August 19, 1994

With 13 years of false starts behind them, the creators of New York City's Holocaust memorial said yesterday that they would finally be able to start building the museum this fall in Battery Park City, at the tip of Manhattan, overlooking the potent symbols of Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Critical new financing -- indeed, half the construction cost -- would come from the Battery Park City Authority, under a lease that was signed yesterday. The gray granite museum is to cost about $15 million.

President Clinton and Democratic Congressional leaders emerged from a hastily arranged White House meeting today with what aides said was a compromise that could gain enough Republican converts to rescue the crime bill and win House passage by early next week. At the same time, various groups of House Republicans were setting their own terms for a deal with Mr. Clinton, but it appeared that the White House was resisting any broad compromise and seeking instead to win just enough Republican votes to allow the President to win a narrow victory.

In a report that analysts said reflected a recovering global economy, the Commerce Department reported yesterday that the nation's monthly trade deficit fell slightly in June. The 1.6 percent decline, to a seasonally adjusted $9.37 billion, from $9.51 billion in May, was primarily due to larger exports, which rose to a record level in June.

The management of I.B.M. has urged the company's 110,000 workers in the United States to fight for the defeat of two Democratic health-care bills in Congress. The memo, believed to be the first of its kind for a company with a tradition of keeping politics out of its communications with employees, was sent over the I.B.M.'s internal electronic mail network on Monday. It came from the company's vice chairman, Paul J. Rizzo, with the approval of the chairman, Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

To the Americans it is an albatross, an economic liability and a threat to global security that must be rendered untouchable or destroyed. But to the Russians it is, as one official put it, "a national treasure," to be husbanded now and to produce boundless energy for future generations. The object of these clashing views is prime, bomb-grade plutonium, produced during the cold war by each side at enormous cost in money, health and environmental damage. With the arms race winding down, huge stocks of plutonium are coming out of bombs -- during the next decade at least 50 tons each in the United States and Russia, American officials say. In Russia, that comes on top of plutonium stocks accumulated for use in power plants.

In a campaign in which tax cuts have emerged as both a promise and a political weapon, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo today pledged a second installment in the cuts enacted this year, saying he wants to reduce the state tax burden as much as $1.5 billion more over several years. The announcement was the latest in a series of dueling tax cut promises from the three men running for Governor. Mr. Cuomo's two Republican rivals today portrayed his proposal -- which contained no specifics and was essentially a pledge to develop a plan -- as hollow electioneering. His main rival, George E. Pataki again used the opportunity to attack Mr. Cuomo over the state's tax rate, though he himself has released only the barest details of his own plans.

Rivalry turns to cooperation when a woman is uncertain as to which of two boyfriends fathered her child.

Boatmen's Bancshares of St. Louis said yesterday that it would buy the Worthen Banking Corporation, the largest bank in Arkansas, for $595 million in stock. The Stephens family, one of the most powerful in Arkansas and longtime backers of President Clinton, own 26 percent of Worthen's stock. As a result of the acquisition, the family will now own 4.3 percent of Boatmen's.

O .K. So this was the summer you would save money by forgoing a half-share on the Jersey shore or a rental in Columbia County. You'd get by on the generosity of friends, you reasoned last spring. And you could take advantage of a deserted metropolis where museums and movie theaters could be enjoyed on weekends without fuss. But invitations to weathered cottages and sandy bungalows have dried up, you've overdosed on culture and all New York City stretches before you like a sea of concrete. Admit it: You'd kill to hear a cricket.

John H. Gutfreund, once one of the most powerful men on Wall Street, has lost more than $5 million of his own money, and probably will lose a lot more before he is done dealing with the aftermath of the Treasury bond bidding scandal that cost him his job as chairman and chief executive of Salomon Inc. In sharp contrast to the normal fate of ousted chief executives, Mr. Gutfreund got almost nothing from Salomon after he left three years ago. Although the company announced that he resigned -- which he insists was the case -- it now maintains he was fired and adds that he should have been fired for cause. As a result, Salomon even decided to seize the stock options and restricted stock he had received in prior years.

When Congress last year was blocking final Government approval of a genetically engineered hormone that had cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, the drug's maker, the giant chemical concern Monsanto, turned for advice to a man renowned for his skills as a legislative strategist. When Sun Diamond Growers, the California agribusiness, organized a dinner earlier this year to retire the Congressional campaign debt of Henry Espy, brother of Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, it called on one of the most prolific fund-raisers in the history of the Democratic Party.

A group of moderate senators announced agreement on a health care bill straddling the center of the debate, but offered no details. Page A20.