June 11, 1984

An article on student loans in the Personal Finance section on May 20 gave incorrect information on the status of some student loans. Peace Corps volunteers can get deferrals for paying installments on National Direct Student Loans, and interest will not accrue, for up to three and a half years. They can get deferrals for paying installments on Guaranteed Students Loans for up to three and a half years, although interest will accrue during that time.

An article Thursday on members of the Sikh religion in the United States gave an incorrect estimate of the number of Sikhs in the New York area. Sikh representatives estimate the number at 15,000.

The Talk of LaSalle Street CHICAGO, June 10 - The business scene here has suddenly witnessed an explosion of unusual activity. In between the arrival of Rupert Murdoch at The Chicago Sun-Times in January and the continuing saga of the shaky Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, a series of mergers, stock deals and extraordinary exchange trades have helped change the way Chicago thinks of itself. During the recession its status as the nation's ''second city'' was lost to Los Angeles as the Sun Belt and the suburbs continued to drain away population and resources. LaSalle Street, the Chicago equivalent of Wall Street, fell into the doldrums. Chicago's chief distinction - insular capital of the nation's industrial and agricultural heartland - became a dubious honor. 'Rust Bowl' and Commodities Regional companies, such as International Harvester, wobbled on the edge of insolvency. More plants were abandoned. The term ''rust bowl,'' meaning areas of industrial blight, entered the language. And Middle Western farmers, never having fully recovered since the 1980 limitation of grain shipments to the Russians, continued to cry about low commodity prices.

Bogdan Lis, the second-ranking official of the underground Solidarity trade union, has been captured and arrested, the Polish television announced tonight. In a terse announcement that gave neither the time, place nor circumstances of the 31-year-old Mr. Lis's arrest, the Government broadcast declared that the ''Gdansk security service'' had arrested Mr. Lis. A former shipyard mechanic, he has been in hiding since martial law was imposed in December 1981. The newscaster described Mr. Lis as one of the members of ''the so-called Temporary Coordinating Commission,'' a clandestine council composed of those former Solidarity leaders who, unlike Lech Walesa, have assumed responsibility for underground activities in defiance of orders banning the union.

The House of Representatives is expected to approve a bill Monday aimed at protecting manufacturers of semiconductor chips from piracy of their easily copied products. The bill, an effort to catch up with the fast pace of developments in high technology, establishes a novel form of government registration for the ''masks'' or stencils used to produce the tiny chips that are the brains of much of today's electronic equipment. Legislation approved by the Senate in May takes a different approach, allowing producers to copyright the masks. Both measures, however, would protect the manufacturers' rights for 10 years.