August 2, 1995

The NATO allies today extended the protection of Western air power to all the so-called safe areas in Bosnia, including Sarajevo, warning that attacks on the enclaves would meet a "firm and rapid" bombing campaign. The decision to broaden the Western threat against rebel Serbs' aggression reflected a growing sense among the allies that the recent show of Western resolve may be succeeding.

Only a short time removed from persistent predictions of their imminent demise, the broadcast networks have become the hottest properties in the media marketplace. Many analysts predicted that yesterday's $5.4 billion deal by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation for CBS Inc. was only a prelude to a bidding war for that network. And coming just a day after the Walt Disney Company agreed to take over Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion, the Westinghouse move was widely interpreted as part of a sudden hunger for network acquisition.

When Laurence A. Tisch announced the sale of CBS Inc. to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation yesterday, he was beaming. Nine years after taking the job of chief executive at the network, the billionaire Mr. Tisch had orchestrated a $5.4 billion deal that made the Loews Corporation, his family-controlled company, $1 billion richer. But Mr. Tisch may very well have been smiling as much from relief as from joy. His venture into the media world ended up tarnishing, not burnishing, his reputation. And that, according to many of Mr. Tisch's friends, is a bitter pill for a man who gives away millions of dollars in philanthropy and who took the top job at CBS to enhance his power and broaden his legacy.

Like European royal families, culinary terms tend to mutate wildly, so that today's embodiment often provides little hint of the character of the original. Salad, for example, derives its name from the day when some long-lost Roman epicure sprinkled a bit of salt over a head of romaine and called it herba salata, or "salted greens." Today the meaning of the word has become so broad that many dishes that come under its escutcheon, like pasta salad and potato salad, bear scant resemblance to that primal leafy snack. But in the heat of summer, when appetites are best satisfied by something that has spent as little time as possible between garden and plate, salads of fresh, crisp greens have an undeniable visceral appeal.

Declaring that "this Congress is on the wrong track," President Clinton lashed out today at the 104th Congress as the captive of polluters and gun lobbyists. And he threatened to veto the bill that pays Congress's administrative expenses unless it makes faster progress in passing Federal spending bills to his liking. At the same time, Mr. Clinton repeated his hope that he can yet find "common ground" with the Republican majority on Capitol Hill on welfare overhaul, campaign finance reform and a balanced budget, and said that the challenge of doing so has "not been debilitating, it's been invigorating." [ Excerpts, page A12. ]