April 8, 1993

The Financial Accounting Standards Board put corporations and their top executives on notice yesterday that starting in 1997 it plans to require companies to take a charge against earnings when they grant stock options. But it left the door wide open for companies to continue issuing gargantuan option awards without harming earnings for three more years. Through 1996, companies would only be expected to estimate in their footnotes what profits would look like if the charge was immediately taken.

The Justice Department asked a Federal judge today to dismiss at least temporarily a series of criminal charges accusing Clark M. Clifford, an imposing Washington presence for half a century, and his protege, Robert A. Altman, of deceiving banking regulators. The department said it had no choice because the judge had refused to postpone the trial, set for June 1. The motion filed with Judge Joyce Hens Green asks that the Federal bank fraud charges against the two be dismissed. But the department said it might bring even broader charges later in the case involving the scandal-ridden Bank of Credit and Commerce International and how it gained influence in the United States.

Ten buildings, including the three main exhibition halls, have been totally reconstructed. Displays for animals from local pigeons to Southeast Asian jungle fowl have been completed, and a new sea lion pool has been fashioned in the center of the main concourse. Early Monday morning, work crews will change all the locks at the zoo in Prospect Park, preparing to transfer it later that day from the city, which oversaw a rebuilding that took nearly five years, to the New York Zoological Society.

THE road south from Missoula, Mont., passes a 60-mile strip of ready-to-sell log homes, assembled in simple shapes, the way a child would fashion a set of Lincoln Logs. The freshly built homes do little to prepare a visitor for the extraordinary log house down the road, the 76-year-old lodge at the Chief Joseph Ranch. Indeed, this lodge is no log cabin. A diverse combination of arches, cables and dormers, set off by logs placed vertically and horizontally, adds an elegance to log-home design that is seldom seen. The house is a log mansion, really, but it is still cozy. A 42-pound bobcat, which likes to snooze by the fire and sometimes leap onto the shoulders of unsuspecting guests, brings the wild surroundings indoors. The ranch is nestled in the foothills of the Bitterroot mountain range along Montana's border with Idaho.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson withdrew today as a candidate to be executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People amid indications that he could have suffered a humiliating defeat had he remained in the race. Since he emerged as a candidate late last year, board members have been heatedly debating among themselves whether Mr. Jackson would be a suitable person to lead the association. The issue was whether his highly charged style would bring a needed jolt to a staid organization or overwhelm it.