[20900001] |Marsh & McLennan Cos. said it agreed to acquire the rest of Gradmann & Holler, a leading West German insurance brokerage firm in which it has held a 15% stake for 15 years.

[20900002] |The transaction, for cash and stock, would represent the biggest European takeover since 1980 for New York-based Marsh & McLennan, the world's largest insurance broker.
[20900003] |It's also the first major sign of the long-awaited consolidation in the European insurance industry as the European Community Commission moves toward a single market by 1992.

[20900004] |Protective barriers will start coming down within the insurance industry next summer, when big industrial companies will be able to buy insurance from carriers in any other EC country for the first time.
[20900005] |That's why "we have been working hard to develop a single, more unified presence in Europe," said A.J.C. Smith, Marsh & McLennan's president, at a London news conference yesterday.

[20900006] |Analysts speculated that Marsh & McLennan would spend between 250 million marks ($136.4 million) and 350 million marks for the rest of Gradmann & Holler, or roughly 25 to 30 times the private firm's estimated earnings.
[20900007] |"This is paying a big price to maintain their virility as the world's leading insurance broker," said Philip Olsen, an analyst at Kitcat & Aitken, a U.K. brokerage firm.

[20900008] |Earlier this year, New York Life Insurance Co. agreed to acquire Windsor Group Ltd., a first step toward establishing a presence in the European market ahead of 1992.
[20900009] |But most U.S. insurers haven't rushed to change the way they do business in Europe because they believe the European market will still be dominated by a handful of domestic companies.

[20900010] |Under the proposed combination, Marsh & McLennan would gain a majority stake in Gradmann & Holler that would increase over time to the rest of the remaining 85%.
[20900011] |The three managing general partners would receive a "significant" number of Marsh & McLennan shares, said Walther L. Kiep, a partner who would also join Marsh & McLennan's board.

[20900012] |Mr. Kiep said he sought the combination because "all our large clients in Germany are becoming European companies or multinational companies and they expect an insurance broker" to serve them as well in Paris as in Germany.

[20900013] |Beatrice E. Garcia in Philadelphia contributed to this article.

[20901001] |WASHINGTON --
[20901002] |United Technologies Corp. won an $18 million Army contract for helicopter modifications and spare parts.

[20901003] |The company will modify one UH-60A Blackhawk transport helicopter to the prototype MH-60K configuration for use by military special forces.

[20901004] |Ingalls Shipbuilding Inc., a division of Litton Industries Inc., was given a $15.5 million extension on a contract for shipyard services.

[20902001] |Furukawa Electric Co. said it plans to increase production of computer memory devices on a large scale in the U.S. and Japan.

[20902002] |As part of the move, its affiliated U.S. company, International Components Technology Corp., purchased a Mexican plant formerly belonging to KSI Disc Products Inc.
[20902003] |The price wasn't disclosed.

[20902004] |Together with two existing plants in the U.S., Furukawa said it will expand its current local monthly production of memory disks to 1.4 million sheets from 800,000.
[20902005] |In Japan, Furukawa said it will raise production at a plant outside Tokyo to 300,000 sheets monthly from 100,000.

[20902006] |Furukawa said the U.S. market is strengthening as related computer technology gains in sophistication and quality.

[20903001] |PRIMERICA Corp., New York, raised its quarterly 14% to eight cents a share, from seven cents, payable Nov. 24 to stock of record Nov. 6.
[20903002] |The financial services company, which has about 98.8 million shares outstanding, noted its "continued confidence in the ongoing strength of the operations.

[20904001] |Compaq Computer Corp. said that its net income rose 51% in the third quarter, bolstered by unusual gains from its investment in a disk-drive maker and reflecting continued growth in its European operations.

[20904002] |The computer maker said net jumped to $87 million, or $2.02 a share, from $58 million, or $1.40 a share, a year earlier.
[20904003] |Sales increased 36% to $683 million from $502 million.
[20904004] |The latest quarter's results, however, included a pretax gain of $13.7 million, or 20 cents a share, in the carrying value of the company's investment in Conner Peripherals Inc. and a $7.6 million gain, or 11 cents a share, from the sale of one million Conner shares.

[20904005] |Net for the nine months was $254 million, or $5.94 a share, up 56% from $163 million, or $4.06 a share, a year earlier.
[20904006] |Sales rose 50% to $2.1 billion from $1.4 billion.
[20904007] |Net for the year-earlier nine months also included a gain of $9.7 million, or 15 cents a share, in the carrying value of the Conner investment.

[20904008] |Michael Swavely, president of Compaq's North America division, attributed the company's third-quarter performance to continued increases in international sales, which accounted for 43% of the company's sales, a 74% increase from a year earlier.

[20904009] |"Over the next couple of years we would not be surprised to see Europe and international {sales} represent 50% of the company's revenues," he said.

[20904010] |During the third quarter, Compaq purchased a former Wang Laboratories manufacturing facility in Stirling, Scotland, which will be used for international service and repair operations.
[20904011] |Mr. Swavely said the new space will allow Compaq to increase the manufacturing capacity of its plant in Erskine, Scotland.

[20904012] |In New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday, Compaq shares fell $1.625 to $108.625.

[20905001] |Wilson H. Taylor, president and chief executive officer of this insurance and financial services concern, was elected to the additional post of chairman.
[20905002] |Mr. Taylor, 45 years old, succeeds Robert D. Kilpatrick, 64, who is retiring, as reported earlier.
[20905003] |Mr. Kilpatrick will remain a director.

[20906001] |Diversified Investment Group Inc. said it agreed to be acquired by Star States Corp. for stock valued at $13.75 a share, or about $24.4 million.

[20906002] |Diversified, the holding company for Fidelity Federal Savings & Loan Association, said the agreement also gives Star States the option to acquire 588,300 of Diversified's 1,774,326 shares outstanding "under certain circumstances."

[20906003] |The acquisition would give Wilmington, Del.-based Star States access to the Pennsylvania market.

[20906004] |The agreement is subject to regulatory approval and resolution of lawsuits brought by certain Diversified holders in connection with the proposed merger.

[20907001] |Chandler Insurance Co. said it expects to report third-quarter net income jumped 97% to $2.8 million, or 51 cents a share.

[20907002] |In the year-earlier quarter, the automobile and trucking insurer had earnings of $1.4 million, or 48 cents a share on a restated basis, on revenue of $16.5 million.
[20907003] |In an interview, W. Brent LeGere, chairman and chief executive officer, said he expects revenue in the latest quarter to total about $28 million.
[20907004] |The earnings-per-share figures reflect a 25% stock dividend in June 1989.

[20907005] |Mr. LeGere attributed the earnings increase to growth in the company's longhaul trucking insurance lines and the ability to keep premium rates firm.

[20908001] |Calgon Carbon Corp. said it will build a $40 million plant for producing granular activated carbon.
[20908002] |The maker of water-treatment chemicals and equipment said it will select the plant site early next year, and production is expected to begin in 1991.

[20909001] |Call Jim Wright's office in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, these days and the receptionist still answers the phone, "Speaker Wright's office."

[20909002] |The former congressman, who resigned as speaker of the House after an investigation of his financial dealings, is ensconced in his district office, maintained by taxpayers on a $200,000 allowance.
[20909003] |He is negotiating a rich book contract to boot.

[20909004] |One of the hottest tickets on Washington's social calendar this fall was a charity benefit honoring former Congressman Tony Coelho, who landed a million-dollar job on Wall Street after resigning over a controversial junk-bond investment last summer.

[20909005] |Michael Deaver, the former White House aide, has become the most recent addition to the teeming ranks of fallen politicians and officials earning their way as lobbyists and consultants here.
[20909006] |Mr. Deaver has reopened a public-relations business.

[20909007] |Surviving scandal has become a rite of political passage at a time when a glut of scandal has blunted this town's sensibility.
[20909008] |Let the president demand strict new ethics rules: With four sitting House members accused of sexual misdeeds, amid the unfolding HUD scandal and after the Wright debacle, "people are slightly dulled by scandal," says political humorist Art Buchwald.
[20909009] |"It now takes something really weird to inspire public outrage."

[20909010] |Not all the scandal-tripped have enjoyed soft landings.
[20909011] |But many have.
[20909012] |"These people bounce back more resiliently than regular people," says Washington writer Suzanne Garment, who is working on a history of post-Watergate scandal.

[20909013] |Given their own penchant for book writing, it is surprising that none of the masters of scandal survival have yet published a guide to the art.
[20909014] |For there is an emerging protocol -- indeed, an etiquette -- to it.
[20909015] |Among the rules:

[20909016] |Pretend Nothing Happened

[20909017] |As if he were still in his old job, Mr. Wright, by resigning with his title instead of being forced from his job, by law enjoys a $120,000 annual office expense allowance, three paid staffers, up to $67,000 for stationery and telephones and continued use of the franking privilege.
[20909018] |Not to mention a generous federal pension.
[20909019] |There is also a busy schedule of speaking engagements at $10,000 a pop, at tony places including the Yale Political Union.

[20909020] |"He's as busy as he was as speaker," reports Mr. Wright's administrative aide, Larry Shannon.

[20909021] |Atone

[20909022] |On the edge of fashionable Georgetown, in a chic office with a river view and a number of corporate clients whom he won't name, Mr. Deaver is trying to reclaim his reputation as one of the savviest image makers in town.

[20909023] |There are few mementos of his days as White House deputy chief of staff and confidant of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
[20909024] |The former $3 million-a-year lobbyist now frequents shelters for the homeless and devotes a third of his time counseling other recovering alcoholics.
[20909025] |"I feel better than I ever have in my life," he says.

[20909026] |Mr. Deaver confessed to his alcoholism during his trial on perjury charges.
[20909027] |He is also a recovering workaholic, relaxing with his family and creating topiary, or garden-shrub sculpture, a fashionable pursuit for which he developed a passion during his three-year legal ordeal.
[20909028] |One sign of Mr. Deaver's renaissance: an appearance on ABC's "Nightline" for a show on pack journalism.
[20909029] |Host Ted Koppel introduced him as "the media master of the Reagan Administration," with nary a mention of Mr. Deaver's conviction in 1987 on perjury charges.

[20909030] |Finding God

[20909031] |"When someone says, 'I've turned to God,' everybody lays off," observes Frank Mankiewicz, an old Washington hand and former aide to Robert Kennedy.
[20909032] |Thus have Charles Colson and Jeb Magruder launched successful post-Watergate careers at the pulpit.

[20909033] |But it doesn't always work so smoothly.
[20909034] |After allegations surfaced in a 1985 divorce contest that he had beaten his wife, SEC enforcement chief John Fedders retreated to a Trappist monastery in rural Virginia.
[20909035] |He is now in solo law practice in Washington, but his fees have been meager and he failed in efforts to win a chunk of his ex-wife's royalties on her tell-all book.
[20909036] |From time to time he returns to the monastery for prayer, meditation and pro bono legal work.

[20909037] |Mr. Fedders is philosophical about his travails.
[20909038] |"This whole experience has been an opportunity for internal growth," he says.
[20909039] |He sees a psychoanalyst five mornings a week.
[20909040] |"I've surrendered to the circumstances," Mr. Fedders says.
[20909041] |"The word surrender has a precise psychoanalytic meaning.
[20909042] |My universe has changed.
[20909043] |I'm enjoying my life and who I am today.
[20909044] |The aspect of being a mega-lawyer isn't as important."

[20909045] |Don't Linger

[20909046] |"The best thing you can do is get off the screen," says Mr. Buchwald.
[20909047] |Nobody proved that more masterfully than Mr. Coelho, the former Democratic majority whip.
[20909048] |Declaring that there was life after Congress, he resigned almost immediately after media reports questioned the propriety of a 1986 junk-bond investment, before any official investigations took hold.

[20909049] |Among the glitterati who turned out in bipartisan black-tie force to benefit the Coelho Epilepsy Fund last month were Sen. Robert Dole, Rep. Newt Gingrich, and other kingpins of Congress.
[20909050] |Dan Rather served as emcee.
[20909051] |From his new, million-dollar-a-year perch on Wall Street as a managing director of Wertheim Schroder & Co., Mr. Coelho reports that many of his former colleagues have contacted him to find out how they, too, can pursue investment banking careers.

[20909052] |It Helps to Be Male

[20909053] |Male scandal victims invariably fare better.
[20909054] |Anne Burford, the former EPA chief who resigned under fire in 1983 during a flap with Congress, was kayoed in the confrontation, even though she was never charged with official wrondgoing.
[20909055] |She worked part-time as a consultant and wrote a book, but never restarted her high-powered legal career.
[20909056] |It didn't help when, in 1986, she was charged (and then cleared) on allegations of public drunkenness.

[20909057] |"I cut my losses and ran," she says, from her new home in Colorado, where she is busy remodeling.
[20909058] |Mrs. Burford remains bitter over the overwhelming legal expenses involved in clearing her name.
[20909059] |"My husband was instantly impoverished by the very act of marrying me," she says.

[20909060] |Another former EPA official, Rita Lavelle, is still struggling after her conviction in 1983 on perjury charges.
[20909061] |"There's nothing she could do to bring herself back to where she was," says her lawyer, James Bierbower.
[20909062] |"You could say she survived, but it wasn't easy on her."

[20909063] |No book contracts have been dangled before Deborah Gore Dean, the reigning queen of the HUD scandal.
[20909064] |Donna Rice of Gary Hart fame failed to obtain a book contract and lost her modeling contract for "No Excuses" jeans.
[20909065] |Fawn Hall, Oliver North's former secretary, has yet to launch a hoped-for television news career, according to her lawyer.

[20909066] |Rita Jenrette, the former wife of Abscam-indicted Rep. John Jenrette, has yet to hit it big in Hollywood, although with roles in such movies as "Zombie Island Massacre" and "Aunt Ida's Bikini Shop," she is doing a lot better than her former husband.
[20909067] |He was back in jail over the summer on shoplifting charges.

[20909068] |Be the Star

[20909069] |Central figures -- such as Richard Nixon -- usually fare better than those with supporting roles.
[20909070] |Richard Secord, the retired Air Force general felled in the Iran-Contra scandal, is all but ruined -- forced to sell his Virginia home and pull his kids out of college, according to a recent fund-raising appeal sent out on his behalf.
[20909071] |Yet his co-defendant in the case -- also a former military officer by the name of Oliver North -- has been busily and profitably burnishing his involvement in the affair.

[20909072] |What accounts for the difference?
[20909073] |During the televised Iran-Contra hearings, Mr. North came off as a patriot from central casting.
[20909074] |Mr. Secord's performance was decidedly less inspiring.

[20909075] |Mr. North remains in heavy demand as a speaker, for fees reported in the $20,000 range.
[20909076] |Even in the wake of Hurricane Hugo 750 people turned out in a remote Virginia town in September for a "family tribute" to Mr. North given by two dozen conservative members of Congress.

[20909077] |If Sex Is Involved, All Bets Are Off

[20909078] |Sex scandals make people look careless and silly, and one of the worst sins in Washington is to be laughed at.
[20909079] |"You can be wicked, but not foolish," says Mr. Mankiewicz.

[20909080] |Nevertheless, Rep. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts was handily re-elected because of the candor with which he handled revelations that he had sex with a male congressional page in 1983.

[20909081] |Former Rep. Robert Bauman, a Maryland Republican who lost his seat in 1980 after he was caught soliciting sex from a 16-year-old boy, has never regained his professional footing as a lawyer.
[20909082] |Mr. Bauman, a conservative, says he was deserted by the right wing.
[20909083] |"Conservatives shoot their own," he says.

[20909084] |If the political establishment is reluctant to forgive sexual misadventures, the private sector sometimes will.
[20909085] |John Tower was accused of womanizing and boozing during his unsuccessful bid to win confirmation as secretary of defense earlier this year.
[20909086] |Now he is writing a book, serving on an elite foreign policy advisory board and consulting for an array of corporate clients, including British publishing mogul Robert Maxwell.

[20909087] |Become a Lobbyist

[20909088] |When all else fails, Gucci Gulch -- the fabled halls of the Capitol inhabited by lobbyists and their imported shoes -- offers a welcome environment for fallen officials.
[20909089] |Former Rep. Fernand St Germain, brought down by the savings-and-loan crisis, now represents -- you guessed it -- savings-and-loans associations.

[20909090] |Some become pseudo-lobbyists.
[20909091] |John Mack promptly quit his job last spring as an aide to Speaker Wright amid public outrage over Mr. Mack's violent attack on a young woman when he was 19 years old.
[20909092] |After a few weeks in seclusion, Mr. Mack opened a consulting firm, but not to enable him to directly lobby; that would require him to disclose his clients by registering as a lobbyist.
[20909093] |Still, Mr. Mack says he talks to "30 members of Congress a week."
[20909094] |Misery Loves Company

[20909095] |Other scandal survivors are sometimes the best source of solace.
[20909096] |Raymond Donovan, the New Jersey construction executive who was forced to resign as labor secretary and indicted in 1985, only to be acquitted of fraud charges, often calls other scandal-tossed public figures to offer a sympathetic ear.
[20909097] |Each time a new scandal hits, he says, "it pulls the scabs off your knees."

[20909098] |One of the first people to come to the Deaver home after his troubles erupted was former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, whom Mr. Deaver scarcely knew.
[20909099] |"He reassured me that the hurricane would end," Mr. Deaver recalls.

[20909100] |Mr. Bauman received an encouraging letter from the recognized master of scandal survival, Richard Nixon.
[20909101] |Says Mr. Bauman: "If things get really tough, I can always auction it off at Sotheby's.

[20910001] |The Canadian government, with a view to becoming more politically active in Latin America, is expected to announce tomorrow its application to join the Organization of American States, a Washington-based regional agency.

[20910002] |The expected Canadian move has been welcomed by the Bush administration even though Canada has opposed such U.S. actions as the trade embargo against Cuba, the invasion of Grenada and the military support for Nicaragua's Contra guerrillas.

[20910003] |Latin American countries have long urged Canada to join the OAS in the hopes that it would be a counterweight to the U.S., which for many years tended to dominate the 32-nation organization.

[20910004] |Even though the U.S. also has supported Canadian membership, it hasn't been a Washington priority.
[20910005] |"The fact that we might not side with the Americans may be a reason why Canada's membership in the OAS hasn't been, over the years, an item high on the U.S. agenda," said Allan Gotlieb, former Canadian ambassador to the U.S.

[20910006] |The Canadian application is expected to be announced in San Jose, Costa Rica, by Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who is attending a centenary celebration of Costa Rican democracy.
[20910007] |"Canada has a larger and more beneficial role to play in the hemisphere," Mr. Mulroney said recently.

[20910008] |Some Canadian political commentators have opposed Canada's joining what they see as a U.S.-dominated organization.
[20910009] |"Canada could do plenty of things to get serious about Latin America without running the risk of getting caught in the cross fire" between the U.S. and Latin American members of the OAS, said Jeffrey Simpson, a columnist in Toronto's Globe & Mail newspaper.

[20910010] |Canada, at times, could be an awkward OAS partner for the U.S. if its United Nations voting record is an indication.
[20910011] |In U.N. General Assembly votes last year, Canada voted the same as the U.S. only 63% of the time.
[20910012] |France voted the same as the U.S. 76% of the time, West Germany 79% and Britain 83%.

[20910013] |Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a liberal research group, said that Latin American countries would be "profoundly disappointed" if Canada were to follow the U.S. lead in the OAS.
[20910014] |"Latin Americans see Canada as a non-interventionist power that respects their sovereignty," he said.

[20910015] |The OAS, which tries to promote peace and economic development within the Americas, is attempting to find a settlement of the current Panama political crisis.
[20910016] |Cuba has been suspended from OAS membership, but the organization's members are discussing Cuba's reinstatement.

[20911001] |Robert H. Knight's Oct. 5 editorial-page article bemoaning violence in comedy movies ("Hollywood, You Slay Me") is interesting, but somewhat off-base.

[20911002] |As a fan of older movies from the 1920s on, I do not find modern comedies contain violence, sex and foul language to any greater degree than other recent movies.
[20911003] |Older movies have plenty of violence, though it is portrayed in keeping with the more restrictive social conventions of the time.
[20911004] |For example, one of my favorite movies is the 1949 British comedy "Kind Hearts and Coronets," in which the entire comedy is based on actor Dennis Price's murdering eight titled relatives (all played by Alec Guinness) because they snubbed his mother and stand in the way of his acquiring the family title.
[20911005] |Similarly, one of the most popular comedy genres of the 1930s and '40s was the "murder mystery/comedy."
[20911006] |The "Thin Man" series of movies, as well as many others, based their entire comedic appeal on the star detectives' witty quips and puns as other characters in the movies were murdered.

[20911007] |Further, I think Mr. Knight made a poor choice in picking "A Fish Called Wanda" as an example of the deplorable state of modern comedy movies.
[20911008] |The specific scene he mentions in which pet dogs are crushed is somewhat reminiscent of the continual plights that befall the coyote in the old Warner Bros. "Road Runner" cartoons.
[20911009] |There is no slow-motion close-up, blood-and-guts portrayal of the animal's demise.
[20911010] |Keep in mind that this is the same movie in which a character is flattened by a steamroller only to pop right back up and peer in the window of a Boeing 747 -- from the outside -- as it takes off.

[20911011] |I will be the first to agree that there is much to be found wrong with modern movie making.
[20911012] |Many modern scriptwriters seem to be incapable of writing drama, or anything else, without foul-mouthed cursing.
[20911013] |Sex and violence are routinely included even when they are irrelevant to the script, and high-tech special effects are continually substituted for good plot and character development.
[20911014] |In short, we have a movie and television industry that is either incapable or petrified of making a movie unless it carries a PG-13 or R rating.
[20911015] |Hence copious amounts of gratuitous sex, violence and gutter language are included as a crutch.
[20911016] |However, these faults are not the exclusive property of modern comedies, and I believe Mr. Knight errs when he attempts to link this modern phenomenon too closely to a single category of movie making.

[20911017] |Michael Smith

[20912001] |Rochester Telephone Corp. said it agreed to buy Viroqua Telephone Co. of Viroqua, Wis.
[20912002] |Terms weren't disclosed.

[20912003] |Rochester will exchange shares of its common stock for all shares outstanding of Viroqua Telephone, a family-owned company.

[20912004] |Viroqua serves about 3,000 access lines in western Wisconsin.

[20913001] |The average unemployment rate in the 15 biggest industrialized democracies was steady in August at the 6.1% rate of the two previous months, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said.

[20913002] |The August rate was 0.6 percentage point lower than in the like month a year earlier, reflecting the pickup of activity in the 15 countries.

[20913003] |The OECD said that most of the improvement occurred in the second half of last year; since February of this year, unemployment has been steady at around 6.2% of the labor force.

[20914001] |ALAMCO Inc. said its board has approved a 1-for-10 reverse stock split.
[20914002] |The Clarksburg, W.Va., producer of gas and oil, said it wants shareholders to approve the split because it would "enhance the marketability" and trading of the stock.
[20914003] |If approved at a shareholder meeting in December, the number of shares outstanding would decrease to five million from 50 million, and par value would rise to 10 cents from a penny.

[20915001] |Duriron Co. said it has agreed to buy Automax Inc., a Cincinnati maker of control accessories for industrial valves.

[20915002] |Terms weren't disclosed, but Duriron said the deal will be completed through an exchange of stock.

[20915003] |Closely held Automax has annual sales of about $10 million.
[20915004] |Duriron, a maker of pumps, valves and other controls, said the acquisition won't impact its 1989 profit.

[20916001] |Canadian manufacturers recorded a 0.8% decline in August in their backlog of unfilled orders, Statistics Canada, a federal agency, said.

[20916002] |The August drop was the fourth decline in five months.
[20916003] |Most of the August decrease was attributed to lower order backlogs in the primary metal and electric and electronics-product industries.

[20916004] |Manufacturers' shipments rose 0.3% in August following two months of declines.
[20916005] |Inventories fell 0.3% in August.

[20917001] |Burmah Oil PLC, a British independent oil company, said its West German subsidiary Castrol has a 49% share in Explonaft G.m.b.H., a new Polish lubricants company.

[20917002] |The remaining 51% of the joint venture will be controlled by Polish lubricants manufacturers, refiners and technical institutes.
[20917003] |Explonaft will develop application guidelines for lubricants, sell high-quality mineral oils, and offer services in industrial cleaning and related fields.

[20917004] |Burmah, which has a strong market position supplying marine lubricants and metal-working fluids in Poland, described the joint venture as "fairly small."
[20917005] |It didn't provide details of setup costs.

[20918001] |Du Pont Co. reported that third-quarter profit grew a robust 19% from a year ago on the strength of the company's operations in various chemicals and fibers, and in petroleum.

[20918002] |Du Pont also raised its quarterly dividend to $1.20 a share from $1.05, a change that will increase the annualized payout to shareholders by some $140 million.

[20918003] |Du Pont, unlike companies hurt badly by sharp price declines for basic chemicals and plastics, is benefiting from its broad range of businesses.
[20918004] |The profit gain was made despite a weakening in the housing market, for which the company is a supplier, and a strengthening in the dollar, which lowers the value of overseas earnings when they are translated into dollars.

[20918005] |The Wilmington, Del., company reported net of $547 million, or $2.36 a share, which was in line with Wall Street estimates.
[20918006] |In the year-earlier period, the company earned $461 million, or $1.91 a share.
[20918007] |Sales in the latest quarter were $8.59 billion, up 9.4% from $7.85 billion.

[20918008] |The dividend increase was Du Pont's second this year, an affirmation of statements by top executives that they intend to increase rewards to shareholders.
[20918009] |"We haven't benefited the shareholder as much as we need to," said Edgar Woolard Jr., Du Pont's chairman and chief executive officer, in an interview several months before he entered his current position in April.

[20918010] |The largest beneficiary will be Seagram Co., which owns about 23% of Du Pont.
[20918011] |A spokesman for Seagram, the Montreal wine and spirits concern controlled by the Bronfman family, said the company will post additional pretax profit of about $33 million a year because of the additional Du Pont dividends.

[20918012] |Du Pont also announced plans for a 3-for-1 stock split, although the initial higher dividend will be paid on pre-split shares.
[20918013] |Du Pont's stock rose $2.50 a share to close at $117.375 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday.
[20918014] |Seagram closed at $84.75, up 12.5 cents a share in Big Board trading.

[20918015] |Leading the gains for Du Pont in the latest quarter was its industrial products segment, where profit soared to $155 million from $99 million a year earlier.
[20918016] |The company benefited from continued strong demand and higher selling prices for titanium dioxide, a white pigment used in paints, paper and plastics.

[20918017] |James Fallon, a New Providence, N.J., marketing consultant to the chemicals industry, says Du Pont still holds an edge in making the pigment because the company was "first in with the technology" to lower costs.
[20918018] |He said Du Pont holds about 23% of the world-wide market, the largest single share, at a time when growing uses for the pigment have kept it in tight supply, although others are now adding low-cost production capacity.

[20918019] |Profit climbed to $98 million from $71 million in the petroleum segment, as Du Pont's Conoco Inc. oil company was helped by crude oil prices higher than a year ago and by higher natural gas prices and volume.

[20918020] |In the diversifed businesses segment, which includes herbicides, profit grew to $64 million from $27 million.
[20918021] |A spokesman said herbicide use in some areas of the U.S. was delayed earlier in the year by heavy rains, thus increasing sales in the third quarter.

[20918022] |In the fibers segment, profit rose to $180 million from $155 million, a gain Du Pont attributed to higher demand in the U.S. for most textile products.

[20918023] |Two segments posted lower earnings for the quarter.
[20918024] |Profit from coal fell to $41 million from $58 million, partly because of a miners' strike.
[20918025] |And profit from polymers dropped to $107 million from $122 million amid what Du Pont called lower demand and selling prices in certain packaging and industrial markets.

[20918026] |For the nine months, Du Pont earned $2 billion, or $8.46 a share, up 18% from $1.69 billion, or $7.03 a share, a year earlier.
[20918027] |Sales increased 10% to $26.54 billion from $24.05 billion.

[20918028] |The increased dividend will be paid Dec. 14 to holders of record Nov. 15.
[20918029] |The stock split, which is subject to holder approval, would be paid on a still unspecified date in January to holders of record Dec. 21.

[20919001] |American Medical International Inc. was dropped from the health care providers industry group of the Dow Jones Equity Market Index.
[20919002] |The company is being acquired.

[20919003] |U.S. Healthcare Inc. was added to the health care providers group.
[20919004] |Both moves are effective today.

[20920001] |The Canadian government plans to auction on Tuesday 750 million Canadian dollars (US$639.9 million) of 9.25% bonds due Dec. 1, 1999, the Finance Department said.

[20920002] |Proceeds of the issue will be used for general government purposes.

[20921001] |Finnish conglomerate Nokia Oy AB said it reached an agreement to buy Dutch cable company NKF Kabel B.V. for 420 million Finnish markka ($99.5 million).

[20921002] |Nokia said it will gain control over NKF Kabel by buying 51% of the shares in NKF Holding N.V., which owns NKF Kabel.

[20922001] |Western European leaders who favor speedy economic and monetary union are adding a new argument to their arsenal: the dizzying political changes under way in Eastern Europe.

[20922002] |French President Francois Mitterrand, European Community Commission President Jacques Delors, Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and others have begun linking the rapid changes in the East to the need to speed up changes in the West.
[20922003] |They are stressing that the best way for the West to help the East is to move faster towards Western European economic and monetary unity.
[20922004] |This would make the market-oriented system more attractive to Eastern countries, they argue, and allow greater economic aid and technological know-how to flow from West to East.

[20922005] |"The only response to the challenge being presented to us by the East," Mr. Mitterrand told the European Parliament in Strasbourg yesterday, "is to reinforce and accelerate the union and cohesion of the European Community."
[20922006] |Mr. Mitterrand proposed that a conference be convened next fall to write a new treaty for the EC allowing a European central bank, and that the treaty be ratified by 1992.
[20922007] |Mr. Mitterrand also proposed a separate "Bank for Europe" that would channel development money to the East.

[20922008] |One basis for linking change in the East and change in the West is the notion that integrating 110 million Eastern Europeans with 320 million Western Europeans is primarily the task of Europeans, despite the U.S.'s obvious strategic and economic interest.
[20922009] |Says a European strategist: "The U.S. tends to look at Eastern Europe {not including the Soviet Union} as Europe looks at Latin America: important but far away.
[20922010] |But for us in Western Europe, these are Europeans next door."

[20922011] |A reintegrated Europe implies big changes in 40-year-old military and economic policies.
[20922012] |There is likely to be a natural division of labor, says Francois Heisbourg, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, with the U.S. more engaged in strategic issues with the Soviet Union, and Western Europe more involved with specific aid measures for the East.

[20922013] |The designation at July's economic summit of major industrialized nations of the EC Commission as coordinator of Western aid to Poland and Hungary was a first step.
[20922014] |In part, this division is dictated by economics: West Germany is a net exporter of capital while the U.S. isn't.
[20922015] |While American aid efforts have been limited by budget problems, yesterday France announced a three-year, four billion French franc ($650 million) aid plan for Poland.

[20922016] |Despite sudden changes in the strategic equation, some Western European leaders, especially British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, remain skeptical about European political and economic unity, and are unlikely to let East-West concerns change their minds.
[20922017] |But British analysts are beginning to link the issues.

[20922018] |"We need a Western Ostpolitik," says John Roper, of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, referring to West Germany's longstanding policy of a diplomatic opening to the East.
[20922019] |"For Poland and Hungary we need to think about a stick-and-carrot economic approach that would force them to price things realistically in return for removing all our tariff barriers."
[20922020] |He notes that the Marshall Plan of U.S. aid to Europe "didn't just throw money at post-war Europe, it also liberalized and opened up those markets."

[20922021] |The French analysis goes further.
[20922022] |"Most of the West's leaders have finally concluded that we all want perestroika {Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of economic restructuring} to succeed," says Hubert Vedrine, security adviser to Mr. Mitterrand.
[20922023] |"But they haven't yet drawn the operational policy conclusions."

[20922024] |He adds that with communism collapsing and Mr. Gorbachev scrambling to rejuvenate the Soviet economy, "Our interest lies in a controlled transformation, a contained nuclear reaction, so we need to help him, and not just with words."
[20922025] |Managing change, he adds, will require a lot more aid and a prominent role for the EC, especially in dealing with the question of German reunification.

[20922026] |Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French Institutue for International Relations in Paris, says it isn't clear what, exactly, West Germany wants.
[20922027] |Any push for a Gorbachev vision of a "common European home," implying the eventual dissolution of the EC, a Soviet-German partnership and the withdrawal of U.S. forces, "would be a very, very serious problem," he says.
[20922028] |He doubts a Bismarckian super state will emerge that would dominate Europe, but warns of "a risk of profound change in the heart of the European Community from a Germany that is too strong, even if democratic."

[20922029] |He adds: "We, and the rest of the EC have to talk to the Germans, now, frankly and raise these future risks with them."

[20922030] |While many commentators, particularly French ones, worry that hasty and emotional reaction to the changes in the East might lead to dangerous pressures for a denuclearized Europe or the speeded-up withdrawal of American troops, Mr. Roper in London sees a more positive scenario.
[20922031] |"There seems to be a message from Moscow there's a deal on offer," he says.
[20922032] |"They want reassurance we won't try to undermine or destroy the Warsaw Pact. . . .
[20922033] |In return, the U.K. and France could keep their nuclear weapons.
[20922034] |He adds: "Once both sides feel comfortable, it should be that much easier to make more progress toward the economic and social reforms that are now starting in the East.

[20923001] |Kyle Technology Corp. said a Seattle investor has signed a letter of intent to buy the company for about $3.1 million, or $1.20 a share.

[20923002] |The investor, Donald A. Wright, plans to run the company, said a spokesman for Kyle.

[20923003] |The transaction has been approved by Kyle's board, but requires the approval of the company's shareholders.
[20923004] |Kyle manufactures electronic components.

[20924001] |Dominion Textile Inc. holders adopted a shareholder-rights plan at the annual meeting.

[20924002] |The so-called poison pill took effect Aug. 9 pending ratification by holders.
[20924003] |Rights attached to the company's common shares were issued that are triggered if a hostile bidder acquires more than 20% of the shares outstanding.
[20924004] |Once triggered, the rights allow holders to buy additional shares at 50% of the then current market price or, at the board's discretion, to receive securities or assets.

[20924005] |Separately, Dominion Textile posted net income of 4.7 million Canadian dollars ($4 million), or 12 Canadian cents a share, for the fiscal-first quarter ended Sept. 30.
[20924006] |The company had a net loss of C$2.3 million, or 14 Canadian cents a share, a year ago.
[20924007] |Sales were C$348.2 million compared with C$307.2 a year earlier.

[20925001] |Computer Sciences Corp. said it received a U.S. Postal Service contract that will have a value of at least $33 million.

[20925002] |Computer Sciences will perform data processing work for the Postal Service under the three-year contract, which also includes two additional option years for which compensation hasn't yet been fixed.
[20925003] |Computer Sciences said its work will improve mail-processing efficiency.

[20925004] |For its fiscal year ended March 31, Computer Sciences had revenue of $1.3 billion.

[20926001] |Ohbayashi Corp. agreed to buy E.W. Howell Co., the U.S. subsidiary of Selmer-Sande AS, of Norway, for about $7 million.

[20926002] |Howell, a Port Washington, N.Y., construction concern, was established in 1891.
[20926003] |It has three U.S. branches.

[20926004] |Ohbayashi officials said the purchase was undertaken to participate in ventures in and around New York City.
[20926005] |They said Howell is particularly successful there because of its membership cooperation with local unions.

[20926006] |Ohbayashi is Japan's second largest construction company.
[20926007] |Until now, its inability to form membership ties with organized labor has kept it from penetrating the lucrative New York metropolitan area construction market.

[20926008] |The company also hopes the latest acquisition will help secure large construction orders from Japanese concerns with U.S. operations.

[20926009] |Ohbayashi cited industry publications crediting Howell, currently capitalized at $2.2 million, with receiving orders valued at $225 million in 1988.

[20926010] |The Japanese company received orders totaling 12.44 billion yen ($87.9 million) from its U.S. business activities during the fiscal year ended in March.

[20927001] |H. Marshall Schwarz was named chairman and chief executive officer of U.S. Trust Corp., a private-banking firm with assets under management of about $17 billion.

[20927002] |Mr. Schwarz, 52 years old, will succeed Daniel P. Davison Feb. 1, soon after Mr. Davison reaches the company's mandatory retirement age of 65.
[20927003] |Mr. Schwarz, who is president of U.S. Trust, will be succeeded in that post by Jeffrey S. Maurer, 42, who is executive vice president in charge of the company's asset-management group.

[20927004] |U.S. Trust, a 136-year-old institution that is one of the earliest high-net worth banks in the U.S., has faced intensifying competition from other firms that have established, and heavily promoted, private-banking businesses of their own.
[20927005] |As a result, U.S. Trust's earnings have been hurt.

[20927006] |But Mr. Schwarz welcomes the competition in U.S. Trust's flagship businesses, calling it "flattery."
[20927007] |Mr. Schwarz says the competition "broadens the base of opportunity for us."
[20927008] |Other firms "are dealing with the masses.
[20927009] |I don't believe they have the culture" to adequately service high-net-worth individuals, he adds.
[20927010] |U.S. Trust recently introduced certain mutual-fund products, which allow it to serve customers with minimum deposits of $250,000.
[20927011] |Previously, the company advertised at the $2 million level.

[20927012] |"We have always taken smaller accounts, but now we are looking for smaller accounts that will grow," Mr. Schwarz says.
[20927013] |"Our bread and butter is still the $2 million to $20 million account," he says.
[20927014] |The new services allow U.S. Trust to cater to the "new wealth," Mr. Schwarz says.

[20927015] |Quarterly net income this year has risen just over comparable periods in 1988, when year-end net was below the 1987 level.
[20927016] |In this year's third quarter, for example, net was $10.5 million, or $1.05 a share, compared with $10.3 million, or $1.02 a share, a year earlier.
[20927017] |Assets as of Sept. 30 fell to $2.46 billion from about $2.77 billion.
[20927018] |"We will have a reasonably flat year this year," Mr. Schwarz says.
[20927019] |Mr. Schwarz also said costs associated with U.S. Trust's planned move to midtown Manhattan from Wall Street will continue to be a drag on earnings through 1990.

[20927020] |Mr. Schwarz's great-grandfather founded the New York toy store F.A.O. Schwarz, but his family no longer has ties to the company.
[20927021] |Mr. Schwarz's father was a U.S. Trust trustee until 1974.

[20927022] |U.S. Trust also created a four-member office of the chairman, effective Feb. 1.
[20927023] |It will include Messrs. Schwarz and Maurer.
[20927024] |Donald M. Roberts, 54, treasurer, and Frederick S. Wonham, 58, who takes responsibility for the funds-service group, were named vice chairmen and will serve in the office of the chairman.
[20927025] |Mr. Roberts continues as treasurer, and Mr. Wonham remains responsible for the offices of comptroller, planning, marketing and general services.

[20927026] |Frederick B. Taylor, 48, also was named a vice chairman and chief investment officer, a new post.
[20927027] |He previously held similar responsibilities.
[20927028] |Mr. Taylor also was named a director, increasing the board to 22, but is not part of the new office of the chairman.

[20927029] |James E. Bacon, 58, executive vice president, who has directed the funds-service group, will retire.

[20928001] |Sun Microsystems Inc., snapping back to profitability after its first quarterly loss as a public firm, said it earned $5.2 million, or seven cents a share, in the fiscal first quarter.

[20928002] |Sun, a maker of computer workstations, reported sales of $538.5 million for the quarter ended Sept. 29, up 39% from $388.5 million a year earlier.
[20928003] |In the 1988 period, the company earned $20.6 million, or 26 cents a share.

[20928004] |Sun's results were slightly better than expectations.
[20928005] |Earlier this month, the company said it expected to break even for the quarter on sales of $530 million.

[20928006] |In a statement, Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive officer, said the company's performance was hampered by problems tied to the introduction of a major new family of computers in April.
[20928007] |One of those new computers, called Sparcstation 1, accounted for nearly half of the 28,000 systems Sun shipped in the quarter, he said.
[20928008] |More than two-thirds of the systems shipped, meanwhile, were products introduced in April.

[20928009] |But problems in manufacturing, forecasting demand and getting the bugs out of a new management information system made it extremely difficult for Sun to meet demand for its newest computers well into the summer.
[20928010] |These problems also resulted in Sun reporting a $20.3 million loss for its fourth quarter ended June 30.

[20928011] |Mr. McNealy said the issues that hurt Sun's performance earlier this year are now "largely" behind the firm, and he indicated that Sun's profitability should increase throughout the fiscal year.

[20928012] |Sun also reported a record backlog of orders.
[20928013] |While this indicates continued strong demand for the company's desk-top computers, Sun faces increasing competition from Digital Equipment Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.
[20928014] |Recently, analysts have said Sun also is vulnerable to competition from International Business Machines Corp., which plans to introduce a group of workstations early next year, and Next Inc.

[20929001] |C.B. Rogers Jr. was named chief executive officer of this business information concern.
[20929002] |Mr. Rogers, 60 years old, succeeds J.V. White, 64, who will remain chairman and chairman of the executive committee.
[20929003] |Mr. Rogers, who was president and chief operating officer of Equifax, will retain his position as president.
[20929004] |The company said a new chief operating officer won't be appointed.

[20930001] |A merchant bank and investment fund have agreed to co-sponsor a reorganization plan to bring Sharon Steel Corp. out of Chapter 11 proceedings and to acquire the company's steel-related assets in a transaction valued at more than $300 million.

[20930002] |Castle Harlan Inc., a New York merchant bank, and Quantum Fund said they would acquire the assets for a combination of cash and the assumption of certain of Sharon's liabilities.
[20930003] |The balance of the company's assets and liabilities would be transferred to a new company that would be owned by Sharon's creditors.
[20930004] |Quantum said it has agreed to purchase as much as $50 million in equity in the new company, if necessary, for the confirmation of the plan.

[20930005] |Castle Harlan and Quantum said the plan is expected to be filed within 60 days with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh.
[20930006] |The agreement is subject to certain conditions, including obtaining financing.
[20930007] |Castle Harlan said that such financing is already being sought and that a formal proposal would be made to Sharon's Chapter 11 trustee and other Sharon creditors over the next few days.

[20930008] |Sharon, based in Farrell, Pa., filed for protection from creditors under the federal Bankruptcy Code in April 1987.
[20930009] |The company had been one of the maninstays of Miami Beach financier Victor Posner's empire.
[20930010] |Mr. Posner resigned as president and chief executive officer of Sharon in April 1988.
[20930011] |He remains chairman, but wields little power at the company.

[20930012] |Quantum Fund, based in New York, is a $2.1 billion investment fund managed by Soros Fund Management.
[20930013] |Quantum is Sharon's largest unsecured creditor.
[20930014] |The Castle Harlan group includes Walter Sieckman, former chief operating officer of Sharon, and Wolfgang Jansen, former executive vice president.

[20930015] |Executives at Sharon declined to comment on the proposal.
[20930016] |The company's trustee, F.E. Agnew, was unavailable for comment.

[20931001] |Two old friends, George Bush and Deng Xiaoping, are trying to limit further damage to U.S.-China ties.
[20931002] |But as Congress prepares a fresh package of sanctions against Beijing, the already-tense relationship could get worse.

[20931003] |The problem for Congress will be to weigh what China is saying to its people against the more conciliatory message it is delivering to the Bush administration.

[20931004] |In a move apparently aimed at heading off new punitive legislation, Mr. Deng sent an indirect signal to Washington via T.D. Lee, a Columbia University physicist who met Mr. Deng and other Chinese leaders in Beijing last month.
[20931005] |When he met with Mr. Bush on his return, Mr. Lee says, he told the president that the Chinese "made statements to me that I regard as a first step toward reconciliation."

[20931006] |The communication Mr. Lee brought represents the softer line the U.S. has been hoping to hear from Chinese officials since the June 4 massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing.

[20931007] |The Chinese leader, Mr. Lee informed Mr. Bush, expressed some regret for what had happened in Beijing and conceded that China's officials bore some responsibility.
[20931008] |Mr. Lee says Mr. Deng told him: "We should not mind those who participated in demonstrations, signed anti-government materials and went on hunger strikes."
[20931009] |Mr. Deng added, says Mr. Lee, that "we really made mistakes.
[20931010] |We must not shirk our responsibility and we cannot just blame the demonstrators."

[20931011] |Mr. Lee also reported to the president that, in a separate meeting, Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin said the Chinese leadership "looked kindly on the students who took part in the demonstrations."
[20931012] |Mr. Jiang also pledged that the Chinese Red Cross would publish "very soon" a list of those killed.
[20931013] |And he told the physicist that China's leaders were "very much concerned" about the deaths and had arranged aid for the victims' families.

[20931014] |"I transmitted my conversations to the White House," Prof. Lee says.
[20931015] |But, he adds, "I was not acting as a messenger."
[20931016] |He says that the Chinese never asked him to convey their statements to President Bush, but that the White House spontaneously invited him to do so.
[20931017] |Mr. Lee concedes the statements made to him are far different from others being issued in China, but attributes that to the fact that the situation in China is "very complex."

[20931018] |According to U.S. sources in Beijing, the administration hopes Mr. Deng's fairly conciliatory comments will prod Congress to be cautious about further sanctions against Beijing.
[20931019] |"The president doesn't want to have legislative sanctions," says a U.S. official.
[20931020] |"But he may not have a choice."

[20931021] |Given China's far-from-conciliatory statements to its own people, Mr. Bush may be unable to prevent new sanctions.
[20931022] |Beijing officials have said they will step up the campaign of arrests and intimidation against those who participated in the demonstrations.
[20931023] |Sentences have been stiff.
[20931024] |A university student got eight years for participating in the rallies, sources in Beijing said, while an 18-year-old worker got 10 years.

[20931025] |Nor has Beijing hinted to its citizens that it will publish the identities of those killed.
[20931026] |So far, the victims are officially considered evil-doers, and their families receive no compensation.
[20931027] |A man gunned down by a stray bullet while cycling to work carries, after his death, the official stigma of "counterrevolutionary," his wife says.

[20931028] |What's more, much of China's official rhetoric is hostile to the U.S.
[20931029] |China frequently lambastes the U.S. Embassy for harboring astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, a political dissident who took refuge there after the massacre.
[20931030] |"In the U.S., there are still people who want to crush China and interfere in our internal affairs," Zhu Qizhen, China's new ambassador to the U.S., said as he left for Washington last week.

[20931031] |The House and Senate are to begin soon hashing out an agreement for sanctions legislation.
[20931032] |It will probably be attached to a State Department authorization bill, which Mr. Bush isn't expected to veto.
[20931033] |A congressional staffer involved in drafting the sanctions says they are likely to mirror those Mr. Bush enacted shortly after the massacre.
[20931034] |But as legislative action, they would carry greater weight and would be more difficult to rescind.

[20931035] |Measures already in effect that are expected to be made law include a ban on military sales and exchanges, a suspension of most high-level government contacts and a halt to U.S. trade enhancement programs, such as the Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Trade Development Program.

[20931036] |Codifying those sanctions could prompt Chinese retaliation.
[20931037] |"If the two sides aren't careful, U.S.-China ties could spin downward, out of control," says a U.S. official in Beijing.
[20931038] |"Bush and Deng are hoping {that} cooler heads prevail.

[20932001] |The amount of blood surgical patients can donate and store before surgery can be increased by the new genetically engineered drug, EPO.

[20932002] |EPO, or erythropoietin, is a protein the human body makes to stimulate the growth of red blood cells.
[20932003] |A genetically engineered version of the human protein developed by Amgen Corp. of Thousand Oaks, Calif., recently has been marketed by the Ortho Pharmaceuticals division of Johnson & Johnson.
[20932004] |A competing version of EPO is being developed by Genetics Institute Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.
[20932005] |The drug is being used primarily to treat anemias.

[20932006] |A new experiment, reported in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, involved giving injections of Amgen's EPO to 23 patients who wanted to store units of their own blood.

[20932007] |The patients began receiving EPO injections about a month before their scheduled surgery.
[20932008] |They then began donating blood twice a week, receiving an EPO injection each time.
[20932009] |If tests indicated a low number of red cells, blood wasn't taken.

[20932010] |The EPO-treated patients donated an average of 5.4 units of blood each compared with only 4.1 units donated by a similar group of surgical patients who received a placebo injection.
[20932011] |The volume of red cells donated by the EPO-treated patients was 41% higher per donor, the research team representing a number of hospitals and blood banks reported.

[20933001] |(During its centennial year, The Wall Street Journal will report events of the past century that stand as milestones of American business history.)

[20933002] |TAX SHELTERS CALLED Individual Retirement Accounts, or "IRAs," were created without fanfare on Sept. 2, 1974, but grew beyond expectations as an inducement to personal saving.

[20933003] |That Labor Day, in his first major act after succeeding the resigned Richard Nixon as president, Gerald R. Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
[20933004] |Pension reform was its main thrust.
[20933005] |Labor and business leaders, quoted at the White House Rose Garden rites, hailed its provisions for insuring corporate pension benefits.
[20933006] |IRAs were like stepchildren there.

[20933007] |The IRA's conception is murky.
[20933008] |In 1972, then Treasury Secretary George Shultz, with the key support of Sen. Carl Curtis, sought some form of pensions for the uncovered.
[20933009] |That year a four-man group headed by William Lieber in the Legislation and Regulations division of the Office of the Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service, was assigned the task of designing a plan.

[20933010] |They used the 1962 Keogh Plan, a pension plan created by a New York congressman for the self-employed, as a partial model.
[20933011] |This team initially called its new model Personal Retirement Account, or "PRA."
[20933012] |But it didn't sing.
[20933013] |So they opted for IRA, naming it after Ira Cohen, a brilliant IRS actuary who helped them.
[20933014] |Ira, himself, confirms this account.

[20933015] |IRA rules have been changed over the years.
[20933016] |One in 1981 raised to $2,000 a year from $1,500 the amount a person could put, tax-deductible, into the tax-deferred accounts and widened coverage to people under employer retirement plans.
[20933017] |This caused an explosion of IRA promotions by brokers, banks, mutual funds and others.
[20933018] |But in 1986 Congress sharply reduced the number of people who could qualify for its benefits and IRA tax-deductions slowed their roaring growth.

[20933019] |IRA account assets have grown to about $400 billion from $393 billion last year and just $26 billion in 1981.

[20934001] |The Soviet State Bank announced a 90% devaluation of the ruble against the dollar for private transactions, in an apparent attempt to curb the nation's rapidly growing black market for hard currency.

[20934002] |The measure, which will take effect next Wednesday, will create a two-tier exchange rate.
[20934003] |Commercial transactions will continue to be based on the official rate of about 0.63 rubles to the dollar.
[20934004] |But for Soviet citizens who travel abroad for business or tourism, the rate will jump to 6.26 rubles to the dollar.

[20934005] |Tass news agency said the devaluation also will apply to foreigners' transactions.
[20934006] |But it didn't elaborate, and it remains unclear how far Western tourists and foreigners living in Moscow will be allowed to benefit from the sweeping rate cut.

[20934007] |The current ruble rate has long been out of line with the black market.
[20934008] |As Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has opened up the country to foreign trade, the discrepancy has become ever greater.
[20934009] |Western tourists in the Soviet Union who could exchange a dollar -- albeit illegally -- for about four rubles a year ago are now being offered 15 rubles or more.

[20934010] |Even at such rates, black marketeers have been able to make big profits because of the dire shortage of consumer goods here.
[20934011] |They use dollars to buy Western items such as video recorders and personal computers and then sell them at a huge mark-up.
[20934012] |The going rate for a small personal computer that costs about $2,000 in the West is anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 rubles.
[20934013] |Even a pack of 20 Western cigarettes can fetch 20 rubles or more.
[20934014] |With more than 300 billion rubles in savings accounts and little to spend them on, Soviet consumers grumble at the exorbitant black-market prices for such goods -- but they buy them anyway.

[20934015] |Moscow has already tacitly admitted that the ruble isn't worth much, announcing in August that it will pay Soviet farmers in hard currency for grain and other produce that they grow in excess of state-plan quotas.

[20934016] |"The absurdity of the official rate should seem obvious to everyone," the afternoon newspaper Izvestia wrote in a brief commentary on the devaluation.

[20934017] |The State Bank's move is part of a drive to iron out exchange-rate discrepancies as Moscow moves toward making the ruble convertible -- a goal that Soviet bankers and economists say is still far away.
[20934018] |Rumors of an impending devaluation have been circulating in Moscow for weeks, but the size of the cut took many Western bankers by surprise.
[20934019] |"It's much bigger than we expected," said one German banker, who asked not to be named.

[20934020] |The next step, which could have a larger effect on businesses, will come early next month, when the Bank for Foreign Economic Affairs is to hold its first auction of foreign currency.
[20934021] |Soviet companies needing Western currencies to buy equipment and supplies abroad will be able to submit bids.

[20934022] |Plans for the auction, which was supposed to take place last spring and become a regular event, have been thwarted by a lack of hard currency.
[20934023] |Soviet firms that hold some are unwilling to part with it, and joint ventures aren't yet allowed to participate.
[20934024] |The Kremlin also has been unwilling to provide hard currency for the auction, using a lot of it instead to finance emergency imports of consumer goods.

[20934025] |If foreign tourists and businesses could sell their currencies freely at the new, better exchange rate, that would enable the State Bank to increase its dollar reserves and would mop up some of the excess rubles in the economy at the same time.
[20934026] |But the amounts they exchange may be limited; most Soviet hotels, for example, demand payment in hard currency from Western visitors.

[20934027] |Unless other rules are changed, the devaluation could cause difficulties for the people it is primarily meant to help: Soviets who travel abroad.
[20934028] |Over the past three years, thousands of people here have made use of looser travel restrictions to get their first taste of life abroad.

[20934029] |But under current rules, they are allowed to change just 200 rubles into dollars and other currencies for each trip.
[20934030] |At the new rate, that would give them about $30 to travel on.
[20934031] |It isn't yet clear whether the 200-ruble limit will be lifted.
[20934032] |If it isn't, the black market for dollars probably will continue to thrive.

[20935001] |International Business Machines Corp. made news this summer when it landed an unusual contract to manage all of Eastman Kodak Co.'s data-processing needs.
[20935002] |But the computer giant appears to have lost a second key contract with Kodak to archrival Digital Equipment Corp.

[20935003] |Kodak yesterday confirmed that it has entered negotiations with Maynard, Mass.-based Digital to manage all of its voice and data communications needs.
[20935004] |Kodak, based in Rochester, N.Y., said IBM also had bid for the business.
[20935005] |IBM is based in Armonk, N.Y.

[20935006] |The loss is a setback to IBM, which pointed to the Kodak contract as an example of its success in systems integration.
[20935007] |That's an emerging business in which computer makers or consultants provide turnkey communications and computing services to major corporations.

[20935008] |A Kodak spokesman declined to disclose the potential value of the contract, which is still in negotiation.
[20935009] |He said that American Telephone & Telegraph, MCI Communications Corp., Rochester Telephone Corp. and IBM itself would likely be Digital's subcontractors on the project.

[20935010] |"When we decided to look outside the company for critical data-processing and communications services, we wanted to get the best vendor for that service," said Paul Allen, the spokesman.
[20935011] |"That's why we went with IBM for data center management . . . and now Digital for voice and data telecommunications.

[20936001] |This year is the 75th anniversary of the Federal Reserve System, and some members of Congress think it's time to take a fresh look at the nation's central bank.
[20936002] |After 75 years there may be a few things that are worth reexamining.

[20936003] |The regional Federal Reserve Bank setup, for instance, may be out of date.
[20936004] |In earlier years it may have seemed reasonable to give Richmond, Va., a bank and allow Los Angeles only a branch of the San Francisco bank, but times have changed.
[20936005] |Maybe the whole regional system is an anachronism; the Fed, after all, is a national central bank.

[20936006] |Some of the would-be reformers, however, want to restore an arrangement we once had -- or, at least, part of it.
[20936007] |In the beginning, the treasury secretary and the comptroller of the currency were both ex officio members of the Federal Reserve Board.
[20936008] |But in 1935, when Congress was trying to find someone or something to blame for the Great Depression, it decided to drop both the secretary and the comptroller from the board.

[20936009] |Carter Glass, a former treasury secretary who was then back in Congress, probably influenced the decision.
[20936010] |He said that when he was on the board he felt that he had a great deal of power and, somehow, he didn't think that was a good thing.

[20936011] |Times have changed.
[20936012] |Rep. Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) has introduced a bill in Congress, co-sponsored by Rep. Lee Hamilton (D., Ind.), that would put the treasury secretary back on the board.
[20936013] |There is doubt that the change would accomplish much but at least Congress, as in 1935, would be doing something.
[20936014] |So far no one has suggested putting the comptroller back on the board.

[20936015] |Nicholas Brady, the incumbent treasury secretary, is of course aware of the proposal, and he doesn't like it much.
[20936016] |Mr. Dorgen has changed tactics, dropping the seat-for-the-secretary idea.
[20936017] |That may have pleased the secretary, but H. Erich Heinemann, chief economist of the investment firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., suggests that Mr. Brady may figure he already has all the power he needs.

[20936018] |Like most treasury secretaries, Mr. Brady takes a keen interest in monetary matters, of course.
[20936019] |He was, in fact, taking an especially keen interest in board matters even before he went to the treasury.
[20936020] |After the October 1987 market crash, Mr. Brady as a private citizen headed a presidential commission that tried to decide what went wrong and what should be done about it.
[20936021] |One of the commission's recommendations was that a single agency, probably the Federal Reserve, should coordinate regulation of all financial markets.

[20936022] |This recommendation might have encouraged a turf-hungry bureaucrat to try to expand his power, but so far Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan hasn't made a pitch for the job.
[20936023] |The Fed has plenty of responsibilities in times of market turmoil and in 1987 and again in 1989 it appears to have handled them well.
[20936024] |Mr. Brady has said he thought government agencies in the latest market drop were better prepared to coordinate their actions, but he has left no doubt that he still likes the ideas the commission advanced nearly two years ago.

[20936025] |In recent weeks, moreover, Mr. Brady has joined other administration officials in trying to urge the Fed toward lower interest rates.
[20936026] |The urging admittedly has been gentle.
[20936027] |In an interview with the Washington Post in early October, the secretary said the Fed may be slightly more interested in curbing inflation than the administration is, while the administration may put slightly more emphasis on spurring economic growth.

[20936028] |At least some economists, of course, would argue that inflation deserves a lot of emphasis.
[20936029] |Earlier this month the St. Louis Fed held a conference to assess the system's first 75 years.
[20936030] |Allan Meltzer, a Carnegie-Mellon University economist, noted that the Fed's record included the longest, most sustained, peacetime inflation in our history, dating from either 1966 or 1967 to 1989.
[20936031] |The inflation-growth argument is an old one, but Mr. Brady, on the board or off, is surely trying to influence Fed policy.

[20936032] |Equally importantly, the treasury secretary has spearheaded the administration effort to bring the U.S. dollar down by shopping avidly for West German marks and Japanese yen.
[20936033] |The treasury can do something on its own, but to have any hope of success it needs help from the Fed.
[20936034] |The central bank has been helping, but apparently not especially eagerly.

[20936035] |The Fed has been intervening in foreign currency markets, all right, but through August, at least, it appeared to be "sterilizing" the intervention.
[20936036] |In other words, it was offsetting purchases of marks and yen by buying dollars in the domestic money market.

[20936037] |Now, sterilized intervention may have some effect.
[20936038] |When traders see the Fed is in the exchange market it may make them tread a little carefully, for fear of what the central bank may do.
[20936039] |But it's generally accepted that sterilized intervention has little or no lasting impact on currency values.
[20936040] |After August the Fed may have stopped sterilizing, but it's hard to see much impact on the dollar.
[20936041] |The dollar is still highly volatile.
[20936042] |The Fed has let interest rates slip slightly, but whether the main reason was dollar intervention, the gloomy reports on manufacturing employment, or the Friday 13 market drop, only Mr. Greenspan and his associates know.

[20936043] |Earlier this year, Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, argued forcefully that a government that wants steady, stable exchange rates might try some steady stable economic policies.
[20936044] |Trying to manage exchange rates to some desired level, he said, "would mean diverting monetary and fiscal policies from their customary roles and thereby risking excessive inflation and unemployment and inadequate capital formation."

[20936045] |The more we think about it, the more we suspect Mr. Brady does indeed have enough power where he already is.

[20937001] |This has been a week of stunning events behind what was once called the Iron Curtain and interesting shifts in official American policy toward Moscow.
[20937002] |It has also been a week when inside-the-beltway Washington has had a high old time gnawing over ex-President Reagan's multimillion-dollar junket in Japan.
[20937003] |The latter may seem oddly irrelevant, if not downright trivial, given the big picture and the way we have handled it in the nation's capital has done nothing to dispel that impression.
[20937004] |In fact, however, Mr. Reagan's casual debasement of the office he so recently held raises issues about which Americans can actually do something.
[20937005] |Our ability to influence the outcome of events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is far more marginal.

[20937006] |Those events continue to move at a rate, and in a direction, which leave informed commentary -- let alone policy -- far in their wake.
[20937007] |Earlier this week, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze confessed that the U.S.S.R. ignored universal human values by invading Afghanistan and, to put it bluntly, "engaged in a violation of the ABM Treaty" by building its radar station at Krasnoyarsk.
[20937008] |Hungary is no longer a "Socialist Peoples" republic, the Communist Party no longer has automatic delegates in the U.S.S.R.'s Congress of Peoples Deputies and Egon Krenz was not backed unanimously by his fellow party functionaries when he took over as East Germany's new maximum leader.
[20937009] |All of that is just for starters, or so the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans in the streets seem to hope and are certainly demanding.

[20937010] |Of like, though lesser, note, Secretary of State James Baker put the administration four-square behind perestroika and glasnost, and therefore behind Mikhail Gorbachev, in a pair of carefully reasoned speeches over the past week or so.
[20937011] |And, last but not least, President George Bush now views the changes in Eastern Europe as "absolutely extraordinary" and believes that Mr. Krenz "can't turn the clock back" in East Germany because the change is too inexorable," as he told the New York Times's R.W. Apple Jr.
[20937012] |(In other words, after some highly visible dithering and public airing of differences, the administration has come down on the side of those who believe that what we are witnessing from Berlin to Siberia is a good thing to be welcomed, rather than a new thing to be feared or viewed with suspicion.)

[20937013] |All of this is what history will note, assuming that events don't make it seem a bad joke, when the record of this time is put down.
[20937014] |For journalists, however, who write what they fondly view as history's first draft, this has also been a week to give a lot of space and time to Ron and Nancy's sales appearance in Japan on behalf of a communications giant and its controversial founder.
[20937015] |It has been a well-paid transaction, this bartering away of the prestige of the republic's highest office.
[20937016] |The Japanese industrialist has coughed up at least $2 million, the Japanese government has put up just about as much, or so it is reported and at least one estimate puts the total tab at $7 million.

[20937017] |All of which has enabled those of us in Washington who enjoy wallowing in such things to go into high public dudgeon, as Mr. Apple and I did the other night on ABC's "Nightline."
[20937018] |Punching away, we raised what I still think were all the right issues and landed more than one hard blow, but at the end of the affair, there was just the tiniest nagging worry that we had been aiming at the wrong target.
[20937019] |As one of his defenders so aptly put it, President Reagan was simply doing what he had always done before his election (and some would say thereafter as well).
[20937020] |He was performing for pay, and why should anyone expect anything more?

[20937021] |Primarily because there's more to the matter than Ronald Reagan's personal values, or lack of them.
[20937022] |Selling the presidency for a mess of pottage is not so much a devaluation from the norm of public life today as it is a reflection of the disintegration of public standards.
[20937023] |The theme song for the 1980s has been, "Anything Goes," and it has been whistled with gusto from Wall Street to some of the highest peaks of televangelism.

[20937024] |There are those who say that this is nothing new, that America has always suffered from a bad case of schizophrenia when it comes to the dichotomy between what is professed and what is practiced.
[20937025] |There is evidence to support that view.
[20937026] |Eighty-three years ago, William James wrote to H.G. Wells: "The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch goddess success . . . that, with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success, is our national disease."

[20937027] |But if it was the national disease in 1906, it is today the national commonplace.
[20937028] |If there is no law against it, do it.
[20937029] |If the law leaves loopholes, use them.
[20937030] |If there is no moral prohibition that expressly forbids it, full speed ahead.
[20937031] |And if you are caught or if people complain, simply argue that "everyone does it" or "no one said I shouldn't " and brazen it out.
[20937032] |As a last recourse, when all else has failed and you are pinned, apologize for having disappointed those who trusted you but deny having actually done anything wrong.
[20937033] |(See, for instance, Jim Bakker's remarks upon being sentenced to prison this Tuesday for defrauding the faithful.)
[20937034] |Consider the troubling dissonance between Mr. Shevardnadze's speech of confession this week and the hang-tough defense of everyone concerned with the Iran-Contra affair.
[20937035] |The Soviet foreign minister publicly concedes that his government "violated norms of behavior" in Afghanistan and just plain lied about the radar station.
[20937036] |We have people in high place still lying through their teeth about Iran-Contra, and that apparently isn't going to change.
[20937037] |For that matter, those long ago identified as liars are still given respectful hearings in the press.

[20937038] |That is the key to the current "national disease."
[20937039] |No one seems willing to hold anyone in public life to a standard higher than the narrowest construction of the law.
[20937040] |The occasional media witch hunt about some politician's private peccadilloes notwithstanding, the general inclination is to offer a version of the old refrain, "Who am I to judge?"
[20937041] |Thus, no standards, no judgment and no values.

[20937042] |"You are mad because he's making so much money," say President Reagan's defenders.
[20937043] |No, we ought to be mad because he has demeaned the office we gave him, enlisting it in the service of private gain, just as we ought to be mad that public officials lie through their teeth, play disingenuous games about their activities or, to steal a phrase, make public service a private trough.

[20937044] |"I'm not going to be stampeded into overreacting to any of this, President Bush told Mr. Apple in this week's interview.
[20937045] |He was referring to the "absolutely extraordinary" events in Eastern Europe, and it is a defensible position.
[20937046] |But there is no defense at all for the ethos of the 1980s.
[20937047] |We didn't stampede into it, we slithered and slipped down the long slope, and now we have as its quintessential symbol a former president huckstering for a foreign poohbah.
[20937048] |Or perhaps that is a fitting symbol for the United States of 1989: Everything for sale; nothing of real value.

[20937049] |Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

[20938001] |Cineplex Odeon Corp. directors said the company's chairman and chief executive, Garth Drabinsky, is considering bidding 780.6 million Canadian dollars (US$666 million) to acquire the company.

[20938002] |The board said Mr. Drabinsky and Vice Chairman Myron Gottlieb are negotiating financing before offering C$16.40 a share to acquire all of Cineplex's shares outstanding.
[20938003] |The directors added that the two executives haven't reached a final decision to proceed with a bid and that until an offer is made the board will continue seeking higher offers from other bidders.

[20938004] |The directors said if Messrs. Drabinsky and Gottlieb mail an offer to shareholders by Nov. 22, it will reimburse them a maximum of C$8.5 million for expenses related to a bid.

[20938005] |"We consider that his bid is an acceptable bid," said Sandra Kolber, spokeswoman for the independent directors' committee appointed last May to solicit and review bids for the company in the wake of a dispute between Mr. Drabinsky and Cineplex's major shareholder, MCA Inc.

[20938006] |MCA and Cineplex's other major shareholder, Montreal-based financier Charles Bronfman and his associates, have agreed to tender their holdings to an offer by Mr. Drabinsky unless a higher offer is made by another bidder.
[20938007] |MCA holds half of Cineplex's equity and 33% of its voting rights through restricted voting shares, while Bronfman interests hold about 24% of the company's equity.

[20938008] |Ms. Kolber said the committee had received other bids.
[20938009] |She declined to identify other bidders but said Mr. Drabinsky's offer "is all cash, and it's for all of the company."
[20938010] |Several Cineplex analysts have speculated that outside bids received by the committee were either disappointingly low or for only part of the company.

[20938011] |"All this has really established is that MCA and the Bronfmans have agreed on a price at which they can be bought out," said Jeffery Logsdon, an analyst with Crowell, Weedon in Los Angeles.
[20938012] |"If a bid materializes at that price, shareholders will have every reason to be glad, but the question of financing still remains."

[20938013] |Last April, Mr. Drabinsky and a group of financial backers planned to acquire up to 30.2% of Cineplex for C$17.50 a share from Bronfman associates.
[20938014] |Mr. Drabinsky, who would have had the right to vote those shares for two years, said the purchase, subsequently rejected by regulators, was aimed at consolidating his control of the company.
[20938015] |MCA strongly opposed the Drabinsky group's move.

[20938016] |The directors didn't indicate the source of financing for Mr. Drabinsky's new proposal, but said MCA and the Bronfman associates agreed in principle to buy for $57 million and then lease back to Cineplex its 18-screen theater complex in Universal City, Calif., if Mr. Drabinsky succeeds in an offer.

[20938017] |"This is being done at the suggestion of {Mr. Drabinsky} and to accommodate him, to facilitate his financing arrangements," Ms. Kolber said.

[20938018] |In addition, the directors said if a bid by Mr. Drabinsky is successful, Cineplex expects Rank Organisation PLC to acquire the 51% of Cineplex's Film House unit it doesn't own, and provide Mr. Drabinsky with additional loan financing.

[20938019] |Michael Gifford, Rank's chief executive, said the British theater chain's total involvement "wouldn't exceed $100 million" but declined to give a breakdown between the loan financing and the proposed Film House purchase.

[20938020] |Cineplex shareholders responded coolly to yesterday's announcement.
[20938021] |In trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Cineplex closed at $11, down 25 cents, with more than a million shares changing hands.
[20938022] |On the Toronto Stock Exchange, Cineplex closed at C$12.875, off 37.5 Canadian cents, well below the C$16.40 level.

[20938023] |"Where's the bid?" asked Pierre Panet-Raymond, an analyst and broker with Toronto securities dealer McDermid St. Lawrence Ltd.
[20938024] |Mr. Panet-Raymond said he doesn't think Messrs. Drabinsky and Gottlieb are "anywhere close" to arranging financing and that investors will need a solid offer before the stock begins to rise again.

[20938025] |Mr. Drabinsky couldn't be reached for comment.

[20939001] |Two West German chemical companies announced steps that apparently are designed to boost the chemical industry's standing among environmental groups and the general public.

[20939002] |Hoechst AG's Chairman Wolfgang Hilger said the company wants to have a substitute product to completely replace ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons by 1995.
[20939003] |In April, Hoechst, the largest producer of CFCs in West Germany, said it wanted to reduce production of the product by 50% by 1993.

[20939004] |Mr. Hilger said Hoechst will invest 50 million marks ($27.2 million) in a plant to make a substitute product it has developed that it says is unchlorinated.
[20939005] |The company hopes the new plant, likely to be built in Frankfurt, will be able to produce 10,000 tons a year.
[20939006] |This year, Hoechst will produce about 62,000 tons of CFCs in factories in Frankfurt, Spain and Brazil.

[20939007] |Of Hoechst's 40.9 billion marks in group sales in 1988, 200 million marks came from sales of CFCs.

[20939008] |Also, BASF AG, another large chemicals company, said it formed a separate division that will study the environmental impact of plastics and will investigate all possibilities of recycling plastics.

[20940001] |George L. Manzanec, 53 years old, senior vice president of Texas Eastern Corp., was elected a group vice president of this natural-gas-pipeline concern.
[20940002] |Mr. Manzanec, who succeeds retiring Richard C. Dixon, will be responsible for gas supply, regulatory affairs, and marketing and transportation and exchange for Panhandle Eastern Pipe Line Co., Trunkline Gas Co., Texas Eastern Transmission Corp. and Algonquin Gas Transmission Co.
[20940003] |All of the companies are units of Panhandle Eastern Corp., which acquired Texas Eastern Corp. earlier this year.

[20941001] |Adolph Coors Co. said its Coors Brewing Co. unit will test market a new line of bottled water in the West beginning early next year.

[20941002] |The move, which was expected, marks the first time since Prohibition that Coors has sold a non-alcoholic beverage, and marks the company's entry into a crowded, but fast-growing market that generated about $2.2 billion in sales last year.

[20941003] |Coors is hoping to become one of the first companies to distribute bottled water nationwide.
[20941004] |Perrier, sold by Perrier Group of America, a unit of Source Perrier S.A. of Paris, and Evian, sold by a U.S. unit BSN of France, are distributed to urban areas nationally, but are less available in rural communities.
[20941005] |Coors, with its large beer-distribution network, could penetrate more markets.

[20941006] |The company said the water will be called Coors Rocky Mountain Sparkling Water and will come from the same mountain spring as water used in Coors beer.
[20941007] |The company said it will sell the water plain and with lemon-lime and cherry flavors and will package it in 28-ounce bottles and 6.5 ounce bottles as part of six-packs.

[20941008] |The test markets, though not specified, will be in northern California, Arizona and Colorado, some of the hottest bottled-water markets.

[20942001] |Some of America's biggest trading partners gave a quick thumbs-down to a U.S. proposal to liberalize world trade and reduce farm-product subsidies.

[20942002] |In Geneva, where world trade talks are being held under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, the European Community called the U.S. proposal "a step backward."
[20942003] |And Japan's minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries told a committee of Japan's parliament that Washington's proposal was impractical and that Tokyo would continue to heavily subsidize its rice farmers.

[20942004] |The U.S., in a far-reaching plan submitted to the Geneva meeting Tuesday, proposed curbing price support subsidies within 10 years and eliminating export subsidies within five years.
[20942005] |U.S. officials said the plan was flexible, and was intended as a pragmatic approach for gradually removing trade-distorting subsidies.

[20942006] |But the EC reacted defiantly, arguing that the proposal's main aim is to destroy the Common Agricultural Policy, the EC's $28 billion-a-year price support program.
[20942007] |"The American proposal is not an adequate basis for negotiation," the EC said in a statement.

[20942008] |EC officials say they are irked that the U.S. has set a specific timetable and is insisting on the "elimination" of export subsides, not just reduction.
[20942009] |EC Agriculture Commissioner Ray MacSharry said the U.S. plan "calls into question" the agreement reached by world negotiators last April in Geneva seeking "substantial progressive reductions in agricultural support and protection."

[20942010] |U.S. Deputy Trade Representative Jules Katz replied that the proposal was entirely consistent with the April accord.
[20942011] |He said he was surprised by the EC's reaction, calling it "vehement, even frenetic."

[20942012] |The U.S. proposal also was criticized by food-importing developing countries, who said that the U.S. made no special allowances for poor nations.
[20942013] |While many experts argue that food-importing nations would eventually become self-sufficient in a free-market system, the poorest nations are likely to need help in the meantime.

[20942014] |Ambassador Katz said the U.S. was open to discussing particular problems of developing countries.

[20942015] |The U.S. administration said its plan would allow considerable flexibility in determining how and when the free-trade goals would be achieved.
[20942016] |The U.S. argues that its plan would ease the transition to freer agriculture trade by converting certain non-tariff barriers into tariffs that, together with existing tariffs, then would be phased out over 10 years.
[20942017] |But the EC is strongly opposed to converting agricultural supports into tariffs.

[20942018] |The new U.S. package also says countries could temporarily raise tariffs on certain products if they experience an unusually heavy volume of imports.
[20942019] |It would establish procedures to prevent countries from using health and sanitation rules to impede trade arbitrarily.

[20942020] |Seeking to allay European concerns, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter said in Washington that the new U.S. plan wouldn't "put farmers out of business" but would encourage them to "grow what the markets desire instead of what the government wants."

[20942021] |The EC, with a population of 320 million, has 8.5 million farmers, while the U.S., with a population of about 245 million, has only two million farmers.

[20942022] |Japan's objections to the U.S. plan center around its desire to stay self-sufficient in rice, a staple food, even though foreign producers are far more efficient.

[20943001] |Bell Atlantic Corp. said it agreed definitively to acquire one of Control Data Corp.'s computer-maintenance businesses.
[20943002] |Terms of the accord weren't disclosed.

[20943003] |Control Data's third-party maintenance unit services products primarily made by Digital Equipment Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.
[20943004] |The unit has 6,000 customers and, according to one analyst, had 1988 revenue of about $85 million.

[20943005] |Under the agreement, which had been widely expected, Bell Atlantic would be buying Control Data's customer base and its approximately 100 U.S. maintenance facilities in about 33 cities.
[20943006] |However, Control Data would continue to provide maintenance services for customers of its Cyber product line.

[20943007] |The unit represents a small portion of Minneapolis-based Control Data's overall computer-servicing business, which last year posted sales of about $400 million.
[20943008] |Earlier this year, the company sold a similar unit in Europe for about $25 million.

[20943009] |Lawrence Perlman, Control Data's president and chief operating officer, said the maintenance business no longer fits into the company's "strategy to be a data solutions company."

[20943010] |Thomas Vassiliades, president of Bell Atlantic's customer services division, said the acquisition would give the company's Sorbus computer-maintenance unit added expertise in "the increasingly sophisticated workstation and high-end mainframe technologies.

[20944001] |Two recent decisions by federal courts cast judges in the odd role of telling authors how they should write history and biography.
[20944002] |These decisions deserve more attention than they have received from scholars, and from journalists as well.

[20944003] |Russell Miller's "Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard" is a biography of the founder of the Church of Scientology.
[20944004] |Mr. Hubbard, who died in 1986, bequeathed the copyrights on his writings to his church, which licensed them to New Era Publications, a Danish corporation.
[20944005] |In 1988 New Era sought a permanent injunction to restrain Henry Holt & Co. from publishing "Bare-Faced Messiah" on the ground that Mr. Miller's quotations from Mr. Hubbard infringed the copyrights.
[20944006] |The publisher argued in response that the "fair use" statute permits quotation "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, . . . scholarship, or research."

[20944007] |District Court Judge Pierre Leval denied the injunction on the ground that New Era had failed to make its claim within a reasonable time -- the doctrine lawyers call "laches."
[20944008] |As for the merits, Judge Leval said that Mr. Miller had written "a serious book of responsible historical criticism."
[20944009] |Verbatim quotation, the judge believed, was justified in order to prove points the author had asserted about Mr. Hubbard -- mendacity, bigotry, paranoia and other unlovely traits that could not be persuasively demonstrated without use of Mr. Hubbard's own words.
[20944010] |"The biographer/critic," Judge Leval wrote, "should not be required simply to express . . . conclusions without defending them by example.
[20944011] |" In such circumstances, free-speech interests outweighed the interests of the copyright owner.

[20944012] |But Judge Leval felt constrained by an earlier decision of the Second Circuit Court forbidding a biographer of J.D. Salinger to quote from Mr. Salinger's personal letters.
[20944013] |He distinguished the two cases: In Salinger, Judge Leval noted, the quotations were for the purpose of enlivening the biography rather than of proving points about the subject.
[20944014] |Still the Salinger decision created a strong presumption against fair use of unpublished materials.
[20944015] |Judge Leval reluctantly concluded that a few of Mr. Miller's quotations from Mr. Hubbard's unpublished writings, because they were not necessary to prove historical points, failed the fair-use test and therefore infringed copyright.
[20944016] |But the proper remedy, Judge Leval said, lay in a suit for damages, not in an injunction.

[20944017] |The case went on appeal to the Second Circuit.
[20944018] |In a decision in April of this year, Judge Roger Miner, joined by Judge Frank Altimari, agreed on denying the injunction and did not doubt that "Bare-Faced Messiah" was a serious work but rejected Judge Leval's argument that the public interest in scholarship could outweigh the sanctity of copyright.
[20944019] |"We conclude," the two judges wrote, "that laches is the sole bar to the issuance of an injunction."
[20944020] |Had the suit been filed in time, they said, "Bare-Faced Messiah" would have been suppressed.

[20944021] |This was too much for James Oakes, the court's chief judge.
[20944022] |In a powerful separate opinion, Judge Oakes further distinguished the Salinger case by pointing out that a living person, like Mr. Salinger, had privacy rights that did not apply to a dead man, like Mr. Hubbard.
[20944023] |"I thought that Salinger might by being taken in another factual context come back to haunt us.
[20944024] |This case realizes that concern."

[20944025] |Decisions by the Second Circuit itself, Judge Oakes continued, had recognized that public interest in the subject matter and the indispensability in particular cases of verbatim quotations are vital components of fair use.
[20944026] |And the injunction Judges Miner and Altimari would so readily have granted had New Era sued in time?
[20944027] |Suppression of the book, Judge Oakes observed, would operate as a prior restraint and thus involve the First Amendment.

[20944028] |Moreover, and here Judge Oakes went to the heart of the question, "Responsible biographers and historians constantly use primary sources, letters, diaries, and memoranda.
[20944029] |Indeed, it would be irresponsible to ignore such sources of information."

[20944030] |Now, scholars in fulfilling their responsibility do not claim the right to invade every collection of papers that bears upon their topics of investigation.
[20944031] |And of course they agree that people can impose restrictions on the use of their papers, whether in their own possession or as donated or sold to libraries.
[20944032] |But in the "Bare-Faced Messiah" case the author found most of his material in court records or via the Freedom of Information Act.
[20944033] |And when responsible scholars gain legitimate access to unpublished materials, copyright should not be permitted to deny them use of quotations that help to establish historical points.

[20944034] |Judges Oakes and Leval understand the requirements of historical scholarship.
[20944035] |Judges Miner and Altimari do not appear to have a clue.
[20944036] |Yet at the moment they are the judges who are making the law.
[20944037] |As matters stand, the Salinger ruling, torn from context and broadly construed, is controlling.
[20944038] |If an author quotes "more than minimal amounts" of unpublished copyrighted materials, as the Salinger decision had it, "he deserves to be enjoined."
[20944039] |The courts have not defined "minimal amounts," but publishers, I understand, take it to mean about 50 words.
[20944040] |The "Bare-Faced Messiah" decision strikes a blow against the whole historical enterprise.
[20944041] |A second decision, handed down in August by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, is another blow against scholarship.
[20944042] |Janet Malcolm, a professional writer on psychiatric matters, wrote a series of articles for the New Yorker, later published in book form by Knopf under the title "In the Freud Archives."
[20944043] |The articles were largely based on interviews Ms. Malcolm had taped with Jeffrey Masson, a psychoanalyst who had served as projects director of the Freud Archives.

[20944044] |Mr. Masson then brought a libel suit against Ms. Malcolm, the New Yorker and Knopf.
[20944045] |As a public figure, Mr. Masson had to prove malice and, as proof of malice, Mr. Masson contended that defamatory quotations ascribed to him by Ms. Malcolm were in fact fabricated.
[20944046] |The quotes could not be found on the tapes, and the two judges who decided the case for Ms. Malcolm and her publishers conceded that, for the purpose of their decision, "we assume the quotations were deliberately altered."

[20944047] |For all historians and most journalists, this admission would have been sufficient to condemn the Malcolm articles.
[20944048] |But Judge Arthur Alarcon, joined by Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall, took the astonishing position that it is perfectly OK to fabricate quotations so long as a judge finds that the fabrications do not alter substantive content or are rational interpretations of ambiguous remarks.

[20944049] |In his eloquent dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski observed that when a writer uses quotation marks in reporting what someone has said, the reader assumes that these are the speaker's precise words or at least his words purged of "uh" and "you know" and grammatical error.
[20944050] |While judges have an obligation under the First Amendment to safeguard freedom of the press, "the right to deliberately alter quotations is not, in my view, a concomitant of a free press."

[20944051] |Ms. Malcolm, for example, wrote that Mr. Masson described himself as "the greatest analyst who ever lived."
[20944052] |No such statement appears on the tapes.
[20944053] |The majority cited Mr. Masson's remark "It's me alone . . . against the rest of the analytic world" as warrant for the Malcolm fabrication.
[20944054] |But, as Judge Kozinski noted, the context shows that Mr. Masson's "me alone" remark referred not to his alleged pre-eminence in his profession but to the fact that his position on a particular issue was not shared by anyone else.

[20944055] |Ms. Malcolm had Mr. Masson describing himself as "an intellectual gigolo."
[20944056] |Again, no such statement appears on the tapes.
[20944057] |The majority decision contended that the phrase was a rational interpretation of Mr. Masson's description of himself as a "private asset but a public liability" to Anna Freud and that in any case it was not defamatory.
[20944058] |Judge Kozinski found the derivation entirely strained and writes that "for an academic to refer to himself as an intellectual gigolo is . . . a devastating admission of professional dishonesty."

[20944059] |These were only two of a series of fabrications that had, in Judge Kozinski's words, the cumulative effect of making Mr. Masson "appear more arrogant, less sensitive, shallower, more self-aggrandizing, and less in touch with reality than he appears from his own statements."
[20944060] |As Robert Coles wrote in a review of Ms. Malcolm's book, Mr. Masson emerges "as a grandiose egotist . . . and, in the end, a self-destructive fool.
[20944061] |But it is not Janet Malcolm who calls him such: his own words reveal this psychological profile."
[20944062] |We now know that the words were not always his own.

[20944063] |"There is one sacred rule of journalism," John Hersey has said.
[20944064] |"The writer must not invent."
[20944065] |Should the green light Judges Alarcon and Hall have given to the fabrication of quotations become standard practice, it will notably reduce the value of journalism for historians -- and for citizens.
[20944066] |As Judge Kozinski put it: "To invoke the right to deliberately distort what someone else has said is to assert the right to lie in print. . . .
[20944067] |Masson has lost his case, but the defendants, and the profession to which they belong, have lost far more."

[20944068] |The historical profession will survive these decisions.
[20944069] |Perhaps in time the Supreme Court will correct them.
[20944070] |But writing history is tough enough without judges gratuitously throwing obstacles in the scholar's path.

[20944071] |Mr. Schlesinger is Albert Schweitzer professor of the humanities at the City University of New York and a winner of Pulitzer Prizes in history and biography.

[20945001] |Hale Milgrim, 41 years old, senior vice president, marketing at Elecktra Entertainment Inc., was named president of Capitol Records Inc., a unit of this entertainment concern.
[20945002] |Mr. Milgrim succeeds David Berman, who resigned last month.

[20946001] |Legal controversies in America have a way of assuming a symbolic significance far exceeding what is involved in the particular case.
[20946002] |They speak volumes about the state of our society at a given moment.

[20946003] |It has always been so.
[20946004] |In the 1920s, a young schoolteacher, John T. Scopes, volunteered to be a guinea pig in a test case sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a ban on the teaching of evolution imposed by the Tennessee Legislature.
[20946005] |The result was a world-famous trial exposing profound cultural conflicts in American life between the "smart set," whose spokesman was H.L. Mencken, and the religious fundamentalists, whom Mencken derided as benighted primitives.
[20946006] |Few now recall the actual outcome: Scopes was convicted and fined $100, and his conviction was reversed on appeal because the fine was excessive under Tennessee law.

[20946007] |So it was with the Hiss case a generation later, when Alger Hiss became a lightning rod for the anxieties of the Cold War and conflicting attitudes toward the New Deal he had served.
[20946008] |His trials aroused public passions out of all proportion to the rather banal secrets he allegedly had passed to Soviet intelligence.

[20946009] |And so it seems to be with the case of Elizabeth Morgan, the Washington, D.C., plastic surgeon jailed in a child custody case for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of her daughter.
[20946010] |Dr. Morgan has just emerged from the D.C. jail after more than two years' confinement for contempt of court, a heroine to her many supporters.

[20946011] |To the rest of us, the case is a puzzle.
[20946012] |It is what lawyers call "fact intensive."
[20946013] |It presents no great issue of legal principle, no overriding question of family law or the law of contempt.
[20946014] |Instead, it turns on the disputed and elusive facts of "who did what to whom."
[20946015] |It is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone who has not pored over the thousands of pages of court pleadings and transcripts to have a worthwhile opinion on the underlying merits of the controversy.
[20946016] |Certainly I do not.

[20946017] |So we must look elsewhere for an explanation of the unusual power this case has exerted over the minds of many, not just in Washington but elsewhere in the country and even the world.
[20946018] |I suggest that three themes have come together in the strange case of Dr. Morgan.

[20946019] |The first is that it represents an intense battle in what James Thurber used to caricature as "the war between the sexes."
[20946020] |But although Thurber did so gently and lightheartedly, many of Dr. Morgan's supporters have taken Thurber's memorable title "The Male Animal" quite literally.
[20946021] |The vehemence of the emotions aroused by the case testifies to its symbolic importance in the war that Thurber accepted as an eternal part of the human condition.

[20946022] |A second theme is the undercurrent of social class and race in the public reaction to the Morgan case.
[20946023] |Dr. Morgan is a highly educated white professional who attended some of the "best" schools.
[20946024] |As members of the Black Caucus in Congress asked during the debate on the legislation that freed Dr. Morgan, does anyone seriously believe that if she were an uneducated, black, working-class woman, Congress would have rushed to pass a private relief bill freeing her?
[20946025] |Or that the president would have hurried to sign the bill "out of compassion for her plight"?
[20946026] |To ask those questions is to answer them.

[20946027] |Finally, the case of Dr. Morgan gave Congress an opportunity to act with unaccustomed decisiveness and to engage in one of its favorite pastimes -- bashing the District of Columbia government.
[20946028] |The local government is discredited in the eyes of many residents for a variety of reasons, and congressmen read the same newspapers and watch the same TV newscasts as other people in the area do.
[20946029] |Bashing the D.C. government is risk-free for members of Congress, who do not have to answer to their own constituents for it.

[20946030] |Congress is paralyzed from acting on such great issues of the day as the federal budget deficit.
[20946031] |Yet a bill tailored to the interests of a single individual passed Congress with almost unimaginable speed, before the judicial process had run its course, and, indeed, while the Morgan case was awaiting a ruling by the appellate court.

[20946032] |The Morgan case thus tells us much more about the current state of sex, class, race and politics in our society than it does about the facts of Dr. Morgan's particular situation.
[20946033] |It may stand as a metaphor for how wide and deep the divisions in that society continue to be however we try to deny their existence.

[20946034] |Mr. Rezneck is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.

[20947001] |The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said it awarded General Dynamics Corp. a $64 million contract to launch the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite in June 1990.

[20947002] |CRRES is a joint NASA-Air Force satellite to study the effects of space radiation on micro-electronic components.

[20947003] |NASA said General Dynamics will launch CRRES using an Atlas 1 rocket.

[20948001] |Ronald J. Taylor, 48, was named chairman of this insurance firm's reinsurance brokerage group and its major unit, G.L. Hodson & Son Inc.
[20948002] |Robert G. Hodson, 65, retired as chairman but will remain a consultant.
[20948003] |Stephen A. Crane, 44, senior vice president and chief financial and planning officer of the parent, was named president and chief executive of the brokerage group and the unit, succeeding Mr. Taylor.
[20948004] |The appointments are effective Nov. 1.
[20948005] |Corroon said it will announce a successor to Mr. Crane at a later date.

[20949001] |An investment company said it offered to acquire Arby's Inc., the fast-food operator, for $205 million.

[20949002] |The proposal, however, was immediately rebuffed by Arby's parent, DWG Corp.
[20949003] |"Arby's isn't for sale," said Renee Mottram, senior vice president at DWG.

[20949004] |The new suitor, Stevric Equity Ventures Inc., of Mineola, N.Y., characterized its proposal as the "first truly independent offer which does not pit one interest group against another within the Arby's franchisee community."

[20949005] |In September, DWG, a Miami Beach, Fla., holding company controlled by financeer Victor Posner, rejected an offer from a group of Arby's franchisees to acquire Arby's for $200 million.
[20949006] |Since then, a second group of franchisees has banded together to try to wrestle control of the unit from Mr. Posner.
[20949007] |Arby's is the marketing, franchising and service company for the 2,100 restaurants in the chain.

[20949008] |Stevric's principals, Richard and Steven Buckley, said they led the acquisition group that acquired the Nathan's Famous Inc. restaurant chain and subsequently served as the top officers of the company.
[20949009] |Richard Buckley said Stevric's acquisition of Arby's "would allow seasoned franchisers and food-service operators, with no conflicts of interest, to stabilize franchisee relations and properly refocus the company's energies toward growth.

[20950001] |General Motors Corp.'s big defense and automotive electronics unit, GM Hughes Electronics, said net income fell 22% in the third quarter, reflecting declining military spending and slumping GM vehicle production.

[20950002] |Meanwhile, net at GM's finance arm, General Motors Acceptance Corp., fell 3.1%.
[20950003] |By contrast, Electronic Data Systems Corp., GM's data processing subsidiary, boosted net 16%.

[20950004] |GM closed down $1.875 at $44.875 in New York Stock Exchange trading yesterday.
[20950005] |Earnings for GM common stock, reflecting the performance of GM's core automotive operations, will be disclosed this morning.
[20950006] |GM Class H, which represents a dividend interest in Hughes earnings, closed at $29, up 25 cents in Big Board composite trading.
[20950007] |GM Class E, which represents a dividend interest in EDS profit, fell 75 cents to $52.25 on the Big Board.

[20950008] |The earnings drop at GM Hughes Electronics is a sign of tough times at both the defense operations of Hughes Aircraft Co. and GM's North American automotive operations, which are a primary customer for the Delco Electronics Corp. side of the GM Hughes unit.

[20950009] |Profit at the unit fell to $110.6 million, or 37 cents a share, from $142.4 million, or 45 cents a share, largely because of a $24 million one-time charge associated with Hughes's previously announced plan to reduce employment by at least 6,000 people by year end.
[20950010] |Even excluding the charge, however, net fell 5%.

[20950011] |In addition, GM's North American vehicle production fell 8.4% from a year ago, which hurt Delco Electronic's earnings, a company spokesman said.
[20950012] |That decline was reflected in revenue for the GM Hughes unit, which edged down to $2.58 billion from $2.63 billion.

[20950013] |In the nine months, GM Hughes net fell 6.6% to $486.6 million, or $1.48 a share, from $521 million, or $1.58 a share.
[20950014] |Revenue rose 3.5% to $8.47 billion from $8.18 billion.

[20950015] |At GMAC, net dropped 3.1% to $234.5 million from $241.9 million.
[20950016] |The finance unit attributed the decline to higher borrowing costs compared with a year earlier.
[20950017] |GMAC said its automotive financing and leasing business rose 35% in the U.S., largely because of dealer and customer incentives used to boost sales.
[20950018] |GMAC profits are combined with earnings from the rest of GM's operations and attributed to the company's traditional common stock.

[20950019] |In the first nine months, GMAC's earnings fell 8% to $859.5 million from $930.2 million.

[20950020] |At EDS, third-quarter profit jumped 16% to a record $110.9 million, or 93 cents a share, from $95.9 million, or 79 cents a share.
[20950021] |Revenue rose 12% to $1.37 billion from $1.22 billion.

[20950022] |In the nine months, EDS earned $315.8 million, or $2.62 a share, up 13% from $280.7 million, or $2.30 a share.
[20950023] |Revenue rose 14% to $4.03 billion from $3.54 billion.
[20950024] |Revenue from non-GM accounts was 45% of EDS's total business in the latest nine months, compared with 40% a year earlier.
[20950025] |The company has said it wants to boost non-GM revenue to at least 50% of its total business by the end of 1990.

[20951001] |William C. Ballard Jr., 48 years old, was elected a director of this distilled beverages concern, expanding the board to 11 members.

[20952001] |Alvin W. Trivelpiece, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn., was elected a director of this optical-products concern.
[20952002] |Mr. Trivelpiece, 58 years old, succeeds William Bolger, who died in August.

[20953001] |In the bidding war for Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, United Illuminating Co. raised its proposed offer to one it valued at $2.29 billion from $2.19 billion, apparently topping all other bidders.

[20953002] |The bids remain subject to evaluation by the federal bankruptcy court supervising PS of New Hampshire's reorganization.
[20953003] |They are also indirectly subject to approval by the state of New Hampshire, where residents fear soaring rates to pay for the cost of reorganization.

[20953004] |Each of the four parties bidding for PS of New Hampshire proposes a complex financial package to satisfy creditors and shareholders and also proposes a formula to limit rate increases to satisfy the state.

[20953005] |The new round of bidding would seem to complicate the decision making for Judge James Yacos, the bankruptcy judge overseeing the case, because the company's stockholders, unsecured creditors and regulators each are currently backing different plans.
[20953006] |In addition, some of the proposals are so close, that non-financial issues such as timing may play a more important role.

[20953007] |The unsecured creditors agreed in principle to support New Haven, Conn.-based United Illuminating's new bid.
[20953008] |They previously had backed an internal reorganization plan proposed by PS of New Hampshire.

[20953009] |All of the bidders contemplate full payment including interest to secured creditors.
[20953010] |United Illuminating's plan, however, offers more for unsecured creditors.

[20953011] |Geoffrey Kalmus, counsel to the official creditors committee, said that under the United Illuminating plan, unsecured creditors would be paid in full credits and interest of about $855 million, accrued before PS of New Hampshire's Jan. 1988 filing for bankruptcy court protection.
[20953012] |In addition, they would receive some $200 million in payments for interest since then.
[20953013] |Mr. Kalmus said that by next July they would have accrued unpaid interest equal to $350 million.
[20953014] |Other plans generally wouldn't pay unsecured creditors' interest accrued since the filing.

[20953015] |Under United Illuminating's plan, a new holding company would be formed to own the two companies.
[20953016] |It would be 72%-owned by United Illuminating holders and 28%-owned by current holders of PS of New Hampshire preferred and common stock.
[20953017] |PS of New Hampshire preferred holders also would get certain debentures and preferred stock.
[20953018] |United Illuminating said the preferred holders total package would equal about 60% of their claims.
[20953019] |Common shareholders would end up owning about 6.4% of the combined company.

[20953020] |As previously reported, Northeast Utilities, Hartford, Conn., Monday filed a bid it valued at $2.25 billion.
[20953021] |That offer was endorsed by the shareholders committee.

[20953022] |The other bidders, New England Electric System, Westboro, Mass., and PS of New Hampshire, didn't change the value of their bids, although PS of New Hampshire changed its rate proposal.
[20953023] |New England Electric values its offer at $2 billion and PS of New Hampshire values its reorganization plan at $2.2 billion.

[20953024] |The bankruptcy judge has ruled that federal bankruptcy laws could be used to circumvent state regulation.
[20953025] |However, creditors and bidders alike concede that the state plays a major role because it could significantly delay final settlement of a plan it didn't like.

[20953026] |The state has endorsed the New England Electric plan, which promises to limit rate increases to 4.8% annually for seven years.
[20953027] |Northeast Utilities' plan proposes 5.5% annual increases.

[20953028] |PS of New Hampshire amended its plan to call for two years of 5.5% rate increases followed by five years of 4.5% increases.
[20953029] |Fuel cost adjustments could change the effective rate increases, however.
[20953030] |Previously it had proposed seven years of 5.5% increases.

[20953031] |United Illuminating also amended its rate plan.
[20953032] |The new offer assumes just five years of 5.5% rate increases, to be followed by state-approved increases under the usual hearing procedure.
[20953033] |Previously United Illuminating had also called for seven years of 5.5% increases.

[20953034] |The bids and rate proposals generally assume the Seabrook nuclear power plant, which is completed, will go into operation.
[20953035] |Most of the plans have reduced bids in case the plant fails to get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

[20953036] |In New York Stock Exchange trading, PS of New Hampshire's 17 1/2 debenture due 2004 closed yesterday at $82.50, up $2.
[20953037] |The utility's stock closed at $4 a share, up 37.5 cents, in composite trading on the Big Board.

[20953038] |In a separate development, PS of New Hampshire gave 60 managers severance agreements that would pay one to three years' salary if their jobs were changed or they were dismissed in the wake of a takeover.
[20953039] |It said the maximum cost of the plan would be $9.7 million.

[20954001] |C. Hyde Tucker will become president and chief executive officer of Bell Atlantic International Inc., a unit of this telecommunications concern, effective Jan. 1.
[20954002] |Mr. Tucker, 56 years old, is currently vice president and chief operating officer of Bell Atlantic's C&P Telephone unit.
[20954003] |Mr. Tucker will succeed Salvatore J. Barbera, 64, who will hold the newly created position of chairman of the international unit until his retirement April 1.

[20955001] |Richard Breeden hadn't noticed that his new desk had just four telephone lines and one phone.
[20955002] |It was, after all, only his second full day as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[20955003] |But the lack of lines became painfully apparent.
[20955004] |As the stock market lurched into a 190-point free fall on Oct. 13, Mr. Breeden found himself scurrying around the sixth floor of the SEC -- from his desk, where the New York Stock Exchange was on an open line, to his assistant's office, where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was connected, to a third room, where a computer monitored market moves.
[20955005] |With other anxious calls pouring in, he recalls, "I'd either have to disconnect the New York Stock Exchange or go out to the secretary's desk."

[20955006] |It won't happen again.
[20955007] |Now there are more lines connected to the chairman's office, and the market-monitoring computer has been moved next to his desk.
[20955008] |It's all part of a new "command center."

[20955009] |The changes in the office layout illustrate Mr. Breeden's stance as the nation's top securities regulator.
[20955010] |Like his predecessor, David Ruder, he was faced with a crisis in the stock markets soon after coming into office.

[20955011] |But unlike Mr. Ruder, who during the 1987 crash damaged himself by saying rather offhandedly that the markets might be closed, Mr. Breeden is turning the market drop to his own advantage, using it to further his agenda for the SEC.

[20955012] |In an interview and in congressional testimony, he repeatedly points to the recent 190-point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average -- the second-largest ever -- as evidence of the need for Congress to give the SEC the ability to better monitor leveraged buy-out loan activity by brokerage firms and to track big trades in the market.
[20955013] |A veteran of another financial crisis, the savings-and-loan bailout, Mr. Breeden wants to have the SEC regulate securities issued by banks and S&Ls.

[20955014] |More broadly, he wants to "modernize" regulation by eliminating barriers between commercial and investment banking and by helping U.S. financial firms compete in the global market.
[20955015] |He believes the tax code encourages the use of debt instead of stock and may fuel leveraged buy-outs, an area the SEC doesn't regulate directly but one where it wields influence both on Wall Street and in Congress.

[20955016] |Also unlike Mr. Ruder, Mr. Breeden appears to be in a position to get somewhere with his agenda.
[20955017] |As a former White House aide who worked closely with Congress, he is savvy in the ways of Washington.
[20955018] |What's more, the coming months likely will offer him the opportunity to obtain his own majority on the five-member commission, enabling him to avoid the dissension that frustrated his predecessor.

[20955019] |But Mr. Breeden, a 39-year-old securities lawyer, has skirted some of the heftier issues facing the financial markets.
[20955020] |For instance, he hasn't stated a clear position on high-risk, high-yield junk bonds, an area of growing concern as turmoil in the junk market spills over into stocks.
[20955021] |He may be waiting to see the results of several pending SEC studies of junk market liquidity and disclosure rules.

[20955022] |He also has kept a close wrap on the names of people under consideration for the crucial post of enforcement director at the commission, a job vacant since the summer.
[20955023] |Mr. Breeden's selection will be scrutinized as an important signal about the strength of his commitment to continuing the SEC's high-profile pursuit of insider trading and market manipulation on Wall Street.

[20955024] |Congress seems likely to let the new chairman have his way for a while.
[20955025] |Members of the Senate Banking Committee know Mr. Breeden from working on the thrift-bailout bill, and the relationship generally remains warm.
[20955026] |Indeed, during Mr. Breeden's confirmation hearing last month, senators asked him to introduce his children three separate times -- more often than they asked about his qualifications for the job.

[20955027] |These days, Mr. Breeden is winning praise in Washington and on Wall Street for his behind-the-scenes role in monitoring the Friday-the-13th market plunge and the following Monday's harrowing morning session.
[20955028] |As a regulator charged with restoring investor confidence, Mr. Breeden avoided making market-jarring comments and worked to gather information critical to Wall Street and to other government agencies.

[20955029] |Not everyone has jumped on the Breeden bandwagon, however.
[20955030] |Some in Washington contend that it's too soon to tell whether Mr. Breeden will help or hinder the SEC.
[20955031] |"I don't think this was a real test," says one congressional aide.
[20955032] |"It was a fairly stressful weekend, but my sense is if you hadn't had Richard Breeden there, it wouldn't have made much of a difference."

[20955033] |For some at the SEC, an agency that covets its independence, Mr. Breeden may be too much of a Washington insider.
[20955034] |They note that he has adorned his office with five photos of George Bush, one of them featuring the First Dog, Millie.
[20955035] |They worry that Mr. Breeden also will roll over when told to do so by the White House.
[20955036] |But Mr. Breeden already has shown an eagerness to run the SEC his way.
[20955037] |During the Monday market rebound, a New York exchange spokesman told Cable News Network viewers that the industrial average had turned down 70 points.
[20955038] |Stunned, Mr. Breeden turned to his market-monitoring computer, which by then was next to his desk.
[20955039] |It showed the DJIA up 30 points.

[20955040] |SEC staffers soon determined that a widely watched stock-market service, Quotron, had miscalculated the industrial average.
[20955041] |Mr. Breeden instructed SEC staffers to inform the network that it was airing the wrong number.
[20955042] |"It was the plunge that didn't happen," he says.

[20955043] |Mr. Breeden also is trying to use a far more catastrophic event -- the California earthquake -- to move another rule change past Congress.
[20955044] |That disaster closed the Pacific Stock Exchange's stock options-trading operation, forcing those options to be switched to other exchanges temporarily.

[20955045] |Though obscure to most investors, the question of whether to list options on more than one exchange has aroused much interest in Congress, mainly because regional exchanges fear the change could bankrupt them.

[20955046] |Congressmen raised the issue yesterday at a hearing.
[20955047] |Mr. Breeden, not missing a chance to press his agenda, cited the earthquake.
[20955048] |That event, he contended, simply shows the "vulnerability" of having listings on only one exchange.

[20956001] |In a corner of the cavernous, new Nippon Convention Center sits Mazda Motor Corp.'s advanced-technology display.
[20956002] |The highlight: a "fragrance control system."

[20956003] |With the touch of a button, drivers can choose from lavender, jasmine, mint or perfume scents, all blown in through the car's air-conditioning system.
[20956004] |The soft, wafting aromas will "improve ride comfort," the display attests, and a proud employee says Mazda hopes to move the system out of the lab and into its cars in a year or two.

[20956005] |Welcome to the 28th Tokyo Motor Show.
[20956006] |Here you can find Mitsubishi Motors Corp. displaying a "live fish transporter," a truck akin to an aquarium on wheels, and Nissan Motor Co. with its "keyless" Boga, whose doors unlock upon recognizing the owner's fingerprints.
[20956007] |Suzuki Motor Co.'s Escudome sport vehicle features a pop-out rear tent and invites drivers to go "back to the nature."

[20956008] |But this biennial event, the world's largest display of cars and trucks, has its serious side, including the first major exhibitions of future engines and vehicle-suspension systems.
[20956009] |It's also the prime showcase for a country whose world dominance in the industry is increasingly acknowledged, and therein lies the draw.

[20956010] |Even the biggest auto shows in the U.S. are largely regional affairs, but the Tokyo show is international.
[20956011] |Virtually every automotive analyst in New York showed up.
[20956012] |Detroit-to-Tokyo flights were booked solid this week as Motor City executives, including Ford Motor Co. Chairman Donald E. Petersen and Chrysler Corp. Vice Chairman Gerald Greenwald, flocked to see the future.
[20956013] |Even the Soviet Union came, for the first time in 24 years, to show off its Lada Niva sedan and its futuristic dark-blue "Kompakt" model.

[20956014] |Here's a firsthand look at what the Japanese hosts sported, and what the foreign visitors saw.

[20956015] |New Technology

[20956016] |The hottest displays were items that insulate passengers from bumps, potholes and other rigors of the road.
[20956017] |These "active suspension systems" electronically sense road conditions and adjust a car's ride.
[20956018] |Existing suspension systems try to absorb bounces, but active suspension provides power to counter the jolts.

[20956019] |Nissan, in a 34-page tract, modestly compares its "hydraulic active suspension" to a cheetah, and equates the various parts to the animal's heart, brain, nerves and blood vessels.
[20956020] |Toyota Motor Corp. grandly touted its system in a car that splits in half to reveal the suspension's inner workings.

[20956021] |Nissan says it will introduce its first system next month on the Infiniti Q45 luxury sedan, and Toyota's Celica coupe will go on sale with the suspension device next spring.
[20956022] |But drivers in the U.S. must wait: The Japanese, for now, are keeping active suspension for domestic use only.
[20956023] |And Detroit's Big Three auto makers say their systems are still under development.

[20956024] |In the engine department, several companies displayed experimental models that within a decade could provide power equal to today's engines and yet take up only half the space, allowing for shorter hoods.
[20956025] |In the so-called two-stroke engines, which are expected to get sharply higher gas mileage, each piston goes up and down only once to provide power.
[20956026] |By contrast, the pistons in conventional four-stroke engines must move up and down twice in each power cycle.

[20956027] |The two-stroke engine displays by Toyota and Fuji Heavy Industries, the maker of Subaru cars, drew plenty of interest from U.S. auto executives, who are rushing to develop two-stroke engines.

[20956028] |Honda Motor Co. shows a more conventional five-cylinder engine in the new Accord Inspire model, which made its debut just this month -- in Japan only.
[20956029] |Honda says the five-cylinder engine provides a compromise between the fuel-economy of a four-cylinder, and the power of a V-6.
[20956030] |It is rumored to be bound for a new model in the luxury Acura line in the U.S., but Honda officials wouldn't comment.

[20956031] |Odd Cars, Funny Names

[20956032] |There's plenty of whimsy here, but it isn't always clear whether it's intentional.
[20956033] |The show's symbol is a woman riding on a snail, not your usual metaphor for speed and agility.
[20956034] |But the sponsors have an explanation: "Through the character associated with a snail," they say, "important values such as harmony with nature and aspirations for the future are sought."

[20956035] |Japanese auto makers are known for coming up with funny names, but this year the practice seems to have reached a new high -- or low.
[20956036] |Honda has a tiny motorcycle called the Monkey, and a slightly larger cousin, the Gorilla.
[20956037] |Mitsubishi has a futuristic delivery truck called the Guppy.
[20956038] |Mazda has the Bongo truck and, under its Autozam nameplate, a "microvan" called the Scrum.
[20956039] |Its buglike Carol minicar is "designed with softness, gentleness and warmheartedness."

[20956040] |But the court jester appears to be Japan's smallest car maker, Daihatsu Motor Co.
[20956041] |One of its futuristic concepts is the bubblelike Sneaker, which seats just one person in front and could hold a small child and bag of groceries in the rear.
[20956042] |Daihatsu also has the Fellow 90, the Leeza Spider and the Hijet Dumbo.

[20956043] |The jokes aren't just on the Japanese, though.
[20956044] |Regie Nationale des Usines Renault, the French auto maker, has a concept car called the Megane.
[20956045] |The name is supposed to connote feminine grandeur, but in Japanese it means "eyeglasses."

[20956046] |Foreign Presence

[20956047] |Foreign auto makers are taking the Tokyo Motor Show more seriously than ever.
[20956048] |AB Volvo invites passers-by to play "the role of the test dummy" by hopping in a car that simulates a crash to show just how its seat-belt tightener works.
[20956049] |Hyundai Motor Co. of South Korea has its first-ever exhibit in Tokyo.

[20956050] |General Motors Corp. is sponsoring its first independent display in 10 years, and it includes a boxy Buick station wagon with wood-grain side panels.
[20956051] |Ford and Chrysler also have exhibits, although theirs are tucked in a separate room with the less-popular automotive parts section.

[20956052] |"We've got to get out of the Detroit mentality and be part of the world mentality," declares Charles M. Jordan, GM's vice president for design, in explaining his pilgrimage to the Tokyo Show.

[20956053] |Even so, traditional American cockiness isn't terribly endangered.
[20956054] |Ford officials, for example, crowed about their first-ever Tokyo Grand Prix racing victory.
[20956055] |True, Ford was declared the winner Sunday, but only after the Honda driver who crossed the finish line first was disqualified because it hit another car and skid momentarily out of bounds.

[20956056] |Mr. Jordan of GM, meanwhile, still criticizes Japanese styling.
[20956057] |"It's hard for the Japanese," he says, "to get a feeling in a car, to get a passion in a car, to get emotion in a car.

[20957001] |Regarding your Sept. 28 Politics & Policy column on the party differences over cutting capital gains or expanding IRAs: Why not compromise now and save the public from the coming infantile congressional political rhetoric that seems to go hand in hand with the process?

[20957002] |The Republicans maintain that a 30% capital-gains exclusion will raise revenue in the short term and spur economic investment, while the Democrats maintain that an increase in the top income-tax rate and expanded IRAs will raise revenue and spur savings.

[20957003] |This is a classic example of the old saying, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
[20957004] |It's ridiculous for a family with taxable income of $50,000 to pay the same 28% incremental tax rate as a family with taxable income of $250,000.
[20957005] |The 33% bracket should apply to all income over the applicable level, not just the 5% rate adjustment amount.
[20957006] |It's equally ridiculous not to provide a capital investment or retirement-savings tax incentive.

[20957007] |Jeffrey T. Schmidlin

[20958001] |PWA Corp. said it plans to sell by spring 1992 all 15 passenger planes it acquired earlier this year in its 248 million Canadian dollar (US$211.6 million) purchase of Wardair Inc.

[20958002] |PWA, which recently merged Wardair's operations with those of PWA-owned Canadian Airlines International Ltd., Canada's second-biggest airline, said the proposed sale is part of a revised five-year plan aimed at streamlining its fleet and shedding debt.

[20958003] |PWA wouldn't estimate the value of Wardair's aircraft, which include 12 Airbus A310-300s and three Boeing 747-100s.
[20958004] |But James Ireland, a Miami-based technical analyst with Avmark Inc., an aircraft evaluation firm, estimated the total "half-life" value of the 15 planes at about $650 million or more.

[20958005] |Mr. Ireland said 11 DC10-30 aircraft that PWA also said it plans to sell, beginning in 1992, have a current half-life value of about $34 million each, or a total $374 million, raising aggregate potential proceeds from the aircraft sale to about $1.02 billion.

[20958006] |Mr. Ireland said current demand for used aircraft is strong, partly because surging orders for new aircraft have lengthened waiting lists.
[20958007] |He predicted that PWA would have little difficulty attracting prospective buyers.

[20958008] |Under its revised fleet plan, PWA said it will also increase its existing fleet of eight Boeing 767-300ER aircraft to 18 by 1994, and add four more Boeing 747-400s by 1994 to the two units that it previously planned to add by next year.
[20958009] |PWA said two of the Boeing 767-300ER aircraft scheduled for delivery in 1990 would be leased out for two to five years.

[20958010] |PWA didn't disclose the expected net cost of the fleet overhaul, but a Toronto-based analyst estimated it at about $450 million (US), excluding replacement costs for the 11 DC10-30 aircraft that PWA plans to sell, and purchase costs for as many as 17 Airbus 320-200 aircraft that PWA previously ordered.

[20958011] |"I don't see this as a debt reduction exercise.
[20958012] |It's focused on streamlining" PWA's fleet in a bid to cut training and aircraft servicing costs, the analyst said.
[20958013] |PWA's long-term debt and capital lease obligations rose to C$1.24 billion at the end of the second quarter, nearly double the year-earlier figure, reflecting debt absorbed under the Wardair purchase.

[20958014] |PWA said it also expects to announce by Tuesday whether it will take delivery of all 17 Airbus 320-200 aircraft it previously ordered.
[20958015] |The first five leased units were to be delivered in 1991.

[20959001] |This British banking and financial-services group's investment-banking arm, Barclays de Zoete Wedd Group, announced the following appointments at its merchant-banking subsidiary Barclays de Zoete Wedd Ltd.
[20959002] |John Padovan, 51 years old, was named a deputy chairman.
[20959003] |Mr. Padovan is currently a director at Barclays de Zoete Wedd Ltd.
[20959004] |Graham Pimlott, 40, was named to the new post of chief executive officer of the merchant-banking corporate-finance division.
[20959005] |Callum McCarthy, 45, was named to the new post of deputy head of the corporate-finance division and a managing director.
[20959006] |Mr. Pimlott and Mr. McCarthy join Barclay's from Kleinwort Benson Ltd. where they served as directors.

[20960001] |The recent bids for United and American Airlines have led Congress to move with supersonic speed to protect incumbent airline managements.
[20960002] |The House is scheduled to vote today on an anti-airline-takeover bill that would block, for up to 50 days, any bid for 15% or more of a U.S. airline, even a straight cash purchase.
[20960003] |Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner, who earlier fueled the anti-takeover fires with his quasi-xenophobic attacks on foreign investment in U.S. carriers, now says the bill would further disturb the jittery capital markets.
[20960004] |Texas Rep. Steve Bartlett, who has 40,000 American Airlines workers in his district, says the bill is "good politics, but bad law."
[20960005] |It is ironic that at a time when America's partial airline deregulation is being emulated by governments from New Zealand to Ethiopia, so many in Congress favor an incumbent-protection program for airlines that would be more appropriate for the Soviet airline, Aeroflot.

[20961001] |Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress that the Fed can wipe out inflation without causing a recession, but he said doing so will inflict some short-term pain and will require reducing the federal deficit sharply.

[20961002] |Mr. Greenspan said he and other Fed governors endorse a bill by Rep. Stephen Neal (D., N.C.) that would require the Fed to pursue policies aimed at eliminating inflation within five years.
[20961003] |"Such a deadline is attainable, but it would have costs," Mr. Greenspan told Rep. Neal's monetary policy subcommittee.

[20961004] |The Fed chief opposed a bill-introduced by Reps. Lee Hamilton (D., Ind.) and Byron Dorgan (D., N.D.) -- that, among other things, would require the Fed to disclose all monetary policy moves immediately and increase outside scrutiny of the Fed.

[20961005] |In responding to questions, Mr. Greenspan played down reports of tension between the Fed and the Treasury over exchange-rate policy.

[20961006] |"What seem to be interpreted as great conflicts are relatively minor issues of tactics," he said.
[20961007] |He didn't elaborate.
[20961008] |But the Fed isn't enthusiastic about Treasury efforts to bring down the value of the dollar through intervention in foreign-exchange markets, and the Treasury is frustrated at the Fed's reluctance to cut interest rates to pull down the dollar's value.

[20961009] |Mr. Greenspan said the inflation rate, currently about 4 1/2%, "could be brought down to levels which are close to zero without putting the economy into a recession, but I do suspect that there might be some modest loss of economic output."
[20961010] |In other words, economic growth would be lower and unemployment would be higher for a few years.
[20961011] |But Mr. Greenspan, who has repeatedly said the Fed's goal is to reduce inflation, added that "whatever losses are incurred in the pursuing of price stability would surely be more than made up in increased output thereafter."

[20961012] |He warned that Fed efforts to conquer inflation would fail -- and could produce "a major financial crunch" -- unless they are accompanied by a significant reduction in the federal deficit, which causes the government to borrow heavily.

[20961013] |Rep. Neal's bill originally called on the Fed to reduce the inflation rate by one percentage point a year for five years and to maintain a zero inflation rate thereafter.
[20961014] |He altered the wording to win Mr. Greenspan's endorsement.
[20961015] |Even so, his bill is given little chance of passage.

[20961016] |Reps. Hamilton and Dorgan also have altered their bill, dropping a proposal to add the Treasury secretary to the 12-member Fed committee that makes monetary policy.
[20961017] |Instead, the bill simply calls for twice-a-year meetings between the committee and top administration officials.

[20961018] |Even that met with Mr. Greenspan's disapproval because it might subject the Fed "to a more intensely political perspective" and "could risk bending monetary policy away from long-term strategic goals."

[20961019] |While each of the Hamilton-Dorgan proposals represents only a small step, together they would erode the Fed's independence, Mr. Greenspan said.

[20961020] |Mr. Greenspan also said that although he favors cutting capital-gains taxes as sound economic policy, he would oppose such a move if it would undo the political compromise embodied in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and result in higher marginal income tax rates.

[20962001] |Sears, Roebuck & Co. signed a contract with Bob Vila, the former host of the popular public television program "This Old House," to star in a half-hour home improvement show sponsored by the giant retailer.

[20962002] |The do-it-yourself show, slated to start airing by June 1990, marks Sears's entry into the burgeoning market of home repair television programs and could bolster sales of its home improvement products.
[20962003] |In recent months, sales of home improvement items have sagged, along with sales of other big ticket durable goods.

[20962004] |The show also signals Mr. Vila's return as a television celebrity.
[20962005] |Earlier this year, public television station WGBH in Boston fired Mr. Vila after a sponsor protested some of his numerous commercial endorsements.

[20962006] |With Mr. Vila as host, "This Old House" became one of the Public Broadcasting Service's top 10 programs, airing weekly on about 300 of the network's stations and seen by an average of 12 million viewers.

[20962007] |But Home Depot Inc., an Atlanta-based home center chain, objected when Mr. Vila started doing commercial endorsements for Rickel Home Centers, a New Jersey building supply company that competes with Home Depot in some markets.

[20962008] |"I'm ecstatic about the change," said Mr. Vila, whose new syndicated program is called "Home Again with Bob Vila."
[20962009] |In an interview, Mr. Vila criticized his old show, which is continuing with a new host.

[20962010] |"Public TV is in fantasy land," he said.
[20962011] |"Last season, we did a story that involved spending $700,000 in converting a two-family house into a bed and breakfast."
[20962012] |In the new show, he said, "we're going to spend $60,000 building a start-up house" for a young couple.

[20962013] |While Sears wouldn't comment on the brouhaha over Mr. Vila's commercial endorsements, it appears to be building a fence around Mr. Vila's affections.
[20962014] |His contract makes him "exclusive" spokesman for Sears's home improvement marketing campaigns.
[20962015] |Ogilvy & Mather in Chicago, a unit of WPP Group PLC, will handle the advertising account and syndication.

[20962016] |The only other endorsement permitted by the contract involves a series of Time-Life home improvement and repair books.
[20962017] |His other agreements to promote products have expired.
[20962018] |Little matter for Mr. Vila, who complains that "public TV never paid me more than $40,000 a year."
[20962019] |He said his compensation under the Sears contract is "a multimillion dollar deal.

[20963001] |Eugene A. Miller, 52 years old, was elected a director of this electric utility company, filling a vacancy.
[20963002] |He is president and chief executive officer of Comerica Inc. in Detroit.

[20964001] |The White House has decided to push for changes in pesticide law that are designed to speed the removal of harmful chemicals from the nation's food supply.

[20964002] |The proposed changes, which are scheduled to be announced today, would apply to pesticides and other substances found on fresh and processed foods, according to federal officials.
[20964003] |Environmental groups have been calling for faster action on dangerous pesticides and may welcome part of the proposal.

[20964004] |But they are already objecting to, among other things, a plan to give more weight to cost-benefit considerations in evaluating pesticides.
[20964005] |"It's a tremendous disappointment," said Janet Hathaway, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
[20964006] |"Allowing the EPA to condone continued use of a chemical whenever the benefits outweigh the risks is absolutely anathema to the environmental community."

[20964007] |The Bush administration plans to announce a series of principles and to work with congressional leaders in writing specific legislative proposals that embody them.
[20964008] |The principles would give the Environmental Protection Agency increased authority and flexibility in regulating pesticides, with the aim of enabling the agency to move more quickly.
[20964009] |There already are proposals pending in Congress to overhaul pesticide law.

[20964010] |Moves to accelerate the removal of dangerous pesticides gained new impetus during this year's Alar scare, when the EPA was harshly criticized for failing to yank the possible carcinogen, a growth regulator used to make apples redder and crunchier.
[20964011] |The agency has since acted to remove Alar from the nation's grocery shelves by May 31, 1991, and the apple industry has said that growers already have stopped using the chemical.

[20964012] |In addition, the principles attempt to eliminate the so-called Delaney Paradox.
[20964013] |Under the Delaney clause, which applies to processed food, a chemical is banned if it causes cancer in laboratory animals.
[20964014] |Under other laws applying to pesticide use, however, that same chemical could be allowed to be used on fresh food if it fell within the EPA's tolerance level.

[20964015] |Among other changes, the White House wants to:

[20964016] |-- Give the EPA more flexibility to declare a pesticide an imminent hazard and pull it from the marketplace.

[20964017] |-- Speed up the process for removing a pesticide that isn't an imminent hazard.

[20964018] |-- Bar states from setting more stringent tolerance levels for a pesticide once the federal government has set a standard.

[20964019] |-- Give the EPA added discretion to set "negligible risk" levels for pesticide residues in processed food.
[20964020] |Chemicals that exceed these risk levels would be barred, but those that fall below these levels would be allowed.

[20964021] |-- Allow the EPA to permit the continued use of pesticides that exceed its negligible risk standard if the benefits of doing so outweigh the cost.

[20965001] |Financial markets took a midweek break from their recent wild gyrations with stock prices falling modestly, bond prices posting tiny gains and the dollar almost unchanged.

[20965002] |The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 5.94 points to 2653.28 in moderate trading.
[20965003] |Long-term Treasury bonds rose slightly despite the arrival on the market of $4.52 billion in 30-year bonds offered by the Resolution Funding Corp. as part of the government's bailout of the savings and loan industry.
[20965004] |The dollar was barely changed against the West German mark and up marginally against the Japanese yen.

[20965005] |Yesterday's sluggish action was in marked contrast to the rearing and plunging of stock prices Tuesday after the proposed buy-out of UAL Corp. once again collapsed.
[20965006] |Traders said the stock market's lurching moves have prompted many investors to head for the sidelines until it regains some semblance of stability.

[20965007] |Although bond prices weren't as volatile on Tuesday trading as stock prices, traders nevertheless said action also was much slower yesterday in the Treasury market.
[20965008] |Bond investors paid close attention to comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was testifying before a congressional hearing, but weren't able to extract many clues about the future course of the Fed's monetary policy.
[20965009] |Many analysts are expecting the Fed to lower interest rates at least once more before the end of the year.

[20965010] |Investors now are awaiting today's release of the preliminary estimate of third-quarter gross national product.
[20965011] |Economists predict the report will show economic growth of about 2.5% in the third quarter, which would have little effect on financial markets.
[20965012] |But an unexpected deviation either way could roil bond and currency markets.

[20965013] |In major market activity:

[20965014] |Stock prices slipped lower in moderate trading.
[20965015] |Volume on the New York Stock Exchange totaled 155.7 million shares.
[20965016] |But advancing issues on the Big Board were ahead of decliners 784 to 700.

[20965017] |Bond prices inched higher.
[20965018] |The Treasury's benchmark 30-year issue rose less than an eighth of a point, or less than $1.25 for each $1,000 of face amount.
[20965019] |The yield on the issue stood at 7.88%.

[20965020] |The dollar was virtually unchanged.
[20965021] |In late New York trading the U.S. currency was quoted at 1.8353 marks and 141.52 yen, compared with 1.8355 marks and 141.45 yen Tuesday.

[20966001] |A few years ago, I was on a panel of journalists that discussed the "image" of intercollegiate athletics for an audience of campus information directors and others.
[20966002] |We scribblers quickly concurred that not only was the bad rep of big-time college sports richly earned, but also that it could be corrected.
[20966003] |Competition could be maintained -- and stadiums probably would remain full -- if schedules were reduced and the games returned to the students, we said.
[20966004] |Comments from the audience reflected widespread, if wistful, agreement with those conclusions.

[20966005] |As the session broke up, I was approached by a man who identified himself as the alumni director of a Big Ten university.
[20966006] |"I'd love to see sports cut back, and so would a lot of my counterparts at other schools, but everybody's afraid to make the first move," he confided.
[20966007] |"It's like the U.S. and the Russians: Nobody wants to disarm first."

[20966008] |And so our institutions of higher learning lurch from scandal to scandal on gridiron and basketball court, while the casualties mount.
[20966009] |Three new books make the point that one large price of the glittery college-sports show can be the integrity of the schools that stage it.
[20966010] |They are: "A Payroll to Meet: A Story of Greed, Corruption and Football at SMU" (Macmillan, 221 pages, $18.95) by David Whitford; "Big Red Confidential: Inside Nebraska Football" (Contemporary, 231 pages, $17.95) by Armen Keteyian; and "Never Too Young to Die: The Death of Len Bias" (Pantheon, 252 pages, $18.95) by Lewis Cole.

[20966011] |The pick of the group is "Payroll"; it should be required reading for every college president.
[20966012] |It chronicles how, over a period of a dozen years, Southern Methodist University bought its way to football respectability in the Southwest Conference, only to find itself trapped and strangled by the athlete-payoff system it created.
[20966013] |The school was the first, in 1987, to receive the NCAA's "death penalty" -- two years without football -- for repeated rules violations.
[20966014] |Given current headlines about the University of Florida, it may not be the last.

[20966015] |The man who brought the bribe to the Dallas school was Ron Meyer, a flashy sort who came in 1975 to rescue a woebegone program, Mr. Whitford writes.
[20966016] |Mr. Meyer's personal style was illustrated by his pinning a $100 bill to a high-school bulletin board on which other coaches tacked their cards.
[20966017] |One recruiter working with Mr. Meyer was so generous with $10 and $20 bills that prospects sang "Here Comes Santa Claus" when he approached.

[20966018] |Paying players at SMU was no casual operation.
[20966019] |It involved the athletics director, two different football coaching staffs, and school trustees and governors -- just about everybody, it seemed, but Donald Shields, the university's president.
[20966020] |There's a memorable passage in which Mr. Shields, having finally learned of the practice, expresses his outrage to Bill Clements, then a university governor (and now the governor of Texas!) and oil man Edwin Cox, chairman of the board of trustees.

[20966021] |"You stay out of it," author Whitford quotes Mr. Clements as saying.
[20966022] |"Go run the university."
[20966023] |Which was about what Mr. Shields did, and quietly, until he resigned a few years later, pleading ill health, when the stuff hit the fan.

[20966024] |Mr. Whitford drew on voluminous news media coverage of the SMU scandal, and on a university internal investigation.
[20966025] |Mr. Keteyian had to do most of his own digging on University of Nebraska football, which is, to date, high and dry as far as the NCAA is concerned.
[20966026] |Unfortunately, he gets low grades as an investigative reporter, relying heavily on what Chicago's late mayor, Richard J. Daley, called "insinuendo."

[20966027] |Discrepancies go unexplained in "Confidential" (one ex-player claims he received $4,000 to $5,000 for his season football tickets while others said theirs brought only a few hundred dollars), and when Mr. Keteyian can't nail down something, like who really owned a car driven by Husker tailback Doug Dubose, he simply reprints his notes.

[20966028] |There are gratuitous references to supposed romantic liaisons between Husker players and a low-level female university employee.
[20966029] |A serious charge -- that star flanker Irving Fryar "threw" the 1984 Orange Bowl game by intentionally dropping a pass in the end zone -- is included, even though the Nebraska assistant coach quoted denied making it.

[20966030] |Still, the book produces more smoke than a smoldering sofa, along with a few flames, especially concerning the use of steroids.
[20966031] |Dean Steinkuhler, a spectacularly bulked-up former lineman, confesses that he used 'em, and says other Huskers did too.
[20966032] |It's a mystery how this could have escaped the notice of Nebraska coaches.
[20966033] |Probably, it didn't.

[20966034] |"Never Too Young" is a different sort of work, focusing on the 1986 death from cocaine ingestion of Bias, a University of Maryland basketball star ticketed for sure pro stardom.
[20966035] |While the university was no more to blame for that than for the similar fate of any other student, it must bear responsibility for its conduct in the aftermath.

[20966036] |Bias's coach, Lefty Driesell, ordered the room in which Bias died to be cleaned before the police could arrive (the order wasn't carried out), and the school's athletics director issued false information about the academic standing of Bias and other players.
[20966037] |Those, of course, were the responses of people with something to hide.
[20966038] |One wonders how other college athletic officials would behave under the same circumstances.

[20966039] |Tomorrow's "On Sports" column will look at another aspect of the college sports mess.

[20967001] |Mercedes-Benz of North America Inc., a unit of Daimler-Benz AG, paid Massachusetts $9.1 million in taxes, bringing to an end a 10-month-long corporate tax chase.

[20967002] |Officials at the Department of Revenue had dogged the foreign car maker for taxes owed on business transactions and were proceeding to settle the dispute in court.
[20967003] |But "the check arrived in the mail," said Stephen Kidder, Massachusetts Commissioner of Revenue.

[20967004] |Mercedes-Benz, which had said it didn't owe taxes to Massachusetts partly because it sells its cars at a dock in Baltimore and not in Massachusetts, didn't explain its change of heart.

[20967005] |Last month, Mercedes-Benz executives approached state revenue officials complaining about bad press, the commissioner said.
[20967006] |The dispute was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article in August.

[20967007] |The amount covers taxes, interest and penalties owed from 1966, when the state began collecting corporate taxes, to 1985.
[20967008] |Mercedes-Benz also agreed to pay taxes owed for the years 1986 through 1988, Mr. Kidder added.

[20967009] |Under Massachusetts tax laws, corporations must pay 9.5% of estimated profits resulting from business transactions in the state if the company conducts a variety of non-sales activities, including warranties, customer complaints and relations with independent dealerships.

[20968001] |National Convenience Stores Inc., trying to shake the doldrums in the convenience-store business, said it will rearrange the merchandise in all of its stores in the next 18 months to cater better to the neighborhoods around its stores.

[20968002] |As part of the plan, the Houston-based company's 1,100 Stop 'N Go stores will be refocused to target black, Hispanic, upscale or core middle-class customers.
[20968003] |Stores in upper-income neighborhoods, for instance, will carry high-priced wines, publications such as Vanity Fair, gourmet pasta sauces, oat bran cereals and Weight Watchers and Pritikin products.
[20968004] |Stores in Hispanic areas will stock an assortment of Spanish-language magazines, Mexican cooking items and candies.
[20968005] |Stores in the company's core middle-class market will get more frozen and quick-to-prepare foods and a greater selection of bottled water.

[20968006] |V.H. Van Horn, National Convenience president and chief executive officer, said the move reflects the company's realization that the industry's poor performance stems from its failure to give customers what they want -- rather than from increasing competition from gasoline stations and 24-hour grocery stores.
[20968007] |"Convenience store merchandise has not kept pace with current trends in consumer preferences," he said in a speech at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

[20968008] |Analysts and competitors said the move reflects a growing need by the stores to expand their customer base beyond the traditional blue-collar worker who pops into a convenience store for a sandwich, cigarettes, soda or beer.

[20968009] |"There are an increasing number of people out there who are time-poor," said Chris Vroom, retail analyst with Alex. Brown & Sons of Baltimore.
[20968010] |"Those are primarily white-collar workers, a customer segment that has historically proved elusive for convenience stores."

[20968011] |National Convenience's move is likely to be echoed by other chains, though analysts note that Southland Corp., owner of 7-Eleven stores, and Circle K Corp. are too debt-heavy to roll out such an extensive effort.
[20968012] |Still, Southland said that its franchisees have been targeting their merchandise to their customers for years, and that the company has begun to follow suit.

[20968013] |For instance, Southland has expanded its bottled water selection in some stores and added fresh sandwiches in some outlets.
[20968014] |Several months ago, it also added black health and beauty aids displays to many stores, a spokeswoman said.
[20968015] |"We certainly see an increasing trend toward that," she added.

[20968016] |National Convenience said it has tested its new merchandise mix in 100 stores, with favorable results.
[20968017] |Analysts said the company's effort will be helped by its decision last year to put point-of-sale scanners in 200 stores, allowing National Convenience to quickly track items that are selling and those that aren't.

[20968018] |To promote its new strategy, National Convenience said it plans to spend about $12 million on advertising for the year ending June 30, up from about $10 million in fiscal 1989.

[20969001] |Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole named a mediator to help resolve the lengthy labor dispute between the United Mine Workers and Pittston Co.

[20969002] |W.J. Usery Jr., labor secretary during the Ford administration, was named to mediate talks to settle the six-month strike by the UMW.

[20969003] |Previous talks between Pittston, of Greenwich, Conn., and the union have been sporadic and unsuccessful.

[20969004] |The union called the strike in April after Pittston refused to sign the UMW's national labor pact.
[20969005] |Pittston seeks changes in health and pension benefits, among other things.
[20969006] |No schedule for formal talks was set, but meetings are expected to begin soon.

[20970001] |One day after Delmed Inc. made top management changes and disclosed the end of an important business tie, its stock didn't trade and the company forecast a "significant" drop next year in sales of its core product.

[20970002] |That disclosure came, a Delmed spokeswoman said, after the American Stock Exchange alerted the company that trading wouldn't resume in its stock until additional information about developments was provided.

[20970003] |In addition to the forecast, the company also said it is examining potential cost cuts and reductions in overhead.
[20970004] |The spokeswoman said the exchange would resume trading of Delmed stock today.

[20970005] |Delmed, which makes and sells peritoneal dialysis products used in treating kidney disease, on Tuesday announced the resignations of Robert S. Ehrlich, chairman, president and chief executive officer, and of Leslie I. Shapiro, chief operating officer and chief financial officer.
[20970006] |They were succeeded by executives of Fresenius USA Inc. and its parent, Fresenius AG, which owns about 45% of Delmed.

[20970007] |At the same time, the New Brunswick, N.J., company said negotiations about pricing and volumes of product had collapsed between it and its exclusive distributor in the U.S., National Medical Care Inc.
[20970008] |Following that announcement Tuesday, however, company officials were unavailable to elaborate.

[20970009] |Yesterday, the spokeswoman said sales of Delmed products through the exclusive arrangement with National Medical accounted for 87% of Delmed's 1988 sales of $21.1 million.
[20970010] |The current distribution arrangement ends in March 1990, although Delmed said it will continue to provide some supplies of the peritoneal dialysis products to National Medical, the spokeswoman said.

[20970011] |Nonetheless, "Delmed currently expects that 1990 sales . . . will be significantly below their 1989 level," the company said in a statement.

[20970012] |Delmed said yesterday that Fresenius USA would begin distributing the product and that the company is investigating other possible distribution channels.
[20970013] |In any case, supplies to patients won't be interrupted, the company added.

[20970014] |Fresenius, a West German pharmaceutical concern, has been discussing a transaction in which it would buy Delmed stock for cash to bring its beneficial ownership to between 70% and 80%.
[20970015] |The transaction also would combine Fresenius USA and Delmed.

[20970016] |But the plan now is being "reformulated," Delmed said, declining to provide most of the new terms of the combination.
[20970017] |Said the spokeswoman: "The whole structure has changed.
[20970018] |The value of the company has changed."

[20970019] |Delmed did say that the proposal still would infuse cash into Delmed but less than the $10 million originally expected.
[20970020] |Delmed also would receive the North American rights to certain Fresenius AG products.

[20970021] |Another option for Delmed, the company said, is that it could sell its plant in Ogden, Utah.
[20970022] |It added that no discussions about such a sale are under way.

[20971001] |Brooks Armored Car Service Inc. never wanted to get into money laundering.

[20971002] |But July 5, a thunderstorm in Wilmington, Del., caused Shellpot Creek to rise 15 feet, pouring 1.3 million gallons of water into basement vaults.
[20971003] |The water destroyed about $75 million in currency and caked $4 million of coins with mud, rendering them dangerous to counting machines.

[20971004] |The $75 million in paper money, although moldy, mildewy and smelly, was exchanged through the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia without incident.
[20971005] |But Brooks was unable to reach a coin-cleaning agreement with the government.

[20971006] |"We kind of got caught between bureaucracies," says President William F. Brooks Jr.
[20971007] |The U.S. Mint wouldn't take the coin because it wasn't mutilated, and the Federal Reserve Bank accepts only clean coins, he says.

[20971008] |The Philadelphia Fed says it is merely an "agent" for coins, responsible only for storage and distribution.
[20971009] |"We issue paper money; we destroy paper money," says Jane Hinkle, a Philadelphia Fed spokeswoman.
[20971010] |"The coin is their problem."

[20971011] |A Mint official says the agency offered to clean the coins for its "bare-bones" cost of $17,000 plus certain other expenses.
[20971012] |But Brooks declined, figuring that transporting the mucked up money to Washington would cost the company thousands more.

[20971013] |So Brooks gave the dirty work to Coin Wrap Inc., which came up with an unusual solution.

[20971014] |For eight hours a day for the past two weeks, in aggregates of as much as 27,000 pounds (equaling $20,000 in pennies), Coin Wrap has been pouring money into a cement-mixing truck.
[20971015] |A giant heater, working like a blowtorch, causes the mud to crust and burns off any wrappers.
[20971016] |After clanging around for an hour or so, the shiny, hot money pours out of the cement chute, where a giant vacuum sucks away the dried mud and burnt wrappers.
[20971017] |After cooling, the coins are then rewrapped.

[20971018] |Brooks expects to pay Coin Wrap a total of about $20,000 -- a cost that insurance won't cover.
[20971019] |And while the job is half done, Brooks is still bitter.
[20971020] |In fact, there's only one person involved who's happy, and that's Floyd String, president of Coin Wrap and conceiver of the cement-truck solution.
[20971021] |Not only did his company find $20,000 worth of work, but when the approach was suggested, Mr. String says, Brooks officials "didn't laugh at me or anything.

[20972001] |"Parenthood," this summer's successful and amusing movie about parents and children, apparently was only the beginning.
[20972002] |It seems that every day a new movie opens featuring a child coping with a mother's death, or adoption, or aging parents, or pregnancy.
[20972003] |And why not?
[20972004] |Some of our best and most idiosyncratic film makers -- from Truffaut to Fellini to Woody Allen -- have taken a cue from Chekhov: When it comes to compelling drama, there's no place like home.

[20972005] |Yet too many people working in Hollywood today seem to suffer from the delusion that the drama played out in every home will be interesting to people who live somewhere else.
[20972006] |This is not the case.
[20972007] |Some diaries simply aren't worth snooping in.

[20972008] |Yet there will be people who will sob at "Immediate Family," a limply constructed and offensive movie about adoption.
[20972009] |These are the sensitive souls who can empathize with and even enjoy hearing about other people's troubles, no matter how haltingly or predictably the sad tale is told.

[20972010] |Written by Barbara Benedek, co-author of "The Big Chill," "Immediate Family" takes the position that only rich people living in nice houses should have children.
[20972011] |The film makers have couched this offensive idea in pretty packaging.
[20972012] |Everyone is very nice and good-looking -- the adoptive parents (Glenn Close and James Woods) and the teen-age couple who decide to give up their baby for adoption (Mary Stuart Masterson and Kevin Dillon).

[20972013] |Linda and Michael (Ms. Close and Mr. Woods), who seem to be pushing 40, live in a large and tastefully decorated home in suburban Seattle.
[20972014] |All of their friends have children and they can't, so now they want a child more than anything -- perhaps even more than Michael wanted his fancy convertible or his deluxe stereo equipment.
[20972015] |The idea of a child-as-required-yuppie-possession must be motivating them, since the wealthy offspring of their friends are shown to be rude brats, in therapy by age five.

[20972016] |Having exhausted all modern aids to fertility, Linda and Michael decide to adopt.
[20972017] |The actors wear pained expressions to indicate their genuine longing for a little one -- or maybe they're not-so-subtly commenting on the inadequacy of the script, and Jonathan Kaplan's ("The Accused") dull direction.
[20972018] |Or maybe they are disgusted by the literal-minded musical score; when a character arrives at a major decision her thoughts are revealed by the sound of "I Can See Clearly Now."
[20972019] |The adoption agency insists on introducing the adopting parents to the birth mother, so Linda and Michael pay for pregnant Lucy's (Ms. Masterson) bus ticket from Ohio.
[20972020] |(Why in these movies is the unwed pregnant woman always from Ohio?
[20972021] |I ask this not necessarily as a native Ohioan.)
[20972022] |Lucy, of course, is pretty and smart, though uneducated.
[20972023] |Everyone falls in love with everyone else.
[20972024] |There is some pain, when Lucy has the baby and "didn't know she would feel like this" and wants to keep the baby.
[20972025] |But in the end, everything turns out for the best, in the film makers' warped view.
[20972026] |Like lawyers in the hostile takeover field, the baby goes where the money is.

[20972027] |At the other end of the life cycle is "Dad," Gary David Goldberg's adaptation of the William Wharton novel.
[20972028] |This picture is about a middle-aged son who makes sure that his delayed bond with his father will last by waiting to cement it until just before the old man dies.

[20972029] |The glib emotional style Mr. Goldberg has perfected on television's "Family Ties" doesn't benefit from magnification.
[20972030] |His characters practically scamper through a vast range of human emotions, like travelers doing 10 cities in eight days.
[20972031] |They pause only to register little whimpers of distress and sighs of satisfaction, like tourists cataloging the sights they've seen from the window of a bus.
[20972032] |Not even Jack Lemmon's expert doddering makes this trip worth taking.

[20972033] |So it's entirely possible that "Look Who's Talking" isn't as entertaining as it seems in comparison to the turgid other films opening now.
[20972034] |But by comparison, this fluffy comedy seems like a gem.
[20972035] |It starts with conception, taking the sperm's point of view, then progresses to the baby's point of view.
[20972036] |Bruce Willis's best attribute as an actor is his coy, lazy voice, and that's all you get of him here, speaking for the baby.

[20972037] |Finally, there is one family movie that quite eloquently explores the depth of human emotion -- only its stars are bears.
[20972038] |For the second time, in a movie called "The Bear," French director Jean-Jacques Annaud demonstrates just how powerful pictures can be.
[20972039] |("Quest for Fire" was the first time.)
[20972040] |To be sure, one wonders what kind of man is this, who feels compelled to try to understand the most primitive longing and instinct in a way that requires the most sophisticated appreciation of visual storytelling.
[20972041] |Supposedly, he proposed the movie to his producer, Claude Berri, in four lines:
[20972042] |"An orphan bear cub.
[20972043] |A big solitary bear.
[20972044] |Two hunters in the forest.
[20972045] |The animals' point of view."

[20972046] |But then, even a great many words couldn't summarize the extraordinary pull of this movie about an orphaned bear who adopts a parent.

[20972047] |Video Tip:
[20972048] |One of the best movies about the child-parent thing in recent years was "Raising Arizona," the 1987 Coen brothers' comedy that definitely was not about the folks next door.

[20973001] |Westinghouse Electric Corp., capitalizing on a major restructuring program, expects operating margins of more than 10% and double-digit per-share earnings growth next year, top officers told securities analysts here.

[20973002] |John C. Marous, chairman and chief executive officer, also said the company expects sales from continuing businesses to rise 8.5% annually through the next three years.

[20973003] |In 1988, the company earned $822.8 million, or $5.66 a share, on sales of $12.49 billion.

[20973004] |Since 1983, Westinghouse has shed 70 businesses that it didn't expect to produce 10% operating margins while acquiring 55 businesses.

[20973005] |In the past 20 months alone, Paul E. Lego, president and chief operating officer, said the divestiture of $300 million of slow-growth, low-profit businesses has been more than offset by $600 million in profitable acquisitions.

[20973006] |Westinghouse expects to meet its corporate goals despite a softening in the economy.
[20973007] |Even if the gross national product is either flat or in the growth range of 2% to 2.5%, "we can handle that," Mr. Marous said.
[20973008] |GNP is the total value of the nation's output of goods and services.

[20973009] |A bright spot is the company's power-generation business, which is experiencing a surge of growth for the first time in years.
[20973010] |Mr. Marous said the business will achieve higher sales this year than the company's target goal of 8.5%.

[20973011] |While Westinghouse hasn't had a nuclear power plant order from a U.S. utility in about a decade, excess capacity is beginning to shrink.
[20973012] |Mr. Lego said the company foresees the need for a major boost in new-generation capability throughout the 1990s.

[20973013] |Westinghouse also is well positioned to sell steam turbine and gas turbine plants to independent power producers.
[20973014] |The company's ability to respond to energy needs world-wide will be enhanced through a recently announced venture with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Mr. Lego said.

[20973015] |He said the independent power segment could grow to provide as much as 50% of near-term generation capacity, adding: "We expect to supply a significant share of this market."

[20973016] |Westinghouse also expects its international sales to soon grow to 25% of total corporate sales from 20% last year.
[20973017] |The company is negotiating with the Soviets to build a Thermo King truck-refrigeration plant that would produce about 10,000 units annually.

[20973018] |Mr. Marous said Westinghouse would own 70% of the facility.
[20973019] |The deal, which will involve an initial $20 million investment, was struck with a handshake, he added.

[20973020] |Company officials also said that any gain from the sale of Westinghouse's 55% stake in its transmission and distribution venture with the Swiss firm of Asea Brown Boveri will be offset by a restructuring charge in the fourth quarter.
[20973021] |The executives didn't disclose the size of the expected gain.

[20973022] |Capital expenditure in 1990 will rise slightly, Mr. Marous said, from an estimated $470 million this year.

[20974001] |SHORT INTEREST in International Mobile Machines Corp. fell to 3,102,935 shares in the month ended Oct. 13 from 3,420,936 in September.
[20974002] |Because of an error by the National Association of Securities Dealers, the listing appeared incorrectly in the main table and several highlight tables in yesterday's edition.

[20975001] |A proposed conflict-of-interest policy for federally funded biomedical researchers may thwart many high-technology new ventures, say financiers, researchers and university administrators.

[20975002] |The National Institutes of Health policy would require researchers to cut financial ties with health-care businesses -- or lose their government money.
[20975003] |Among other concerns, the agency says researchers with business ties are more likely to falsify findings in order to tout new drugs.
[20975004] |As ties between academia and venture capital have blossomed in recent years, governmental fear of abuse has risen.

[20975005] |But the guidelines could "make it impossible to commercialize research," says Kenneth Smith, associate provost and vice president for research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[20975006] |The NIH is asking grant recipients and others for comments on the proposed guidelines until Dec. 15.
[20975007] |After that, it will make a final decision on the policy.

[20975008] |The guidelines could foil future arrangements similar to the deal behind Lithox Inc., a Salem, Mass., start-up, says Robert Daly, a managing partner of TA Associates, a venture-capital firm.
[20975009] |With $2.3 million, he and other investors launched Lithox last year to market a gallstone cure being developed by researchers of the University of California at San Diego.

[20975010] |The researchers, who are being financed by the Lithox funds, will receive a royalty, or percentage of sales, if their research yields a commercial product.
[20975011] |But because the University of California, like many other universities, shares its royalties with researchers, it may disqualify itself from federal funds under the proposed guidelines, Mr. Daly says.

[20975012] |The high-tech industry is full of the kind of arrangement that the new guidelines would affect.
[20975013] |For instance, Commonwealth BioVentures Inc., a venture-capital concern, last month invested $600,000 to launch Amira Inc., a Worcester, Mass., concern that will produce pharmaceuticals.
[20975014] |Scientists Rima Kaddurah-Daouk and Paul Schimmel conducted the initial research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[20975015] |While Ms. Kaddurah-Daouk left MIT to head Amira, Prof. Schimmel will continue to work at MIT, serve on Amira's board and own a small equity stake in the company.

[20975016] |The Amira transaction is typical of the way venture-capital firms are approaching the task of commercializing biotechnology research.
[20975017] |While universities develop the basic research, "venture capitalists are the ones best positioned to finance its commercialization," says Gloria W. Doubleday of Commonwealth.
[20975018] |"This is the best way to transfer technology straight off the campuses of universities."

[20975019] |But the new guidelines could prevent scientists like Prof. Schimmel from being involved with start-ups such as Amira, venture capitalists point out.
[20975020] |And if that happens, the entire process of transferring technology to the marketplace could be harmed, they say.

[20975021] |The stakes in the controversy are large.
[20975022] |Last year, venture capitalists spent an estimated $600 million to finance start-up companies in medical and biotechnology businesses, according to the National Venture Capital Association, a trade group.
[20975023] |Many of the deals involved transactions in which scientific institutions or researchers agreed to commercialize their work in return for an equity stake or royalties.

[20975024] |In many of these deals, "venture capitalists had the inside track," says Lawrence Bock of Avalon Ventures, La Jolla, Calif.
[20975025] |Investors were willing to gamble on new technologies because "we had exclusive rights to those technologies," he adds.

[20975026] |But under the proposed guidelines, all federally funded research will have to be reported publicly so that anyone can capitalize on the work.
[20975027] |"Without the exclusivity, most venture capitalists won't have the incentive to invest in such deals," Mr. Bock says.

[20975028] |Last year, for example, Avalon and others invested $14 million in Athena Neurosciences Inc., South San Francisco, Calif., to license and develop technology for delivery of drugs to the brain.
[20975029] |But before Athena was able to get an exclusive license to the technology, the Federal Register published most of the details, "giving all of the company's potential competitors a chance to exploit it," Mr. Bock says.
[20975030] |Athena eventually acquired exclusive rights to the technology and currently is developing it.
[20975031] |But, says Mr. Bock, "It was a close call."

[20975032] |The proposed guidelines could also delay commercialization -- and force small companies to waste scarce capital, entrepreneurs say.
[20975033] |If start-ups can't have early access to research being conducted at institutions, "we have to replicate it ourselves or do without the research," says Ruth Emyanitoff, manager of business development at Applied bioTechnology Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., concern.
[20975034] |Duplicating research is both costly and time-consuming for a start-up, Ms. Emyanitoff says.

[20975035] |For its part, NIH insists that its guidelines "should not stifle research creativity or technology transfer from the research laboratory to commercial use."
[20975036] |Universities such as Harvard and MIT should be able to develop a way to act as brokers for the individual scientists, says Katherine Bick, who oversees the huge NIH grants program as its deputy director for extramural research.

[20975037] |NIH staff members believe the guidelines are essential to prevent the escalation of problems that have already begun to surface in scientific ventures.
[20975038] |Not long ago, scientists holding stock in Spectra Pharmaceutical Services Inc. were accused of falsifying research to boost the stock.
[20975039] |Many officials are also concerned about companies getting a "free ride" on government-sponsored research.
[20975040] |A congressional subcommitee has been investigating the potential abuse from researchers holding stock in companies exploiting their research.

[20975041] |Among other provisions, the NIH guidelines would prohibit researchers and members of their immediate families from holding stock in any company that is affected by the outcome of their research.

[20975042] |Ms. Bick, the NIH administrator, says the business and scientific community is overreacting to what the agency merely meant to be "ideas for discussion."
[20975043] |The predictions of doom are "premature," she says.

[20975044] |But when agencies like the NIH circulate guidelines, they've often already formulated policy, veteran scientists say.
[20975045] |Indeed, institutions already are taking note.
[20975046] |On Sept. 14, Harvard began circulating a conflict-of-interest policy statement that, in effect, would follow the NIH guidelines faithfully.

[20975047] |The University of California at San Francisco is also circulating a memo among its scientific faculty that will restrict contact with the world of business.
[20975048] |In many other institutions, scientists are shunning contacts with venture investors until the NIH policy is settled.

[20975049] |Says Mr. Daly, the venture capitalist: "It doesn't matter whether they call it guidelines or policy.
[20975050] |The damage is already done.

[20976001] |Friday, Oct. 27, 9 p.m.-midnight EDT, on PBS (PBS air dates and times vary, so check local listings): "Show Boat."
[20976002] |New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse produced this faithful revival of America's most influential musical, written by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein and first produced on Broadway in 1927.
[20976003] |Worth watching, although the music has lasted better than the plot or the humor.

[20976004] |Saturday, Oct. 28, 8-10 p.m. EDT, on HBO (repeated Oct. 31, Nov. 5, 8, 14, 16 and 20): "Perfect Witness."
[20976005] |Aidan Quinn, Brian Dennehy and Stockard Channing are excellent in this gripping tale of a reluctant witness in an organized crime prosecution.
[20976006] |It's set in New York, but it resonates with the terrible dynamics of the Latin American drug wars.

[20976007] |Sunday, Oct. 29, 8-11 p.m. EST, on ABC: "The Final Days."
[20976008] |No doubt there is something to irk everyone in this AT&T-sponsored dramatization of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book about Watergate.
[20976009] |Personally, I'm irked by its combination of ponderousness and timidity, which adds up to an utter lack of drama.

[20976010] |Sunday, Oct. 29, 10-11 p.m. EST, on Showtime (repeated Nov. 2, 6, 11 and 15): "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
[20976011] |Fans of Anthony Andrews ("Brideshead Revisited") will relish watching him play the title role(s) in the 19th-century Robert Louis Stevenson pre-Freudian drama of schizoid horror.

[20976012] |Monday, Oct. 30, 10-11 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Journey Into Sleep."
[20976013] |I promise you will stay awake through this intriguing documentary about the science of sleep.

[20976014] |Wednesday, Nov. 1, 9-10:30 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Thomas Hart Benton."
[20976015] |Critical opinion is divided about the success of Benton's populist defiance of modernist art.
[20976016] |But no one could disagree that Ken Burns has made a fascinating film about this famous American painter.

[20976017] |Thursday, Nov. 2, 9-10 p.m. EST, on A&E (repeated at 1 a.m. and on Nov. 5): "Third and Oak: The Pool Hall."
[20976018] |A one-acter by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Marsha Norman is the first presentation in a new series called "American Playwrights Theater," sponsored by General Motors.
[20976019] |James Earl Jones and Mario Van Peebles carry out a bitter intergenerational dialogue between two black men.

[20976020] |Thursdays, Nov. 2-23, 10-11 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Taiwan: The Other China."
[20976021] |Judy Woodruff hosts this handsome four-part series about the history, economy, culture and politics of the island home of Chinese democracy and capitalism.

[20976022] |Friday, Nov. 3, 9-11 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Our Town."
[20976023] |Along with "Show Boat," "Great Performances" kicks off its new season with this Lincoln Center production of Thornton Wilder's best known play, in which the role of the small-town Stage Manager is given a hip twist by performance artist Spalding Gray.

[20976024] |Saturday, Nov. 4, 1:30-6 p.m. EST, on NBC: Breeder's Cup Day.
[20976025] |Polished hooves, fancy turf, fat purses -- the horse race of the year.

[20976026] |Sunday, Nov. 5, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. EST, on ABC: New York City Marathon.
[20976027] |Shiny Nikes, cracked cement, media glory -- the foot race of the year.

[20976028] |Sunday, Nov. 5, 8-9 p.m. EST, on TNT: "Gary Cooper: American Life, American Legend."
[20976029] |I've seen a great many moviestar film portraits, and this one is outstanding.

[20976030] |Sundays, Nov. 5-12, 9-10:30 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Glory Enough for All."
[20976031] |Can "Masterpiece Theatre" make a compelling human story out of the discovery of insulin?
[20976032] |This earthy, amusing film answers with a resounding "yes."

[20976033] |Sunday and Monday, Nov. 5 and 6, 9-11 p.m. EST, on NBC: "Cross of Fire."
[20976034] |The Ku Klux Klan was revived in the 1920s as a national organization aimed at Catholics and Jews as well as blacks.
[20976035] |One reason for its downfall was the murder trial of D.C. Stephenson, an Indiana leader whose reckless career is depicted in this film starring Mel Harris ("thirtysomething") and John Heard.

[20976036] |Tuesday, Nov. 7, 8-9 p.m. EST, on PBS: "Hurricane!"
[20976037] |Has the San Francisco earthquake caused you to forget Hugo?
[20976038] |You'll remember when you see the stunning footage taken from inside a hurricane's eye, in this edition of "NOVA.

[20977001] |Merksamer Jewelers Inc., a fast-growing jewelry store chain, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-law protection from creditors, apparently to speed a management buy-out of the chain.

[20977002] |The filing, made yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court here, follows an agreement by L.J. Hooker Corp., Merksamer's owner, to sell the chain to management for an undisclosed price.
[20977003] |GE Capital Corp., a financial services subsidiary of General Electric Co., is providing Merksamer management with $15 million in financing.

[20977004] |L.J. Hooker, based in Atlanta, filed for Chapter 11 protection in August and has also announced its intention to sell its B. Altman & Co. department store chain.
[20977005] |L.J. Hooker is owned by Hooker Corp., Sydney, Australia, which itself is currently being managed by a court-appointed provisional liquidator.

[20977006] |L.J. Hooker's planned sale of Merksamer is subject to approval by Judge Tina Brozman of U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

[20977007] |Rumors to the effect that the Merksamer chain would file for Chapter 11 arose last week in the jewelry industry.
[20977008] |At that time, Sam Merksamer, president of the chain, angrily denied that his company was about to file.
[20977009] |Mr. Merksamer is leading the buy-out.

[20977010] |According to executives close to the situation, Merksamer filed for Chapter 11 to speed the sale of the chain.
[20977011] |One executive said an accord signed by the unsecured creditors of L.J. Hooker Corp. had frozen in place all of L.J. Hooker's assets.

[20977012] |The Merksamer bankruptcy-law filing appears to supersede that agreement.
[20977013] |"By filing for Chapter 11, the Merksamer chain will only need approval from a bankruptcy judge for the sale, not the hundreds of unsecured creditors," said this executive.
[20977014] |"The cash from the sale will go to L.J. Hooker, but the company itself will belong to Sam Merksamer."

[20977015] |Mr. Merksamer and Sanford Sigoloff, chief executive of L.J. Hooker, were unavailable for comment.
[20977016] |In a statement, Mr. Merksamer described the filing as a "legal technicality," but also said that "our inability to obtain trade credit, combined with a need to ensure that our stores were properly stocked for the Christmas season, necessitated our filing Chapter 11."

[20977017] |The jewelry chain, which is based in Sacramento, Calif., had revenue of $62 million and operating profit of $2.5 million for the year ended June 30.

[20978001] |For all of this year's explosive run-up in stock prices, Renaissance Investment Management Inc.'s computer sat on the sidelines.
[20978002] |Now it's on the fence.

[20978003] |Renaissance, a Cincinnati-based money manager, began buying stocks again this week with half of the $1.8 billion that it oversees for clients, according to people familiar with the firm's revised strategy.
[20978004] |It was the first time since January that Renaissance has thought stocks are worth owning.

[20978005] |Renaissance declined to confirm the move, but its stock purchases were thought to have begun Tuesday, timed to coincide with the maturity this week of Treasury bills owned by the firm.
[20978006] |The other half of its portfolio is expected to remain invested in Treasury bills for the time being.

[20978007] |Wall Street executives said they believed that Renaissance's $900 million buy program was carried out by PaineWebber Inc.
[20978008] |As reported, PaineWebber bought shares Tuesday as part of a customer strategy shift, although the broker's client was said then to have been Japanese.
[20978009] |Yesterday, PaineWebber declined comment.

[20978010] |When it owns stocks, Renaissance's portfolio typically is composed of about 60 large-capitalization issues; to make buy or sell moves, the firm solicits Wall Street brokerage houses a day or so in advance, looking for the best package price to carry out the trades.
[20978011] |The broker winning the business doesn't charge commissions, but instead profits by buying or selling for less than the overall package price.

[20978012] |That puts the broker at risk if it's trying to buy stock in a rising market.
[20978013] |In Tuesday's gyrating session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 80 points early in the day, but finished with less than a four-point loss.

[20978014] |Renaissance's last portfolio shift, carried out by Goldman, Sachs & Co., was a highly publicized decision last January to sell its entire stock portfolio and buy Treasury bills.
[20978015] |The sell signal, which sent a bearish chill through the stock market, came when Renaissance's computer found that stocks were overpriced compared with bonds and Treasury bills.

[20978016] |At the time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at about 2200.
[20978017] |The Dow average now stands more than 20% higher, while Renaissance's portfolio of Treasurys produced a return of about 6% through the first three quarters of the year.
[20978018] |The computer's miscalculation has been painful for Renaissance.
[20978019] |Almost any money manager holding stocks has turned in better results, while Renaissance has played it safe with Treasury bills.

[20978020] |So why does Renaissance's computer like stocks with the Dow at 2653.28, where it closed yesterday, when it didn't with the Dow at 2200?

[20978021] |"With the decline in stock prices and continued low or stable interest rates, stocks are representing a better value all the time," Renaissance President Frank W. Terrizzi said yesterday.

[20978022] |Three-month T-bill yields have fallen to 7.8% from about 9% at the start of the year.
[20978023] |Stock prices, meanwhile, are about 140 points lower than the peak of 2791.41 reached on the Dow industrial average Oct. 9.
[20978024] |Are those declines enough to signal a partial return to stocks?

[20978025] |Mr. Terrizzi won't say specifically, explaining that if there was such a move, it would take about three days to complete the loose ends of the transaction.
[20978026] |During that time, a buyer with the clout of a Renaissance could end up driving up the price of stocks it was trying to buy if it tipped its hand.

[20978027] |But everything is relative to Mr. Terrizzi, so stocks in his view can become more attractive in comparison with bonds or T-bills, even if shares are more expensive than when they were sold in January.
[20978028] |"Our {computer} model has a certain trigger point," he said.
[20978029] |When the computer says switch, Renaissance switches.

[20978030] |The firm has made 17 previous shifts from one type of asset to another in its 10-year history.
[20978031] |Almost all have involved at least half and often the firm's entire portfolio, as the computer searches for the most undervalued investment category, following a money-management style called tactical asset allocation.

[20978032] |Competing asset-allocation firms march to their own computer models, so some have been partly or fully invested in stocks this year while Renaissance has sat on the sidelines.
[20978033] |As a result, competitors say Renaissance has been looking for any opportunity to return to the stock market, rather than risk losing business by continuing to remain fully invested in Treasury bills.

[20978034] |Mr. Terrizzi confirms some clients have left Renaissance, but no major ones, and the firm has added new accounts.

[20979001] |David Evans, who last week resigned as president and chief executive of Qintex Entertainment Inc. "for personal reasons" just as the company filed for bankruptcy-law protection, has been temporarily reappointed to both positions, the company said.

[20979002] |Qintex Entertainment also said Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Jonathan Lloyd, 37 years old, would join the nine-member board.
[20979003] |He succeeds Roger Kimmel, who resigned last week saying his participation in evaluating the company's role in buying MGM/UA Communications Co. was no longer necessary.

[20979004] |Mr. Evans will stay until a successor is found, but not later than the end of the year, the company said.

[20979005] |It was the 49-year-old Mr. Evans who had moved into the offices of MGM/UA and run the company during Qintex Australia Ltd.'s aborted bid for the movie company.
[20979006] |After MGM/UA terminated the $1.5 billion merger because of a dispute over a $50 million letter of credit, Qintex Entertainment -- which is 43%-owned by Qintex Australia -- found itself facing problems of its own.
[20979007] |And the relationship between Qintex Entertainment and the Australian company appears to be quickly deteriorating.

[20979008] |On Oct. 19, Qintex Entertainment was about to default on a $5.9 million payment owed to MCA Inc. in connection with the distribution of a television program.
[20979009] |Qintex Entertainment was depending on Qintex Australia to arrange financing.
[20979010] |But early on Oct. 19, the second of two hectic days of board meetings, Mr. Evans said he believed Qintex Australia wouldn't be forthcoming.
[20979011] |He recommended that the company file for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code before the MCA deadline, according to a source familiar with the sessions.

[20979012] |But a majority of the board, which includes three members from the Australian company, overrode him.
[20979013] |Mr. Evans resigned.
[20979014] |Later in the day, according to the source, the board reversed itself, decided to file for bankruptcy protection, and asked Mr. Evans to stay on.
[20979015] |Mr. Evans told the board he needed the weekend to think about it.
[20979016] |Mr. Evans couldn't be reached yesterday for comment.

[20979017] |Last Monday, Qintex Australia announced a restructuring plan and said it would sell off assets.
[20979018] |Last week the company indicated it would cut back on the working capital it would supply to Qintex Entertainment.

[20979019] |Separately, a Qintex Entertainment shareholder filed suit in federal court in Los Angeles charging Qintex Australia with misleading shareholders about Qintex Entertainment's financial position.
[20979020] |Qintex Australia said it hadn't seen the suit and couldn't comment.

[20980001] |The Sept. 25 "Tracking Travel" column advises readers to "Charge With Caution When Traveling Abroad" because credit-card companies charge 1% to convert foreign-currency expenditures into dollars.
[20980002] |In fact, this is the best bargain available to someone traveling abroad.

[20980003] |In contrast to the 1% conversion fee charged by Visa, foreign-currency dealers routinely charge 7% or more to convert U.S. dollars into foreign currency.
[20980004] |On top of this, the traveler who converts his dollars into foreign currency before the trip starts will lose interest from the day of conversion.
[20980005] |At the end of the trip, any unspent foreign exchange will have to be converted back into dollars, with another commission due.

[20980006] |The card holder will pay the modest 1% fee only on the amounts actually needed.
[20980007] |Typically, he will be billed only several weeks after the expenditure, and then has another couple of weeks before he has to pay the bill.
[20980008] |In the meantime, the money can continue to earn interest for the card holder -- often more than 1% during that "float" period alone.

[20980009] |Daniel Brigham

[20980010] |Visa U.S.A. Inc.

[20981001] |MGM Grand Inc. has agreed to pay $93 million and nearly 1.8 million common shares to buy 117 acres of land along the Las Vegas, Nev., Strip as a site for its planned movie-studio and theme-park resort.

[20981002] |Of the total purchase price, $50 million cash and $30 million in stock (nearly 1.8 million shares) would be paid to buy the existing 700-room Marina Hotel & Casino from Southwest Securities, a Nevada limited partnership.
[20981003] |The remaining properties to be acquired are the Tropicana Country Club & Golf Course, a facility jointly owned by Ramada Inc., of Phoenix, Ariz., and the Jaffe family, and a small parcel owned by MGM Grand director James D. Aljian.

[20981004] |The purchase price was disclosed in a preliminary prospectus issued in connection with MGM Grand's planned offering of six million common shares.
[20981005] |The luxury airline and casino company, 98.6%-owned by investor Kirk Kerkorian and his Tracinda Corp., earlier this month announced its agreements to acquire the properties, but didn't disclose the purchase price.

[20981006] |The proposed stock offering and issuance of nearly 1.8 million common shares in connection with the land purchase will bring MGM Grand's total shares outstanding to 28.7 million, of which 72% will be owned by Mr. Kerkorian and Tracinda, according to the prospectus.

[20981007] |In over-the-counter trading, MGM Grand was bid at $17.50 a share.

[20981008] |Proceeds from the offering are expected to be used for remodeling the company's Desert Inn resort in Las Vegas, refurbishing certain aircraft of the MGM Grand Air unit, and to acquire the property for the new resort.
[20981009] |The company said it estimates the Desert Inn remodeling will cost about $32 million, and the refurbishment of the three DC-8-62 aircraft, made by McDonnell Douglas Corp., will cost around $24.5 million.

[20981010] |MGM Grand said the latest stock offering won't cover the $600 million or more cost of building the proposed resort and theme park, and added it will need to seek additional financing, either through bank borrowings or debt and equity offerings, at a later date.
[20981011] |Construction is set to begin in early 1991.

[20981012] |The resort will include the MGM Grand Hotel, a multi-spired, castle-like facility that will include 5,000 rooms and 85,000 square feet of casino space.
[20981013] |The facility will be marketed toward families, and room rates will be between $35 and $55 a night, MGM Grand said.

[20981014] |The prospectus didn't include many details about the studio and theme park, although conceptual drawings, released this month, show that it may feature several "themed" areas similar to those found at parks built by Walt Disney Co.

[20982001] |Investors poured $2.8 billion more into money-market mutual funds in the latest week despite further declines in yields.

[20982002] |Assets of the 400 taxable funds tracked by IBC/Donoghue's Money Fund Report jumped to $351.2 billion in the week ended Tuesday, the Holliston, Mass.-based newsletter said.
[20982003] |Assets soared $4.5 billion in the previous week.

[20982004] |Meanwhile, the average yield on taxable funds dropped nearly a tenth of a percentage point, the largest drop since midsummer.
[20982005] |The average seven-day compound yield, which assumes that dividends are reinvested and that current rates continue for a year, fell to 8.47%, its lowest since late last year, from 8.55% the week before, according to Donoghue's.

[20982006] |"Lower yields are just reflecting lower short-term interest rates," said Brenda Malizia Negus, editor of Money Fund Report.
[20982007] |Money funds invest in such things as short-term Treasury securities, commercial paper and certificates of deposit, all of which have been posting lower interest rates since last spring.

[20982008] |Individual investors can still get better yields on money funds than on many other short-term instruments.
[20982009] |The yield on six-month Treasury bills sold at Monday's auction, for example, was just 7.77%.
[20982010] |The average yield on six-month CDs of $50,000 or less at major banks was 7.96% in the week ended Tuesday, according to Banxquote Money Markets, a New York information service.

[20982011] |One way that money fund managers boost yields in a declining rate environment is by extending the maturities of their investments, so they can earn the current higher rates for a longer period.
[20982012] |The average maturity of the taxable funds that Donoghue's follows increased by two days in the latest week to 40 days, its longest since August.

[20982013] |"They're anticipating further declines in rates and they're going to get them, slowly," said Walter Frank, chief economist for the Donoghue Organization, publisher of Money Fund Report.

[20982014] |Average maturity was as short as 29 days at the start of this year, when short-term interest rates were moving steadily upward.
[20982015] |The average seven-day compound yield of the funds reached 9.62% in late April.

[20982016] |The highest-yielding funds are still above 9%.
[20982017] |The top-performing fund in the latest week was Dreyfus Worldwide Dollar, with a seven-day compound yield of 9.45%.
[20982018] |The fund invests heavily in dollar-denominated money-market securities overseas.
[20982019] |It is currently waiving management fees, which contributes to the higher yield.

[20982020] |The average seven-day simple yield of the 400 funds fell to 8.14% from 8.21%, Donoghue's reported.
[20982021] |The average 30-day simple yield slid to 8.22% from 8.26%, and the average 30-day compound yield fell to 8.56% from 8.60%.

[20983001] |Many small investors are facing a double whammy this year: They got hurt by investing in the highly risky junk bond market, and the pain is worse because they did it with borrowed money.

[20983002] |These people invested in "leveraged" junk bond mutual funds, the publicly traded funds that make a habit of taking out loans to buy extra junk.

[20983003] |It's a good strategy in a rising market, where a 25% leveraged portfolio in effect allows investors to have 125% of their money working for them.
[20983004] |The strategy boosts current yield by putting more bonds into the portfolio.

[20983005] |Trouble is, junk bond prices have been weak for months.
[20983006] |Thus, the leverage has amplified the funds' portfolio losses.
[20983007] |And shares of leveraged junk funds this year have been clobbered even harder than the junk bonds they hold.

[20983008] |"That's really where the leverage hurt," says Thomas Herzfeld, a Miami-based investment manager who specializes in closed-end funds.
[20983009] |"Share prices performed even worse than the funds' asset values because fear has taken hold" in the junk market, he says.

[20983010] |Leverage is never a problem for the traditional "open end" mutual funds, which aren't publicly traded and aren't allowed to use leverage at all.
[20983011] |Leverage is used only by some of the closed-end funds.

[20983012] |The usual maneuver is to borrow against the portfolio value or issue preferred stock, using the proceeds to buy additional bonds.
[20983013] |The fallout for investors lately has been painful.

[20983014] |Consider the New America High Income Fund.
[20983015] |With a leveraged position of about 45%, the fund's share price has plunged 28.5% so far this year.
[20983016] |That's worse than the price drop sustained by the bonds in its portfolio, whose total return (bond-price changes plus interest) has amounted to a negative 6.08%.

[20983017] |Such problems may not be over.
[20983018] |Leveraged funds in particular "are still extremely vulnerable, because we're still at the beginning of problems in the junk market," says George Foot, a managing partner at Newgate Management Associates in Northampton, Mass.

[20983019] |Many investors are unaware their funds have borrowed to speculate in such a risky market.
[20983020] |"If someone actually sat down and thought about what they were being sold," says Gerald Perritt, editor of the Mutual Fund Letter in Chicago, they might shy away.

[20983021] |In a typical leverage strategy, a fund tries to capture the spread between what it costs to borrow and the higher return on the bonds it buys with the borrowed money.
[20983022] |If the market surges, holders can make that much more profit; the leverage effectively acts as an interest-free margin account for investors.

[20983023] |But when the market moves against the fund, investors lose more than other junk holders because the market decline is magnified by the amount the fund is leveraged.

[20983024] |Fund managers, for their part, defend their use of leverage.
[20983025] |Carl Ericson, who runs the Colonial Intermediate High Income Fund, says the fund's 25% leverage has jacked up its interest income.
[20983026] |"As long as I am borrowing at 9.9% and each {bond} yields over that, it enhances the yield," he maintains.
[20983027] |Mr. Ericson says he tries to offset the leverage by diversifying the fund's portfolio.

[20983028] |Yet some funds have pulled in their horns.
[20983029] |New America High Income Fund recently said that it plans to reduce its leverage position by buying back $5 million in preferred stock and notes from investors.
[20983030] |The fund made a similar move earlier this year.

[20983031] |"We are trying to increase our flexibility," says Ellen E. Terry, a vice president at Ostrander Capital Management, the fund's investment adviser.
[20983032] |She declined to elaborate and wouldn't disclose the fund's recent purchases, sales or cash position.

[20983033] |Ms. Terry did say the fund's recent performance "illustrates what happens in a leveraged product" when the market doesn't cooperate.
[20983034] |"When the market turns around," she says, "it will give a nice picture" of how leverage can help performance.

[20983035] |Several leveraged funds don't want to cut the amount they borrow because it would slash the income they pay shareholders, fund officials said.
[20983036] |But a few funds have taken other defensive steps.
[20983037] |Some have raised their cash positions to record levels.
[20983038] |High cash positions help buffer a fund when the market falls.

[20983039] |Prospect Street High Income Portfolio, for instance, now holds about 15% in cash and equivalents, nearly quintuple the amount it held earlier this year, says John Frabotta, portfolio co-manager.
[20983040] |He says the fund, which is 40% leveraged, has maintained a "substantial cushion" between its borrowing costs and the yields of the portfolio's bonds.
[20983041] |"I don't want to be in a position to have to sell," Mr. Frabotta says.

[20983042] |Other funds have recently sold weak junk bonds to raise cash.
[20983043] |At the 50%-leveraged Zenith Income Fund, portfolio manager John Bianchi recently dumped Mesa Petroleum, Wickes and Horsehead Industries, among others, to raise his cash position to a record 15%.

[20983044] |"That's a problem because cash isn't earning us very much money," Mr. Bianchi says.
[20983045] |He concedes: "This is the most difficult market that I've been involved in."

[20983046] |Because of the recent junk-market turmoil, the fund is considering investing in other issues instead, including mortgage-backed bonds.

[20983047] |"We're looking at the leverage factor every day," says Robert Moore, president of Bernstein-Macaulay Inc., a Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc. unit and the fund's adviser.
[20983048] |"At some point, if we are unable to cover our leveraged cost -- and at the moment we're right on it -- we're going to have to make a move.

[20984001] |One of the more bizarre garden stories since Eden has been unfolding for four years now, in the private paper-and-crayon fantasies of artist Jennifer Bartlett.
[20984002] |And if she and the Battery Park City Authority have their way, her horticulturally inept plan will soon go public as a real garden "artwork" in the downtown complex.

[20984003] |South Gardens, as the Bartlett scheme is called, will occupy the last 3.5 acres of open space at the southwest tip of Manhattan.
[20984004] |It could cost taxpayers $15 million to install and BPC residents $1 million a year to maintain.
[20984005] |Created by an artist who flaunts her ignorance of plants and gardens, South Gardens, as now planned, will die from congestive garden design.

[20984006] |Ms. Bartlett's previous work, which earned her an international reputation in the non-horticultural art world, often took gardens as its nominal subject.
[20984007] |Mayhap this metaphorical connection made the BPC Fine Arts Committee think she had a literal green thumb.
[20984008] |(Ms. Bartlett would not discuss her garden for this article.)

[20984009] |Last year she boasted to HG magazine: "I'd never looked at a garden in my life."
[20984010] |And she proved no shirking violet in her initial statement to the BPCA, a New York State public benefit corporation: "The only thing I was interested in doing was a very complicated garden, which would cost an enormous amount of money and be very expensive to maintain."

[20984011] |Undeterred, the BPCA hired Ms. Bartlett and another confessed garden ignoramus, the architect Alexander Cooper, who claimed he had never visited, much less built, a garden, and said of the project, "I don't view this as a landscape.
[20984012] |I view this as a building."
[20984013] |The third principal in the South Gardens adventure did have garden experience.
[20984014] |The firm of Bruce Kelly/David Varnell Landscape Architects had created Central Park's Strawberry Fields and Shakespeare Garden.
[20984015] |The BPCA called its team a "stunning" collaboration.

[20984016] |After four years, though, the South Gardens design is 100% uncollaborated Jennifer Bartlett.
[20984017] |She has done little more than recycle her standard motifs -- trees, water, landscape fragments, rudimentary square houses, circles, triangles, rectangles -- and fit them into a grid, as if she were making one of her gridded two-dimensional works for a gallery wall.
[20984018] |But for South Gardens, the grid was to be a 3-D network of masonry or hedge walls with real plants inside them.
[20984019] |In a letter to the BPCA, kelly/varnell called this "arbitrary and amateurish."
[20984020] |The landscape architects were expelled from the garden in July.

[20984021] |All the while, Ms. Bartlett had been busy at her assignment, serene in her sense of self-tilth.
[20984022] |As she put it in a 1987 lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design: "I have designed a garden, not knowing the difference between a rhododendron and a tulip."
[20984023] |Moreover, she proclaimed that "landscape architects have been going wrong for the last 20 years" in the design of open space.
[20984024] |And she further stunned her listeners by revealing her secret garden design method: Commissioning a friend to spend "five or six thousand dollars . . . on books that I ultimately cut up."
[20984025] |After that, the layout had been easy.
[20984026] |"I've always relied heavily on the grid and found it never to fail."
[20984027] |Ms. Bartlett told her audience that she absolutely did not believe in compromise or in giving in to the client "because I don't think you can do watered-down versions of things."
[20984028] |(This was never a problem with South Gardens, because the client had long since given in to Ms. Bartlett's every whim.)

[20984029] |Last year the public was afforded a preview of Ms. Bartlett's creation in a tablemodel version, at a BPC exhibition.
[20984030] |The labels were breathy: "Within its sheltering walls is a microcosm of a thousand years in garden design . . . a rose garden, herb garden, serpentine garden, flower fields, an apple orchard . . . organized in a patchwork of 50-by-50-foot squares to form `rooms' . . . here and there are simple architectural forms, a whimsical jet of water, a conceit of topiary or tartan plaid, and chairs of every sort to drag around. . . .
[20984031] |At the core of it all is a love for plants."

[20984032] |Plant lovers who studied the maquette were alarmed.
[20984033] |They looked at the miniature and saw a giant folly.
[20984034] |Ms. Bartlett's little rooms left little room for plants or people.
[20984035] |Kelly/Varnell had put South Gardens' carrying capacity at four people per room, or about 100 humans overall.
[20984036] |This mincemeat of tiny gridlocked squares was inspired by the artist's own digs: "My loft was 50 by 100 feet, so 50 feet by 50 feet seemed like a good garden room."

[20984037] |Inside the grid were 24 of these plant cells jammed full of clutter.
[20984038] |One she made into a topiary rec room, replete with plants shaped into a Barcalounger, TV, piano and chairs.
[20984039] |In another, she requisitioned topiary MX missile cones -- costing $10,000 each -- in heights up to 20 feet.
[20984040] |Another she stuffed with eight "rectilinear hedges" for a topiary geometry lesson in the right-angling of plants.
[20984041] |In the herbal lounge she specified a "plaid knot garden" decor.
[20984042] |She ordered the foyer done in a different plaid planting, and made the landscape architects study a book on tartans.

[20984043] |In one garden roomette she implanted a 43-foot square glass cube meant to show off a plaid tile floor conceit, a "zinc sink," a "huge fishbowl with carp" and a "birdcage with cockatoos."
[20984044] |Next door she put a smaller plaid-floored glass house, where, she suggested, a flat of strawberries might be displayed in the dead of winter.

[20984045] |In another compartment called the Linden Bosque, 62 linden trees were to be crowded together at killing intervals of 10 or 16 feet.
[20984046] |(Lindens need about 36 feet.)

[20984047] |One thing about the Bartlett plan was never in doubt: It would demand the full-time skills of a battalion of topiary barbers, rosarians, orchardists and arborists.
[20984048] |Ms. Bartlett blithely suggested calling upon "semi-skilled garden club workers for maintenance."
[20984049] |Furthermore, she had insisted on paths so narrow (five to eight feet) and hedge corners so square that standard maintenance equipment -- trucks or cherry pickers -- couldn't maneuver.

[20984050] |Then, to make these gardenettes quite literally rooms, Ms. Bartlett had thrown up windowless walls (brick, lattice, hedge) eight to 10 feet tall, casting her interiors into day-long Stygian shade.
[20984051] |It was hard to see how photosynthesis would ever happen in South Gardens without decking the walls in a Christmas-like array of Gro-Lites.

[20984052] |Finally, flouting the BPCA's wishes to continue the popular two-mile riverside Esplanade, prized for its expansive views of New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Ms. Bartlett threw up yet another wall, this time concrete, this time 10 1/2 feet tall.
[20984053] |She ran it the length of the South Gardens riverfront, blotting out the city's great natural water features, the harbor and the river.
[20984054] |(Within her garden, she has decreed a waterfall, a rill, ponds and other costly, trivial waterworks beside the Hudson.)

[20984055] |While the model was still on view, Manhattan Community Board 1 passed a resolution against South Gardens.
[20984056] |The Parks Council wrote the BPCA that this "too `private' . . . exclusive," complex and expensive "enclosed garden . . . belongs in almost any location but the waterfront."
[20984057] |Lynden B. Miller, the noted public garden designer who restored Central Park's Conservatory Garden, recalls her reaction to the South Gardens model in light of the public garden she was designing for 42nd Street's Bryant Park: "Bryant Park, as designed in 1933, failed as a public space, because it made people feel trapped.
[20984058] |By removing the hedges and some walls, the Bryant Park Restoration is opening it up.
[20984059] |It seems to me the BPCA plan has the potential of making South Gardens a horticultural jail for people and plants."

[20984060] |The three urban horticulture experts with Cornell Cooperative Extension weighed in with a letter to the BPCA that began: "We feel that the garden is horticulturally doomed."
[20984061] |They then addressed the decidedly "questionable safety of . . . a complex garden of endless hiding places.
[20984062] |The 8 ft. hedges which obstruct views in and out of small `rooms' insure . . . that this garden will be a potential breeding ground for crime."
[20984063] |(At Harvard, Ms. Bartlett had declared: "There are going to be problems with safety . . .
[20984064] |I'm not going to address questions of safety!")

[20984065] |Despite the dire assessments of knowledgeable garden professionals, Ms. Bartlett's South Gardens design somehow continues on, seemingly impervious to reason, stalled only by bureaucratic lethargy and logistical complications.
[20984066] |BPCA President and CEO David Emil hopes to negotiate a seawall that could "be significantly more visually permeable."
[20984067] |And by substituting yet another landscape architect, Nicholas Quennell, he insists he can achieve that and other accommodations to gardening reality while still preserving the "artistic vision" of a "truly great artist."
[20984068] |After four years of no progress in this direction, it is doubtful any viable collaboration with Ms. Bartlett will suddenly now be possible.
[20984069] |(Mr. Quennell has said he plans to go with the grid, regardless.)
[20984070] |There is still time, however, for Gov. Mario Cuomo or Fabian Palomino, chairman of the BPCA board, to prevent this topiary "Tilted Arc."

[20984071] |These statesmen might take counsel from William Robinson, author of "The English Flower Garden" -- the gardener's bible since 1883 -- who seems to have had a Jennifer Bartlett in mind when he wrote: "Unhappily, our gardeners for ages have suffered at the hands of the decorative artist when applying his `designs' to the garden. . . .
[20984072] |It is this adapting of absurd `knots' and patterns from old books to any surface where a flower garden has to be made that leads to bad and frivolous design -- wrong in plan and hopeless for the life of plants.

[20985001] |I read the exerpts of Wayne Angell's exchange with a Gosbank representative ("Put the Soviet Economy on Golden Rails," editorial page, Oct. 5) with great interest, since the gold standard is one of my areas of research.
[20985002] |Mr. Angell is incorrect when he states that the Soviet Union's large gold reserves would give it "great power to establish credibility."
[20985003] |During the latter part of the 19th century, Russia was on a gold standard and had gold reserves representing more than 100% of its outstanding currency, but no one outside Russia used rubles.

[20985004] |The Bank of England, on the other hand, had gold reserves that averaged about 30% of its outstanding currency, and Bank of England notes were accepted throughout the world.
[20985005] |The most likely reason for this disparity is that the Bank of England was a private bank with substantial earning assets, and the common-law rights of creditors to collect claims against the bank were well established in Britain.
[20985006] |By contrast, in 19th-century Russia an authoritarian government owned the bank and had the power to revoke payment whenever it chose, much as it would in today's Soviet Union.

[20985007] |The success of the British gold standard was due to independent private banking and common law, rather than the choice of gold for valuing the currency.
[20985008] |It is no coincidence that from 1844 to 1914, when the Bank of England was an independent private bank, the pound was never devalued and payment of gold for pound notes was never suspended, but with the subsequent nationalization of the Bank of England, the pound was devalued with increasing frequency and its use as an international medium of exchange declined.

[20985009] |The Soviet Union should keep these lessons in mind as it seeks to establish the ruble as an international currency.
[20985010] |One way to make the ruble into a major international currency would be to leave reserves of gold and earning assets in a Swiss bank with distributions based on Swiss laws.
[20985011] |Unless the laws determining the noteholder's rights to payment are independent of the issuer of those notes, however, a gold-based ruble would be as unsuccessful for the Soviets as it was for the czars.
[20985012] |Christopher R. Petruzzi

[20985013] |Professor of Taxation

[20985014] |California State University

[20985015] |Fullerton, Calif.

[20986001] |Wednesday, October 25, 1989

[20986002] |The key U.S. and foreign annual interest rates below are a guide to general levels but don't always represent actual transactions.

[20986003] |PRIME RATE: 10 1/2%.
[20986004] |The base rate on corporate loans at large U.S. money center commercial banks.

[20986005] |FEDERAL FUNDS: 8 3/4% high, 8 11/16% low, 8 3/4% near closing bid, 8 13/16% offered.
[20986006] |Reserves traded among commercial banks for overnight use in amounts of $1 million or more.
[20986007] |Source: Fulton Prebon (U.S.A.) Inc.

[20986008] |DISCOUNT RATE: 7%.
[20986009] |The charge on loans to depository institutions by the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

[20986010] |CALL MONEY: 9 3/4% to 10%.
[20986011] |The charge on loans to brokers on stock exchange collateral.

[20986012] |COMMERCIAL PAPER placed directly by General Motors Acceptance Corp.: 8.45% 30 to 44 days; 8.20% 45 to 67 days; 8.325% 68 to 89 days; 8% 90 to 119 days; 7.875% 120 to 149 days; 7.75% 150 to 179 days; 7.50% 180 to 270 days.

[20986013] |COMMERCIAL PAPER: High-grade unsecured notes sold through dealers by major corporations in multiples of $1,000: 8.55% 30 days; 8.45% 60 days; 8.40% 90 days.

[20986014] |CERTIFICATES OF DEPOSIT: 8.09% one month; 8.09% two months; 8.06% three months; 8% six months; 7.94% one year.
[20986015] |Average of top rates paid by major New York banks on primary new issues of negotiable C.D.s, usually on amounts of $1 million and more.
[20986016] |The minimum unit is $100,000.
[20986017] |Typical rates in the secondary market: 8.53% one month; 8.45% three months; 8.27% six months.

[20986018] |BANKERS ACCEPTANCES: 8.47% 30 days; 8.30% 60 days; 8.27% 90 days; 8.08% 120 days; 7.98% 150 days; 7.90% 180 days.
[20986019] |Negotiable, bank-backed business credit instruments typically financing an import order.

[20986020] |LONDON LATE EURODOLLARS: 8 11/16% to 8 9/16% one month; 8 9/16% to 8 7/16% two months; 8 5/8% to 8 1/2% three months; 8 1/2% to 8 3/8% four months; 8 7/16% to 8 5/16% five months; 8 7/16% to 8 5/16% six months.

[20986021] |LONDON INTERBANK OFFERED RATES (LIBOR): 8 11/16% one month; 8 5/8% three months; 8 7/16% six months; 8 3/8% one year.
[20986022] |The average of interbank offered rates for dollar deposits in the London market based on quotations at five major banks.

[20986023] |FOREIGN PRIME RATES: Canada 13.50%; Germany 9%; Japan 4.875%; Switzerland 8.50%; Britain 15%.
[20986024] |These rate indications aren't directly comparable; lending practices vary widely by location.

[20986025] |TREASURY BILLS: Results of the Monday, October 23, 1989, auction of short-term U.S. government bills, sold at a discount from face value in units of $10,000 to $1 million: 7.52% 13 weeks; 7.50% 26 weeks.

[20986026] |FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORP. (Freddie Mac): Posted yields on 30-year mortgage commitments for delivery within 30 days.
[20986027] |9.75%, standard conventional fixed-rate mortgages; 7.875%, 2% rate capped one-year adjustable rate mortgages.
[20986028] |Source: Telerate Systems Inc.

[20986029] |FEDERAL NATIONAL MORTGAGE ASSOCIATION (Fannie Mae): Posted yields on 30 year mortgage commitments for delivery within 30 days (priced at par) 9.68%, standard conventional fixed-rate mortgages; 8.70%, 6/2 rate capped one-year adjustable rate mortgages.
[20986030] |Source: Telerate Systems Inc.

[20986031] |MERRILL LYNCH READY ASSETS TRUST: 8.62%.
[20986032] |Annualized average rate of return after expenses for the past 30 days; not a forecast of future returns.

[20987001] |Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Richard Breeden told a congressional subcommittee that he would consider imposing "circuit breakers" to halt program trading at volatile times.

[20987002] |Mr. Breeden, in his first testimony to Congress since taking the SEC post, said the agency is studying the Friday the 13th market plunge, including how current circuit breakers affected the market that day and the following Monday.
[20987003] |After the study, the SEC would be willing to consider adding new circuit breakers or fine-tuning the current ones, he added.

[20987004] |Circuit breakers, designed to give the markets a breather in cases of sharp price movements, curb trading of futures or stocks at various trigger points.
[20987005] |At certain points during the Friday the 13th drop, circuit breakers kicked in on the futures market, slowing trading at times.
[20987006] |A circuit breaker that would have closed down the New York Stock Exchange wasn't tripped.

[20987007] |Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.), chairman of the House Telecommunications and Finance Subcommittee, is pushing the idea of a circuit breaker for computer-driven program trading in hopes that would curb "turmoil" in the marketplace.
[20987008] |He argued that program-trading by roughly 15 big institutions is pushing around the markets and scaring individual investors.

[20987009] |Mr. Breeden didn't reject the proposal.
[20987010] |After the SEC study of the drop is completed, he said, "I'm perfectly happy to work with this committee . . . in identifying whether we need other devices," such as a program-trading curb.

[20987011] |Mr. Breeden backed most of the provisions in a market-reform bill that the SEC brought to the subcommittee last year under then-chairman David Ruder.
[20987012] |The measure is expected to move through this Congress.
[20987013] |But the new chairman vehemently opposed a provision in the bill that would give the agency the right to close the markets at times of stress.

[20987014] |Mr. Breeden contended that uncertainty over when the SEC might act could worsen volatility in the markets.
[20987015] |He argued that the current circuit-breaker system allows investors to know "precisely when and where any trading interruptions will occur and how long they will last."

[20987016] |Mr. Breeden offered strong support for two other provisions in the bill.
[20987017] |One would force brokerage houses to provide the SEC detailed information about loans made by their holding companies.
[20987018] |Such loans often are used to finance leveraged buy-outs, and the agency is worried that a sharp market drop could create capital problems for the firms.

[20987019] |He also backed a rule to require large traders to report transactions on a systematic basis.
[20987020] |That information, he argued, is critical to reconstructing sharp market moves, such as the one nearly two weeks ago.

[20988001] |In a rare package sale of its real estate, K mart Corp., Troy, Mich., has sold 17 of its strip shopping centers to a limited partnership led by New York developer Philip Pilevsky, according to sources familiar with the transaction.
[20988002] |They estimate the value of the transaction at close to $100 million.

[20988003] |K mart officials and Mr. Pilevsky wouldn't comment on the sale.

[20988004] |K mart previously had announced it would report its third consecutive decline in quarterly earnings for the period ended yesterday, the same day the real estate deal was completed.

[20988005] |Analysts are estimating third-quarter earnings will drop between 13% and 20% to about 50 to 55 cents per share, compared with 63 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.
[20988006] |It is unclear what effect the sale of the shopping centers will have on earnings.

[20988007] |K mart developed the centers, which range in size from about 150,000 square feet to just over 250,000 square feet.
[20988008] |Most are anchored by a K mart store.
[20988009] |The retailer reportedly will lease its stores back from the developer, who plans to expand the small centers.

[20988010] |The centers comprise a total of about 1.6 million square feet of retail space.
[20988011] |They are spread around the country and include locations in California, Florida, Washington and Arizona.

[20988012] |Mr. Pilevsky, who heads Philips International Holding Corp., a New York-based real estate company, owns more than a dozen other shopping centers in which K mart is a tenant.
[20988013] |The company is active in office and residential development in New York.
[20988014] |However, nationally, Mr. Pilevsky controls through limited partnerships about 85 shopping centers with about 17 million square feet.

[20988015] |K mart runs 2,200 K mart stores, primarily in leased facilities.
[20988016] |The company typically sells the centers it develops, but has usually sold only one or several at a time.

[20989001] |Motorola is fighting back against junk mail.
[20989002] |So much of the stuff poured into its Austin, Texas, offices that its mail rooms there simply stopped delivering it.
[20989003] |Now, thousands of mailers, catalogs and sales pitches go straight into the trash.

[20989004] |"We just don't have the staff to {deliver} it, nor do we have the space or the time," says a spokesman for the Schaumburg, Ill., electronics company, which has 5,000 employees in the Austin area.
[20989005] |"It's the overload problem and the weight problem we have."

[20989006] |Motorola is in good company.
[20989007] |Businesses across the country are getting fed up with junk mail, and some are saying they just aren't going to take it anymore -- literally.
[20989008] |While no one has tracked how many company mail rooms throw out junk mail, direct-mail advertising firms say the number is growing.

[20989009] |General Motors earlier this year said it wouldn't deliver bulk mail or free magazines in its Flint, Mich., office, while Air Products & Chemicals, Allentown, Pa., says it screens junk mail and often throws out most of a given mass mailing.

[20989010] |Why the revolt?
[20989011] |Anybody with a mailbox can answer that: sheer, overwhelming, mind-numbing volume.
[20989012] |According to the Direct Marketing Association, total direct mail -- to both businesses and consumers -- jumped 50% to 65.4 billion pieces in 1988 from five years earlier.
[20989013] |Though direct mail to businesses isn't broken out separately, the association says it's growing even faster.

[20989014] |The deluge has spurred cost-conscious companies to action, with mail rooms throwing the stuff out rather than taking the time or money to deliver it.

[20989015] |The direct-mail industry, not surprisingly, is fuming at the injustice of it all.
[20989016] |After all, this is the industry that has a hard enough time getting any respect, that is the butt of so many jokes that television's "L.A. Law" portrays direct-mail-mogul David as short, bald, intensely nerdy, and unremittingly boring.

[20989017] |The practice of businesses throwing out junk mail "is a commonly known problem, and it's increasing as companies attempt to put through budget cuts across the board," right down to the mail-room level, says Stephen Belth, a list consultant and chairman of the Direct Marketing Association's business-to-business council.
[20989018] |"But it's like biting the hand that feeds them, because every one of these companies uses direct marketing."

[20989019] |It's almost impossible to track the number of companies trashing junk mail, since the decision is usually made in the mail room -- not the board room.
[20989020] |And the practice often varies from location to location even within a company.
[20989021] |But industry executives say businesses seem especially inclined to dump mailers sent to titles rather than to individual names.

[20989022] |Motorola's Austin operation was one of the first to lose patience, deciding a few years ago to junk any bulk mail that wasn't addressed to an individual.
[20989023] |Magazines aren't delivered at all, even if an individual's name is listed; employees who want their magazines have to pick them up from the mail room or the company library -- and are told to change the subscriptions to their home addresses.

[20989024] |At Air Products, meanwhile, the mailroom staff opens junk mail and often throws it away -- even if addressed to an individual.
[20989025] |"If they get 50 packets of something, they open one, see what it says, throw 48 away and send two to people or departments they think are appropriate," a spokesman says.

[20989026] |Direct marketers were especially alarmed when General Motors -- one of the country's largest companies and a big direct-mail user itself -- entered the junk-mail battle.
[20989027] |As of March 1, its Flint office, with about 2,500 employees, stopped delivering bulk mail and non-subscription magazines.
[20989028] |Employees were told that if they really wanted the publications, they would have to have them sent home instead.
[20989029] |The reason: overload, especially of non-subscription magazines.

[20989030] |Direct-mail executives see GM's stand as an ominous sign -- even if the junk-mail kings did bring it on themselves.
[20989031] |"Why anyone would want to close themselves off {from direct mail}, a priori, doesn't make any sense," says Michael Bronner of Bronner Slosberg Associates, a Boston directmail firm.
[20989032] |"It smacks of big brotherism.
[20989033] |They're going to decide what their employees can or cannot read."

[20989034] |The practice is, however, legal in most cases.
[20989035] |Jack Ellis, a U.S. postal inspector in New York, says the Postal Service's only job is to deliver the mail to the mail room; once it gets there, a company can do with it what it wishes.

[20989036] |The junk-mail titans, ever optimistic, are looking for ways around the problem.
[20989037] |So far, they say, it hasn't had any noticeable effect on response rates.
[20989038] |And before it does, they're trying to cut back on the clutter that created the situation in the first place.
[20989039] |Among other things, the industry is trying to come up with standardized business lists that cut down on duplications.
[20989040] |"We're going to have to mail a lot less and a lot smarter," says Jack Miller, president of Quill Corp., a Lincolnshire, Ill., business-to-business mail-order company.
[20989041] |But then again, mailing less and smarter won't be much help if the mail ends up in the garbage anyway.

[20989042] |New Hyundai Campaign

[20989043] |Hyundai Motor America, fighting quality complaints, declining sales and management turmoil, yesterday unveiled its 1990 ad strategy, tagged "We're Making More Sense Than Ever."

[20989044] |The ad campaign, created by Saatchi & Saatchi's Backer Spielvogel Bates agency, is an extension of the auto company's "Cars That Make Sense" campaign, which emphasized affordability.
[20989045] |TV ads plugging the company's new V-6 Sonata and its souped-up Excel subcompact will begin appearing Monday.

[20989046] |One spot shows a Sonata next to a rival midsized car, and an announcer says, "Listen to what they're saying about the Hyundai Sonata."
[20989047] |As the announcer reads favorable quotes about the model from Motor Trend and Road & Track magazines, the other car, which is white, slowly turns green.
[20989048] |"No wonder the competition's green with envy," the announcer says.

[20989049] |Ad Notes. . . .

[20989050] |ACQUISITION:
[20989051] |EWDB, formed by the merger of Eurocom and Della Femina McNamee WCRS, said it agreed to buy Vizeversa, an agency in Barcelona.
[20989052] |Terms weren't disclosed.

[20989053] |HOLIDAY ADS:
[20989054] |Seagram will run two interactive ads in December magazines promoting its Chivas Regal and Crown Royal brands.
[20989055] |The Chivas ad illustrates -- via a series of pullouts -- the wild reactions from the pool man, gardener and others if not given Chivas for Christmas.
[20989056] |The three-page Crown Royal ad features a black-and-white shot of a boring holiday party -- and a set of colorful stickers with which readers can dress it up.
[20989057] |Both ads were designed by Omnicom's DDB Needham agency.

[20990001] |Senate Democrats who favor cutting the capital-gains tax aren't ready to line up behind the leading Senate proposal.

[20990002] |Their reluctance to support the proposal is another blow to the capital-gains cut, which has had a roller-coaster existence since the beginning of the year, when it was considered dead and then suddenly revived and was passed by the House.

[20990003] |Nevertheless, Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood, the ranking GOP member on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, last night introduced his plan as an amendment to a pending measure authorizing U.S. aid for Poland and Hungary.

[20990004] |Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D., Maine) was confident he had enough votes to block the maneuver on procedural grounds, perhaps as soon as today.
[20990005] |Mr. Packwood all but conceded defeat, telling Mr. Mitchell: "I sense at this stage you may have the votes."

[20990006] |The two lawmakers sparred in a highly personal fashion, violating usual Senate decorum.
[20990007] |Their tone was good-natured, with Mr. Packwood saying he intended to offer the proposal again and again on future legislation and Sen. Mitchell saying he intended to use procedural means to block it again and again.

[20990008] |Although the proposal, authored by Mr. Packwood and Sen. William Roth (R., Del.), appears to have general backing by Republicans, their votes aren't sufficient to pass it.
[20990009] |And Democrats, who are under increasing pressure from their leaders to reject the gains-tax cut, are finding reasons to say no, at least for now.
[20990010] |A major reason is that they believe the Packwood-Roth plan would lose buckets of revenue over the long run.

[20990011] |The Packwood-Roth proposal would reduce the tax depending on how long an asset was held.
[20990012] |It also would create a new individual retirement account that would shield from taxation the appreciation on investments made for a wide variety of purposes, including retirement, medical expenses, first-home purchases and tuition.

[20990013] |"A number of us are not going to touch capital gains, IRAs or anything else unless it contributes to deficit-reduction," said Sen. Charles Robb (D., Va.), who is one of the 10 to 20 Democrats who the Bush administration believes might favor giving preferential treatment to capital gains.

[20990014] |President Bush has been hearing this kind of opposition first hand during meetings over the past two days with Democratic senators at the White House.
[20990015] |And at a luncheon meeting Tuesday of Democratic senators, there was outspoken opposition to cutting the capital-gains tax this year, according to participants.

[20990016] |The trend is making advocates of the tax cut less optimistic about success.
[20990017] |"There is a one-out-of-three shot of getting it this year," said Sen. David Boren of Oklahoma, a leading Democratic proponent of cutting the capital-gains tax.
[20990018] |He called the battle "uphill."

[20990019] |Other Democrats who favor a capital-gains cut are even more pessimistic.
[20990020] |"There will be no capital-gains bill this year," said Sen. Dale Bumpers (D., Ark.).
[20990021] |"I'm probably not going to vote for any capital-gains proposal.
[20990022] |The IRA portion (of the Packwood-Roth plan) is irresponsible."

[20990023] |Another significant factor in the capitalgains debate is the extent to which it has become a purely political battle between President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Mitchell.
[20990024] |Mr. Mitchell has made clear to his wavering colleagues that the issue is important to him personally.

[20990025] |Today, Sen. Mitchell and other leading Democrats plan to turn up the heat again by holding a news conference to bash the proposal.
[20990026] |Estimates requested by Sen. Mitchell from the Congressional Joint Taxation Committee show that the richest 100 taxpayers got an average benefit from the capital-gains differential of $13 million each in 1985, the last year for which figures are available.

[20990027] |White House officials acknowledged yesterday that Democrats still are reluctant to publicly express support for the Packwood-Roth capital gains proposal because they are loath to buck Sen. Mitchell.
[20990028] |As a result, the officials said they are open to making a variety of deals with Senate Democrats to win their support for a capital-gains tax cut.

[20990029] |Democrats asked in this week for discussions with President Bush have suggested ways of "tinkering" with the Packwood-Roth proposal, suggesting an interest in looking for a modified version they can back, one official said.

[20990030] |In addition, White House aides think that there are numerous other important measures Democrats badly wanted passed -- such as the scaling back of a controversial catastrophic health-care plan for the elderly -- that might provide the president leverage in cutting deals with Democrats.
[20990031] |A capital-gains tax cut might be paired with such measures to help ensure passage.
[20990032] |Other possibilities include a child-care initiative and an increase in the minimum wage.

[20990033] |If they can't secure immediate passage of a capital-gains plan, administration officials also aren't ruling out making a deal with Congress to put off a vote until a firm date in the future, even next year.
[20990034] |But the officials insist that such a deal on a future vote would have to apply to both the House and the Senate.

[20990035] |Gerald F. Seib contributed to this article.

[20990036] |Japanese immigration authorities said they found 658 more Chinese among Vietnamese boat people, bringing the number of Chinese trying to enter Japan by posing as Vietnamese refugees this year to 1,642.

[20990037] |Japan plans to send the Chinese back home and is negotiating with the Chinese government, a Justice Ministry official said.
[20990038] |The Chinese were among 3,372 boat people supposedly from Vietnam who arrived in Japan this year, compared with 219 for all of 1988, the official said.

[20990039] |The 658 Chinese, who have been in a refugee-assistance center, were sent to immigration facilities yesterday pending deportation to China, the official said.

[20990040] |On Sept. 13, Japan began a policy of screening boat people, accepting only those deemed to be political refugees.

[20990041] |Francoise Verne, 52-year-old former deputy director of France's mint, faces prison for her theft of some 67 rare coins from the mint's collections.
[20990042] |Second in command from 1979 to 1984, Mrs. Verne told a Paris court that the "great disorder" that reigned at the agency led her into temptation.
[20990043] |Before an inventory in 1984 that showed the "disappearance" of 944 coins valued at about 2.9 million French francs (about $465,000), there hadn't been any stock-taking since 1868.
[20990044] |Tony Lambert, Mrs. Verne's successor, says the mint's losses from the theft run into the hundreds of thousands of francs.

[20990045] |El Salvador is destroying more than 1.6 million pounds of food that had rotted in government warehouses, government officials said.
[20990046] |The state Supply Regulator Institute is to burn rice, corn and beans that spoiled because of neglect and corruption in the previous Christian Democrat government, a statement from the information service SISAL said.
[20990047] |During the past administration the foodstuffs were first bought by the institute, then sold at low prices to "unscrupulous businessmen" who resold them to the institute at inflated prices, the statement said.

[20990048] |A black-draped cruise liner sailed into Naples yesterday bringing 800 Libyans threatening vengeance if Italy refuses to pay compensation for more than 30 years of colonial rule.
[20990049] |Another 250 Libyans were already in Italy to stage a day of mourning for victims of Italy's colonial rule between 1911 and 1943, when Tripoli says Rome kidnapped 5,000 Libyans and deported them as forced labor.
[20990050] |Libya's revolutionary Committees have threatened attacks on Italians if Rome doesn't pay compensation.
[20990051] |But officials in Rome say the issue was legally resolved by a settlement between Italy and King Idris, deposed by Col. Muammar Gadhafi in 1969.

[20990052] |Canadian Indians are taking five countries to court in a bid to stop low military flights over their homes, the Dutch Defense Ministry said.
[20990053] |Representatives of the Inuit and Cree peoples living in Quebec and Labrador in northeastern Canada told the ministry of the planned action at a meeting, a ministry spokesman said.
[20990054] |They also wanted to prevent a NATO training base being built in the region, he said.
[20990055] |The action, in the Canadian Federal Court, will be against Canada, the Netherlands, West Germany, Britain and the U.S., the ministry spokesman said.

[20990056] |Japan suspended imports of French mushrooms after finding some contaminated by radiation, an official of the Ministry of Health and Welfare said.
[20990057] |Japan has been testing imported food from Europe since the April 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union, the spokesman said.
[20990058] |Since then, the ministry has announced 50 bans on food imports from European countries, including Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece and the Soviet Union.

[20990059] |The Venice city council is battling plans to tap huge gas fields off the coast that it says will speed up the city's slow sinking into its lagoon.

[20990060] |AGIP, the state-owned energy giant, made the announcement about the gas field last month.
[20990061] |Located six miles northeast of Venice, the field contains 875 billion cubic feet of methane gas-one-tenth of Italy's reserves.

[20990062] |Alarmed councilors say the project could jeopardize costly efforts to stop, or slow down, the subsidence that makes Venice subject to regular and destructive flooding.
[20990063] |The council unanimously opposed the idea of AGIP pumping out the methane gas and swiftly appealed to the company and to Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, who has yet to reply.

[20990064] |AGIP refused to reconsider and says drilling is due to start early next year.
[20990065] |"It's unlikely extracting the gas will cause subsidence," says a spokeswoman.

[20990066] |Thieves stole a 12th century fresco from an abandoned church in Camerino, Italy, by removing the entire wall on which the work had been painted, police said. . . .
[20990067] |West Germany's BMW commissioned the Nuremberg post office to test a prototype battery-powered car.
[20990068] |The vehicle has a top speed of 65 miles an hour and requires recharging from a standard wall socket every 100 miles.

[20991001] |Total Assets Protection Inc., rebounding from its earlier loss, expects to report earnings from operations of about $200,000 for the third quarter, J.C. Matlock, chairman, said.

[20991002] |Net income includes an extraordinary gain of about $100,000 from the reversal of bad debt and interest income.
[20991003] |Revenue was about $4.5 million.
[20991004] |In the 1988 third quarter, the company posted a net loss of $876,706, or 22 cents a share, on revenue of about $5.1 million.

[20991005] |Total Assets plans and designs computer centers, computer security systems and computer backup systems.

[20992001] |Regarding your Oct. 4 page-one article "Bad Blood" on the generic-drug battle: The Epilepsy Institute is not just a patient-advocacy organization.
[20992002] |It is primarily a certified outpatient treatment facility providing comprehensive services to people with epilepsy and their families.
[20992003] |The institute's advocacy efforts are based on the needs of the population it serves and represents.

[20992004] |In 1985, the Medical Tribune reported that a growing number of critics are challenging the FDA bioequivalence-therapeutic-equivalence equation.
[20992005] |"They contend it is based on an assumption that has not yet been proven in valid tests," the Tribune said.

[20992006] |In 1986, some institute patients were reporting breakthrough seizures when they were switched from a specific brand-name medication to a generic one or from one generic manufacturer of a specific product to another.
[20992007] |In addition, neurologists were beginning to report these observations as well.
[20992008] |Call it anecdotal if you will.
[20992009] |But no ethical physician would switch patients who were doing well on a specific medication from a specific manufacturer to prove a point.

[20992010] |We do not depend on pharmaceutical companies for our support.
[20992011] |The institute has governmental service contracts for the provision of direct patient services; collects patient fees; receives money through contributions from individuals, foundations and bequests.
[20992012] |The funds received from pharmaceutical firms are used to offset physician symposiums, and these symposiums do not stress any particular medication or manufacturer.

[20992013] |The Epilepsy Institute's reporting of breakthrough seizures stemmed from concerns about the people we treat and care about daily.
[20992014] |This perhaps was perceived as a "bold" stance, and thus suspicious.
[20992015] |But let us not confuse profits of big business masquerading as concerns for people's health care or for the cost.
[20992016] |For whom is the saving?
[20992017] |Surely not to people with epilepsy who depend on the same levels of medication in their bloodstream daily to maintain seizure control.

[20992018] |Reina Berner

[20992019] |Executive Director

[20992020] |Arnold M. Katz

[20993001] |Parker Hannifin Corp. said it agreed to sell its three automotive parts divisions to a management-led investor group for $80 million.

[20993002] |The buy-out group is headed by Paul R. Lederer, president of Parker's automotive group, and includes several other executives of the three divisions.

[20993003] |The units are the Edelmann, Ideal and Plews divisions.
[20993004] |Net sales for the units for the fiscal year ended June 30 were $135.6 million.

[20993005] |Parker officials said the company is selling the units to focus on its other businesses.

[20994001] |A volcano will erupt next month on the fabled Strip: a 60-foot mountain spewing smoke and flame every five minutes.

[20994002] |The man-made inferno will tower over a man-made lagoon with more than four acres of pools, grottoes and waterfalls.
[20994003] |Visitors, whisked from the Strip on a moving walkway, will glide over a habitat for rare white tigers, which will star in performances by the famed illusionist team of Siegfried & Roy.
[20994004] |Nearby, six dolphins will frolic in a 1.5 million-gallon saltwater aquarium.

[20994005] |At the core of all this stands a hotel.
[20994006] |In the lobby behind its nine-story, orchid-strewn atrium, a 20,000-gallon aquarium will come alive with sharks, stingrays, angelfish, puffers and other creatures of the deep.

[20994007] |And oh, yes.
[20994008] |There's a casino, the financial heart of it all.

[20994009] |This is the Mirage, a $630 million island-fantasy hotel-casino now being completed for opening in November by Golden Nugget Inc.
[20994010] |It's the most stunning example of Las Vegas's concerted effort to transform itself into a world-famous vacation resort for families as well as gamblers.
[20994011] |Las Vegas has seen nothing quite like it before.

[20994012] |Not for 15 years has a big new hotel-casino opened here.
[20994013] |Now the Mirage and Circus Circus Enterprises Inc.'s $290 million Excalibur are going up.
[20994014] |The Excalibur, with a castlelike hotel, jousting tournaments and other Arthurian attractions, will be able to handle up to 30,000 visitors a day when it opens in 1990.

[20994015] |If MGM Grand Inc. proceeds with its plan for an amusement park -- a $700 million movieland resort with a working studio, casino and 5,000-room hotel that would become Las Vegas's biggest -- the investment in the three properties will total some $1.6 billion.
[20994016] |MGM Grand has agreed to buy a 117-acre site for the resort for $93 million in cash plus stock currently valued at nearly $30 million.

[20994017] |Smaller projects swell the figure to at least $2.5 billion.
[20994018] |Still other projects that have been announced but not yet started could put expenditures above $3 billion over the next few years.

[20994019] |Stephen A. Wynn, who owns 29.4% of Golden Nugget's shares, says the Mirage and other projects will help Las Vegas attract a whole new generation of visitors.
[20994020] |"If you create a wonderment, if you create something so exciting that the public dreams of being part of it, then they'll come," he says.
[20994021] |The projects already under construction will increase Las Vegas's supply of hotel rooms by 11,795, or nearly 20%, to 75,500.
[20994022] |By a rule of thumb of 1.5 new jobs for each new hotel room, Clark County will have nearly 18,000 new jobs.
[20994023] |The county at the end of 1988 had 307,000 jobs, 95,400 of them in the tourist industry.
[20994024] |Projects in the talking or blueprint stage would add a further 48,000 rooms.

[20994025] |Hotel-casino operators play down the possibility of a labor shortage.
[20994026] |After all, 40,000 newcomers a year are settling in the Las Vegas Valley.
[20994027] |But Nevada state labor economists think a shortage is probable.

[20994028] |Nobody yet seems to have calculated the total number of slot machines, crap tables or roulette wheels Las Vegas will add to the enormous store that Lady Luck already guards here, much less the ultimate impact of the growth on schools and municipal services.

[20994029] |"Traffic is certainly a concern, as is pollution, water and an adequate labor market," says Frank Sain, executive director of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau.
[20994030] |City fathers have managed to push through projects that are crucial for tourist growth, such as the expansion of McCarran International Airport to accommodate the 44% of Las Vegas tourists who fly here.
[20994031] |This year, by one means of transport or another, more than 18 million people will visit the city.

[20994032] |The expansion will set off a marketing war among the big hotel-casinos.
[20994033] |Las Vegas promises, or threatens, to become a giant carnival, with rooms to be had for $45 a day or less, for visitors uninspired solely by gambling.
[20994034] |Amid a riot of jousting knights, circus clowns, gold-leaf centurions and creatures of the wild, lesser competitors will fall.

[20994035] |Caesars World Inc. plans to defend its august reputation by sinking $190 million into its opulent Caesars Palace, next door to the new Mirage, and adding a $100 million shopping area reminiscent of Rodeo Drive.
[20994036] |The Palace, with its marble fountains and toga parties for high rollers, is already well-known for its Caesarean theme.
[20994037] |The Flamingo Hilton, Imperial Palace, Frontier and others are pouring millions of dollars into facelifts, new room towers and casino floor space just to keep up.

[20994038] |Where's this huge amount of investment capital coming from?
[20994039] |Golden Nugget, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.'s first casino client, has borrowed on more than $600 million worth of mortgage notes, mostly sold to private investors by Drexel, to build the Mirage.
[20994040] |Other casino owners, Circus Circus among them, are financing their expansion with their own cash and revolving credit lines from local lenders such as First Interstate Bank of Nevada.

[20994041] |Will the investments pay off?
[20994042] |The growth of Las Vegas tourism in recent years persuades lenders that they will.
[20994043] |Casino revenues and hotel occupancy rates are high.
[20994044] |Last year, the tourists left $3 billion with the area's casinos, nearly 10% more than in 1987.
[20994045] |The people with a stake in Nevada's gambling industry believe that they have barely tapped the potentially huge family trade.

[20994046] |"If you build a better mousetrap, it will catch more mice," says Fred Benninger, chairman of MGM Grand.
[20994047] |Ellen Cokely, a tourist from Alton, Ill., seems inclined to agree.
[20994048] |"I'd love it if my daughter had something else to do here," says Ms. Cokely, watching seven-year-old Kristin on the water slide at the Strip's Wet 'n' Wild water park.

[20994049] |"Two generations ago, Dad came to Las Vegas by himself for a little diversion," says Van Heffner, executive vice president of the Nevada Hotel and Motel Association.
[20994050] |"One generation ago, Mom joined Dad.
[20994051] |Now, in the '90s, we're headed toward a total resort environment."

[20994052] |Only a decade or so ago, casino managers balked at in-room TV sets and other fripperies that distracted from gambling.
[20994053] |Casinos today offer bowling alleys, water parks, golf courses, tennis courts, lush swimming pools and other diversions, and more such facilities are being designed.

[20994054] |Despite the new emphasis on the family trade, however, tourists in search of naughtier fun than gambling seem certain to find it, with Las Vegas call girls remaining on the scene.

[20994055] |A serious economic downturn, pessimists observe, could hurt the expansionists.
[20994056] |For now, however, the naysayers' voices are drowned by the roar of cement mixers and the clanging of construction cranes along the Strip.
[20994057] |This is no place for pedestrians, but at 7:30 on a recent morning, when construction choked traffic at the famous Four Corners intersection to one lane, a taxi passenger found it faster to abandon the cab and walk to her destination.

[20994058] |The ferocious competition probably will drive some poorly managed properties into bankruptcy or new ownership.
[20994059] |It has happened before.
[20994060] |The Dunes, the Aladdin and the Riviera were all acquired by the present owners from bankruptcy proceedings spawned by the last recession, in the early 1980s.

[20994061] |Yet that hasn't discouraged investors.
[20994062] |Some have bought big chunks of Strip property for what may turn into another wave of building.
[20994063] |Atlantic City casino owner Donald Trump is scouting the Las Vegas market with an eye toward building an appropriately spectacular place.

[20994064] |Even before the huge new projects began, the Strip's recent expansion squeezed smaller competitors.
[20994065] |Many blue-collar customers of downtown's no-frills gambling spots have been lured to the Strip or to Laughlin, Nev., a Colorado River town catering to snowbirds and the recreational-vehicle crowd.
[20994066] |Hotel expansion and an influx of more-discriminating tourists have hurt motels.
[20994067] |Since 1979, the number of motel rooms has fallen by 17,000.

[20994068] |Many people here expect a room-rate war as the new projects open.
[20994069] |"There's probably going to be some pressure on occupancy and room rates over the next year, but after that you should see the market return to 80%-plus occupancy and regular rates," says Paul Rubeli, casino executive at Ramada Inc., which runs the Tropicana.

[20994070] |Skeptics wonder whether mega-resorts such as the Mirage will be able to squeeze a profit from their cash flow.
[20994071] |The Mirage will cost at least $1 million a day to operate.
[20994072] |Mr. Wynn seems confident that it will produce a healthy profit, but some securities analysts doubt it.
[20994073] |Competitors and analysts say that among large existing properties Bally Manufacturing Corp.'s Bally Grand hotel-casino probably will be hardest hit among major properties.
[20994074] |Bally officials decline to discuss the situation.

[20994075] |Bally bought the former MGM Grand hotel-casino from Kirk Kerkorian four years ago.
[20994076] |Only now is it undergoing a badly needed facelift.
[20994077] |Its parking lot is inconvenient, the MGM lion's-head logo still appears in places, and customers still call it the Grand, rather than the Bally Grand.
[20994078] |It has a "great location, but they're going to have some real problems when everyone around them opens," says Daniel Lee, a Drexel analyst.
[20994079] |Older properties that still have a 1950s image are also vulnerable.

[20994080] |Any hotel-casino without a strong identity will get whacked by the new competition, says Glenn Schaeffer, senior vice president of Circus Circus.
[20994081] |"If you don't know what you are, bigger won't make you better," he says.
[20994082] |"But it'll sure make you poorer."

[20994083] |Circus Circus's flagship casino has become the envy of competitors for its ability to vacuum cash from the pockets of vacationing families.
[20994084] |The Circus Circus lures them with low room rates, inexpensive buffets and entertainment for children at no extra charge.
[20994085] |The company's Excalibur will also appeal to families, of course.
[20994086] |Its castle, Mr. Schaeffer says, will be "the most compelling piece of folk architecture ever built."

[20994087] |Some casino owners have resisted the temptation to add rooms.
[20994088] |Instead, they are spending to reinforce the identity that they believe attracts their customers.
[20994089] |"More rooms aren't the answer for us," says Caesars World chairman Henry Gluck.
[20994090] |While his company's hotel is building a retail complex in Beverly Hills style and redoing existing rooms, it has decreased the number of its rooms.
[20994091] |Some have been combined into suites for the high rollers.

[20994092] |Caesars has made a specialty of catering to high rollers from abroad, who are also being aggressively courted by the Mirage, the Las Vegas Hilton and others.
[20994093] |Other, smaller concerns are also pursuing market niches -- Hawaiian tourists, for example, or the local trade.
[20994094] |"There's still room for boutique properties," says James Barrett, president of MarCor Resorts Inc.
[20994095] |Off the Strip, MarCor is building the Rio, a hotel-casino with a Brazilian theme and only 430 rooms -- all of them suites.

[20994096] |Despite the proliferation of tourist distractions, Las Vegans haven't forgot that gambling is still what the town is all about.
[20994097] |"The days when when the thrust of casinos was all high rollers, with no windows and clocks and lots of red and black decor, are gone," Mr. Sain of the visitors' bureau says.
[20994098] |"But 93% of tourists still come for gambling.
[20994099] |We can't lose sight of that.

[20995001] |NORTH SIDE SAVINGS BANK directors declared an initial dividend of 10 cents a share, payable Dec. 5 to stock of record Nov. 21.
[20995002] |The Floral Park, N.Y., thrift has a strong capital-to-assets ratio, said Vice President Michael D.N. Confer.
[20995003] |At Sept. 30, the thrift, which converted to a stock form of ownership from a mutual form in April 1986, had more than four million shares outstanding.

[20996001] |ARTICLE I, SECTION 7, CLAUSE 2:
[20996002] |Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it.
[20996003] |If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. . . .

[20996004] |ARTICLE I, SECTION 7, CLAUSE 3:
[20996005] |Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

[20996006] |President Bush told reporters a few months ago that he was looking for the right test case to see whether he already has the line-item veto.
[20996007] |Vice President Quayle and Budget Director Darman said recently they've joined the search.
[20996008] |On Tuesday, the subject came up again when Marlin Fitzwater explained the constitutional argument based on the provisions above to the White House press corps.

[20996009] |President Bush doesn't have any provision in mind, but line-item-veto bait will be like earthworms at midnight in the coming Continuing Resolution.
[20996010] |The harder question is whether anyone yet understands that Mr. Bush's fight for his constitutional prerogatives is about politics as much as it is about law.

[20996011] |We have been persuaded by the constitutional argument for the inherent line-item veto since 1987, when lawyer Stephen Glazier first made the case on this page.
[20996012] |The 1974 budget "reform," passed over President Nixon's veto, took away the presidential impoundment power, thereby introducing monstrous CRs and eviscerating the presidential veto.

[20996013] |Mr. Glazier discovered that the Founders had worried that Congress might take the President out of the loop.
[20996014] |Article I, Section 7, Clause 3 says that whether it's called an "order, resolution or vote" or anything else, Presidents must have the chance to veto.
[20996015] |Labeling an omnibus budget a "bill" can't deprive the President of his power to veto items.

[20996016] |Finding a test case shouldn't be hard, but there is something to be said for picking the best one possible.
[20996017] |The White House had the perfect case, but Congress blinked before it could go to court.
[20996018] |After the HUD and S&L stories broke, some Congressmen began to worry that their influence peddling at executive-branch and independent agencies might some day get them in trouble.
[20996019] |They worried about an Interior Department directive to log all communications with Members or their staffs.
[20996020] |Congress inserted the following into the Interior appropriation: "None of the funds available under this title may be used to prepare reports on contacts between employees of the Dept. of the Interior and Members and committees of Congress and their staff."

[20996021] |The White House warned that this would be an unconstitutional usurpation of its power.
[20996022] |When it threatened to use this provision as the test for a line-item veto, Congress caved.
[20996023] |The fear Congress has of any line-item-veto test led Members to add the single most contorted and ridiculous provision this year, "This section shall be effective only on Oct. 1, 1989."
[20996024] |This means Interior contacts cannot be logged only on one day -- a Sunday that had already passed.

[20996025] |If the White House is looking for another unconstitutional bill, Rep. John Dingell is trying again to raise the Fairness Doctrine from the dead.
[20996026] |President Reagan vetoed this as a First Amendment violation.
[20996027] |The "Fairness" Doctrine's enthusiasts are incumbents in the House who know the rules squelch lively discussions on broadcasts, deterring feisty challengers.
[20996028] |There are also other provisions requiring Congressmen to join treaty-negotiating teams and new restrictions on OMB.

[20996029] |Unconstitutional bills make good legal targets, but the line-item veto is better understood as a political opportunity than as mere fodder for lawyers.
[20996030] |Commenting on the budget mess this week, President Bush said: "The perception out there is that it's the fault of Congress.
[20996031] |And you can look to the leadership and ask them why that is the perception of the American people."
[20996032] |Exactly right.
[20996033] |Now's the time to make the political case that Presidents need the line-item weapon to restore discipline to the budget.

[20996034] |Congress is in no position to naysay Mr. Bush now that we're into Gramm-Rudman's sequestration.
[20996035] |Just this week, the House-Senate conference met -- 231 conferees, divided into 26 different subconferences.
[20996036] |Senator Daniel Inouye agreed to close some bases in Hawaii in exchange for such goodies as $11 million for a parking lot at Walter Reed Hospital.
[20996037] |Conference negotiator Rep. Bill Hefner pulled down $40 million in military bases for North Carolina and graciously allowed Senator James Sasser $70 million for bases in Tennessee.
[20996038] |President Bush should take the Constitution in one hand and a budget ax in the other and get to work.
[20996039] |He should chop out both unconstitutional provisions and budget pork.
[20996040] |Congress may have lost any sense of discipline, but that doesn't mean the country must learn to live forever with this mess.
[20996041] |President Bush has the power to change how Washington works, if only he will use it.

[20997001] |Troubled SCI Television Inc. proposed to restructure much of its $1.3 billion in debt to buy time to sell assets and pay its obligations.

[20997002] |The leveraged buy-out firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., which owns 46% of the common equity of SCI TV, indicated in the debt plan that it would reduce its equity stake to 15%, giving the rest of its stake to bondholders in the restructuring.

[20997003] |KKR also signaled to the company's creditors that Henry Kravis and other KKR directors of SCI TV would resign from the board once the restructuring is completed and forgo their voting rights.

[20997004] |Holders of SCI TV's $507 million of high-yield junk bonds are being asked to forgive a lot of debt in exchange for taking a 39% equity stake in SCI TV.
[20997005] |They immediately termed the proposal inadequate and said the restructuring would not solve the company's problems.

[20997006] |"I think the current plan is sufficiently flawed in a sufficient number of bondholders' eyes that substantial revisions will be required to get it done," says analyst Craig Davis of R.D. Smith & Co. here.

[20997007] |Investors interpreted the KKR move as a desire by the firm to wash its hands of SCI TV.
[20997008] |But a spokesman for KKR says that with only a 15% equity stake, it wouldn't be appropriate for KKR to keep board representation.

[20997009] |KKR already has made about $1 billion of gains from earlier transactions with SCI TV, thus it isn't significantly affected by the company's troubles.

[20997010] |SCI TV, which is controlled by Nashville, Tenn., entrepreneur George Gillett, owns six TV stations, including several CBS Inc. affiliates.
[20997011] |It is having trouble meeting its debt payments because of heavy borrowing in 1987 for a leveraged buy-out.

[20997012] |Through investment banker Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., SCI TV is offering to exchange three classes of junk bonds for packages of new bonds and equity that investors value at ranges from 20 cents to 70 cents on the dollar.
[20997013] |KKR would give up a 31% equity stake to bondholders, while Mr. Gillett would surrender an 8% stake.
[20997014] |While one big SCI TV investor thinks that's pretty generous, many junkholders had been hoping that KKR and Mr. Gillett would invest new money in SCI TV.
[20997015] |Those investors think SCI TV needs new equity to survive.

[20997016] |SCI TV's debt restructuring plan would defer payment of $153 million of bank debt.
[20997017] |It also would defer interest and principal on junk bonds that have fallen due; the grace period for paying the bill expires Nov. 16.

[20997018] |At the same time, investors estimate the restructuring would cut the company's annual cash interest bill from about $90 million to $85 million.
[20997019] |Yet to pay that interest bill, analysts say SCI TV will only produce about $80 million to $90 million of cash flow a year.

[20998001] |Office Market Weakens In Overbuilt Northeast

[20998002] |THE NORTHEAST office market is feeling serious aftereffects of the giddy overbuilding of the 1980s.

[20998003] |Foreclosures and other signs of financial distress, most often associated with the real estate market in the Southwest, are surfacing in the suburban office market of the once thriving Northeast.

[20998004] |Some projects are now in the hands of lenders, including a 425,000-square-foot office facility in Little Falls, N.J.
[20998005] |The owners of a 32-acre hotel and office complex in King of Prussia, Pa., have advertised for new financing.
[20998006] |Rising office vacancy rates in Fairfield County, Conn., have builders and bankers scrambling to restructure loans.
[20998007] |And in suburban Boston, developers are bracing for cutbacks in the computer industry, a major user of office space.

[20998008] |Many troubled properties haven't been foreclosed on and are hard to identify, says Albert I. Berger, who heads the Secaucus, N.J., office of Helmsley-Spear Inc., a real estate brokerage.
[20998009] |Owners are voluntarily -- and quietly -- turning over properties to lenders through "deeds in lieu of foreclosure."
[20998010] |Often, developers stay on as property manager.

[20998011] |Real estate analyst Lloyd Lynford says the Northeast's distress is masked by relatively low vacancy rates.
[20998012] |But in today's overbuilt market, tenants have many choices and are negotiating low rents that squeeze building owners.
[20998013] |On average, Mr. Lynford says, it now takes three to 3 1/2 years to fill new office space, compared with 2 1/2 years in 1988.

[20998014] |Beverly Hills Comes To Suburban Tokyo

[20998015] |WHY SHOULD the Japanese cross the Pacific to buy American real estate when they can simply recreate it at home?

[20998016] |Tokyu Development Corp. is spending $500 million to build American-style luxury homes in suburban Tokyo with rarely seen back yards, front yards, swimming pools and tennis courts.

[20998017] |The Japanese company hired Richardson Nagy Martin, a Newport Beach, Calif., architectural firm, to design what the Japanese press has dubbed "the Beverly Hills of Tokyo."
[20998018] |Instead of Japan's typical small homes clustered on narrow streets with no sidewalks, the new "One Hundred Hills" development will offer 65 houses on half-acre lots.
[20998019] |That's more than 10 times the usual housing site size.

[20998020] |Buyers with $6 million to spend can select from 11 designs, including a Mediterranean-inspired California style, a traditional Yankee look and designs inspired by Midwestern architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
[20998021] |There are spacious living rooms and baths, plus a master grandparents suite and a foyer for removing shoes to suit Japanese life styles.

[20998022] |Exteriors are faced with brick, wood or stone, but the homes are made of steel-reinforced concrete.
[20998023] |"We were disappointed we couldn't use wood," says architect Walter J. Richardson, "but the Japanese only want stronger materials."
[20998024] |At $1,000 per square foot, the Japanese want the feeling of indestructibility, he explains, not to mention protection from possible earthquake damage.

[20998025] |Housing Developers Try Brand-Name Buildings

[20998026] |RESIDENTIAL builders, faced with a more competitive market, are turning to a traditional consumer marketing technique to establish brand-name identity.

[20998027] |"One of the difficulties people in real estate have is that each product is like starting a new company, or starting a new line in the fashion business," says L. Robert Lieb president of Mountain Development Corp. in West Paterson, N.J.
[20998028] |So he's using "river" in many project names.
[20998029] |"It'll never be like what Bristol-Myers does," he adds, "but it helps establish recognition with the public -- and with banks."

[20998030] |Weingarten-Siegel Group Inc. of Manalapan, N.J., has built Cross Creek Pointe, Allegro Pointe and other Pointes in New Jersey.
[20998031] |Caspi Development Corp of Armonk, N.Y., has developed two apartment buildings called Classic and plans a third.
[20998032] |Developer Steve Caspi says the same brand name indicates consistent quality, "regardless of location, design or amenities."

[20998033] |The leader in real estate brand names is developer Ara Hovnanian.
[20998034] |His entry-price condos are labeled Society Hill.
[20998035] |Beacon Hill is for "move-up" town houses, and Nob Hill, for single-family houses.
[20998036] |Because of standardized designs, Mr. Hovnanian says, "a buyer can visualize Society Hill regardless of where it is."

[20998037] |Quake Not Likely to Jolt The Commercial Market

[20998038] |THE EARTHQUAKE in San Francisco has sent few tremors through the hearts of real estate investors.

[20998039] |"I think there's a disease called buyer's regret, and I'm sure it's running rampant at this moment, but it gets cured in a short period of time," says Kenneth Leventhal, co-managing partner of Kenneth Leventhal & Co., a Los Angeles accounting firm specializing in real estate.
[20998040] |"If I were buying a building in San Francisco now the first thing I'd do is insist on a structural inspection, then I'd delay a little, stall a little."

[20998041] |But like other real estate professionals accustomed to California's quake risks, Mr. Leventhal anticipates little long-term change in the city's commercial real estate market.

[20998042] |Still, local builders are eager to tell the world that most of San Francisco doesn't look like the TV images of destruction.
[20998043] |Planners of the Urban Land Institute real estate conference this week hastily added a panel on the quake's effects.
[20998044] |"The message is we build'em right," says Peter Bedford, a California developer and officer at Urban Land Institute.
[20998045] |"There's seven million square feet of space that's doing great.

[20999001] |HEALTH CLUBS gear up for a graying clientele.

[20999002] |Although their ads picture curvy young people in skimpy outfits, club owners know the future lies with the lumpier over-40 set.
[20999003] |"It's a misconception that physical fitness is something for the young and middle-aged," says Michael Pacholik, sales manager of the LA Fitness club, Diamond Bar, Calif.
[20999004] |About 10% to 15% of members at Atlanta's Holiday Espre Center are elderly, says Gerald Williams, fitness consultant.
[20999005] |"Most want cardiovascular conditioning . . . the No. 1 way of reducing risk of heart disease."

[20999006] |The Association of Quality Clubs, which puts 1988 industry revenue at $5 billion, surveyed the health-conscious over-40 market and found that 43% exercise regularly.
[20999007] |Michael Hays, head of ProBody Fitness, notes an industry "wash" is in progress.
[20999008] |"Clubs need to be run like restaurants where every square foot makes a dollar," he says.
[20999009] |Older people help profits by filling in "downtime."
[20999010] |He adds: "The medical market and the fitness market parallel each other and are going to cross real soon."

[20999011] |People on fixed incomes get a break at Espre; over 55 wins a 45% discount at Anaheim Imperial Health Spa.

[20999012] |"HOT" TOPAZ sparks regulator, jeweler concern over import of irradiated stones.

[20999013] |A committee of gem dealers investigates the source of some "hot" blue topaz stones recently reported by a Hong Kong jewelry manufacturer.
[20999014] |In the U.S., radiation limits are set and monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses reactors that process the topaz.
[20999015] |The agency is working on licensing importers but doesn't currently monitor imports.
[20999016] |Topaz, a translucent mineral that is often whitish when taken from the ground, can be turned blue by irradiation, which transforms it into a gemstone that looks like an aquamarine.

[20999017] |"The {stones} that were irradiated in the U.S. are safe," says John Hickey, chief of the NRC operations branch, Washington.
[20999018] |"We believe that the vast majority of imported material is safe.
[20999019] |But there is a small risk that some were imported with high radiation levels."
[20999020] |Mr. Hickey added that the stones found in Hong Kong are thought to carry double the U.S. radiation limit, although he noted that double or even triple the U.S. limit is "still in the range of safe levels."
[20999021] |Some jewelers have Geiger counters to measure topaz radiation.

[20999022] |CAPITAL TRAVELS to Europe as 1992 unification nears.

[20999023] |Boston's Advent International raises $230 million from U.S. pension funds and other institutions to invest in Europe.
[20999024] |Other venture capitalists are already there: MMG Patricof Group and its Alan Patricof Associates, New York; Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co., Boston; and San Francisco's Hambrecht & Quist have about $800 million to invest in European companies.

[20999025] |European venture capital funds total about $14 billion and are expected to continue growing 35% annually.
[20999026] |Continentals believe that the strongest growth area will be southern Europe.
[20999027] |Spain and Italy are most often mentioned as the future economic hot spots.
[20999028] |Favored ventures include media, telecommunications and retailing.
[20999029] |Most popular acquisition method: the leveraged buy-out.

[20999030] |Family-owned firms that need cash to grow are attractive, says John Turner of Matuschka Gruppe, Munich.

[20999031] |AN AIDS DIRECTORY from the American Foundation for AIDS Research rates and reviews educational materials.
[20999032] |"Learning AIDS" lists films, pamphlets, brochures, videos and other educational data.
[20999033] |The distributor is R.R. Bowker, New York.

[20999034] |SUSPECT "SALES" ads are challenged by the Better Business Bureau of Metropolitan New York.
[20999035] |The bureau found that only two of six New York furniture stores could prove their presale prices were higher.

[20999036] |DRACULA'S BUSY this time of year, but a visit to his Transylvania castle is part of a Chicago-based Unitours trip in the spring, presumably the count's off-season.

[20999037] |RADIO MALAISE draws the ear of the Federal Communications Commission.

[20999038] |AM radio, which has been losing listeners to FM channels since the 1970s, approaches the 1990s with a diminished voice.
[20999039] |But it may have a good listener in Washington.
[20999040] |The FCC plans to hear a day of testimony Nov. 16 on the plight of AM radio.
[20999041] |The commission believes that improving AM service would broaden listening selections and increase options for advertisers.
[20999042] |The issues are also thought to be important to the FCC's new chairman, Alfred Sikes, a former AM broadcaster in his native Missouri.

[20999043] |The FM radio band, considered technically superior because it can carry stereo broadcasts, has cornered the airwaves for delivering music.
[20999044] |AM stereo remains largely undeveloped because it lacks a uniform delivery system.
[20999045] |The National Association of Broadcasters in June adopted an agenda for revitalizing AM radio that includes, among other things, pursuing further FCC action on selecting an AM stereo standard and seeking a law requiring all stereo receivers to include AM stereo.

[20999046] |Listeners turned to radios run on batteries for news when the San Francisco earthquake and Hurricane Hugo cut power lines.

[20999047] |BRIEFS:
[20999048] |A Modern Healthcare magazine article says 40% of surveyed executives admitted falling asleep during formal presentations. . . .
[20999049] |Lee Co., the jeans maker, celebrates its 100th anniversary with a hardcover yearbook featuring photos of its 10,000 employees.