LEAD: In the closing days of World War II, as much of Japan lay in ruins, an 11-year-old boy was living and studying in Nikko, a quiet town in the mountains safe from the American B-29 Superfortresses that were bombing Tokyo nightly.

MAN IN THE NEWS: Akihito; New Symbol for New Japan

LEAD: IN an effort to halt the construction of garbage-burning incinerators in New Jersey, a bill has been introduced calling for a moratorium on the issuance of permits for the incinerators.

Alternatives to Incinerators are Sought

LEAD: The commercial opens with a shot of the actor Randy Quaid slouched in his rather messy apartment, holding a beer and a very large sandwich. He is complaining in a folksy way about a party he recently attended. ''They didn't even serve beer,'' he grouses. ''I oughta throw a real party - Texas style.

A Texas-Size Bet in Advertising

LEAD: TWO weeks before leaving office, the Reagan Administration was again tangling with the man America loves to hate - Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. As they have done in the past, the Western European allies last week were sitting on the sidelines, wringing their hands and wondering whether the other shoe would drop.

Reagan, Qaddafi and the Death Cloud

LEAD: When President Reagan submits the final budget of his Presidency Monday, it will be the first in which both spending and revenue exceed $1 trillion.

Reagan Budget: $1.15 Trillion

LEAD: A GROWING number of Westchester's public and non-public high schools are doing away with class ranking, as administrators, parents and students conclude that the practice only increases competition among already pressured college-bound students.

Class Ranking Falling From Favor

LEAD: IN the face of what has been an overbuilt rental market in the East End suburbs, the Paragon Group of Dallas and Carney Development Company of Louisville are doing what few others will try in 1989 - building more apartments.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Louisville, Ky.;
Overbuilt? Build On!

LEAD: FOR years Richard Spataro has offered a full line of services for male and female customers at his small shop in this Monmouth County community. But Mr. Spataro says a 1984 state law intended to upgrade the barber industry may actually drive him out of business.

Barbers Say 1984 Law Makes It Difficult to Do Their Business

LEAD: Around the display tables of university bookstores, ''the latest fashion from Paris'' does not refer to the length of skirts. It refers to a series of startling ideas and images out of the French mind. In paraphrase: That truth is castrating and humanism oppressive. That the ego is infinitely dissolvable.

IN PARIS - MINISkIRTS OF THE MIND

LEAD: 
BULLWHIP DAYS 
The Slaves Remember. 
Edited by James Mellon. 
Illustrated. 460 pp. New York: 
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. $27.50.

'A POWERFUL LOT OF TRIBULATIONS'

LEAD: Secretary of State George P. Shultz announced steps today to convince West Germany that a Libyan plant that the United States says is intended to produce chemical weapons was built with German help.

BONN TO REVIEW AMERICAN EVIDENCE ON LIBYAN PLANT

LEAD: PERHAPS more than a whimper, but there certainly wasn't much of a bang when the main thrust of the Government's case against Oliver L. North collapsed last week.

Who Knew What Will Remain Unknown

LEAD: Select National Guard forces, including helicopter units and military police detachments, will be used increasingly this year in anti-drug activities. Defense Department officials hope one result will be to ease public pressure on the Air Force, Army and Navy to fight drugs.

ROLE IN DRUG WAR FOR NATIONAL GUARD

LEAD: Rarely in any sport do two teams clash who have egos larger than the field boundaries on which they will play, who display confidence that oozes and overflows from owner down to equipment manager and who have the players to back any boast no matter how boisterous, no matter how brash.

A Clash Of Proud, Big Egos In N.F.C.

LEAD: Carlos Saul Menem is known as a pleasant fellow who can't say no and as a man who likes to be photographed with showgirls and belly dancers.

Argentine, Aiming to Please, Runs as a Peron for the 90's

LEAD: ''Mississippi Burning'' is now on trial. It's just 21 years and three months since the climax of the case that inspired the movie, when a group of white supremacists were put into the dock and charged with violating the civil rights of three young voter-registration workers. The means being murder, the violations were permanent.

FILM VIEW: 'Mississippi Burning': Generating Heat or Light?; Taking Risks to Illuminate a Painful Time in America

INSIDE

LEAD: 
WITHIN THE PLANTATION HOUSEHOLD 
Black and White Women of the Old South. 
By Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. 
Illustrated. 544 pp. Chapel Hill: 
University of North Carolina Press. Cloth, $34.95. Paper, $12.95.

LEAD: From a farm on Long Island to Notre Dame to the Red Sox to baseball immortality in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Completing A Dream

LEAD: A CHANCE to make sealed bids for purchases has increased interest in a new condominium project in this seaside town as the real-estate market has softened, the developers say.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Middletown, R.I.;
Sealed Bids Aid Condo Project

LEAD: DECEMBER may have been the busiest month for the many people preparing for holiday festivities, but it was also the busiest month of 1988 for the Red Cross disaster action team in Westchester. For the victims the team helped, it was the cruelest month - their homes were destroyed and their holiday gifts were left charred and soggy.

Disaster Strikes and Red Cross is There

LEAD: The screams began sometime after dinner: a teen-ager and his father were having a quarrel that could be heard through the wall of a neighbor's apartment in a luxury building on East 87th Street in Manhattan. Suddenly the neighbor heard a banging. Apparently the father was bashing his son's head against the bathroom wall.

Stopping Child Abuse Before It Happens

LEAD: Joseph Saleh called the Broadway basement where he is creating Manhattan's newest downtown moviehouse ''a miracle.'' Here was cheap space - less than $20 a square foot - where zoning permits a cinema. It even seemed to have been built with the multiplex in mind: big at 20,000 square feet - ''like a football field'' - and tall with 26-foot ceilings.

POSTINGS: 'Miracle' in Manhattan; Basement Multiplex

LEAD: It is not surprising that United Airlines was the only major carrier to support deregulation when debates heated up in the late 1970's. The free-for-all competition created by deregulation, United figured, would enable it to consolidate its position as the undisputed king of the skies.

Steve Wolf's Big Test

LEAD: THE sanest way to spend an East Coast winter, some say, is to turn dormant and emerge sleek and fresh in the spring. But on hard-working, hard-traveling Long Island, where hibernation is a seasonal style that few can afford, life hurtles on, with only the snow to slow the pace.

In Darkest Winter, Many Cold, Few Frozen

Aaron Wiremu Cruden is a New Zealand rugby union player, who plays for Waikato and formerly Montpellier, Manawatu and New Zealand internationally. Cruden's usual position is fly-half.

Aaron Cruden, New Zealand rugby player

Aaron_Cruden

The Kegworth air disaster occurred when British Midland Airways Flight 092, a Boeing 737-400, crashed onto the motorway embankment between the M1 motorway and A453 road near Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, while attempting to make an emergency landing at East Midlands Airport on 8 January 1989.

Kegworth air disaster: British Midland Flight 92, a Boeing 737-400, crashes into the M1 motorway, killing 47 of the 126 people on board.

January 8, 1989

Headlines from January 8, 1989

MAN IN THE NEWS: Akihito; New Symbol for New Japan

Alternatives to Incinerators are Sought

A Texas-Size Bet in Advertising

Reagan, Qaddafi and the Death Cloud

Reagan Budget: $1.15 Trillion

Billboard 200

Giving You The Best That I Got

Cocktail

Rattle And Hum (Soundtrack)

New Jersey

Traveling Wilburys

Notable Births

Historical Events

Historical Context for January 8, 1989