LEAD: Peter Miller Dawkins, former Wall Street investment banker, former United States Army brigadier general, former collegiate football hero and now the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from New Jersey, is even more imposing in the flesh than the photographs and posters suggest.

Dawkins's Strategy: Image as World-Class Achiever

LEAD: Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, said today that he would not oppose bills that expand the underwriting powers of banks but prohibit top banks from merging with top brokerage firms.

Greenspan Can Accept Bank Curb

LEAD: A 24-year-old fine-arts graduate student from Arkansas who had moved to New York City a week ago ''to pursue her dream'' was shot and killed yesterday in a robbery on a Brooklyn sidewalk.

Student Slain Fighting Thief For Her Purse

LEAD: The strongest hurricane to hit the Western Hemisphere in this century slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico today with 23-foot waves and wind gusts of up to 218 miles an hour, devastating coastal cities and resorts and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Century's Fiercest Storm Sweeps Yucatan

LEAD: HIGH above Madison Avenue, old-time rocking chairs ($350 to $1,000) hang from pipes on the ceiling, twig brooms ($85) are propped up against barrels filled with rolls of mattress ticking, stone-washed denim and buffalo-check cotton ($35 to $55 a yard). Flannel shirts ($45 to $97) are piled onto rough-hewed wood shelves, and there is country music in the air.

Lauren Re-invents Country in the City

LEAD: When the Monsanto Company bought G. D. Searle & Company three years ago, it defended the $2.8 billion purchase, noting that Searle's Nutrasweet division was hugely profitable and maintaining that its lackluster drug operation could be turned around.

Searle Looks a Lot Riskier Now

LEAD: Today is primary election day in New York State. The polls will be open from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M. in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Ulster and Erie Counties and from noon to 9 P.M. in the rest of the state.

Polling Hours

LEAD: The United States today called for an end to the privileges given developing countries through most of the postwar period to restrict imports.

U.S. Asks End of 3d World Import Curbs

LEAD: Scientists have transplanted the major elements of the human immune defense system into living mice, a stunning achievement that should provide a powerful new tool for medical research.

Human Immune Defenses Are Transplanted in Mice

LEAD: The radon scare is old news in this village 15 miles from the Pennsylvania border. With much of the country just being warned about the radioactive gas and the threat of lung cancer it poses, this square-mile community of 2,000 has met and, by all accounts, conquered the worst residential radon hotspot known in the United States.

The Jersey Village That Fought Radon With Fans and Won

LEAD: THE ride starts with the Garden of Eden. Then come classical gardens: Egyptian, Persian, Roman, Italian Renaissance, 18th-century French and 19th-century Victorian. Next, you travel under the Magic Mountain that separates Occidental from Oriental gardens, and you end up in a basin turnaround with a statue of

How Do New Gardens Grow? In Green Sand and Fantasy

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Shortly before Dr. Richard R. Green was installed as New York City schools chancellor last March, he outlined his long-range goals for the beleaguered education system. But wasn't there something, Dr. Green was asked, that he might do immediately?

Metro Matters; Clocks or No, New Chancellor Is Fighting Time

LEAD: America's two largest newspaper companies won a Federal judge's approval yesterday to proceed with the partial merger of their Detroit papers, but a group of readers, advertisers and politicians said it would appeal the decision.

Court Backs Partial Merger Of Two Detroit Newspapers

LEAD: Dana Williams, dressed in a bright yellow outfit, waved a cheery goodbye to her father as she began her first day at Public School 106 in the Bronx. But later in the day, as her class was turned over to a lunch aide in the cafeteria, she wept bitterly at being separated from her teacher for a brief time.

First Day in First Grade: Tears at P.S. 106

LEAD: The campaigns of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and Vice President Bush today reached final agreement today on the ground rules for their two Presidential debates, which both sides acknowledged were critical and outside experts said could decide the election.

Dukakis and Bush Agree on the Rules For Debates on TV

LEAD: Hurricane Gilbert, the mightiest storm to hit the Western Hemisphere in this century, concentrates so much of its destructive energy into a narrow core that meteorologists say the storm resembles a monster tornado.

Meteorologists Say the Hurricane Is Similar to a Monster Tornado

LEAD: The organization that sets the accounting rules for American business is presenting new proposals today that could require the nation's largest companies to add as much as $2 trillion in new obligations to their financial statements.

Costly Accounting Change Planned

LEAD: Elizabeth Mead Steig, Margaret Mead's sister, was once quoted as saying: ''You can tell your sister to go to hell in 10 different langauges, but if you need a dime she'll give you one.''

Two Sisters Make Rivalry an Asset

LEAD: Oil prices surged on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday in hectic trading, with crude oil for delivery next month rising by 84 cents, to $15.40 a barrel.

84-Cent Jump Raises Oil Price to $15.40

LEAD: A South African anti-terrorist squad stormed a bus in which 69 Roman Catholic pilgrims were being held hostage here tonight, killing three hijackers and a hostage and ending a 26-hour ordeal.

4 Die as South Africans Storm Hijackers in Lesotho

LEAD:  6 F.B.I. Agents Punished  The Director acted against agents who took part in a surveillance of citizens opposed to Administration policy in Central America. Page A20.  Americans See Soviet Blast  With American officials present for the first time, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear device under the central Asian steppes.

INSIDE

LEAD: In a surprisingly favorable development, the nation's trade deficit plunged to $9.5 billion in July, the lowest monthly level since late 1984.

U.S. TRADE DEFICIT IMPROVES SHARPLY AS IMPORTS PLUNGE

LEAD: In a quiet corner of Forest Hills that once was as hotly contested as the sites designated for public housing in Yonkers, an old white woman sat on a bench under a willow tree and tried to explain to an old black woman what the early mornings used to feel like in her native Odessa. Nearby, children from a nursery school played, and a mother shouted to her son in

Forest Hills: From Rage to Tranquillity

LEAD: Gov. Michael S. Dukakis outlined his military policy today in the greatest detail he has yet offered, endorsing three nuclear arms programs and calling for a major buildup of conventional forces. He also went beyond Reagan Administration proposals and challenged the Soviet Union to eliminate its biggest and most deadly nuclear missiles.

Dukakis Outlines Military Policy And Offers a Challenge to Soviets

Chelsea Kane Staub is an American actress and singer. She is best known for her role as Stella Malone in the Disney Channel sitcom television series Jonas and the role of Riley Perrin in the Freeform sitcom, Baby Daddy. She also voiced Bea Goldfishberg in the Disney Channel animated sitcom Fish Hooks.

Chelsea Kane, American actress and singer

Chelsea_Kane

Tim Moltzen is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played for the Wests Tigers in the National Rugby League. He mostly played at fullback, halfback and five-eighth, but could also fill in at centre.

September 15, 1988

Headlines from September 15, 1988

Dawkins's Strategy: Image as World-Class Achiever

Greenspan Can Accept Bank Curb

Student Slain Fighting Thief For Her Purse

Century's Fiercest Storm Sweeps Yucatan

Lauren Re-invents Country in the City

Billboard 200

Hysteria

Appetite For Destruction

Tracy Chapman

Roll With It

He's The D.J.; I'm The Rapper

Notable Births

Historical Context for September 15, 1988