January 29, 1993

NEW YORK CITY DINKINS PLANS $215 MILLION LOAN To help close a projected $2.1 billion budget gap in the next fiscal year, the Dinkins administration plans to borrow $215 million at 5 percent interest from Chemical Bank, using as collateral unpaid property-tax debts, senior officials said. The unusual scheme would allow the administration to use the funds on the first day of the fiscal year instead of waiting until delinquent taxpayers get around to paying up. A1.

THAT husky laugh you hear coming from the great beyond is Marlene Dietrich's. She's not around to control her image anymore, but at least she has managed to confuse it. "There have been 55 books written about me!" she snapped at Maximilian Schell in his 1984 documentary "Marlene," in which the aged star granted hours of interviews but refused to be shown on camera (all of that specified in the contract she kept reminding him of). She hated anyone else mucking around with her legend. It seems as if 55 more books have appeared since she died in May, a 90-year-old recluse who had not left her Paris apartment in years. The actual number is closer to five, including two major biographies intent on revealng the truth behind the glamorous, ageless woman she always pretended to be.

Crown Heights has become the center of a battle between two factions of the Lubavitch Hasidic community. On one side is a group of rabbis and followers who maintain that the Grand Rebbe of the Lubavitcher Hasidim, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, has proclaimed himself the Messiah.

A.T.& T. yesterday reported record fourth-quarter earnings of $1 billion, or 75 cents a share, up 57.5 percent from a year earlier, when it earned $635 million, or 48 cents a share. Quarterly revenue of A.T.& T., the world's largest telecommunications company, which has been struggling in an increasingly competitive industry, totaled $17.5 billion, up 6.3 percent from a year earlier and about equal to the gross domestic product of Morocco.

To help close a projected $2.1 billion budget gap in the next fiscal year, the Dinkins administration plans to borrow $215 million from Chemical Bank, using as collateral unpaid property-tax debts, senior officials said last night. The unusual plan would allow the administration to use the funds on the first day of the fiscal year, July 1, instead of waiting until delinquent taxpayers finally get around to paying up.