November 23, 1987

LEAD: ON a Wednesday night earlier this month, at the Larry Holmes Commodore Inn on United States Route 22 in Phillipsburg, N. J., friends and relatives of the proprietor gathered in a ballroom there to throw him a surprise birthday party.

LEAD: After organizing the largest Federal liquidation of a thrift institution - the $1.3 billion shutdown of the Vernon Savings and Loan Association of Dallas - thrift regulators do not intend to close any other large Texas institution in the near future, said M. Danny Wall, the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank

LEAD: After years of frantic scrambling for beds and blankets, New York City's system of shelters for the homeless has grown into a vast bureaucracy that city officials and critics alike say is becoming increasingly competent in providing at least the bare necessities to all who need it.

LEAD: Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that he had received encouraging signs that the Soviet Union wanted to resolve the main differences remaining over a new missile treaty.

LEAD: Major Brazilian exporters, alarmed by an American threat to impose punitive tariffs on their products, are quietly urging the Government to find ways of dealing with United States objections to this country's controversial computer policy.