April 26, 1993

The Small Business Administration's popular loan-guarantee program will run out of money this week, a victim of the Clinton Administration's inability to push its economic stimulus package through Congress. Demand from small businesses for the guaranteed loans has been growing much faster than the budget for the program, and beginning on Tuesday the agency will stop approving the loans until Congress acts to increase the budget, an agency official said Friday.

Despite strenuous objections from labor unions, President Clinton's health policy advisers have tentatively decided to let the nation's biggest companies serve as their own health insurers, bypassing the regional insurance pools that would serve as the core of Mr. Clinton's health-care plan. Confidential work papers from the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform say that under Mr. Clinton's plan large employers may "elect to remain outside the purchasing cooperative" that obtains insurance for small businesses and individuals. At least 33 million workers now get health-care coverage from big businesses, defined as companies with 1,000 or more employees.

The Knicks badly wanted 60 regular-season victories, and another victory against the Bulls. So yesterday was not a day of rest. Patrick Ewing played 40 minutes as the Knicks prevailed over Chicago, 89-84, and the Madison Square Garden crowd chanted "M.V.P.! M.V.P!" whenever the star center, who finished the game with 22 points and 12 rebounds, stepped to the foul line in the closing five minutes.

NEW YORK CITY CRIME: ANY IS TOO MUCH The frustrated cry against crime that echoed during David N. Dinkins's first summer as Mayor is reverberating again. This time, it is being sounded by Mr. Dinkins's own Police Commissioner. Reported crime may be down, but the public's threshold for pain keeps going up. Which is precisely the point Senator Moynihan was making earlier this month when, in remarks that miffed the Mayor, Mr. Moynihan compared New York with the more stable city he remembered from his youth 50 years ago. Metro Matters. B2. BURNED UP OVER A CIGARETTE BILLBOARD To understand how a billboard promoting cigarettes in Shea Stadium has come to be a political thorn for Mayor Dinkins, it is helpful to think of Spider-Man, the comic-book vigilante forever at odds with city leaders. The billboard is a Marlboro advertisement under the huge video screen in left-center field, making, anti-smoking advocates say, a dangerous connection between smoking and athletic prowess. Spider-Man is a childhood hero of Joseph W. Cherner, a once and probably future Wall Street bond trader who as head of a small anti-tobacco group has used his wealth and drive to back Mr. Dinkins into a political corner. B3.

As the walls of the Branch Davidian compound shook last Monday, Ruth Riddle sat in her second-floor bedroom, reading the Bible. In the cafeteria downstairs, Remos Avraam was eating cereal when he heard the first thrusts of a tank slam against the building.