June 8, 1994

The Justice Department will not, for the time being, oppose I.B.M.'s efforts to end a 1956 Federal court order restricting its business operations, the Government's top antitrust lawyer told a Federal judge in Manhattan yesterday. I.B.M. plans later this week to seek repeal of the 38-year-old rules, which among other measures require the company to provide computer services as an entirely separate business from the company's computer manufacturing and sales operations.

A day after ending merger talks with Electronic Data Systems, the Sprint Corporation confirmed today that it was negotiating a multibillion-dollar alliance with the state-owned telephone companies of France and Germany. Although Sprint would not discuss specific figures, people familiar with the discussions said that France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom were seeking to invest a total of about $4 billion in Sprint, the third-largest American long-distance carrier.

SEATED comfortably on a red leather banquette at the Russian Tea Room, Mikhail Zhvanetsky, Russia's most famous living satirist and comedian, stopped briefly between bites of his beef Stroganoff one day late last month. He smiled. "This dish reminds me of how Americans speak Russian," he said. "I know what it's supposed to be, but I don't understand it." Mr. Zhvanetsky (pronounced jeh-vah-NYET-skee) had just flown from Moscow for a 12-city tour of the United States. The first show, on May 27 at Carnegie Hall, was sold out: 2,800 seats for a performance entirely in Russian. Many New Yorkers may be surprised, but not the 300,000 Russian-speaking people who live in the region.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani vowed yesterday to move ahead with a plan to fingerprint welfare recipients, despite an agreement between Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and the State Legislature that would exclude New York City from a pilot program involving 12 counties. Mr. Giuliani, who says such a system would reduce welfare fraud, maintained that fingerprinting did not amount to a change in welfare eligibility standards and therefore did not need state approval.

Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and legislative leaders said tonight that they had finally cobbled together the last details of the $34 billion state budget in a deal that reflected both the revival of New York State's fiscal health and the political needs of a difficult election year. Sixty-eight days after the legal deadline passed, Mr. Cuomo and the leaders of the State Senate and the Assembly had reached agreement on one last issue: exactly how much the state would increase assistance to schools and local governments. Lawmakers returned to the session late tonight to begin debating the package, and were expected to finish voting early Wednesday.

Interactive television may be years away from entering the home, but its advent away from home is another matter. A growing number of airline passengers will soon be able to sit back and press the buttons of a computer system that will offer them many of the entertainment options of their living rooms, the business capabilities of their offices and real-time information on where to pick up their baggage and at what gate to make a connecting flight. Northwest Airlines already has such a system -- including Nintendo games -- in place on several jets, and it plans to add more planes in the coming months. United Airlines is putting a competing system on its wide-body fleet. British Airways and Singapore Airlines have similar plans. And passengers can play video mah-jongg on China Airlines.

The price of the Revlon Worldwide Corporation's $1.1 billion in junk bonds has slid almost 15 percent since March, raising the eyebrows of traders who specialize in high-yield and "distressed" securities. The bonds have become so cheap that some are wondering why there has been no move to buy them back by Ronald O. Perelman, whose Mac Andrews & Forbes investment group owns Revlon Worldwide and its operating subsidiary, the Revlon Consumer Products Corporation.

ACCORD IS REACHED ON BUDGET IN ALBANY Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders said they had cobbled together the details of the $34 billion state budget in a deal that reflected both the revival of New York State's fiscal health and the political needs of an election year. A1. With a $1.5 billion surplus to spread about like election-year tonic, there were winners and lesser winners. News Analysis, B4. SCHOOLS FIND SPACE IN UNUSUAL PLACES Most of the children who squeeze into the elementary schools of District 24 in southwest Queens, the most crowded in New York City, seem not to realize that they are learning under extraordinary circumstances. But for their teachers and administrators, life is a scramble of workarounds and compromises. A1. NEW YORK CITY SYMBOL OF BLIGHT SHOWS PROGRESS Nothing symbolized quite so powerfully the problem of urban blight in the 1980's as the pictures of curtains and potted plants that were placed on the windows of abandoned apartment buildings in the Bronx. Now, 563 of the apartments in a once-devastated area have been renovated in Crotona Park West. B3. SCHOOL FOE OF 'RAINBOW' TO RESIGN Mary A. Cummins, the Queens school board member who came to prominence as a vocal opponent of a multicultural curriculum that taught tolerance for homosexuals, said she would resign her board seat. B3. HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER KILLS 2 A Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, woman and her 4-year-old daughter were killed by a hit-and-run driver as the mother, holding on to her daughter with one hand and a bag of groceries with the other, tried to cross a busy residential street. B3. A VIRULENT BACTERIUM MAKES A COMEBACK A highly virulent strain of streptococcal bacteria, often referred to in popular accounts as "deadly, flesh eating bacteria," is making a comeback in the United States, experts say. C11. The City Council is challenging the Mayor's plan to crack down on food vendors. B2. Hasidic Jews are said to have abandoned plans to settle a lawsuit against the city. B4. Mayor Giuliani defended the hiring of four relatives to positions in his administration. B4. REGION ARMAND D'AMATO FIGHTS VERDICT A lawyer for Armand P. D'Amato, Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato's brother, told an appeals court that his client's conviction for mail fraud represented an abuse of prosecutorial power. B6. AGREEMENT WILL END TOLLS ON 2 ROUTES Legislative leaders in Albany have agreed to terminate the 25-cent tolls on the Hutchinson and Saw Mill River Parkways. B6. SENATE LEADER BACKS PART II OF TAX PLAN Ending the only remaining political suspense over whether Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey would have her way on Part II of her promised income-tax cut, the President of the State Senate publicly endorsed the idea. B6. 2 FAVORITES ARE NOMINATED FOR SENATE The two major candidates for party nominations for the United States Senate easily defeated their lesser known challengers in primary elections in New Jersey. B6. About New York by Michael T. Kaufman B3

It is the city that never sleeps versus the city that never wins. Houston, whose Rockets will play host to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night in the opening game of the National Basketball Association finals, is desperate for its first-ever, bona fide world-class championship -- and an intangible measure of world-class, major-league respect to go with it.

IF Oscars were awarded for cooking, Joachim Splichal would have to bunk out in his garage to make room for them in the house. The chef of Patina, a French-California-style restaurant on the fringe of the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles, and Pinot, a casual bistro in the Studio City section, Mr. Splichal has won over that fame-propelled city with his electrifying and highly personal food. "You know, cooking in a restaurant is a lot fancier than cooking at home, but the basics are really the same," said Mr. Splichal (pronounced SPLEE-shahl), while assembling ingredients for a four-course dinner at Pierre Franey's house on eastern Long Island. No sooner had he spoken than the phone rang. It was his wife and partner, Christine, calling from Los Angeles to update him on the two restaurants. Although the couple have received more press than the chardonnay grape in recent years, they continue to exude the zeal of beginners.

City and state officials have begun examining sites other than the South Bronx as a home for a new Yankee Stadium, at the request of team officials who say fans are staying away from home games because of concerns about safety in that neighborhood. Officials said last night that 8 to 10 sites in all 5 boroughs are under study, including the rail yards on the West Side of Manhattan, where Gov. Mario M. Cuomo had earlier proposed building a stadium over the tracks.

UNDER the Agriculture Department's regulations for school lunches, a school that substitutes yogurt for meat loses its Government reimbursement for the cost of the food. And while it is possible to buy fat-free, salt-free tortilla chips to serve with salsa, schools are not reimbursed for them either, because the rules prevent the use of any kind of chips.