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Locked in a fierce price war with competitors, no-longer-fat-and-happy Apple Computer -- whose stock has declined 40% since January and which got a tough- minded new CEO last month -- announced plans to lay off 2,500 workers, 16% of its work force.
Northwest Airlines Pact
To head off bankruptcy, Northwest Airlines, the fourth largest U.S. carrier, agreed to give its unions a strong voice on its board of directors and a large financial stake in the company in exchange for contract concessions worth $1 billion.
SCIENCE
No Cure for Hepatitis B
Two of 20 participants in a clinical trial of the drug fialuridine, a new treatment for chronic hepatitis B, suffered from a bad reaction to the drug and died of liver failure. Nine others remain hospitalized. Eli Lilly, fialuridine's American manufacturer, quickly stopped all tests in late June, after the 11 patients started showing dangerous symptoms.
Acid Rain Improvement
Into each person's life a lot less acid rain must fall -- so the Federal Government has reported. According to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey, concentrations of sulfate and nitrate -- two components of acid rain -- declined significantly between 1980 and 1991.
Finding Viroids Faster
Before being released to growers, imported apple and pear trees are kept in federal quarantine centers for up to five years. Inspectors, who have to certify that the plants are free of viruslike microorganisms known as viroids, must wait until the trees bear fruit and check the apples and pears for viroid scarring and spotting. Agriculture Department scientists announced that they have developed a test that takes only two months: botanists graft a branch of the imported tree to a healthy plant, let it grow, then examine sap from a new twig or leaf for viroids.
MEDIA & THE ARTS
Murdoch to Post: Drop Dead
The New York Post, America's oldest continuously published daily, is apparently out of business; provisional publisher Rupert Murdoch dropped his bid to buy the tabloid after he and the unions failed to agree on cost cuts. The Saturday edition of the paper was canceled, and staff members started cleaning out their desks. The unprofitable paper's fate was left in the hands of a bankruptcy court this week, but plausible new buyers seemed unlikely to appear.
Record Price for a Drawing
A slightly damaged drawing by Michelangelo, Holy Family with the Infant Baptist on the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, brought $6.32 million at auction at Christie's in London -- a world record for an old-master drawing. The buyer was the supremely well endowed J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California.
Mailer's Picasso
Norman Mailer's latest work in progress, a biography of Pablo Picasso, has become embarrassing for his publisher, Random House, and his prominent editor, Jason Epstein. Picasso biographer John Richardson, who is also edited by Epstein, refused to allow excerpts from his 1991 book, A Life of Picasso: Volume I, 1881-1906, to be used in Mailer's book, which he denounced as a "scissors-and-paste job." Mailer now expects to sell his project -- sans the Richardson passages -- to another publisher. Richardson is staying at Random House but has switched editors.