March 8, 1987

LEAD: The Belgian authorities said today that 408 of 543 aboard a British ferryboat had been rescued after she capsized outside this harbor on Friday.

LEAD: A AN ANTONIO insurance company is seeking a niche in the growing military retirement market by developing a residence here for affluent former military officers.

LEAD: Blazing with the light of nearly a billion suns, the exploding star that burst into view over the Southern Hemisphere Feb. 24 is yielding a trove of clues expected to help decipher the evolution of the universe. But this supernova has also produced a crop of puzzles that have brought into rare focus the collective efforts of observatories ordinarily as competitive as rival department stores.

LEAD: SELLERS who market their homes through a broker must normally sign a listing agreement that gives the broker and the community's multiple-listing service the exclusive right to sell the property for three to six months.

LEAD: THE RANCH HOUSE INN IS separated from the freeway by a low wire fence and a narrow strip of dirt. When John Huston wakes in the night, struggling to breathe, he can almost reach out and touch the herd of Colts and Mustangs that is inexorably plunging past.

LEAD: Some elderly people are too healthy for nursing homes, yet wary of the fen-for-yourself living of a standard apartment complex. In an effort to create something in between, Paul T. Liistro is developing a retirement center in his hometown of Manchester, Conn., that will provide individual apartments as well as an exhaustive, perhaps an exhausting array of services.

LEAD: Democratic leaders, saying that economic issues, not the Iran arms affair, will be the key to their party's resurgence, have begun warning the party not to depend on the scandal for victory at the polls in 1988.

LEAD: THE difficulties of striking a balance between longstanding guidelines regulating growth and the growth itself are playing themselves out in this suburban Chicago village.

LEAD: The Veterans Administration issued its 12 millionth home-loan guarantee on Friday, representing $275 billion in guaranteed loans since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill during World War II. As of last year, 808,061 of those loans had gone to veterans in the New York metropolitan area.

LEAD: SINCE its beginning in October 1983, the Title III program of the Federal Job Training Partnership Act (J.T.P.A.) has provided $17 million to retrain and give re-employment assistance to thousands of New Jersey workers who lost jobs at more than 450 plants that closed or cut back in that time.

LEAD: Smoking and Philanthropy Many health and antismoking groups say the sponsorship of cultural activities by tobacco companies raises ethical questions. Page 34.

LEAD: FOR the nation's No. 1-ranked college basketball team, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, practice had ended.