July 12, 1996

The list of corporate casualties in the technology field is lengthening. It's easy to dismiss an Apple Computer or a Digital Equipment as troubled companies bedeviled by problems of their own making. But with two blue-chip bellwethers, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, surprising Wall Street this week with announcements of slowing business, it raises questions about the outlook for technology shares in general. Skittish investors expressed their concerns yesterday by driving the price of technology stocks down sharply. The Pacific Stock Exchange index of 100 technology companies fell more than 4 percent yesterday, and the technology index has dropped more than 17 percent in less than two months.

Finally producing what has become the tardiest state budget in the nation's history, Gov. George E. Pataki and the Legislature announced a $66 billion spending plan on Thursday that rejects most of the cuts and policy changes that Mr. Pataki had advocated. The Governor and legislative leaders ended a long, rancorous stalemate by reaching a compromise late Wednesday night on several issues that had held up a final agreement, including Mr. Pataki's plan to overhaul the state's $5 billion workers' compensation system.

Investors fled the stock market yesterday as more signs of weakening corporate profits further shook confidence already undermined by fears of higher interest rates. Led by significant declines among technology and health care stocks, the biggest loser was the Nasdaq Composite Index, which posted its second-worst drop of the year with loss of 3.1 percent.

Ross Perot declared today that he would seek the Presidential nomination of the Reform Party, a move that immediately recast what for months had essentially been a two-man race for the White House and deepened anxiety among Republicans. In a network television appearance, Mr. Perot called himself uniquely qualified to be the nominee of the party, which he founded, and said he had finally entered the race because "the American people want me to do this."

The accident near Harrison last December that killed a PATH track foreman and a laborer occurred because the foreman neither obtained permission to work on the track nor posted a watchman, and because the engineer of the train that hit them was inattentive, the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. In addition, the board found, an engineer and an operations examiner whose train passed through the area shortly before the accident failed to warn the trainmaster that the track workers were on the job without a watchman. The engineer of the train that hit the workers had said that his view was hindered by bright sunlight. But two passengers told the board's investigators that they saw the men working on the tracks.