March 14, 1996

Steve Forbes, the publishing magnate who had challenged the Republican establishment on Capitol Hill with his call for a radical restructuring of the tax system, will drop out of the race for the Republican Presidential nomination today, his campaign manager said yesterday. Mr. Forbes's decision came after he had spent $25 million to $30 million of his personal fortune, a record amount, in a quixotic quest for his party's nomination. In the end, he managed to win a mere 71 Republican convention delegates, less than 10 percent of the 996 needed to prevail. Calculated against the cost of his campaign, Mr. Forbes spent $352,112 to $422,535 for each delegate he gained.

LIVING in other people's houses, with other people's things, has been the main domestic arrangement of my adulthood. It feels oddly natural, maybe because the first other-people's house any of us lodge in is that of our parents. We live with their taste before we know what taste is; we allow them to choose our clothes and dress us. Whatever they believe home is -- a faux Versailles, or a tumble-down trailer -- remains, for a while anyway, what we believe home should be. Some of us never transcend this infantile state, and construct some sort of grand philosophy around our failure to become our own parents -- that is, to stay in one place and furnish it. I've been working vaguely at a philosophy for the last 15 years. In that period, while calling a series of rented houses in Massachusetts home base, my husband and I have lived three years in Kyoto, a year in Washington, a year in Rome, a year in London, a year in Reykjavik, Iceland, and two years in Paris. And thanks to the heroic flexibility of the college where we both teach, we'll soon be leaving Massachusetts for a year in Paris again.

A man carrying four handguns stormed into a school here this morning and opened fire on a gym class filled with 5- and 6-year-olds, killing 16 children and a teacher, and reserving a final bullet to take his own life. Twelve more children from Dun- blane Primary School were wounded, three critically, the police said.

A fourth candidate has entered the race to fill Mr. Zimmer's seat. Mayor David Del Vecchio of Lambertville said yesterday that he would join a field that already includes Rush Holt of Hopewell, Carl Mayer of Princeton Township and Richard Walling of East Brunswick.

The dean of New Jersey's Congressional delegation, Marge Roukema, announced yesterday that she would endorse Richard A. DuHaime, a longtime ally, in his bid for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate. She said that her decision to support Mr. DuHaime, director of the Passaic County Freeholders, was not meant as a swipe at a fellow Congressman, Representative Richard A. Zimmer of Delaware Township. Representative Roukema said Mr. DuHaime earned her endorsement because of the close support he and his wife, Anne, who is the Mayor of Bloomingdale, have given her over the last dozen years, especially in three key primary races. Most major state Republicans have endorsed Mr. Zimmer, who is seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Bill Bradley.

It is probably the last place on earth that blue-chip American corporations would turn for advice: a suite of second-floor offices in a low brick building near an elevated subway line in the South Bronx, the home of the inspector general of the New York City School Construction Authority. But legal experts say the authority has developed one of the most promising anticorruption programs to arise in years, one that offers fresh ideas to a corporate community that is facing a host of new pressures to police its own ranks.

One of the nation's major tobacco companies broke ranks yesterday and agreed to settle a huge class-action lawsuit, exposing cracks in the powerful industry alliance that has battled antismoking cases for decades. The Liggett Group, the smallest of the nation's five major cigarette makers, and lawyers representing millions of smokers agreed to drop the company from the suit in return for payments to a national quit-smoking campaign and Liggett's promise to withdraw from the fight against new Food and Drug Administration tobacco regulations.

The State Senate Health Committee will take up a bill today that would prohibit health insurance companies from using information gathered from genetic tests as a basis for denying health insurance coverage. Insurance Commissioner Elizabeth Randall has asked that the measure be modified so that insurance coverage could not be denied on the basis of any medical history, not just the results from genetic tests.

The nation's economy grew modestly in the first two months of the year, with wages firmly in check despite an apparent spreading of labor-market tightness, a Federal Reserve survey found today. But severe weather in the Northeast and other natural disturbances clouded the assessment. Analysts said they could find no significant difference from the preceding report issued on Jan. 17 that described the economy as "growing at a generally modest pace" in the final weeks of 1995.

Mirage Resorts of Las Vegas, which hopes to open a 2,000-room casino hotel in Atlantic City, is also seeking partners to develop a smaller casino hotel across the street, a spokesman said yesterday. Several companies have expressed interest in building the 1,000-room hotel, which would be located on a 14-acre marina district parcel that Mirage has owned since the early 1980's, said Alan Feldman, the Mirage spokesman. TERRY PRISTIN

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a substantial investment that Michael R. Milken, the former junk-bond king, and Lawrence J. Ellison, the chairman and chief executive officer of the Oracle Corporation, made in Hasbro Inc., the toy company, according to a Government official and associates of Mr. Milken. The inquiries are part of a widening S.E.C. investigation of Mr. Milken's business activities in an effort to determine if he has breached a 1990 consent agreement that bans him from the securities industry for life. The S.E.C. would not comment on the investigation.

It seems a potent combination: Apple Computer Inc. and Bandai Company Ltd. developing a simplified home computer to combine the American company's innovative Macintosh technology with the Japanese toy maker's knack for fun. The Power PC meets the Power Rangers. But as the Pippin Atmark goes on sale this month in Japan, questions are being raised about whether the machine really combines the best of the computer and toy worlds or is merely an unacceptable compromise -- underequipped as a computer yet, at about $620, overpriced as a video-game machine.