Indiana Youth Center

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson has agreed to perform 100 hours of community service in each of four years of his probation after his scheduled release from prison March 25, prison officials said yesterday in Indianapolis. Contrary to some news reports, mostly attributed to Tyson's former boxing promoter Don King, there was no move in the Indiana prison system to free Tyson any earlier than his original release date, prison spokeswoman Pam Pattison said. Upon his scheduled release, Tyson will have served exactly three years of a six-year sentence at the Indiana Youth Center for raping 19-year-old beauty contestant Desiree Washington during the Miss Black America pageant in July, 1991.

John Starks liked his performance better the second time around. Starks shook off the bad memory of his last game at the Summit, scoring 22 points and shooting 9-for-17 from the field to lead the New York Knicks past Houston, 93-77, last night in a rematch of the NBA finals. Starks was only 2-of-18 from the field last June 22 when the Rockets beat the Knicks 90-84 in Game 7 of the championship series, but he was on target in the rematch, going 3-of-3 from three-point range and leading the Knicks in scoring.

Mike Tyson, shielded from the media by a group of friends and advisers, walked out of prison yesterday morning, quietly leaving behind the 8-by-11- foot cell that had been his home for the last three years. The ex-champion became an ex-convict at 6:20 a.m., immediately stepping into a black limousine that drove him to a nearby Islamic mosque, where he joined another former champion, Muhammad Ali, in a 30-minute prayer service. Tyson, 28, wearing a black collarless jacket and a white prayer cap, seemed tired and withdrawn after the ceremony, nodding to a group of well-wishers who shook his hand and cried, "May Allah bless you, Mike.

Amid reports of a rift between Mike Tyson and promoter Don King, the former heavyweight champion emerged from seclusion yesterday and met with his probation officer in Youngstown, Ohio. The reports include one from the Chicago Tribune that King has not been invited to the news conference Tyson is holding today at noon at the Gund Arena in Cleveland. He will make his first public comments since his release Saturday from the Indiana Youth Center, where he served nearly three years of a six-year rape conviction.

Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is going to take a shot at the U.S. District Court after failing to have his rape conviction overturned in the Indiana state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Tyson's attorneys filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus Monday in federal court in Indianapolis. The writ claims a prisoner should be freed because his imprisonment violates his constitutional rights. Tyson was convicted in February 1992 of raping Desiree Washington, a participant in the Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis.

NEW YORK TYSON REPORTEDLY BECOMING MUSLIM Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson has embraced Islam and plans to officially become a Muslim and adopt a new name "within the month," a newspaper reported. Tyson, who is serving a six-year prison term for rape at the Indiana Youth Center, pored over the Koran and has chosen the name Malik Abdul Aziz, the New York Post said today. Malik is the Muslim equivalent of Mike, the Post said. WASHINGTON HOOKS STAYS ON AS NAACP CHIEF Benjamin Hooks said yesterday he temporarily postponed his retirement as executive director of the NAACP after a protracted search for a successor failed to be completed.

First, Mike Tyson got in trouble for signing autographs for other inmates. Now, it seems, a dispute triggered by a handshake has gotten him in trouble. Tyson, the former heavyweight champion, has been segregated from the general population at the Indiana Youth Center for threatening a staff member Monday, authorities said. An inmate who called the Associated Press said a guard told him Tyson threatened to "whup" a guard who ordered him to keep moving after he had stopped to shake hands with another prisoner.

Close friends of Mike Tyson say the former heavyweight champion is skeptical about his chances of winning a new trial and now spends his prison time reading and studying in hopes that an education will win him early release. Even if Judge Patricia Gifford, of Marion County (Ind.) Superior Court, sides with the defense during his June hearing and a new trial is ordered, Tyson, convincted of rape, will be just 11 months short of his May 1995 release from the Indiana Youth Center.

Mike Tyson is out of Indiana, and out of trouble. The same cannot be said for four Indianapolis police officers who spent their off-day Saturday escorting Tyson's caravan after the former heavyweight champion was released from prison. The officers are being questioned about the episode amid reports that one of the two patrol cars the officers rode in traveled at speeds exceeding 110 mph along Interstate 70 during the motorcade. "It's not consistent with our policy concerning our take-home car policy, and obviously the excessive speed that's been alleged is certainly not authorized," Indianapolis police chief James Toler said yesterday.

Three witnesses insist he has changed from the time he entered prison 26 months ago on a rape conviction - and the changes, for the most part, have made him a better person. But former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson is - and probably will remain - an inmate of the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield until May 1995 when, with time off for good behavior, he could be paroled. Tyson, 27, lost another bid for early release yesterday in Indianapolis when Judge Patricia J. Gifford, of the Indiana Superior Court, rejected his application.

Literally and figuratively, Mike Tyson likes to turn up the heat. It felt like an August afternoon in the Mojave Desert for the former heavyweight champion's open-to-the-media workout yesterday at the Joe Hand Boxing Gym in West Kensington. Reporters who arrived in sweaters and coats were quickly transformed into sweating, panting, potential victims of heat exhaustion. And why not? The temperature inside the building was a steamy 90 degrees. "That's the way Mike wanted it," said Joey Jones, director of sales for Joe Hand Promotions.

Mike Tyson has settled the civil suit filed against him by the beauty contestant he was convicted of raping four years ago, one of the boxer's lawyers said yesterday. "All I can tell you is that the matter has been resolved and Mike is looking to the future and not to the past, and that's why he resolved this," attorney Nathan Dershowitz said from his office in New York. Dershowitz would not say how much money - if any - the settlement involves. Tyson was convicted in 1992 of raping Desiree Washington in a hotel room while both were in Indianapolis for Indiana Black Expo, a black cultural festival.

In a room in Gund Arena, a long relay throw from Jacobs Field, boxing's most widely anticipated comeback commenced with the announcement that, for now, there will be no replacement players on Team Tyson. Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson needed only 76 seconds, about as long as it took for him to finish off some opponents, to read a prepared statement yesterday afternoon in which he revealed details of the resumption of his career. Contrary to some published reports, Tyson, 28, paroled Saturday after three years in an Indiana prison on a rape conviction, said he has retained promoter Don King and two close friends, John Horne and Rory Holloway, as his co-managers.

In his familiar lisp, the one that contrasted with the thunderous punches he once threw in the ring, Mike Tyson yesterday delivered a message that rang out loud and clear to the boxing world. Tyson, meeting with reporters for the first time since his release from prison last week, said he would retain Don King as his promoter, thus shattering the hopes of all the power brokers who had been wooing the former heavyweight champion for months. You could almost hear King let out his characteristic cackle - Heh-Heh-Heh - all the way from Las Vegas, where he was believed to be yesterday, promoting the heavyweight title fight between Oliver McCall and Larry Holmes on April 8. King had been the subject of reports all week in the New York tabloids, which indicated that the ex-champion was ready to dump the controversial promoter.

Amid reports of a rift between Mike Tyson and promoter Don King, the former heavyweight champion emerged from seclusion yesterday and met with his probation officer in Youngstown, Ohio. The reports include one from the Chicago Tribune that King has not been invited to the news conference Tyson is holding today at noon at the Gund Arena in Cleveland. He will make his first public comments since his release Saturday from the Indiana Youth Center, where he served nearly three years of a six-year rape conviction.

Mike Tyson is out of Indiana, and out of trouble. The same cannot be said for four Indianapolis police officers who spent their off-day Saturday escorting Tyson's caravan after the former heavyweight champion was released from prison. The officers are being questioned about the episode amid reports that one of the two patrol cars the officers rode in traveled at speeds exceeding 110 mph along Interstate 70 during the motorcade. "It's not consistent with our policy concerning our take-home car policy, and obviously the excessive speed that's been alleged is certainly not authorized," Indianapolis police chief James Toler said yesterday.

Mike Tyson, shielded from the media by a group of friends and advisers, walked out of prison yesterday morning, quietly leaving behind the 8-by-11- foot cell that had been his home for the last three years. The ex-champion became an ex-convict at 6:20 a.m., immediately stepping into a black limousine that drove him to a nearby Islamic mosque, where he joined another former champion, Muhammad Ali, in a 30-minute prayer service. Tyson, 28, wearing a black collarless jacket and a white prayer cap, seemed tired and withdrawn after the ceremony, nodding to a group of well-wishers who shook his hand and cried, "May Allah bless you, Mike.

About 6 o'clock tomorrow morning, along the flat farm fields of Indiana, inmate No. 922335 will re-enter a society that could make him the richest ex- convict in boxing history. Mike Tyson, the former undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, will walk out of the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield - a free man for the first time in three years, ready to field offers from a group that one member has branded the "vultures" of boxing: promoters. "Iron Mike" is coming out, and the boxing world is going nuts.

The helicopter crash that killed stock car driver Davey Allison probably was caused by Allison's mistakes and inexperience in piloting the aircraft, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded yesterday. In its final ruling on the July 12, 1993 crash at the Talladega race track in Alabama, the safety board blamed Allison's "poor in-flight decision to land downwind in a confined area that was surrounded by high obstructions. " The board also listed Allison's "failure to properly compensate for the tailwind condition" as a probable cause of the fatal crash.

Oliver McCall, a native of Chicago who calls himself the "Atomic Bull," claims that he has surpassed the most famous Bull of them all. "I hear Michael Jordan is coming back," McCall said. "But he's got to know there's a new Bull in town. " Which just goes to show that winning the heavyweight title is such a heady experience that you will challenge anyone - including one of the greatest athletes who ever lived. "Hey, I'm having fun," McCall, the World Boxing Council champion, said, smiling.