August 23, 1993

Edith Markson stumbled and crash-landed on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village shortly after her return to New York more than a year ago. The badly injured 80-year-old woman was spotted by two homeless men, one of whom swooped her in his arms and majestically carried her one block to a nearby medical laboratory. Even in old age, with a mending broken hip and a metal valve in her ailing heart, Mrs. Markson is surprised at how uplifting New York City can be. Coaxed back here from San Francisco by anxious relatives who wanted to keep an eye on her, she has found that the city has much to offer an "old lady" like herself.

They come to the games with their faces painted in the national colors -- red, yellow and green -- and dance down the central boulevard, El Prado, to celebrate victories with a new pride and greater social unity than Bolivia has ever known as a country. And all because of a soccer team. This land-locked country is the poorest in Latin America, sets the record for military coups in the region and is often mocked by neighbors of fairer complexion for its large Indian population. But Bolivians dare to dream the impossible -- qualifying as one of the 24 teams in next year's World Cup in the United States.

Setback for Mars Mission An abrupt loss of communications with the Mars Observer spacecraft has threatened the prospects for the $1 billion project. Page A16. United Way Comes Up Short With an $8 million shortfall in its fund-raising campaign, United Way of New York City has advised many of the agencies it supports to expect cuts of about 17 percent. Page B1. Algerian Ex-Premier Is Killed A former Prime Minister of Algeria, Kasdi Merbah, was killed by gunmen. The Government blamed its Muslim militant opponents. Page A4.

NEW TWISTS IN CHINESE IMMIGRATION Undeterred by the fate of their countrymen who struggled ashore from a stranded freighter off the Rockaway Peninsula in June, or by a crackdown ordered by President Clinton soon afterward, growing numbers of illegal Chinese immigrants are coming to the United States, immigration officials and lawyers say. But as law-enforcement authorities have focused their attention on stopping more boats from landing, many smugglers have turned to airplanes as their favored route of passage, and have developed new schemes to camouflage the small groups that arrive by plane each day. A1. EMPIRE TRIES AGAIN ON MANAGED CARE As Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield sets off on an ambitious plan to reduce costs by limiting the choice of doctors and medical care for millions of customers, company officials acknowledge that their previous foray into managed care has not been successful. But they say that they have corrected many of their problems and are working hard on the rest. B5. NEW YORK CITY RETIREES HEAD BACK TO NEW YORK Despite the fear of crime, grime and hassles in the city that never sleeps, experts say a growing number of retirees are bucking decades-old migration patterns by moving to New York for its quality of life. Older and sicker than when they left, they have returned to be closer to family and for the city's plentiful services. The retirement migration has contributed at least in part to an explosion in the city's elderly population, officials say. A1. SEARCHING FOR A KILLER AND A MOTIVE In the tense neighborhoods of Crown Heights and Brownsville, the police are searching for a man who has killed four people and critically wounded two more. Investigators say they are not able to determine either the motive or determine how the gunman chose his victims. All they have been able to do is establish, through ballistics tests, that the same 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol was used in the shootings, which began Aug. 12. In most cases, the victims were left with their valuables. The killer, the police said, simply walked up to his victims and began to shoot. B2. QUESTIONS FOR THE BUDGET DIRECTOR He still does not get it. Philip R. Michael was forced to resign as the New York City Budget Director after investigators concluded that he had shown favoritism towards a company trying to win a city contract. Mr. Michael maintains that he did nothing improper and makes no apologies for his efforts to balance the city budget. But the report on the Department of Investigation's five-month inquiry raises questions about his judgment and the appearance of impropriety. Metro Matters, B3. FOUR INJURED IN HARLEM FIRE Four people, two of them young children, were in critical condition as a result of smoke inhalation following a suspicious, four-alarm fire that destroyed their five-story tenement in upper Manhattan. B3. REGION REDEVELOPMENT AND DISRUPTION The Butler Paint store in downtown Meriden, Conn., has been in business for 117 years, through depressions, floods and hurricanes. The owner and other downtown merchants say that nothing has disrupted business as much as the city's $24 million redevelopment project. Last year downtown streets were impassable for more than six months. This year the city has torn them up again. B5. A PLEDGE TO BE A GOOD NEIGHBOR Larry Hogue, the mentally ill man whose menacing behavior had created fear on Manhattan's Upper West Side, says he wants to be a good neighbor and possibly a homeless advocate if officials decide this week to let him live with his son in Connecticut. He visited Bridgeport while on leave from a psychiatric hospital. B2. A NUCLEAR-WASTE ARGUMENT IS RENEWED For three decades, things nuclear have preoccupied the sparsely settled town of Ashford, N.Y., near Buffalo. Now New York State will be losing its only existing disposal site for low-level nuclear waste, renewing talk of placing the new dump here, and rekindling old resentments among townspeople. B5. Chronicle B2

For many years Puerto Rico's leaders paid but passing attention to people of Puerto Rican descent living on the mainland, making a few courtesy calls and campaign stops in the Northeast. But that is changing.

Because of an $8 million shortfall in its fund-raising campaign this year, United Way of New York City has advised many of the 400 human-services agencies it helps that they should expect cuts in support of about 17 percent. As result, the heads of several agencies have said they will press for a review of how United Way of New York distributes its money, as well as the policy that allows donors to designate what charities and areas they would like their money to go to.

As the time to return to classes fast approaches, summer interns, seasoned by two or three months of working at jobs in New York, share two realizations: it's a tough world out there, but they are a step ahead of the game. "A job isn't going to fall in your lap," said Brett Grossman, an intern with the Avrett, Free & Ginsberg advertising firm. "You're going to have to work on it, and you get a lot of rejection."

To most people the analogy would be far-fetched, but at a conference of central bankers at this Rocky Mountain resort, the bankers often compared themselves to generals waging war. The reason offered is that those who forge monetary policy, like those who wage war, have to grapple with an unending torrent of chance and change.

The United States won the men's 400-meter relay tonight with a comb sticking out of the leadoff man's hair. It won the men's 1,600-meter relay with a world record polished off by the fastest 400 meters ever run. It won the woman's 1,600-meter relay easily and lost the women's 400-meter relay to Russia by an inch, maybe less. Noureddine Morceli of Algeria won the men's 1,500 meters and Javier Sotomayor of Cuba the men's high jump, reaffirming their status as world-record holders. A Chinese, Liu Dong, won the women's 1,500 meters, giving her nation a sweep of the three longest races for women.

The glass is half-full. The glass is half-empty. The Yankees won a series. The Yankees lost an opportunity.

The Pac-10 Conference today placed the University of Washington's football program on a two-year probation and prohibited the team from playing in post-season games for the next two years. Hours after the announcement, Don James, the winningest football coach in the school's history, resigned. The conference, which also barred Washington from receiving football television revenue during the coming season and reduced its football scholarships, penalized Washington for a "lack of institutional control" that allowed violations of National Collegiate Athletic Association rules by Huskies players.

The New York metropolitan area is now the country's second largest cellular-phone market, with about 678,160 subscribers, more than three times the number in 1989. And experts see even more growth, partly as a result of recent moves to accommodate the increase in such traffic. Last year an additional area code was created in Manhattan to handle a huge rise in cellular phones and pagers, and in recent weeks the Port Authority said it was considering a plan to equip the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels with antennas to allow the use of the phones. Experts expect to see similar rises in portable fax machines and lap-top computer modems.