DIGEST
The stock of Dart Group, the Landover-based owner of Crown Books, Trak Auto, Total Beverage and part of Shoppers Food Warehouse, rose $11.12 1/2, or 13 percent, to close at $95 on the Nasdaq stock market. Investors responded to an agreement, announced after the market closed last Friday, under which outside directors of Dart would remove control of the company from the feuding Haft family. Trading had been halted until midday yesterday.</br></br>CoreStates Financial and Meridian Bancorp agreed to a $3.2 billion merger. CoreStates, of Philadelphia, has $29.3 billion in assets and about 355 branches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Meridian, based in Reading, Pa., has $15 billion in assets and more than 300 branches in those two states and Delaware. The merged company will become the nation's 19th-largest bank, as measured by its $44.3 billion in assets.</br></br>T-bill rates fell. The discount rate on three-month Treasury bills fell to 5.31 percent from 5.34 percent last week. Rates on six-month bills fell to 5.32 percent from 5.38 percent. The actual return to investors is 5.47 percent for three-month bills, with a $10,000 bill selling for $9,865.80, and 5.56 percent for a six-month bill selling for $9,731.00. Separately, the Federal Reserve said the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable-rate mortgages, fell to 5.61 percent last week from 5.69 percent the previous week.</br></br>A key union negotiator at USAir has resigned his union post. Pete Gauthier, chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association master executive council at USAir Group, said two recent events made it a "natural" time for a change in the union's leadership. Arlington-based USAir ended talks with its unions in July that would have swapped a stake in the company for $2.45 billion in wage concessions over five years. And it said last week that it has held talks with United and American airlines about a possible alliance or acquisition.</br></br>Healthsouth of Birmingham, the largest U.S. provider of rehabilitation services, said it will buy Surgical Care Affiliates of Nashville, the biggest outpatient surgery firm, in a $1.2 billion stock swap. The deal extends a series of acquisitions by Healthsouth as it seeks to marry the two medical services and offer them on a nationwide scale.