July 20, 1994

Railroads may have built this country, but it looks like mutual funds are its future, as Kansas City Southern Industries announced yesterday that it was selling its century-old railroad business to concentrate on financial services. In a deal that at today's stock prices is worth about $1.6 billion, the Illinois Central Corporation will buy Kansas City Southern's railroad using 21.2 million shares of its stock and assuming $929 million of debt. If approved by Federal regulators, the merger will create the country's eighth-largest railroad by revenues, said George W. Edwards Jr., president of Kansas City Southern Railway.

Suggesting that he was ready for compromise on health care legislation, President Clinton today softened his call for insurance coverage for all Americans, saying 95 percent or 98 percent might do. One day after the National Governors' Association declined to endorse his proposal that employers pay much of the cost of their workers' insurance, Mr. Clinton repeated his willingness to consider other ways to pay for coverage. But he said his advisers had found serious problems with other methods they had studied, and he repeated his contention that making employers pay was the fairest and most efficient way to finance expanded coverage.

With the debate over reducing the country's welfare rolls focusing renewed attention on the rising birthrate among unwed women, the Census Bureau reported today that the number of children living with a parent who had never married -- a reflection of out-of-wedlock births -- soared by more than 70 percent from 1983 to 1993. According to the bureau, 6.3 million children, or 27 percent of children under the age of 18, lived in 1993 with a single parent who had never married, up from 3.7 million in 1983.

Twelve men have walked on the moon: some of them look at how it changed their lives. Page A14.

"SHE said it looks like Fido food. Ask her." "I'd never say a thing like that. You said it."