EVENTS

UN SAYS BOSNIA TRUCE HOLDING The United Nations said a cease-fire was holding in Bosnia, despite sporadic fighting and shelling along several front lines yesterday. Red Cross officials said both sides were showing flexibility in talks on exchanging prisoners and finding missing persons. International negotiators hope a four-week cease-fire, which took effect Friday, will give them breathing space to work out a political settlement to the 26-month-old war. Many previous truces have failed. The war is at a seeming stalemate in many areas. Yesterday, sporadic fighting and shelling were reported, but a UN spokesman, Maj. Dacre Holloway, said in Sarajevo, ``Basically, the cease-fire is holding.'' Feeding quake refugees

Rescue workers in Colombia started delivering food and clothes Saturday to 1,000 refugees who had not eaten in the five days since being stranded by an earthquake and avalanche, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The refugees had gone without aid since a 6.4-magnitude earthquake and subsequent landslide hit the remote mountainous region 180 miles southwest of Bogota last Monday. Kelly seeks reelection

Sharon Pratt Kelly, the first black woman elected mayor of a major US city, announced her bid Saturday for reelection in the District of Columbia, saying she needs more time to fulfill her mandate of bringing the city's myriad social and fiscal problems under control. Nigerian clampdown

Speaking on the first anniversary of Nigeria's thwarted presidential election, strongman Gen. Sani Abacha said yesterday that any challenge to his rule will be ``sternly punished.'' There was no word on the whereabouts of Moshood Abiola, the wealthy businessman who apparently won those elections a year ago. A day earlier, General Abacha ordered the arrest of Mr. Abiola after the business tycoon declared himself the president. A reward of $2,300 was being offered for information leading to Abiola's capture. Menachem Schneerson

Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, the charismatic, Sorbonne-educated scholar who rebuilt the Lubavitcher sect from the ashes of the Holocaust into a major force in Judaism, died yesterday in New York City. Rabbi Schneerson, whose most fervent followers believed he would be revealed as the Messiah, was the seventh in a dynastic line of Lubavitcher rebbes dating to 18th-century Russia. Under his leadership, the sect became the most outward-looking and influential of the ultrareligious Hasidic groups. He left no designated successor.