HUNTING SEASON OVER?

The courtship had all the frenzied twists of a Looney Tunes cartoon--or CNN's Gulf War coverage. For nearly a month, with the world looking on, Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin used shuttle diplomacy to pursue an $8 billion merger with Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting. Spectators watched in bemusement as Time Warner acknowledged its courtship, then appeared to be stymied by cable-TV king John Malone, a Time Warner rival whose Turner stake gives him effective veto power over a deal. But by Sunday, as TIME went to press, Levin and Turner were tantalizingly close to sealing an agreement to create the world's...