April 12, 1999

Political Memo column contends that New Jersey Gov Christine Todd Whitman begins her run for United States Senate with so many political advantages that it would be easy to mistake her for prohibitive favorite; says, however, that political experts in both parties warn that volatility of New Jersey electorate, together with fact that Whitman has never managed to win more than 50 percent of vote in statewide election, will make 19 months leading up to general election tumultuous and unpredictable (M)

New York Knickerbockers defeat New Jersey Nets, 93-78; photo (M)

Several hundred Albanian-American volunteer soldiers from Yonkers, NY, will fly from US to join rebels in Kosovo, Serbia, following lead of other Albanians in Europe since NATO began bombing of Yugoslavia and Serbs drove ethnic Albanians from homes; while many say they have relatives in Kosovo, many were born in US and have never set foot in Balkans; photos (M)

Market Place column reports that Internet start-ups are rushing to go public before investors' appetites are sated; says that Internet-related businesses already account for bigger portion of total number of new issues than subjects of other recent frenzies, such as biotechology companies, and that new Internet stocks are rising higher and faster than anything in recent memory; says interest is coming not only from individual investors and day traders, but also institutional investors like mutual and pension funds; says all this interest is putting some strains on initial-offering system; graphs (M)

Two years ago when New York State Board of Regents announced that it would shut down teacher education programs that did not meet its standards, several programs at City University of New York appeared to be in danger; state figures then showed that 40 to 60 percent of students at several CUNY colleges failed provisional teacher-certification tests; test results released last last week, however, suggests that CUNY's education programs may be doing better than that; CUNY officials say that new results, culled from more selective grouping of students, shows higher success rate that more accurately reflects their schools' quality that will bolster their efforts to remain open (M)