust and parry, stock traders pushed the Dow Jones industrial average above 10,000 and kept it there until the end of the day's trading. The Dow closed at 10,006.78, up 184.54 points, or 1.9 percent. Although 10,000 on the Dow was little more than a psychological hurdle for investors, the market's move is significant in what it reflects: unparalleled strength of the economy and American corporations' dominance of the world stage. [Page A1.]

Minority PEC Israel Economic Corp shareholders file lawsuits to block PEC's largest shareholder, Discount Investments Corp, from buying up remaining shares and delisting PEC stock; offer to privatize PEC is made several months after Goldman, Sachs & Co paid $78 million for 9.5 percent stake in Israeli holding company that controls Discount Investments; Goldman, jointly with Lehman Brothers, also happens to be lead underwriter of Cellcom, Israel's largest mobile telephone operator and PEC investment, which plans to list shares in US shortly; lawsuits contend that offer substantially underestimates value of investments PEC has made over the years (M)

Market Place column on whether Dow Jones industrial average matters anymore as it closes above 10,000 for first time; says 30 Dow industrials still matter even though they have failed to keep up with gains of smaller, more sought after companies that are part of other indexes that track overall market; holds since beginning of 1995, Dow has lagged behind by few percentage points each year returns of Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and has fallen even further behind Nasdaq composite index; chart lists some facts about living standards and lifestyles on Nov 14, 1972, when Dow hit 1,003.15, with similar conditions on March 29, 1999, when average hit 10,006.78; photos (M)

University of Connecticut upsets top-ranked Duke, 77-74, to win NCAA men's basketball title; Connecticut University and coach Jim Calhoun win first NCAA title; photos (M)

Mzwakhe Mbuli, musician and writer known as People's Poet of South Africa, is convicted of bank robbery; court rejects Mbuli's claim he was framed; photo (M)

Bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO warplanes has bred sense of solidarity among residents of Belgrade, cosmopolitan capital, pulling city further away from Europe into isolation, uniting Serbs behind their soldiers, their Kosovo and even Pres Slobodan Milosevic; residents say they have been united from heaven by bombs, not by God; angry mobs trash American Center, British Council, Goethe Institute and French Cultural Center; many residents wear 'target' logo that has swept city in gesture of contempt toward NATO; Govt is urging citizens to run to air raid shelters for 12 or 15 hours each day, understanding that collective panic provides sense of solidarity with nation and its military; photos (M)

Clyde Haberman NYC column discusses efforts by Writers Room, which came into being in 1978 in Greenwich Village as quiet haven for writers, to ban use of typewriters; want to convert all old style typewriters into computers (M)