November 4, 1994

Drawn by the fresh curves of some 1995 vehicles and the reduced prices on 1994 models, customers continued to flock to new car dealerships in October, buying 8.9 percent more cars and light trucks than were sold during the brisk period a year earlier, the auto makers reported today. During October, the first month of the 1995 model year, sales of cars rose 2.9 percent, to 738,221, while sales of light trucks -- pickups, mini-vans and sport utility vehicles -- rose 18.8 percent, to 525,285.

Oliver Mayer's "Blade to the Heat" is a one-alarm play, but it is getting a four-alarm production at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. It begins with the growling of wild beasts and ends with a boxing match as brutal as you are likely to see on a stage. In between, the lights throb, the bloodthirsty crowds roar and two drummers, as if possessed, beat a mad tattoo on the congas. Flashbulbs rip holes in the darkness, already fouled by clouds of smoke. Even the scene changes are explosive: the stagehands seem to be running for their lives.

The Federal Trade Commission gave conditional approval yesterday to Eli Lilly & Company's $4 billion purchase of PCS Health Systems, the nation's biggest prescription drug benefit company, and made clear that it would keep similar deals under surveillance for possible antitrust violations. In a consent order, Lilly agreed to keep the PCS system, which it is buying from the McKesson Corporation of San Francisco, open to drugs made by competitors. Lilly will also build a "fire wall" to prevent it from competing unfairly by obtaining pricing information submitted to PCS by other drug makers.

When Edgar S. Woolard Jr., chairman and chief executive of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, delivered a speech by satellite to the company's Asian offices recently, not once did he mention Japan, which accounts for half of the chemical giant's Asian sales. Mr. Woolard instead gushed on about new opportunities in China and elsewhere in the Far East, to the annoyance of company employees in Japan. More and more, American companies seem to be less mindful of Japan, lured instead by faster-growing, less-developed markets in China and elsewhere in Asia. Japan is perceived as an already mature market in which it is expensive to operate, with strong domestic competitors and numerous regulations and other barriers.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry was pitching hard, but Prince Sultan was unreceptive. After a late-night banquet of roasted meats and exotic fruit juices at the Saudi Defense Minister's palace in Jidda last month, the talk turned to money.