LEAD: THE fateful day for West Midtown developers looms one year away -on Friday the 13th. A zoning bonus, set to expire on that date next May, has prompted a frenzy of demolition and digging north of Times Square.

Racing the Clock In West Midtown

LEAD: IN announcing his withdrawal from the 1988 Presidential campaign on Friday, Gary Hart said that elections should be decided on issues.

A WOULD-BE PRESIDENT FAILS THE TEST OF 'CHARACTER'

LEAD: THE Long Island Lighting Company, which is seeking to use 170 megawatts of power from the Shoreham nuclear plant to meet what it expects to be record energy demands this summer, can count on support from a neighboring utility.

CON ED OFFERS LILCO NEW POWER IF NEEDED

LEAD: A group of academics, most of them professors at Queens College, have joined together in an unlikely real-estate venture that is teaching them a few things that are not readily available in the classroom. The proposed residential development, in the Town of North East, N.Y., just south of Millerton in Dutchess

A Lesson in Development

LEAD:  STORMING THE MAGIC KINGDOM  Wall Street, the Raiders, and the Battle for Disney. By John Taylor. Illustrated. 261 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $18.95.

TALES FROM THE FABLE FACTORY

LEAD: SOME say the 15th-century English house now crowning a hill outside Cleveland used to be a country inn before it was dismantled and brought to this country. Others say it was the manor of a wealthy merchant, one of the nouveau riche of the age between Chaucer and Shakespeare.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Cleveland;
A 15th Century Manor for Sale

LEAD: Dennis Rasmussen of the Yankees did not yield any home runs last night, something he has done frequently this season, especially with no one on base. But his offense let him down as he pitched a complete game at the Stadium.

YANKEE BATS SILENT IN DEFEAT

LEAD: IN 1980, the Tarrytown school district closed an elementary school because of dwindling enrollments and sold the building to a condominium developer. But now after a decade of decline, elementary enrollments are rising and the district is facing a shortage of space.

ELEMENTARY CLASSES GROWING LARGER

LEAD: AS the first week of hearings on the Iran-contra affair drew to a close, new questions had been raised about Ronald Reagan's involvement. But the public still had not learned what the President knew and when he knew it.

SPOTLIGHT FALLS ON THE SECRET WORLD OF A MASTER OPERATIVE

LEAD: BOB OJEDA, the Mets' best pitcher in 1986, suggested that maybe the moon is aligned with Saturn. Dave Johnson, his manager, speculated that it might have something to do with the work force in Haiti. ''Maybe one shift likes pitchers and another shift doesn't,'' Johnson said. ''Maybe the shift that doesn't like pitchers comes in and winds the ball tighter.

BASEBALLS ARE FLYING OUT EVERYWHERE

LEAD: Most of today's clustered condominiums are connected in such a way that barking, hammering and other din can permeate common walls, floating from living room to living room. But a 125-acre residential development planned for the Town of New Castle, N.Y., near Chappaqua, is trying to overcome this by having the condos attached at their garages.

No Party Walls

LEAD: British scientists have found the first evidence that genetic differences make some people more susceptible than others to infection with the virus that causes AIDS.

INHERITED FACTOR MAY PLAY A ROLE IN RISK OF AIDS

LEAD: HOSPITALS and nurses groups around the state used Nurses Day last week to call attention to the growing nursing shortage in New Jersey and elsewhere. Although officials said that the situation had not yet endangered patients, they warned that it soon could affect health-care delivery at all levels, from the storefront clinic to the coronary-care unit.

STATE, HOSPITALS AND NURSES ACT TO FORESTALL AN ACUTE SHORTAGE

LEAD: Now is the time for tenants and landlords to sign up for the annual hearings that help to determine how much rents will be allowed to rise in some 943,000 rent stabilized apartments, lofts and hotel rooms in New York City.

The Annual Rent Catharsis

LEAD: 3 I.R.A. Leaders Died in Raid  The police in Northern Ireland disclosed that three senior figures in the Irish Republican Army were among eight guerrillas killed Friday in an intercepted raid on the police.

INSIDE

LEAD: Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger has sent President Reagan a report proposing four new tests that would violate the traditional interpretation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Administration officials said today.

NEW TESTS URGED ON MISSILE SHIELD

LEAD: Politics more or less as usual resumed after Gary Hart quit the Presidential race. Four Democrats took their case to Iowa: Bruce Babbitt, Michael S. Dukakis, Richard A. Gephardt and Paul Simon.

1988: A New Chapter

LEAD: The funeral of William J. Casey, the former Director of Central Intelligence who died Wednesday, was marked today by the controversy that continues to swirl around President Reagan's policy of aiding the rebels fighting the Government of Nicaragua.

CONTRA CONTROVERSY RAISED AT CASEY FUNERAL

LEAD: With those corporate rites of spring - annual meetings - drawing to an end, shareholders may have been left with great expectations. Annual meetings, like annual reports, are meant to put the company's best foot forward. But shareholders who expect higher dividends may be disappointed.

Disappointing Dividends

LEAD: PUBLIC transportation and private-sector money are two key components in a new state study that suggests ways to solve the traffic-congestion problem along the Princeton Corridor - Route 1 between Trenton and New Brunswick.

STATE IDENTIFIES PRINCETON CORRIDOR KEYS

LEAD: It was appropriate, somehow, that so much of the drama of former Senator Gary Hart's decision to withdraw from the 1988 Presidential campaign unfolded in New Hampshire, which has for so many years played a special role in the quadrennial American political pageant.

HOTLY CONTESTED PRIMARIES LIKELY IN BOTH PARTIES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

LEAD: THE puncturing of a social myth is not a lovely thing. When Dennis Levine was arrested a year ago this week, and then others and still others, and then Ivan Boesky - suddenly the whole idea that risk arbitrage could be practiced without inside information lay in doubt. And with it, the Reagan era myth that greed was good.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, DENNIS LEVINE

LEAD: IT worked for Tupperware. So now hospitals are using the same idea: getting a group of women to gather in a home for games, prizes, refreshments and a sales pitch. But at the BodyCues women's home health care parties sponsored by the St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio, the pitch comes from doctors and nurses - and what is being sold is nothing less than the hospital itself.

HOSPITALS PITCH HARDER FOR PATIENTS

LEAD: LILLIAN WEBB, the chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Commission, sees a certain gallows humor in the fact that because no other space could be found, her temporary office is the former trauma room of a hospital. ''They've certainly got the right place,'' she says with a laugh.

FOCUS: ATLANTA;
A Suburb Welcomes Slowdown

LEAD: In the year after, their infielders make errors, their hitters do not always come up with the necessary hit, and worst of all for the Mets, they cannot elude the big injury.

May 10, 1987

Headlines from May 10, 1987

Racing the Clock In West Midtown

A WOULD-BE PRESIDENT FAILS THE TEST OF 'CHARACTER'

CON ED OFFERS LILCO NEW POWER IF NEEDED

A Lesson in Development

TALES FROM THE FABLE FACTORY

Billboard 200

The Joshua Tree

Licensed To Ill

Slippery When Wet

Look What The Cat Dragged In

Graceland

Historical Context for May 10, 1987