LEAD: For the Rangers, silliness seemed the order of the day.

Rangers Come Back On 5 Goals

LEAD: The Reagan Administration is likely to allow five American oil companies to resume doing business in Libya, U.S. officials said. Page A7.

Changes in Libya Embargo

LEAD: ''IT'S amazing,'' said the hard-driving coach of the Bengals' receivers, Bruce Coslet, ''what a player will do for $5.''

SUPER BOWL: Rice Overcomes Pain; Bengals Turn Tables; Their Receivers Are Paid to Hit

LEAD: Energy Department managers in South Carolina and the operator of the Savannah River nuclear weapons plant there were intimately aware of critical structural flaws and deficiencies in management and maintenance years before three reactors were shut down for safety.

BOMB PLANT FLAWS KNOWN TO DU PONT AND U.S. FOR YEARS

LEAD: The Brazilian Government announced an indefinite freeze today on prices and wages and a devaluation of about 17 percent as part of a new anti-inflation plan.

Brazil Acts To Fight Inflation

LEAD: Additional charges will be brought against the top officers of a defunct New Jersey investment partnership who were indicted last summer on charges of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, lawyers in the case said yesterday.

New Princeton/Newport Indictment Seen

LEAD: Perestroika has rippled through Finland, the Western nation with the longest and most extensive trading relationship with the Soviet Union, causing almost as much turmoil and uncertainty in board rooms and government offices as the restructuring has brought on the other side of the border.

Perestroika Enters Finland, a Bit Bumpily

LEAD: The cover conference at Berkley Books was under way for only a few minutes when someone raised the question: Should the cover on the paperback edition of the suspense novel ''Smoke and Mirrors'' actually depict a mirror?

Helping to Sell a Book by Its Cover

LEAD: SHORTLY after arriving in Miami this week, each of the 90,000 visitors expected for Super Bowl XXIII at Joe Robbie Stadium next Sunday will receive an original piece of artwork: the medium is crayon, the artists nearly 100,000 students in the Dade County elementary school system.

Miami Diagrams Its Big Play

LEAD: Seven people were killed and eight others were injured here early today when a fire swept through a boarding house on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson River.

Yonkers Blaze Kills 7 People Inside a House

LEAD: A slightly built young man who apparently has detailed knowledge of New York City's subway system and its cars may be responsible for at least seven sexual attacks since September, the Transit Police said yesterday.

Man Sought in 7 Sex Attacks in Subways

LEAD: At the time of the breakup of the Bell System, few would have picked Cincinnati Bell Inc. to emerge as a star performer. But it has done just that.

Surprise Star Among the Bells

LEAD:  Dispute Over Building Ban  City Council members challenged Mayor Koch's account of public disclosure of a change in a law that benefited a developer. Page B1.  7 Die in Yonkers Fire  In the city's worst fire in years, seven people were killed and eight injured when flames swept through a boarding house.

INSIDE

LEAD: Minutes before the start of the New York Knicks game Saturday night, Alex Sumner stood outside Madison Square Garden, desperate.

At Garden, a Fast Break for Knick Tickets

LEAD: The army Chief of Staff, Lieut. Gen. Dan Shomron, has told a parliamentary committee that Yasir Arafat's wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization has not planned or carried out any guerrilla acts in more than two months.

ARAFAT'S FACTION IS SAID TO AVOID GUERRILLA ACTIONS

LEAD: City Council members, civic leaders and lawyers who represent poor New Yorkers yesterday challenged the Koch administration's assertion that there had been public disclosure and debate over a change in city law that benefited the developer Harry Macklowe.

Koch Disputed On a Benefit To Developer

LEAD: As a storm of insider trading allegations, some of them touching French Finance Ministry officials, continued to grow in intensity, President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Michel Rocard moved last week to try to contain the damage to their Government.

French Leaders Act to Ease Damage of Insider Scandals

LEAD: Steve Jones, given a reprieve when Paul Azinger bogeyed the final hole, sank a 4-foot birdie putt on the first playoff hole today to win the 30th annual Bob Hope-Chrysler Classic and remain the only winner on the 1989 PGA Tour. This victory in a three-way playoff against Azinger and the Scot, Sandy Lyle, came a week after Jones won the MONY Tournament of Champions at La Costa Country Club in Carlsbad,

Steve Jones Wins Playoff With a Birdie

LEAD:  Q. Whereabouts at home in the house did you keep this money that you had saved?  A. In the safe.  Q. But a little box in a big safe?  A. In a big box in a big safe.

Metro Matters; A Little Tin Box With Feerick As Its Pandora

LEAD: The Treasury Department is considering whether to abolish the Federal Home Loan Bank Board as part of a sweeping overhaul of financial services regulation in the Bush administration, a top banking regulator said last week.

Shifts Studied For Financial Regulators

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: In the two weeks since West German companies were accused of helping to outfit a suspect chemical plant in Libya, West German officials have gone from a petulant defensiveness to the surprising admission that they knew all about it long before the Americans told them of their concerns.

Angst and Anger in Bonn; U.S. Disclosures on Libyan Chemical Plant Raise Hackles and Questions About NATO

LEAD: THREE months later, the reminders are still being transmitted from Jerry Rice's left ankle. Rice's season goes on, longer than any of his three previous years with the San Francisco 49ers. His contribution has met the personal standards that his record-setting 1987 season established.

SUPER BOWL: Rice Overcomes Pain; Bengals Turn Tables

LEAD: When New York City's elementary and junior high schools were given greater autonomy 19 years ago, parents were supposed to gain direct control over their children's schooling through the local school boards that took over much of the central administration's responsibility.

In New York, Parents Lack Say in Schools

LEAD: President-elect George Bush's economic policy appointees are ideological agnostics who call themselves results-oriented, and they are. But Mr. Bush has yet to present them with a detailed map for reaching his goal of budget reduction and continued prosperity.

January 16, 1989

Headlines from January 16, 1989

Rangers Come Back On 5 Goals

Changes in Libya Embargo

SUPER BOWL: Rice Overcomes Pain; Bengals Turn Tables; Their Receivers Are Paid to Hit

BOMB PLANT FLAWS KNOWN TO DU PONT AND U.S. FOR YEARS

Brazil Acts To Fight Inflation

Billboard 200

Giving You The Best That I Got

Rattle And Hum (Soundtrack)

Cocktail

New Jersey

Appetite For Destruction

Historical Context for January 16, 1989