April 1, 1993

One minute after the start of the new fiscal year, Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and the state's legislative leaders emerged from a closed-door meeting this morning to announce that they had settled their impasse over the state budget but would not provide any details about their agreement. "This is not the time for details," Mr. Cuomo said, capping one of the more bizarre scenes in the recent history of the state's fiscal politics. Although he announced a deal and shook hands with Assembly Speaker Saul Weprin and the Senate majority leader, Ralph J. Marino, in his ceremonial office, as though the details had been hammered out, Mr. Cuomo said there was still "an immense amount of work to be done."

WHO cannot think of wicker as woven into the fabric of America's domestic history? Wicker is the chameleon of furniture design, and in spite of being known for its intricacies, is the plain Jane of antiques. Ornate or plain, painted or left natural, woven furniture was meant to be used, and used it was. Once damaged, it was often repainted. Just as often it was left weatherbeaten in the garden until it was thrown away.

Those static-filled radios used to dispatch cab drivers may be on the verge of becoming a mode of communication for the masses -- and a potentially powerful competitor to the $9 billion cellular industry. Fleet Call Inc. is at the forefront of a new industry trying to combine mobile radio and new digital technology to build a network nearly indistinguishable from that of the cellular industry, which serves more than 11 million customers.

Reversing nearly a decade of American policy, the Clinton Administration has decided to ask Congress to renew funding for two international groups that either provide or pay for abortions and had lost their funds under the Reagan Administration. The president of one group, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities, said in an interview that she had received assurances from senior State Department officials that the Administration intended to ask Congress for at least $20 million, and perhaps as much as $40 million, for the agency in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

Five months before the World Trade Center bombing, about 20 members of the two mosques in Brooklyn and Jersey City where several trade center suspects worshipped were subpoenaed to appear before a Federal grand jury. The subpoenas, issued to people who had visited El Sayyid A. Nosair in prison or attended his trial, indicates that Federal agents had been pressing harder than was previously known to make inroads into the small emigre world from which the trade center suspects came. Mr. Nosair was tried for the 1990 murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the self-declared Jewish militant.