August 24, 1994

Anybody old enough to remember the days before the personal computer is also old enough to remember when Paul Brainerd, founder and chairman of the Aldus Corporation, coined the term "desktop publishing" and helped turn every marketing assistant, account manager and college student into a self-styled publisher. Ten years later, desktop publishing is a $2 billion industry. Now, with Aldus expecting to complete a $500 million stock-swap merger next week with another leader in the field, Adobe Systems Inc., the companies hope together to achieve similar success in the emerging market of "electronic publishing."

Health care legislation is hanging by a fraying thread. Eleven months after President Clinton proclaimed a bold -- and complex -- proposal to guarantee health insurance to all Americans, the last clear legislative path toward that goal seems to be closing. Last Friday's bipartisan proposal by the self-styled "mainstream coalition," which seemed to pro-Administration Democrats to offer a welcome basis for negotiation, looks less encouraging today after the group's Republican leader, Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, continued to present it in all but "take it or leave it" terms.

After largely shielding New York City's Police Department from his budget knife, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani announced unexpectedly yesterday that he would delay for two months the start of the next two classes of recruits at the Police Academy. The Mayor, who had opposed such a step during budget negotiations with the City Council last spring, said it would save about $10 million in salaries and pension costs for a total of 1,600 trainees. The first of the two classes was to start next Monday.

The New York State Attorney General, G. Oliver Koppell, said yesterday that he would oppose the proposed merger of R. H. Macy & Company and Federated Department Stores Inc. unless Federated agreed to sell all 12 Macy's stores in the New York metropolitan area, including the chain's fabled store in Herald Square. In a statement that stunned Federated and could bog down the effort to bring Macy out of the bankruptcy proceedings that have already stretched more than two years, Mr. Koppell said he had concluded that the proposed combination would decrease competition in the New York department store market, inevitably resulting in higher prices and fewer shopping choices for New Yorkers.

After months of uncertainty, the Blockbuster Entertainment Corporation said late yesterday that its board had voted unanimously to recommend that the company be sold to Viacom Inc. The proposed sale would involve a swap of Viacom's securities for Blockbuster's stock at the same terms that Blockbuster had initially accepted in January.