Nation IN BRIEF : NEW YORK : U.S. to Probe Slaying of Hasidic Scholar

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said the Justice Department will conduct a civil rights investigation of a Jewish scholar’s slaying during the 1991 Crown Heights riots. Reno made the decision after hearing pleas from lawmakers and Brooklyn Dist. Atty. Charles J. Hynes, whose office was criticized after a state jury acquitted the only defendant charged in the case. Three days of violence erupted after a car in the motorcade of a Jewish religious leader jumped a curb and killed a 7-year-old black boy. Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hasidic scholar from Australia, was later fatally stabbed by a group of blacks.