August 16, 1988

LEAD: Bob Dole watched his wife, Elizabeth, with mock suspicion to make sure she was not campaigning harder than he was for the coveted Vice-Presidential spot. Ronald Reagan swept his wife up in his arms and told the world, in unabashed prose that made Nancy Reagan blush and mist, just how much he loves her.

LEAD: What stands to be the costliest election race in American history except for the one for the Presidency is gathering force in California - and no one is even running for office.

LEAD: Internecine warfare was declared within Connecticut's Republican Party today.

LEAD: At the first public hearing since the city and four City Councilmen were found in contempt of court, scores of residents had their five minutes each under the glare of television lights tonight. Most vented anger over a court-ordered housing desegregation plan, but some said it was time to obey the law and build the subsidized housing.

LEAD: THE ECONOMY U.S. factories, mines and utilities raised output 0.8 percent in July. It was the biggest monthly increase this year and broader based than had been expected. As the latest evidence of a booming economy, it raised the possibility the Government will have to take steps to raise interest rates again to contain inflation.

LEAD: AS scientists and public officials urge painful, expensive measures to prevent climate change -reducing energy use, developing alternative sources of power, curbing production of destructive pollutants - a breed of visionaries is dreaming of more direct, if seemingly fantastic, countermeasures.

LEAD: In a transaction that caught the industry by surprise, Random House Inc. agreed yesterday to acquire the Crown Publishing Group, one of the last family-owned major publishing houses in the United States.

LEAD: WITH a growing ability to operate on fetuses, doctors have noticed something curious: the operations leave no scars.

LEAD: FOR most of the last two decades, a quixotic science called neural network theory has been suffering through a dark age. All but a handful of enthusiasts had given up their dream of making intelligent computers by using networks of artificial neurons to electronically mimick the brain's circuitry.

LEAD: Manhattan drivers - long sufferers of clogged roadways, parking tickets and interminable stoplights - are confronting a new menace this summer: street bumps called hummocks.

LEAD: The miseries of a torrid summer reached a nadir for thousands of New Yorkers yesterday as the Consolidated Edison Company cut off power to as many as 13 of the largest apartment buildings on the Upper East Side to prevent a wider blackout.

LEAD: Yonkers Again Rejects Plan The Yonkers City Council again rejected, by a 4-3 vote, the housing-desegregation plan ordered by a Federal judge and remains in contempt of court. Page B1. Random House in Deal Surprising the publishing industry, Random House agreed to acquire Crown Publishing Group, among the few family-owned major publishing houses in the nation.