LEAD: The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency scientist reported today.

Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate

LEAD: The 1986 immigration law is failing to stem the illegal flow of Mexicans into the United States and may be creating new problems on both sides of the border by distorting traditional immigration patterns, Mexican and American researchers say.

IMMIGRATION LAW IS FAILING TO CUT FLOW FROM MEXICO

LEAD: In a series of detailed memorandums, E. Robert Wallach, a former lawyer for Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, wrote to Mr. Meese and other Reagan Administration officials to plead the case of the Wedtech Corporation and to keep Mr. Meese apprised of the company's efforts to obtain Pentagon contracts.

Ex-Meese Aide's Wedtech Efforts Detailed

LEAD: The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Lloyd Bentsen, said today that he has 70 co-sponsors for the revised trade legislation he has just introduced.

70 Senators Sponsor New Trade Bill

LEAD: THIS year's JVC Jazz Festival, which opens tonight and ends on July 3, offers jazz for just about any taste, in settings ranging from the confines of Carnegie Hall to the grassy expanses of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, from the 92d Street Y to the Hudson Dayliner.

POP/JAZZ: Arts Festival; The Hills and Halls Are Alive With Jazz

LEAD: A VISITOR to the Metropolitan Museum of Art should march straight up the main staircase, walk toward the collection of Caravaggios and proceed directly forward into a small gallery numbered 32. There hangs ''Christ's Descent Into Limbo'' by the Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, on loan through Oct.

Review/Art; A Mantegna Masterpiece at the Met

LEAD: The temperature in winter may on occasion top 11 degrees. The living quarters, outside the 10-foot-tall gates of a Soviet missile factory, will be austere.

HUGHES MISSILE WATCHERS FACE LONELY DAYS IN RUSSIA

LEAD: A political struggle that has ensnared Governor Cuomo and United States Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and embarrassed Bronx politicians took an unexpected turn yesterday when the Bronx District Attorney, Paul T. Gentile, announced that he would not be a candidate for election this fall.

Interim District Attorney Drops Out of Bronx Race

LEAD: In an extraordinary massing of political and legal prestige, 60 senators, 47 state attorneys general, the American Bar Association, prominent historians and more than 100 civil rights, religious and civic groups will urge the Supreme Court not to overrule a major 1976 civil rights decision.

High Court Getting Unusual Plea Not to Reverse Key Rights Ruling

LEAD:  Pope Meets With Waldheim  John Paul II arrived in Austria and met with President Kurt Waldheim, who has been accused of complicity in Nazi war crimes. Page A3.  Reading Scores Improve  New York City children have slightly improved their scores on reading tests, but they still fall far short of statewide averages.

INSIDE

LEAD: A man widely regarded as one of the world's most brilliant scientists formally entered the computer business today with a program intended to do for mathematics what the calculator did for arithmetic.

A Top Scientist's Latest: Math Software

LEAD: The Warsaw Pact is prepared to make greater reductions than NATO in conventional forces in Europe to remove imbalances and enhance the prospects for a more comprehensive arms-reduction agreement, a senior Soviet arms control official said today.

Soviet Offers to Adjust Imbalance Of Conventional Forces in Europe

WEEKENDER GUIDE

LEAD: One morning this week, in a voice barely audible, Tracey Maye stood in a Bronx courtroom and admitted that she had killed her baby girl. During the 15-minute hearing, she sat hunched over, head down. ''Miss Maye,'' Judge Gerald Sheindlin said, ''on March 20, 1987, at about 7:30 in the morning at 1171 Clay Avenue, you did recklessly cause the death by striking her repeatedly with an electrical wire?

Our Towns; A Mother Kills And the Blame Must Be Shared

Business Digest

LEAD: New York City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin grabbed the political initiative yesterday and, going a step further than Mayor Koch, said he would accept no corporate contributions at all for his 1989 campaign.

Goldin to Bar Business Gifts For Campaign

LEAD: In what the police say is the second racially motivated attack in New York City in two days, a black man was beaten by a group of white men yesterday after he went to the aid of a white woman who was quarreling with a white man, the police said.

Black Man Beaten in Racial Attack, Police Say

LEAD: The re-emergence of a theory that many black and white children learn differently because of their different cultural backgrounds has set off a political and intellectual debate among New York officials and educators.

Do Black and White Children Learn the Same Way?

LEAD: Children in New York City's public school system did slightly better this year on citywide reading and math tests than they did last year, according to results released yesterday by the Board of Education.

Test Scores Improve a Bit In New York

LEAD: The Reagan Administration today raised its forecast for the nation's 1988 economic growth to 3.5 percent, from 2.9 percent.

Estimate On G.N.P. Is Raised

LEAD: Duluth thought it had a deal. It would use its municipal authority to arrange for $10 million worth of low-interest bonds to help an outside company finance the acquisition of a local manufacturer. In return, the northern Minnesota industrial city would get assurances that existing jobs would be preserved and new ones created.

WHEN A CITY'S DEAL TO SAVE JOBS SOURS

LEAD: The dollar, which surged Wednesday, fluctuated yesterday as traders tried to figure out how much more room there was for the currency to rise.

Currency Markets; The Dollar Fluctuates In Quiet Day

LEAD: Less than three years after crack surfaced in New York streets, the city's police have all but conceded the fight to abolish trafficking in the drug, saying its virulent growth has overwhelmed traditional law-enforcement tactics.

Against Drug Tide, Only a Holding Action

LEAD: Electric utilities are feeling the strain as the water level of the Mississippi River falls. Page 14.

Utilities Are Feeling Strain

LEAD: The severe drought gripping the farm belt has begun to raise the supermarket price of such items as cereal, mayonnaise and spaghetti, and the list of affected products will inevitably broaden to include such items as pickles and canned peas in coming weeks, according to industry officials and Government and private analysts.

Drought Raising Food Prices; Inflation Effect Seems Minor

Micah Lincoln Richards is an English football pundit and former professional player who played as a right-back.

Micah Richards, English footballer

Micah_Richards

Nichkhun Buck Horvejkul, better known mononymously as Nichkhun, is a Thai and American rapper, singer, songwriter, actor, and model who is currently based in South Korea as a member of the South Korean boy band 2PM.

Nichkhun, Thai-American singer and actor

Nichkhun

Csaba Kesjár was a Hungarian racing driver who was born in Budapest and died in Norisring, Nuremberg.

June 24, 1988

Headlines from June 24, 1988

Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate

IMMIGRATION LAW IS FAILING TO CUT FLOW FROM MEXICO

Ex-Meese Aide's Wedtech Efforts Detailed

70 Senators Sponsor New Trade Bill

POP/JAZZ: Arts Festival; The Hills and Halls Are Alive With Jazz

Billboard 200

OU812

Faith

Hysteria

Open Up And Say...Ahh!

Dirty Dancing

Notable Births

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for June 24, 1988