LEAD: Japan's ruling party formally approved a plan today for the most sweeping overhaul of the tax system in 38 years, its second effort in a year to tackle an issue that has proved to be political dynamite.

A New Effort in Japan To Change Tax System

LEAD: A Government-financed group in the United States has made $600,000 available to organizations working to defeat Gen. Augusto Pinochet in a coming plebiscite.

Group Is Channeling U.S. Funds to Parties Opposing Pinochet

LEAD: WHETHER being married leads to happiness or being happy leads to marriage, the positive relation between the two has been considered something of a sociological fact for years. Now, according to one of the researchers who established the correlation, marriage is not what it used to be.

In Happiness Quotient, The Unmarried Gain

LEAD: Howard H. Baker Jr., the White House chief of staff, surprised Washington today by announcing that he is resigning July 1 rather than serving to the end of President Reagan's term seven months from now. He will be succeeded by Kenneth M. Duberstein, his deputy.

REASON 'PERSONAL'

LEAD: Governor Cuomo, in his most forceful statement thus far on the Tawana Brawley case, yesterday condemned the family and its advisers for defying a special grand jury investigation, saying that ''our law has been mocked and trifled with.''

Cuomo Rebukes Brawley Family For Not Talking

LEAD: The world's leading industrial companies and engineering bodies came to a Baltimore convention center last week to spend a few days making something no one needed - 4,000 desktop holders for business cards and pens.

The Drive to Speed Automation

INSIDE

LEAD: BEFORE they had children, Anne and Joel Beerman went out to dinner a lot. ''A lot,'' emphasized Mr. Beerman, a lawyer here. ''We went to inexpensive seafood restaurants, ethnic restaurants and to, I don't know what you call them, New Wave or whatever, with salads and fancy sandwiches.''

When Parents Dine Out, Children Now Go Along

LEAD: Spring was canceled this year, and Richard Belchive blames the phenomenon for ruining in short and merciless order his old front porch, his old favorite suit and a new romance. The constant rain of three weeks back, he will tell you, caused it all, finally undoing the foundation of the porch of his house on Staten Island and the inside stitching on his 1962 Brooks Brothers jacket.

It's Too Late to Ask Where Spring Went

LEAD: In a move that could herald a breakthrough in the debate over how to solve the state's fiscal problems, the Assembly Speaker, Mel Miller, today proposed that up to $500 million in surplus funds from state authorities be used to help close New York's budget gap.

Miller Seeks Shift of Funds To Cut Deficit

LEAD: The Suffolk County Legislature today overrode a veto by the County Executive and enacted the nation's first law regulating the use of video-display terminals in the workplace.

Suffolk Legislature Overrides Veto of a Video Terminal Bill

LEAD: Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d today ordered an Irish Republican Army fugitive deported to Britain, where he is wanted for the killing of a British soldier, on the ground that he entered the United States illegally.

Meese Orders I.R.A. Fugitive In New York to Go to Britain

LEAD: The alliteratively named Peter Paris, a young man who moved to town a year ago from Indiana and immediately missed having a dog, dropped into the Humane Society of New York Monday on his lunch hour and picked a pet to walk. He chose Pywaket, a mix of German shepherd and collie, by the looks of her, affixed a leash, got some newspaper, signed her out in the log book, and left by the front door, past a sign that says: ''Volunteer!

About New York; For Volunteers, Walking a Dog Is Never a Chore

LEAD: Investigators said yesterday that a Bronx woman and her three children died of accidental carbon-monoxide poisoning Monday in their basement apartment and that the cause was apparently a clogged flue from a water heater.

Four Deaths Linked to Gas From Heater

LEAD: A 7.7-million-share block of Texaco Inc.'s stock was traded yesterday, prompting speculation among Wall Street professionals that Carl C. Icahn's chances of winning a proxy fight against the company had significantly improved.

3.2% Stake In Texaco Is Traded

LEAD: Leaders of the Nicaraguan rebels said today that they needed more weapons and ammunition from the United States to strengthen their position in negotiations with the Sandinista Government.

Contras Ask U.S. For More Arms; Passage Dubious

LEAD: Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation made surprise searches at the Pentagon today in what law-enforcement officials said was a major bribery investigation aimed at procurement officials of the Defense Department.

F.B.I. in Surprise Search Of Pentagon and Suppliers

LEAD: CONSIDER this simple meal: Corn on the cob with butter and salt, chicken with rice, lettuce tossed with olive oil and lemon, and ice cream. What could be more ordinary? More prosaic? More boring?  But its very ordinariness made it fascinating to Dr. Margaret Visser, a classicist whose interest in the meanings of everyday foods resulted in ''Much Depends on Dinner,'' a book about the myth and history of that one meal's ingredients.

For Dinner, a First Course in Myths

LEAD: The photographers outnumbered the drug dealers Monday night along Restaurant Row, the block of West 46th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues that has become the temporary touchstone for New York City's agonized struggle with crack.

The New Show Off Broadway: 46th Street

LEAD: THE setting was a simple cafe with handpainted medieval scenes on arched walls. On the table, a golden-skinned roasted chicken, surrounded by homemade pasta and garnished with sprigs of coriander and juicy tomato slices, was accompanied by a bowl of creamy sauce.

Dumplings and a Smile: New Soviet Restaurants Find an Eager Public

LEAD: In a report that was far better than expected for the second straight month, the Government said today that the nation's trade deficit shrank 15.5 percent in April, to the lowest monthly point in more than two and a half years.

U.S. TRADE DEFICIT CUT BACK IN APRIL TO 32-MONTH LOW

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Bond prices soared and yields plummeted yesterday in response to a steep decline in the nation's trade deficit for April.

Bond Prices Jump After Trade Report

LEAD: The French Bourse's hopes of becoming one of the world's major stock markets took an embarrassing step backward today when the president of the French Stockbrokers Association resigned after a disclosure that the group lost $86 million because of mismanaged investments.

Costly Faux Pas for Paris Bourse

LEAD:  INTERNATIONAL A3-16  Nicaraguan rebels need weapons and ammunition from the United States to strengthen their negotiating position with the Sandinistas, contra leaders said. The Administration may be divided over the request. Page A1

June 15, 1988

Headlines from June 15, 1988

A New Effort in Japan To Change Tax System

Group Is Channeling U.S. Funds to Parties Opposing Pinochet

In Happiness Quotient, The Unmarried Gain

REASON 'PERSONAL'

Cuomo Rebukes Brawley Family For Not Talking

Billboard 200

Faith

Open Up And Say...Ahh!

Hysteria

Dirty Dancing

OU812

Historical Context for June 15, 1988