July 30, 1990

LEAD: For the last four years, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a Jerusalem radio studio have run a covert program in which radio reporters were hired by the studio and given Government guidance on what they should report to radio stations around the world, participants in the program and other Government officials say.

LEAD: Isabel Geffner spent two days at the Shakespeare & Company bookstore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan last week, unpacking boxes of books, stocking shelves, setting up displays and fielding questions from customers about what to read on vacation and where to find a book entitled ''Sex After Sixty'' - a ''gift book,'' the customer stressed.

LEAD: Reflecting a surge in exports, orders for American-made machine tools rose 27.2 percent in June from the level of May, the industry's trade association says in its monthly report. But economists cautioned that the rise did not reflect significantly higher spending on capital improvements in the United

LEAD: Never mind that William J. Cibes Jr. had only $44 in his campaign account for governor as recently as the middle of this month, or that he thinks the state needs an income tax on wages to make wealthy people pay more, or that few Connecticut residents know who he is anyway. Mr. Cibes is the low-budget candidate who roared.

LEAD: The growling of lawn mowers, that ubiquitous sound of suburban summers, is music to the ears of executives at the Briggs & Stratton Corporation, the world's largest maker of lawn mower engines. Briggs engines made here have been the heart of American mowers for generations.