June 12, 1984

Stock prices plunged yesterday on apprehension over rising interest rates. Trading remained light. The Dow Jones industrial average finished with a drop of 15.64 points, to 1,115.61, after moving lower most of the day. It was the biggest daily drop in the average since May 4, when it fell by 16.22 points.

An article May 17 on school desegregation since 1954 erroneously described the status of desegregation orders in Cincinnati and St. Louis. In an agreement reached in February, Cincinnati's board of education and the state of Ohio agreed to share the costs of a court-ordered plan equally, and the school district is not appealing the order. The state of Missouri has appealed a consent decree on desegregation in the St. Louis metropolitan area; the St. Louis school board has not appealed, and the plan is operating.

An experimental antiballistic missile has accomplished the first direct interception and destruction of an incoming dummy missile warhead, Army officers reported today. On Sunday, the non-nuclear missile was lofted into space where it unfolded an umbrella-like device 15 feet across that collided with the test warhead, the Army officers said. The interceptor, fired from Meck Island in the Kwajalein Islands, met hundreds of miles away over the South Pacific with the dummy warhead fired from a Minuteman 1 intercontinental missile launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California. Encouragement for Space Plan Army generals made no sweeping claim, emphasizing that the experimental missile did not constitute a working weapon system. But the success of the interception over the Pacific Ocean Sunday seemed sure to encourage advocates of President Reagan's proposal to seek a defense against ballistic missile attack.

A New York State court yesterday declared invalid a state law that prohibits liquor stores from selling liquor at less than a minimum retail price. The court, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, ruled that the state law prescribing a price-floor system in the retailing of hard liquor for off-premises consumption violated Federal antitrust laws. State Liquor Authority officials said that they would appeal the case to the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, and that until that court acted, the ruling would not be enforced. Elsewhere in the country, 18 states regulate the price of liquor by selling it themselves at the wholesale or retail level. Like New York, both New Jersey and Connecticut are among the 32 states in which wholesale and retail liquor sales are run by private enterprise and regulated by the state.

What do you do with an exotic metal alloy that has the ability to ''remember'' its original shape and return to that shape when heated? In the United States, the answer is: Use it to make pipe joints in fighter planes and think about using it for satellites that could be launched in compact form and would unfold automatically in space. But in Japan, the answer is: Use the alloy to make eyeglass frames, air-conditioner louvers and a toy in which a boy's head and a girl's head are separated by a wire made of the alloy. When the toy is dunked in hot water, the wire returns to a ring shape, bringing the heads together in a kiss.