September 21, 1984

In one of the largest corporate divestitures in recent years, R.J. Reynolds Industries said yesterday that it had agreed to sell its energy operations to the Phillips Petroleum Company for $1.7 billion. Reynolds, the nation's second-largest producer of cigarettes after Philip Morris Inc., said that a substantial portion of the proceeds would be used for a stock repurchase program. The company has about 113.5 million shares outstanding, about half of which are held by institutions. In heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Phillips plunged $2.625 a share, to $39.125. Reynolds rose 62 1/2 cents, to $67.625.

Toyping Wong, who has lived for 40 years in a tenement at 56 Henry Street, says she is going to fight eviction ''because I've got no place else to go and this is my home.'' The 66-year-old garment factory worker is one of 22 tenants of two tenements on Henry Street in Chinatown who have filed a legal complaint against their landlord for ''excessive'' rent increases. They suspect that the increases - and some improvements by the landlord - are a prelude to getting them out and getting in those with more money to spend on rent. Gentrification, it seems, has come at last to Chinatown. .Buildings that have suffered a hundred years of neglect are now being upgraded. Artists have moved into lofts and tenements on the SoHo- Chinatown border.

Federal officials are trying to stop a new technique by which savings institutions have been issuing certificates of deposit to finance real estate ventures generally considered riskier than usual. While the depositors are given a chance to share in any profits the ventures might make, regulators call the practice ''unsafe and unsound'' and are balking at insuring the deposits. Dallas Thrift Unit Balks Under the program, the savings institutions sell C.D.'s - usually maturing in seven or eight years - with a guaranteed minimum interest rate, typically 10 percent. But investors are promised additional income based on the earnings, if any, from the pool of real estate investments.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER, 21, 1984 International The U.S. Embassy was attacked by a suicide car bomber, killing at least 23 people and injuring scores in a Beirut suburb. The assailant, who died in the explosion, detonated the vehicle in front of the six-story building, devastating it. Two Americans were known to be among the dead. The embassy had recently been moved to Aukar in Christian East Beirut because it was thought to be safer than West Beirut. (Page A1, Columns 3-6.) Security measures were incomplete when the United States occupied its new embassy in Beirut, according to a senior State Department official. The area around the embassy was guarded by Lebanese Christian militiamen because a contingent of 80 United States marines was withdrawn seven weeks ago when State Department officials decided it was no longer needed. (A1:5.)

A correction in this space yesterday - referring to the Sports of The Times column on Wednesday - gave a further incorrect chronology of events in the Korean War. The United Nations command's withdrawal to Pusan occurred in the summer of 1950, before either the American landing at Inchon or the Chinese intervention. (A later evacuation by sea to Pusan, by the United States X Army Corps, occurred in December 1950, after all the other events.)