November 2, 1993

Grant Bennett leads one of the last American companies that make a tiny but essential ceramic part for computers and advanced weapons systems, and he reluctantly concluded late last year that he needed Government help to survive in the face of Japanese competition. So Mr. Bennett and another American company asked the Commerce Department for a bit of trade protection, arguing that America's national security would suffer if the troubled industry were allowed to collapse.

In a final, frantic round of appeals, the New York City mayoral rematch between David N. Dinkins and Rudolph W. Giuliani scraped to a close yesterday nearly four tumultuous years after it began, leaving the verdict to the voters in an election in which turnout and demographic shifts may play a decisive role. Mr. Giuliani, smiling and ebullient, invoked the future as he sped from seven senior-citizen centers to evening rallies in each of the five city's boroughs, predicting that his victory would bring a new era of action at City Hall. Mr. Dinkins, feisty and upbeat, harkened to history, imploring the core of the interracial coalition that made him the city's first black mayor not to forsake him after a single term.

In an usual foray by outsiders into the beer industry, a Dallas investment firm said yesterday that it had agreed to buy the G. Heileman Brewing Company, the nation's fifth-largest brewer, for $390 million. The buyer, Hicks, Muse & Company, is led by Thomas O. Hicks, who achieved great success in the 1980's by buying A & W, Dr Pepper and Seven-Up and later taking them public again.

Dozens of representatives of the nation's largest property-casualty insurance companies began gathering claims from owners of fire-damaged homes around Southern California yesterday, after a series of fires caused what is estimated to be more than $250 million in insured losses. State Farm and Allstate, the two insurance companies expected to receive the largest share of the claims, both said yesterday that it was too early to gauge the final insurance toll of a series of fires that whipped across 152,000 acres and destroyed more than 720 structures.

After more than a year of heated argument, Congress is expected to begin debate today on whether to kill financing for expanded human tests of an experimental AIDS vaccine. The vaccine's manufacturer, Microgenesys, says it could help people infected with H.I.V. Critics say the manufacturer gained $20 million in Government financing because of an influential lobbyist rather than because the vaccine has therapeutic promise.