January 6, 1994

IN Robert Wilson's loft in TriBeCa, everything is exactly in place: furniture, sculpture and artifacts from his operas and plays. Bare light bulbs glare down on a carpetless concrete floor. By his design, there are no doors in the apartment, only passageways 20 inches wide. The effect is that of a post-modern museum. Moving among his possessions and identifying them, Mr. Wilson is a walking Acoustiguide, stopping longer before some displays for more extended commentary. Years ago, when his father visited the apartment, he asked him how he could live there. "It's like being in prison," his father said. "None of the chairs are comfortable." His son replied, "Comfort is a state of mind."

When Federated Department Stores became Macy's senior creditor Friday, it set in motion what may be the last of the spectacular fights over failed leveraged buyouts. The alliances are still fluid, and there are many scenes left to play, but the leading characters are taking their places on the stage. ALISON LEIGH COWAN MACY'S MANAGEMENT Once part of the Federated team, Myron E. Ullman 3d, 47, has held senior posts at R.H. Macy & Company since November 1988, where he has struggled to live down doubts about his abilities as a financier-turned-merchant. Now the chairman and chief executive, Mr. Ullman has reacted coolly to Federated's keen interest in Macy; he wants credit for saving a beloved New York institution himself. His aim is to convince creditors that he can draft a stand-alone plan of reorganization as good as any a suitor like Federated might offer. Failing that, he might split off Macy's Northeastern stores as a separate entity, with him at the helm.

As Sarajevo staggered through the heaviest bombardment in months, France pressed the United States to join Western Europe in military intervention to prevent the war in Bosnia from spreading. The United States has shown no sign of wanting to become more involved. But France, arguing that NATO's credibility is at stake, is insisting that the issue be discussed when leaders of the 16 NATO nations meet next week in Brussels.

Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., an unreconstructed New Deal liberal from Massachusetts who rose to become Speaker of the House for 10 years, died last night at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He was 81 and lived in Washington and Harwich Port, Mass. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, said a statement released by his family.

The Mexican armed forces pressed their counterattack on peasant guerrillas today, sending rocket-equipped planes and helicopter gunships into the hills after the retreating rebels. Just outside San Cristobal de las Casas, the second-largest city in the state of Chiapas, military planes that had bombed the guerrillas on Tuesday attacked today with rockets and machine guns on a hillside where the only people in evidence were local peasants and journalists in well-marked vehicles, some of whom were nearly hit.

Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary was in her office in November when Dan Reicher, a top aide, pulled her out of a meeting and told her he had disturbing news. "I just found out about experiments you should know about," Mr. Reicher said. "People were injected with plutonium back in the 1940's. There's a newspaper in New Mexico that's about to lay out the whole thing."

After a long internal debate on Russian policy, President Clinton plans to go to Moscow next week urging continued tough economic reforms, officials said today. But they added that he will also offer some new ideas about how Western aid can be used to retrain Russian workers and cushion those left unemployed by economic change.

Furor Over Fetal Ovaries A British scientist set off an international furor by suggesting that ovaries from aborted fetuses be implanted in infertile women. Page A16. A Deal With North Korea Clinton Administration officials said the North Korean Government had accepted international inspections of its nuclear sites. Page A12. Higher Interest Rates Seen Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen predicted that short-term interest rates would rise. Page D1. Congress Taxes Itself A 1992 energy law will leave members of Congress owing more taxes than they may think. Page D20.

When the State Attorney General's office reported last summer that electromagnetic fields from high-voltage power lines above the Woodmere Middle School were among the strongest recorded at any school in New York, anxious parents swung into action. Petitions were circulated, school board members were grilled and meetings with utility company officials were organized, all in an effort to learn more about the fields and their links, if any, to cancer. "You had a lot of angry parents," recalled Sherry Einaugler, president of the Parent-Teachers Association at the school, where a steel transmission tower sits in the parking lot, about 100 feet from the main entrance.

METRO DIGEST CUOMO PROPOSES INCENTIVES FOR GROWTH Sounding election-year themes for a state recovering from a lingering recession, Governor Cuomo proposed incentives to encourage job growth, including cutting taxes on real-estate developers, corporations and hotels. A1. In his State of the State Message, Mr. Cuomo sought to outflank the Republicans who want to hang him this election year from the twin nooses of joblessness and crime. News Analysis. B6.

City Council Speaker Peter F. Vallone, now the most powerful Democrat at City Hall, said yesterday that he would resist any attempt by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to give more power to borough presidents or turn over city work to private companies without proof it would save money. The decentralization of government and the privatization of some city services have been cornerstones of the new Mayor's agenda. But the Speaker drew the line on those issues, even as he laid out a legislative agenda that on some other fronts was striking for its appeal to the same middle-class voters that swept the Republican-Liberal Mayor into office.

While the titans of department-store retailing are squaring off to battle for R. H. Macy & Company's stores, the co-manager of an unusually brazen mutual fund is busy trying to line up their shots. As a manager of the fund that wields the biggest stick among Macy's creditors -- Fidelity Investment's Capital and Income Fund -- Daniel Harmetz is being courted by rival retailers at the same time that he is wooing others to join the fray.