December 18, 2002

Neil MacFarquhar tours Bekaa Valley in Lebanon with star chef Ramzi Shwayri, sampling meze, Middle Eastern hors d'oeuvres traditionally served with arak, liquor distilled from anise; Shwayri looks forward to day when country can return to past glory as destination for bon vivants; recipe; photos (M)

New York Giants prepare to face Indianapolis Colts; photos (M)

Tyco International former independent director Frank E Walsh Jr pleads guilty to securities fraud, becoming first board member to be charged with crime in recent wave of corporate scandals; acknowledges receiving $20 million payment from Tyco for helping to broker acquisition but did not disclose his compensation arrangement to rest of board or to shareholders; avoids prison sentence by agreeing to repay money and $2.5 million fine as part of plea agreement; Walsh is charged with felony violation of Martin Act, New York State's general business law; Manhattan Dist Atty Robert M Morgenthau comments; criminal complaint contends Tyco's former chief executive L Dennis Kozlowski negotiated to pay Walsh $20 million 'finder's fee' for pushing Tyco to CIT Group that was run by Walsh's friend Albert R Gamper Jr; Tyco has divested itself of CIT and booked loss of about $7 billion; Tyco paid Walsh, who is member of board's compensation committee, $10 million personally and $10 million more to favorite charity, Community Foundation of New Jersey; Tyco made payments in July 2001, but board did not learn of them until six months later; photo (M)

Study of compensation committees at 2,000 of largest American corporation reveals that their members frequently are not independent enough of executives whose pay they will set; committee members should in theory be independent enough to deny executives raises or force them to take pay cuts when things are going poorly, but members of compensation committees at hundreds of companies work for or do business with company or its chief executive, and in some cases they even belong to executive's family; such ties are not always disclosed; experts concede that even committees with minor or nonexistent conflicts of interest can approve outside pay for lackluster or even poor performance; legislation enacted this summer after wave of costly corporate scandals is silent about makeup of compensation committees; both New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq market have proposals before SEC that would require independent compensation committees as part of listing standards; table; photos (L)

Calvin Klein sells company that bears his name to Phillips-Van Heusen, country's biggest shirtmaker, for $400 million in cash, plus $30 million in stock and up to $300 million in royalties, linked to revenues over next 15 years; Phillips-Van Heusen plans to introduce new Calvin Klein's men's sportswear line, to complete with more moderately priced Lauren line by Ralph Lauren, and with Jones New York labels; new men's line will be produced by Van Heusen and be marketed in 2004; company also plans to coin some new licenses, most likely to include similarly lower-priced women's sportswear line; Van Heusen's chief executive Bruce Klatsky comments; Klein says he will remain active at Van Heusen; co-founder of Klein's company is Barry Schwartz; photos (M)

Footlights column: Rijksmuseum opens branch at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam with exhibit of works by Dutch masters; 15th annual New York Pops holiday concerts will include performance by singer and pianist Bobby Short and work that Randall Thompson composed in 1943 to honor 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston is set to open exhibit of works from State Pushkin Museum in Russia; sixth annual Kwanzaa Festival and Marketplace will open at Prudential Hall in Newark, NJ; photo s (M)

China National Petroleum Corp withdraws bid to buy Russian government's 74.95 percent stake in oil company Slavneft after possible sale raises outcry among Russian politicians (S)

Interviews with several middle class black residents of New Rochelle, NY, on their reaction to Sen Trent Lott's remarks on race relations in bygone era of 'still-here Strom Thurmond' (M)

Metropolitan Transportation Authority leaders who said new labor contract included productivity gains to help pay for 6 percent wage increase over next three years now say productivity measures will not cover $180 million cost of those raises; admission could undercut Mayor Michael R Bloomberg's efforts to wrest similar productivity concesssions from city's work force; Peter S Kalikow, MTA chairman, defends settlement, sayng savings will bear reasonable relationship to wage increases that were granted (M)

New York State Senate approves bill extending civil rights protections to homosexuals, and Gov George E Pataki signs it; vote, 34 to 26, is not as close as lobbyists on both sides of issue werr predicting; aides to Senate majority leader, Joseph L Bruno, who kept issue from floor vote for eight years, say he helped put it over the top by making last-minute appeals to his Republican colleagues to vote for bill along with him; bill's supporters say it will protect thousands of people from discrimination in housing, employment, credit and public accommodations; photos (M)

Pres Bush orders Pentagon to field modest antimissile system in Alaska and California by 2004; system, if it works, could intercept limited attack from state like North Korea; Congress must still approve $1.5 billion in additional funds over next two years to put system in place, and debate there will focus on system's effectiveness; White House and Pentagon officials call new 'test bed' system a prototype, but insist it will constitute first step in defending against accidental launching or against hostile states that that have only a few missiles; map (M)

Taiwan's government sells 13.5 percent of state-owned Chunghwa Telecom Co to consortium of domestic companies for $1.88 billion (S)