February 1, 1993

Companies A remarkable week in American corporate history ended with an about-face by American Express's chairman, who resigned just days after winning a board room battle. The turmoil at American Express, along with significant shifts at I.B.M., Westinghouse and Sears, signaled a shift in which shareholders are gaining more leverage over executives. [ Page A1. ] As Harvey Golub assumes the chief executive's job today at Amerian Express, he inherits several critical cases from James D. Robinson 3d. [ D1. ] Revlon's No. 2 executive is expected to step down. Insiders say Michael Hammond will be succeeded by George Fellows, a senior executive at Colgate-Palmolive. [ D1. ]

For the second time in a week, the American Express board meets today to choose a chairman. The leading candidate, Richard M. Furlaud, is poised to join the growing ranks of chairmen who are not also chief executives -- the better to oversee their companies' activities. In an interview last night, Mr. Furlaud stressed that the next American Express chairman should exercise oversight while entrusting direct management to the new chief executive, Harvey Golub. "The nonexecutive chairman is not the boss," said Mr. Furlaud, a former president of Bristol-Myers Squibb. "He or she should not be involved in running the business." Revolt by Major Shareholders On the recommendation of Mr. Furlaud, who leads the board's nominating committee, the board decided last Monday to promote Mr. Golub, then the company's president, but keep James D. Robinson 3d as chairman. The board also gave Mr. Robinson command of the Shearson Lehman Brothers brokerage subsidiary.

Twenty-six years ago, hundreds of black children from Hartford stepped onto buses to go to schools in five nearby towns. They were pioneers, the first to take part in Project Concern, one of the nation's earliest voluntary desegregation programs between a city and its suburbs. The buses still run, yet Hartford's schools are far more racially segregated today. And so Project Concern finds itself at the heart of a lawsuit challenging the racial and economic segregation dividing Hartford from its suburbs, asking a judge to order what good will has not accomplished.

In all the tales of sudden death in New York, there are always the salient facts: the strange, sad circumstances of the final encounter, the grim details of weapons and wounds, the history of a life tragically cut short. There are such facts about the life and death of Aurea Bonnie Vargas. She grew up in a small town in Puerto Rico. She attended schools there and in New York. She became a bilingual teacher of handicapped children. She was 41 years old, unmarried and living at 202 Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side. And she was killed last Friday when she stepped from her door, was seized by a fleeing bank robber and was shot through the heart in a hail of police bullets.

The Dallas Cowboys turned a close game into a rout so quickly, so decisively, so painfully for the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVII today that all the Bills could do was sing a familiar refrain: Wait till next year. The Cowboys certainly won't have to. In achieving a 52-17 victory before 98,374 fans at the Rose Bowl, they made a mockery of the Buffalo no-huddle offense, the Buffalo no-tackle defense, the Buffalo no-hold-on-to-the-football performance that marked this spectacle of what was supposed to be a close game between two talented teams.

Alan Greenspan, the habitually cautious chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, appeared to have read the election returns when he gave a surprisingly strong endorsement last week to President Clinton's plans to stimulate the economy. In suggesting that the President's stimulus package was not too large and his longer-term deficit reduction plan not too small, Mr. Greenspan seemed to signal an era of camaraderie with the new President. This should make life easier for Mr. Clinton by reducing the chances of interest rate increases and for Mr. Greenspan by reducing the criticism he faces. The harmony might also head off Congressional efforts to exert more control over the Fed.

On an icy winter morning at the Livingston Income Support Center in Brooklyn, a handful of men and women sat in a back corner of the office listening quietly as city workers explained a new requirement for those seeking public assistance. "Do you have a satisfactory ongoing relationship with a doctor?" one worker asked Hyacinth Maryshaw, 36. "No," Ms. Maryshaw answered.

The angry sound bites of the New York City mayoral election are months away, but for more than a year a quiet campaign has been busily afoot: the race for millions of dollars to make it all possible. The candidates' cash says much about them and their strategies for winning. Mayor David N. Dinkins, though scarred by three tumultuous years in City Hall, is also flush with the powers of incumbency, and it shows in his most recent fund-raising reports, released last month.

For someone who has just lost more than $640 million, Jean-Luc Lagardere looks singularly sprightly. The eyes of the ebullient chairman of Matra-Hachette still twinkle, and he remains a man with a ready smile. But Mr. Lagardere, a flamboyant businessman, has changed after making a disastrous attempt to take Hachette into the television business. In place of the fast-talking entrepreneur of a few years ago who was busy buying magazines in the United States and planning a worldwide media empire, a quieter man now fiddles occasionally with worry beads on his desk, and says:

Koreans Block Nuclear Visit Stirring concern that it is still seeking to develop nuclear arms, North Korea has rebuffed a request by the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect two sites. Page A9. The Right Girds for Battle Emboldened by the furor over President Clinton's proposal to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military, the Christian right is organizing for other battles. Page A14 Clues in Campaign Cash New York City's mayoral election is months away, but the millions the candidates have raised say much about them and their strategies for winning. Page B1. Israel Arrests 3 Americans Israel detained three Americans, saying it suspected them of links to a militant group whose leaders have been a focus of deportations. Page A2.

Ireland this weekend gave up its fierce battle to maintain the strength of its currency, handing another big victory to speculators and leaving Europe's battered monetary system facing another test of its ability to survive. The devaluation of the Irish pound, announced late on Saturday in Brussels after an emergency meeting of European Community monetary officials, brought to 5 the number of major European currencies -- there are 10 altogether -- that have been devalued or taken out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism since September.

In the end, the burdens were more than the Buffalo Bills could bear. There was the weight of failure in the previous two Super Bowls and the weight of expectations for Super Bowl XXVII yesterday. And if that wasn't enough, the Dallas Cowboys quickly brought their own pressure to bear, forcing nine Buffalo turnovers as they humiliated the Bills, 52-17.