LEAD: Israel's central bank stopped selling or buying foreign currency today in an effort to head off a panic over the efforts of Finance Minister Shimon Peres to shore up the country's battered economy.

Israel Stops Trading In Currency to Halt Flight From Shekel

INSIDE

LEAD: Libya has offered to allow an international inspection of a plant that the United States says will be used to make chemical weapons, but Washington has rejected the offer, the State Department said today.

Libya Offers to Allow Inspection Of Chemical Plant but U.S. Balks

LEAD: Edsel B. Ford 2d said he and his cousin William Clay Ford Jr. are pressing Ford's chairman for appointments to two of the auto maker's most powerful committees. Page 31.

Fords Seek Power at Ford

LEAD: On the day before key tax breaks expire, Federal regulators today announced three more giant rescues of savings and loan institutions and promised to commit more than $3.7 billion in future aid.

FORD MOTOR TO BUY WEAK SAVING UNITS WITH FEDERAL HELP

LEAD: Members of Japan's hard-driving work force will face a vexing problem in the new year: what to do with their Saturdays.

Relaxing Takes Some Work As Weekends Come to Japan

LEAD: President Reagan and Vice President Bush were subpoenaed today to testify as defense witnesses for Oliver L. North at his trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Iran-contra affair.

Reagan and Bush Get Subpoenas To Testify as Witnesses for North

LEAD: Mayor Koch said yesterday that his administration could not have prevented most of the deaths resulting from child abuse and neglect recorded in the city this year, even though in about half the cases the city's social service agency knew of prior instances of abuse or neglect.

KOCH ARGUES CITY CAN'T TOTALLY END FATAL CHILD ABUSE

LEAD: The shortage of tritium, a vital material for nuclear weapons, arrived right on schedule.

How a Vital Nuclear Material Came to Be in Short Supply

LEAD: Isamu Noguchi, a versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks of 20th-century art, died of heart failure yesterday at the New York University Medical Center. He was 84 years old and had homes in Manhattan and on Shikoku island in Japan.

Isamu Noguchi, the Sculptor, Dies at 84

LEAD: ''Nobody has the answer. There is no proposal that I know of that, if you implement it with infinite sources of money, would eliminate child abuse.'' - Mayor Edward I. Koch.  [ 27:3. ]

Quotations of the Day

LEAD: A black rural community won a small but significant victory today in its battle to keep from being forcibly incorporated into a nominally independent black homeland nearby.

Pretoria Court Backs Blacks Resisting a Territorial Shift

LEAD:  International 2-5, 24  Washington rejected Libya's offer to allow an international inspection of a plant that American officials say is intended to make chemical weapons. Washington said the conditions of the offer are inadequate.  Page 1  Trying to head off a panic in Israel over Finance Minister Shimon Peres's 5 percent devaluation of the shekel, the central bank stopped selling or buying foreign currency.

NEWS SUMMARY

LEAD: Investigators have told the Scottish police that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was put aboard in Frankfurt, West Germany, The Times of London reported in today's issue.

Trail of Bomb on Pan Am Jet Is Said to Lead to Frankfurt

LEAD: A brief article on Nov. 29 about the suicide of a West German prince, Ludwig Rudolf, identified his father incorrectly. He was Prince Ernst August of Hanover, the Duke of Braunschweig and Luneburg.

Corrections

LEAD: Heaped on the pavement in front of the Lockerbie town hall are dozens of floral wreaths and bouquets bearing expressions of sympathy.

For Lockerbie, Therapy of Self-Help

LEAD: An unidentified caller claiming to represent a pro-Iranian group today again took responsibility for the Pan Am bombing and threatened unspecified further action against the United States.

Trail of Bomb on Pan Am Jet Is Said to Lead to Frankfurt; New Threat Received

LEAD: Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about an investigation of Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. of Washington misidentified a District of Columbia Council member. He is Jim Nathanson, not George Nathanson.

LEAD: An article on Thursday about plans for a day-care center at Police Headquarters in New York City misstated the estimated cost per child for the day-care service. It is $110 a week, not $110 a month.

LEAD: An obituary on Thursday about Adm. Alfred M. Pride, an early naval aviator, described the autogiro incorrectly. A precursor of the helicopter, the autogiro had a conventional propeller for forward propulsion and a freely rotating blade above the fuselage to provide lift.

LEAD: President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, in an interview made public today, said that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir of Israel was stubborn and that the Camp David agreement was out of date.

SHAMIR 'STUBBORN,' MUBARAK ASSERTS

LEAD: An obituary of Sondra T. Ordover on Dec. 13 listed her survivors incompletely. Ms. Ordover, an editor and publisher of paperback books, is also survived by a sister, Nancy Levin of Los Angeles.

LEAD: Sudanese protesters took to the streets of Khartoum and other cities again today despite Government concessions on food price increases. At least two people were reported killed on Thursday.

Protest and Paralysis Continue in the Sudan

LEAD: In a new sign of warming relations between church and state, a Roman Catholic Bishop in Lithuania has been invited to resume his official duties after almost 28 years in internal exile.

Lithuanian Bishop Is Invited To Resume Religious Duties

LEAD: More than 180,000 members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God jammed a huge soccer stadium here one recent Sunday to hear Bishop Edir Macedo denounce the Devil and his supposed presence among powerful African-Brazilian spiritist cults.

A Spirited 'Holy War' In an Easygoing Land

Michal Řepík is a Czech professional ice hockey left winger. He is currently under contract with HC Sparta Praha of the Czech Extraliga (ELH). Repik was selected by the Florida Panthers in the 2nd round of the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.

Michal Řepík, Czech ice hockey player

Michal_Řepík

Nicolas Calas was the pseudonym of Nikos Kalamaris, a Greek-American poet and art critic. While living in Greece, he also used the pseudonyms Nikitas Randos and M. Spieros.

December 31, 1988

Headlines from December 31, 1988

Israel Stops Trading In Currency to Halt Flight From Shekel

INSIDE

Libya Offers to Allow Inspection Of Chemical Plant but U.S. Balks

Fords Seek Power at Ford

FORD MOTOR TO BUY WEAK SAVING UNITS WITH FEDERAL HELP

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 31, 1988