March 11, 1991

The temptation to wave the flag in ads seems nearly irresistible now -- companies like the General Motors Corporation and Delta Air Lines Inc. are already using patriotic themes -- but many agency executives said in recent interviews that trying to capitalize on the victory in the Persian Gulf war was a mistake. "It is inappropriate to use the war as a selling tool," said Stephen Novick, an executive vice president and co-creative director at Grey Advertising. "Most consumers are going to see right through the gimmick, and they are bound to view it as pseudo-patriotic."

In a top-secret dispute, Federal experts are divided over whether the thousands of nuclear arms the nation deploys in Europe are as safe as they should be from sabotage and theft. The rift comes at a time of political tensions created by the Persian Gulf war, with American nuclear forces in Europe on high-level alert against terrorist attack.

Trying to put pressure on the directors of the NCR Corporation to negotiate a friendly merger, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company said yesterday that it was willing to raise its offer to $100 a share, if NCR would drop its objections to the deal. But NCR quickly responded negatively and reasserted that it would perform better as an independent company.

Negotiators for the unions at The Daily News and Robert Maxwell, the British publisher who wants to buy the strikebound newspaper, bargained all day yesterday and into today as they faced a 10 A.M. deadline set by Mr. Maxwell. George E. McDonald, the head of the Allied Printing Trades Council of Greater New York, a union umbrella group, said at 10 P.M. that several unions appeared to be close to a settlement, but he would not name the unions. Earlier in the day, the negotiators reworked wording that had threatened to derail the talks.

Seton Hall closed out one of the most competitive seasons in Big East history yesterday and made some school history of its own by trouncing Georgetown, 74-62, at Madison Square Garden to win its first Big East tournament championship. Making their first appearance in the championship game, the Pirates handed Georgetown steady doses of its own medicine by playing suffocating interior defense on the 6-foot-10-inch Alonzo Mourning and the 7-2 Dikembe Mutombo, and forcing Georgetown to try to win with its inconsistent perimeter shooting.