September 21, 1999

Heavy trading and rapid decline in stock of J Jill Group prior to company's request to halt trading linked to leak that Internet and catalogue retailer planned to announce it would post loss for third quarter ended Sept 25; announcement came after J Jill Group asked Nasdaq to halt trading, with share price down $4.50, or 40 percent, to $6.875; trading resumed about an hour later and stock fell further; company is ending one of its catalogues, called Nicole, only three months after announcing it had repositioned catalogue to aim for growth; pros on Wall Street who owned stock in Comsat have made lot of money at expense of amateurs; Lockheed Martin completed its purchase of 49 percent of Comsat on Sept 18, paying above-market price of $45.50 a share; if Lockheed buys rest of company, which it may not be allowed to do, it will pay considerably less for remaining shares; it is in interests of all shareholders to tender their shares into Lockheed offer; those who do tender, including many professional traders and institutional investors, are about $38 million richer than they would have been if all eligible shares had been tendered; graph on J Jill Group stock (Market Place column) (M)

Harvey Araton Sports of The Times column discusses former basketball player Bill Walton working with centers at New Jersey Nets training facility; photo (M)

Growing number of wireless phone users in New York metropolitan region have stumbled on unexpected benefit of mobile telephone; find that at night and on weekends it doubles as low cost way of making many calls that rack up regional or long distance toll charges on wired phone (M)

Vanguard of international peacekeeping force stakes its claim to silent and broken town of Dili in East Timor under gaze of clusters of refugees, sullen Indonesian troops and small, angry groups of militiamen; more than 1,000 Australian soldiers spread out through burned, looted and evacuated city; there is no resistance, but three large fires are set hours after they arrive; photo (M)

Gov Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey formally announces appointment of Carson Dunbar, New York FBI supervisor, to head state police; Dunbar promises to strengthen force's recruitment and disciplinary procedures and change its culture so that racial bias is no longer tolerated; Dunbar says he will make Internal Affairs Bureau more accountable to public and review incentive programs for drug seizures that may have encouraged racial profiling; says he accepted job because of his mixed racial background: his father is black and his mother is white; adds he wants chance to build on civil rights advances he has witnessed in his lifetime; says he himself was subjected to racial profiling at traffic stop by New Jersey state trooper several years ago; some civil rights leaders question whether Dunbar has leadership skills and vision to lead deeply divided agency through politically charged overhaul; photo (M)