INSIDE

LEAD: A letter from New York City's top child welfare official explaining his agency's actions in the case of a 5-year-old girl who was beaten to death shows a pattern of repeated visits, confusion over the identity of children and failures to look up records that might have signaled a history of neglect.

CONFUSION MARKED ABUSE CASE REVIEW

LEAD: The nation's state and Federal prison systems, already straining as they handle more and more prisonerssentenced to longer and longer terms, are beginning to confront a complicated and costly new problem: elderly convicts.

Aged Inmates Pose Problem For Prisons

LEAD: The hidden losses embedded in the Government's huge portfolio of subsidized loans and loan guarantees have reached startlingly high levels, say budget experts, who add that losses from the programs will continue to cost taxpayers billions of dollars for years to come.

HIDDEN U.S. LOSSES IN LOAN PROGRAMS REACH HIGH LEVELS

LEAD: The $55 billion United States cigarette industry, facing a serious threat from a proliferation of city, county and state antismoking laws, is fighting back with a richly financed nationwide campaign to organize opposition to the legislation.

Cigarette Industry Financing Wide War on Smoking Bans

LEAD: A Brazilian union leader who received repeated death threats during a campaign to protect the Amazon rain forest was shot and killed Thursday at his home in northwestern Brazil.

Brazilian Who Fought to Protect Amazon Is Killed

LEAD: After the first playback of the cockpit and flight data recordings from the Pan Am Boeing 747 that crashed here, investigators said today that the cockpit voice recorder showed normal flight deck conversations until it cut off, and that an unidentified noise came at the end of the tape. The data recorder was also suddenly cut off, when the plane was at 31,000 feet.

Faint Unknown Noise Is Detected At End of Crashed Jet's Recording

LEAD: The Defense Department says that four major arms makers are under investigation for illicit possession of secret Government documents, not the eight that a top Pentagon investigator had identified on Wednesday.

PENTAGON ASSERTS OFFICIAL MISSPOKE ON INQUIRY'S SCOPE

LEAD: ''There are a number of potential causes for in-flight breakup. We are looking for evidence to try to point us in the right direction.'' - Mick Charles, a British investigator of the fall of Pan Am Flight 103.  [ 1:3. ]

Quotation of the Day

LEAD: Palestinian guerrillas and Lebanese Shiite Muslim militiamen announced an agreement today to end three years of fighting and begin a new relationship.

P.L.O. and Muslim Militia Agree to End Lebanon Fight

LEAD: Kenya has re-established diplomatic relations with Israel in light of the Palestine Liberation Organization's decision to recognize Israel, the state-run Voice of Kenya radio said today. Kenya, with most other black African countries, broke off relations with Israel after the 1973 Middle East war.

Kenya Reopens Israeli Ties

LEAD:  International 2-5  A recovered cockpit voice recorder from the Pan Am Boeing 747 that crashed in Scotland shows normal flight deck conversations until a cutoff and an unidentified noise at the end of the tape. Page 1  Airlines have no assured protection against bombs, experts in aviation security said, noting that officials had been paying particular attention to the possibility of bomb attacks in recent months.

NEWS SUMMARY

LEAD: A listing in the Executive Changes column in Business Day on Thursday about Daiwa Securities America Inc. misstated the new title of Takuro Isoda, its chairman and chief executive. He was named senior managing director of the parent company, the Daiwa Securities Company.

Corrections

LEAD: An article on Nov. 14 about President-elect Bush's visit to Gulf Stream, Fla., misstated the length of Jupiter Island and the size of its population. It is 15 miles long, not 9, and has a population of about 1,600, not 500.

LEAD: Chadli Benjedid has been overwhelmingly re-elected President of Algeria for a third five-year term, the Interior Ministry announced today.

Chadli Benjedid Re-elected To 3d Term to Head Algeria

LEAD: The Palestine Liberation Organization has unexpectedly achieved a long-standing goal: a dialogue with the United States. But the breakthrough has illuminated an equally long-standing challenge: to establish that Palestinian aspirations will not prove perilous, unwanted and unacceptable to Israelis and many

Arafat's Aim: Turning a Foot in the Door Into Something More Permanent

LEAD: A picture caption Thursday about the sentencing of Dr. Peter J. Sarosi, who pleaded guilty to charges stemming from his role in the unlawful adoption of a baby boy by Joel B. Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, misidentified the lawyer at right. He was Wilfred T. Friedman, not Greg Baruch.

LEAD: Pope John Paul II received Yasir Arafat today and told him that Israelis and Palestinians had ''an identical, fundamental right to their own homelands,'' but that both must reject violence, including terrorism and reprisals.

POPE SEES ARAFAT AND BACKS TALKS

LEAD: Some of the lines at the Junior department store along Marszalkowska Boulevard here are longer than usual these days, though not because of a shortage of goods.

At Polish Store, the Cash Is Western

LEAD: South Africa has agreed to cut back the number of policemen in Namibia and disband a paramilitary police force there, diplomats said today.

PRETORIA TO CUT POLICE IN NAMIBIA

LEAD: Ask most residents of the world's largest metropolis what problem worries them most and the answer is likely to be pollution, crime or overcrowding. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari must contend not only with those issues but also with the growing political restiveness of the Mexican capital.

Now, the Urban Sprawl Wonder Diet

LEAD: No more survivors will be found from the Dec. 7 earthquake in Soviet Armenia, and crews will concentrate on clearing eight million tons of rubble in the crumbled cities, a Government official said today.

Armenia Quake Crews End Rescue Mission

LEAD: If you work for the Government, what does it mean when the President sends you a bathroom scale for Christmas?

Ortega's Gifts: A Message?

LEAD: Several aviation officials indicated today that it was far too early to dismiss mechanical or structural flaws as a cause of the midair disintegration of a Pan American World Airways jumbo jet over Scotland.

Flaw Not Ruled Out but Sabotage Is Still Suspected

LEAD: Leftist rebels attacked the Defense Ministry with car bombs and catapult explosives today, killing at least 3 people and wounding at least 35, officials said.

Leftist Rebels Bomb Salvador Ministry, Killing 3 and Wounding 35

Stefanos "Klaus" Athanasiadis is a Greek retired professional footballer who played as a striker.

Stefanos Athanasiadis, Greek footballer

Stefanos_Athanasiadis

Emre Özkan is a Turkish football defender who plays for TFF Third League club Ergene Velimeşe.

Emre Özkan, Turkish footballer

Emre_Özkan

Simon Terwase Zenke is a Nigerian professional footballer who plays as a forward.

Simon Zenke, Nigerian footballer

Simon_Zenke

Jainendra Kumar was a 20th-century Indian writer who wrote in Hindi. He wrote novels include Sunita and Tyagapatra. He was awarded one of India's highest civilian honours, the Padma Bhushan in 1971. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award by the Sahitya Akademi in 1966, for his work Muktibodh (novelette), and its highest award, the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 1979.

December 24, 1988

Headlines from December 24, 1988

INSIDE

CONFUSION MARKED ABUSE CASE REVIEW

Aged Inmates Pose Problem For Prisons

HIDDEN U.S. LOSSES IN LOAN PROGRAMS REACH HIGH LEVELS

Cigarette Industry Financing Wide War on Smoking Bans

Billboard 200

Giving You The Best That I Got

Rattle And Hum (Soundtrack)

Cocktail

Appetite For Destruction

New Jersey

Notable Births

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for December 24, 1988