Interview with singer Tony Bennett and his son and manager, Danny, on his personal finances; photos (M)

His Heart's in San Francisco, His Money in His Son's Hands

New York Knicks, derailed throughout season by personal agendas, are pulling together in crucial last games of regular season; photo (M)

How the Knicks' Big Swoon Is Now Becoming a Souffle

 Scandal to Be Aired Again  The trial of Julie Hiatt Steele offers a chance for many of the main players in the Presidential sex and perjury scandal to be heard again.   Page 48.    N.R.A. Rallies  Despite calls to cancel, the National Rifle Association held its annual meeting in Denver, just 10 miles from Littleton.   Page 28.

INSIDE

CHERRYL MITCHELL is a native New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn. But she's quick to tell you she doesn't think much of life in the city, or the ''concrete forest,'' as she calls it.    ''I left and I've never missed it or looked back,'' she said. ''Now I hear birds and see real trees when I wake up.''  

Life on the Edge; How High a Fence Is the City Line?

Jewish Community Center plans to move into its own new 137,000-square-foot building on southwest corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street by January 2001; center currently occupies 10,000 square feet in Jewish Guild for the Blind building on West 65th St; new building will be named Samuel Priest Rose Building; center's executive director Debby Hirshman comments; drawing (M)

POSTINGS: New Jewish Community Center at 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue; From Swimming to Study

Charismatic, ridden by Chris Antley, right, was one of the lightly regarded horses in this year's jam-packed Kentucky Derby, but he beat everyone to the finish line yesterday to capture the 125th Run for the Roses and send the trainer D. Wayne Lukas to the winner's circle for the fourth time.  

A 31-1 Long Shot Captures the Derby

Michelle Krebs reports on five minivans (M)

It's the Extras That Count

Leasing to begin May 3 for 192 rentals at 75 West Street with $20-million conversion from offices to apartment building nearly complete; building is named Post Towers after The New York Post, for which it was built in 1926; Post left in 1970, and Bank of New York used it until 1996 (S)

POSTINGS: Converting Old New York Post Building; From Offices To Apartments

Comment observes that if much seems alien and bizarre about murderous assualt by two students in Littleon, Colorado, there is at least one point of familiarity burned into memory bank of most adults: high school; discusses high school world of jocks and nerds, winners and losers, that remains even as outside world changes; social critic Camille Paglia describes 'pitiless process' of clique formation and laments how schools warehouse students in sterile regimentation (M)

The Nation: Alma Maters; Two Words Behind the Massacre

Small investors, asbestos-exposed workers and property owners who spent millions to rid buildings of asbestos are challenging National Gypsum Co's 1993 bankruptcy reorganization; hold National Gypsum and three main holders of company's senior debt, Fidelity Management and Research, Goldman, Sachs & Co and Trust Co of West, had secret cost-cutting plan, devised by consultant Harry Leonhardt, and improperly failed to tell court that company hired Booz-Allen & Hamilton consulting firm to flesh out plan; investment firms largely gained control of company and have made big profits, while other creditors got only fraction of their claims; time-line; graph; table; photos (L)

Going For Broke

Three American soldiers held captive for more than month are released and handed over to Rev Jesse L Jackson for their trip home; Pres Slobodan Milosevic agrees to free Americans after a lobbying effort by Jackson that was not sanctioned by United States officials; soldiers say they have no ill will toward Yugoslav people and were treated well; soldiers are Staff Sgt Christopher J Stone, Staff Sgt Andrew A Ramirez and Specialist Steven M Gonzales; Jackson, after winning Milosevic's promise to release men, urges NATO to reciprocate by immediately halting further air strikes and opening negotiations on Kosovo; photo of Jackson in prayer with Milosevic, Foreign Min Zivadin Jovanovic and Repr Rod R Blagojevich of Illinois (L)

Serbs Release 3 Captured U.S. Soldiers

From Skeptic To Admirer

News analysis of Yugoslav Pres Slobodan Milosevic's move to release three captured US soldiers and offer to accept lightly armed United Nations peacekeeping force to monitor peace in Kosovo; Milosevic is seen making it clear that he wants a bombing halt, and that he is ready to deal; photo of Milosevic with Rev Jesse L Jackson (M)

Yielding, Yet Advancing

A secret report to top Clinton Administration officials last November warned that China posed an ''acute intelligence threat'' to the Government's nuclear weapons laboratories and that computer systems at the labs were being constantly penetrated by outsiders.    Yet investigators waited until March to search the computer of a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who had been under investigation for nearly three years, suspected of spying for China. And it was not until April that the Energy Department shut down its classified computer systems to impose tighter security over their data.  

1998 REPORT TOLD OF LAB BREACHES AND CHINA THREAT

Bernard Holland article praises Metropolitan Opera for seamless management of over 200 opera productions a year and says it can well serve as a models for European houses that must now rely on less generous government support; says Met can still be faulted for its Norman Rockwell-like realism and standard repertory, but showed a new conscience in its 1998-1999 season; photos (M)

Where Opera, For Good Or Ill, Is Grand

Charismatic Gives Derby a 31-1 Surprise

Area off Exit 8A of New Jersey Turnpike has become one of East Coast's prime centers for warehousing and distribution; because there is very little housing in area, trucks have largely unimpeded access over local roads to Turnpike, part of Interstate 95, which connects with national highway system; real estate executives estimate that there are 35 million square feet of industrial space within few miles of Exit 8A, most of it built over last 10 years; Cashman & Wakefield says buildings in 8A area accounted for 54 percent of 2.6 million square feet of industrial construction in northern and central parts of state last year; companies that have rented warehouse space in area include Home Depot, Graybar Electric Co and Calibar Logistics; map; photos (M)

I-95's Exit 8AIs a Magnet To High-Tech Warehouses

Walter Murch article on the future of cinema after the reel, clapstick and film itself give way entirely to digital technology; drawing (L)

SUMMER FILMS: THE FUTURE; A Digital Cinema Of the Mind? Could Be

Review of revelations about Chinese nuclear espionage against US, and Pres Clinton's response that Americans have as much to fear from weak China whose ailing banks and bankrupt enterprises could undermine world economy (M)

Political Muscle: The Only Good Enemy is a [Strong/Weak] Enemy; When Allies Are Fierce Competitors

TO be infirm in middle age, but not dangerously so, is a dress rehearsal, a visit to the other side. So this is what it feels like when the light changes before you can get across the street. So this is why my mother complains that there is no place to sit in the grocery store. So this is what it means to depend on the kindness of strangers.    The first of these strangers offered to share a soda and a package of peanut butter crackers when I almost passed out in a drugstore, just days after surgery to reconstruct a shattered right wrist. I shouldn't have been there, too fragile and all that. But I needed a gizmo to cut pills in half, since I couldn't break them the good old-fashioned way.   

Unsettling Glimpse Of What Is to Come

Review of Russian suspicions that US gives lip service to free markets and global partnership, but is really happy to see old foe down economically; photo; both countries have fumbled on promoting healthy democracy, but few would say that in long run US would not benefit from prosperous Russia; Russia has emerged from hibernation this spring, with Kosovo crisis, in almost gleefully anti-American mood, yearning for empire (M)

Political Muscle: The Only Good Enemy is a [Strong/Weak] Enemy; Straining To See the Real Russia

Bank robberies, declining nationwide, are increasingly common in North Carolina, state in which banks are so numerous that North Carolina is one of nation's leaders in number of branches; state's banks, credit unions and savings institutions were robbed 289 times last year, 38 percent jump from 1997; while numbers are not yet fully reported, North Carolina's rise in bank robberies last year appears to be near nation's highest; FBI says that North Carolina had 38.9 bank robberies for each million people last year, compared with Illinois and New Jersey, which had 21 and 11 robberies per million, respectively; photos; chart (L)

Carolina Bank Robberies Show That Friendliness Carries a Price

NATO officials say that Russia appears to be moving toward agreeing to a United Nations Security Council resolution that would authorize an armed international military force in Kosovo to allow refugees to return, even if Yugoslavia continues to refuse one; while Russia continues to say publicly that it will veto any such peacekeeping force that does not have consent of Pres Slobodan Milosevic, NATO diplomats say there is movement behind the scenes in Moscow (M)a

NATO Sees Russia Easing Objections Over Peacekeepers

Review of five minivan models; photos; key statistics (M)

Rating Vans: Who Has the Best Family Room for the Road?

Catherine Zeta-Jones, 29, describes wardrobe for US tour promoting new film Entrapment; interview; photo; Welsh-born actress was first noticed at age 19, in television series The Darling Buds of May (M)

Zorro's Girl Outgrows Her Petticoats

Douglas Scott Harkness was a Canadian politician.

Douglas Harkness, Canadian politician (born 1903)

Douglas_Harkness

Robert Oliver Reed was an English actor, known for his upper-middle class, macho image and his heavy-drinking, "hellraiser" lifestyle. His screen career spanned over 40 years, between 1955 and 1999. At the peak of his career, in 1971, British exhibitors voted Reed fifth-most-popular star at the box office.

Oliver Reed, English actor (born 1938)

Oliver_Reed

General elections were held in Panama on 2 May 1999, electing both a new President of the Republic and a new Legislative Assembly.

Panamanian general election: Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to be elected President of Panama.

May 2, 1999

Headlines from May 2, 1999

His Heart's in San Francisco, His Money in His Son's Hands

How the Knicks' Big Swoon Is Now Becoming a Souffle

INSIDE

Life on the Edge; How High a Fence Is the City Line?

POSTINGS: New Jewish Community Center at 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue; From Swimming to Study

Billboard 200

I Am...

Fanmail

...Baby One More Time

Come On Over

Believe

Notable Deaths

Historical Events

Historical Context for May 2, 1999