LEAD: Thirteen months after the Public Service Company of New Hampshire entered bankruptcy, the utility is involved in a tangled, bitter proceeding over who will regulate its rates - the state or a friendlier Federal agency.

Seabrook Utility in a Battle Over Who Regulates Rates

LEAD: Former Representative Mario Biaggi's long struggle to avoid prison was lost yesterday when the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal of a 1987 conviction for accepting an unlawful gratuity and obstructing justice.

Biaggi Loses Bid to Avoid Prison Term

LEAD: The nation's airline industry is calling for a repair program for its aging planes that would be the most sweeping ever in commercial aviation.

Hundred of Aging Planes Face a Sweeping Overhaul

LEAD:  79 Aliens Seized on Jet  Immigration officials boarded a jet in Atlanta and removed 79 Latin American aliens thought to have been illegally transported. Page A16.  Supply of Weapon Fuel  The Government has a large supply of tritium, a perishable gas in nuclear weapons, but lacks a plant to extract it.

INSIDE

LEAD: A two-month international investigation of industrial espionage culminated in a Geneva parking lot yesterday when four people were arrested after they tried to extort $10 million from E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, law-enforcement and company officials said.

Four Arrested in an Extortion Plot Asking $10 Million From Du Pont

LEAD: The percentage of New York City's population reported to be living below the poverty level has risen despite the city's economic growth.

New York City's Economic Growth Fails to Curb Rise of 'New Poverty'

LEAD:  COMPANIES  An investigation of industrial espionage culminated in a Geneva parking lot when four people were arrested after they attempted to extort $10 million from Du Pont, law-enforcement and company officials said. The case involved some of Du Pont's most important secrets for the production of Lycra, the company's brand of spandex fiber.

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Morton Thiokol Inc., the maker of the booster rocket whose failure set off the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger three years ago, said today that it would spin off its commercial operations from its troubled aerospace unit.

Thiokol to Spin Off Non-Aerospace Units

LEAD: The head trader of a major West Coast brokerage testified yesterday in the GAF Corporation's stock manipulation trial that he executed a series of stock purchases in the fall of 1986 to inflate the price of Union Carbide stock.

GAF Trial Told of Stock Maneuvers

LEAD: He moved quietly through the streets of Chinatown, a portly stoop-shouldered man with a receding thatch of black hair. He traveled without fanfare or bodyguards in and out of Offtrack Betting offices and mah-jongg parlors, residents said.

Chinatown Shopkeeper, 71, Called 'Elder of Heroin Trade'

LEAD: PUBLIC health officials and therapists grappling with soaring rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teen-age pregnancies, sexual abuse of children, rape and divorce say that progress is being seriously hampered by out-of-date information about the sexual behavior of Americans.

Who's Having Sex? Data Are Obsolete, Experts Say

LEAD: THE Big Bang theory, generally regarded as the best explanation for the origin, expansion and ultimate fate of the universe, is facing the first serious challenge to its validity in more than two decades.

Novel Theory Challenges The Big Bang

LEAD: Responding to a flood of consumer complaints, the Federal Communications Commission set new guidelines yesterday for five telephone companies that have been shown to charge very high rates to consumers for long-distance calls made from hotels, hospitals, universities and some pay telephones.

Complaints Spur F.C.C. Rules On High-Cost Calls at Hotels

LEAD: An angry judge today abruptly halted the trial of Oliver L. North until Tuesday after the defense appeared ready to ask a witness to disclose a name the Government wants to keep classified.

Angry Judge Delays North Trial as Sides Clash Over Secrecy

LEAD: THE African elephant - mythic symbol of a continent, keystone of its ecology and the largest land animal remaining on earth - has become the object of one of the biggest, broadest international efforts yet mounted to turn a threatened species off the road to extinction.

Huge Conservation Effort Aims to Save Vanishing Architect of the Savanna

LEAD: Even as Congress considers a rescue package for the beleaguered savings and loan industry that the Bush Administration estimates could eventually cost $157 billion, more than 80 percent of the 3,100 savings and loan companies are solvent and about half of them are considered in the best of health.

Savings and Loans That Prosper

LEAD: Although neither is a commercial enterprise, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are encroaching on each other's turf as if deregulation had just come to global economics.

World Bank and I.M.F. In a Conflict Over Roles

LEAD: A proposal by President Jose Napoleon Duarte to postpone elections, begin a cease-fire and meet leftist guerrillas was rejected today by a key right-wing party and by the rebels' political allies.

RIGHTISTS REJECT DUARTE PEACE BID

LEAD: Until Robert A. Lange moved from southern Westchester County, which can look an awful lot like New York City, to northern Westchester, which looks the way a suburb should, he thought every bird was a sparrow.

Our Towns; This Is a War Being Waged Over Bird Feed

LEAD: John G. Tower apparently failed to win new supporters among Senate Democrats today with his pledge not to drink if confirmed as Defense Secretary, and his Republican backers conceded that renewed concerns about his financial ties to military contractors raised an additional threat to the nomination.

TOWER PROSPECTS FOR CONFIRMATION SEEM TO BE DIMMER

LEAD: This small town in the Mohawk Valley generally concerns itself with the care of cows and vegetables, not of low-level radioactive waste. That changed one day shortly before Christmas, however, when New York State announced that Root was in one of 10 areas across the state being considered for disposal of the waste.

Quiet Towns In an Uproar Over Waste

LEAD: The only proposition on which everyone at the United States Supreme Court today appeared to agree was that rock music is loud music.

Supreme Court Accord: Rock Music Is Loud

LEAD: Treasury bill rates soared yesterday to their highest level in four years, reflecting recent moves by the Federal Reserve to push up the cost of borrowing. By tightening credit, the Fed hopes to arrest what it perceives to be accelerating inflation.

U.S. Bill Rates Set 4-Year High

LEAD: The number of homeless families sheltered by New York City decreased by 500 last year to 4,637, social service officials said yesterday.

After 8 Years, a Dip in Families in Shelters

LEAD: New York State's trade and business schools are taking in more than half a billion dollars a year in Federal and state aid and loans, but are doing such a poor job that only 22 percent of the students find work in the fields in which they are trained, a study that is being released today asserts.

Study Faults Trade Schools' Results

Carlos Dunlap is an American former professional football player who was a defensive end in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Florida Gators, who won the 2009 BCS National Championship Game. He was selected by the Cincinnati Bengals in the second round of the 2010 NFL draft.

Carlos Dunlap, American football player

Carlos_Dunlap

Charles T. Jenkins is an American former professional basketball player. He was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in the 2011 NBA draft after finishing his four-year college career with the Hofstra Pride. In addition to being a citizen of the United States, Jenkins also has Serbian citizenship.

February 28, 1989

Headlines from February 28, 1989

Seabrook Utility in a Battle Over Who Regulates Rates

Biaggi Loses Bid to Avoid Prison Term

Hundred of Aging Planes Face a Sweeping Overhaul

INSIDE

Four Arrested in an Extortion Plot Asking $10 Million From Du Pont

Billboard 200

Don't Be Cruel

Appetite For Destruction

Traveling Wilburys

Shooting Rubberbands At The Stars

Electric Youth

Notable Births

Historical Context for February 28, 1989