August 14, 1995

Not many people would stand all night in a damp field with a shotgun for a companion. But this is the season of the potato thief in rural Russia, so Maria Petrovna is taking no chances. After putting in a 16-hour day tending her animals (a cow, some chickens, a few pigs), baking bread, making cheese, culling the vegetable garden and chopping a little wood, the 68-year-old Mrs. Petrovina slips out of the three-room house she shares with the cattle and heads into the gathering darkness.

The Republican-led Congress that left town last week for its summer recess heads home rightly boasting that it has made as much progress toward setting a Federal budget as Democrats made by this time of year when they ruled Capitol Hill. But this is no ordinary year, or garden-variety budget. Rather, it is the cornerstone of Republican fiscal policy, the first of seven budgets intended to erase the annual Federal deficit by 2002. Yet despite some progress in cutting spending this summer, even some Republicans are beginning to fear that their first year's effort on the budget will fall victim to the clock and the irresistible pressures of re-election politics.

Carol Perry, acting chief of staff for the Newark school district, has estimated that cleaning up and repairing the neglected buildings of the state-run system could cost between $4 million and $7 million, The Associated Press reported.

Turner's Quest for Network Now Leads to Microsoft The media world is watching yet another effort by Ted Turner to acquire a network. In his quest to assemble financing for a bid for CBS, the head of the Turner Broadcasting System recently met with William H. Gates, Microsoft's chairman, to discuss an investment in Turner, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. Mr. Turner has already enlisted the help of Michael Milken, the financier, to work up a bid for CBS, which has agreed to be sold to Westinghouse for $5.4 billion. He is also trying to negotiate a purchase of King World Productions that could provide cash for a run at the network. [ Page D2. ] When Discarded Books Survive McGraw-Hill expected a company called Guaranteed Destruction to live up to its name and destroy tons of unwanted textbooks in 1993. But McGraw-Hill contends in a lawsuit that the company sold trailer-loads of the books to intermediaries who funneled them into the campus book trade. [ D7. ] For Jerry Garcia, Electronic Grieving The Internet pages dedicated to The Grateful Dead rock group, known as the Dead Web, have been extraordinarily busy since the death of Jerry Garcia, the group's leader. The speed at which Dead Web pages memorialized Garcia was a testament to the passion of his fans and the ease with which such pages can be updated. Taking In the Sites. [ D8. ] Tiring of the Name Game The company in charge of assigning "domain names" -- the Internet equivalent of vanity plates -- has wearied of the disputes about who gets to use what name in cyberspace. So it is requiring registrants to indemnify it against lawsuits. Peter H. Lewis: On Line. [ D5. ] A Client-Stoked Consolidation Fever Cisco Systems' plan to buy Combinet underscored the consolidation process going on in the networking industry, a response to corporate clients' desire for bigger suppliers rather than a variety of vendors. [ D5. ] How to Strike It Rich On the Internet Marc L. Andreessen, the 24-year-old co-founder of Netscape Communications, became the newest member of Silicon Valley's instant millionaires club when the company went public last week. While his continued wealth is not guaranteed, his story offers six guidelines to overnight wealth. [ D5. ] This "browser" product of Netscape's -- what does it do, anyway? [ D5. ] Scientology's Secrets on Line The Church of Scientology is battling a band of dissidents who have used the Internet to transmit its secret scriptures globally. [ A12. ] Praise for NBC's Olympic Deal After NBC agreed to pay $1.27 billion for the TV rights to the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, and the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, the reaction by rival networks lacked the usual heavy-duty attacks decrying the folly of overpaying for sports events. Bill Carter: Television. [ D7. ] The Poverty Gap Among Children A study shows that poor children in the United States are poorer than the children in most other Western industrial nations. [ A9. ] Tobacco Marketing Under Siege Plans to curtail smoking by teen-agers include new limits on cigarette marketing that would have a profound impact on magazine and outdoor advertising and on store promotions. The rules could affect trademarks and brands that the companies have spent billions to develop. Advertising. [ D6. ] A British Paper Stumbles The Independent newspaper of Britain is floundering, beset by a recent recession, the rising cost of newsprint and a price war instigated by Rupert Murdoch. [ D7. ]

Some of biggest names in the computer industry sent separate letters to the White House last week in pre-emptive moves aimed at a proposed regulation originally intended to insure that law-enforcement officials have access to encoded telephone and computer communications. The proposal may be released as soon as this week. But as the Government's task force on the encryption issue prepared to disclose the closely held details of the proposal -- the latest version of a measure revealed more than three years ago but subsequently reconsidered in the face of industry opposition -- unexpected divisions emerged from the last-minute, scattershot lobbying.