March 7, 1989

LEAD: The Soviet Union opened an East-West conference today with a broad proposal for a three-stage reduction in nonnuclear weapons and military personnel in Europe.

LEAD: In the first breach of Democratic ranks in the battle over John G. Tower's nomination to be Secretary of Defense, Senator Howell Heflin of Alabama announced today that he would vote for Mr. Tower's confirmation.

LEAD: New York City's health care crisis, worsened by the AIDS epidemic, will drive away businesses and jobs unless state and local officials act now to relieve the overcrowded system, a privately financed commission on AIDS said yesterday.

LEAD: WHILE Western psychology assumes that human nature is the same everywhere, there are profound psychological differences from culture to culture, according to a growing body of evidence.

LEAD: Mayor Edward I. Koch, in a new book published on the eve of his re-election campaign in New York City, offers a personal and political testament that documents his shift over the years to a more conservative philosophy.

LEAD: Some of the nation's biggest backers of solar energy are losing interest just as the technology to transform sunlight into electricity is getting closer to being economically competitive with some conventional power sources.

LEAD: It's an enormous job for ordinary citizens to stop a garbage incinerator planned in their area. For two years Marlene Mendelsohn, a substitute teacher, has run a kaffeeklatsch a week, raising $100,000 to pay lawyers and anti-incinerator experts. In her garage she has 37 boxes of files; in the laundry room is a stack of clippings to be filed; by the kitchen phone she keeps crates of her best files handy for emergencies.

LEAD: A mass migration officially estimated at more than 2.5 million Chinese has flooded this city in the last few weeks, responding to the lure of southern China's prosperity.

LEAD: A former chairman of the world's largest corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, was arrested on bribery charges Monday night.

LEAD: WITH custom-built spacecraft growing so expensive, new vehicles for American planetary missions will take on the mass-produced look more commonly associated with Detroit. Nearly all of them in the next decade and beyond will come in one of two standardized models - either a no-frills runabout for neighborhood trips to the inner solar system or a larger sedan for long journeys to the outer planets.

LEAD: Morning at the Shoreham nuclear power plant: Today, just as they have every day for the last four years, 1,000 workers run through their rituals of readiness. Machinists check pipes and valves, electricians fix broken ventilation fans and control-room operators test the instruments that monitor the workings of the vast machine.

LEAD: In recent years, Salomon Brothers has been in the news either for the well-publicized social activities of its chairman, John H. Gutfreund, and his wife, Susan, or for a series of defections that have rocked the firm.