LEAD: Eastern Airlines' three striking unions agreed today to wage and benefit concessions worth about $200 million a year as part of Peter V. Ueberroth's effort to gain control of the carrier.

3 EASTERN UNIONS BACK CONCESSIONS IN UEBERROTH DEAL

LEAD: The Soviet Foreign Minister canceled a trip to East Germany and flew to the Soviet republic of Georgia today in an effort to restore calm after clashes between nationalist demonstrators and Government troops.

Shevardnadze, Native Son, Goes to Restive Georgia

LEAD: A police officer shot and killed a disturbed man who had menaced a dozen pedestrians when the man lunged at the officer with a large Gurkha knife on Manhattan's East Side yesterday after four officers were unable to stop him with tear gas and a stun gun.

Officer Kills Man Swinging Gurkha Knife

LEAD: The Grand Union Company, the 11th-largest supermarket chain in the country, is being acquired in a transaction valued at $1.2 billion by an investor group that includes Salomon Brothers Inc. and Miller Tabak Hirsch & Company, a New York-based investment bank that specializes in arbitrage and leveraged buyouts.

Article 116789 -- No Title

LEAD: More than 100 mentally disabled children in the New York City foster-care system are being kept in hospitals - in some cases more than a year and at costs of up to $900 a day - waiting for the city to find proper homes for them.

Disabled Foster-Care Youths Kept in New York Hospitals

LEAD: FLAKES of crumbling brick drew the archeologist step by step along the line where the wall of an ancient city of lower Mesopotamia once stood. The trail led to remnants of the south gate, and there on the ground lay a clay fragment bearing cuneiform inscriptions.

Archeologists Discover A Lost Rival to Babylon

LEAD: Rand A. Burgner is haunted by the specter of the garbage barge Mobro, which turned Long Island's solid-waste crisis into a national embarrassment two years ago when no one would accept its trash.

L.I. Town's Waste Crisis: Burn or Recycle?

LEAD: RESEARCHERS who study the brain have discovered that it differs anatomically in men and women in ways that may underlie differences in mental abilities.

Subtle but Intriguing Differences Found In the Brain Anatomy of Men and Women

LEAD: As Stan Lundine has discovered, life as Lieutenant Governor can be filled with little ignominies.

Lundine Surmounts the Little Ignominies of Being No. 2

LEAD: Making its third and ''final'' offer to buy the West's second-largest gold mining company, Minorco S.A., the overseas arm of South Africa's Anglo American and De Beers group, yesterday raised to nearly $6 billion its bid for Consolidated Gold Fields P.L.C. of Britain.

Minorco Lifts Its Offer for Gold Fields

LEAD: A recent claim by scientists in Utah that they had achieved nuclear fusion in a jar of water gained important support today from two independent research groups that repeated part of the experiment.

Claim of Achieving Fusion in Jar Gains Support in 2 Experiments

LEAD:  COMPANIES  Eastern Airlines' striking unions agreed to concessions on wages and benefits worth about $200 million a year as part of Peter Ueberroth's effort to gain control of the airline. The concessions are subject to the bankruptcy court's naming a trustee to run the airline as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy.

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Oliver L. North, bristling with anger and contempt for his accusers, today defended his handling of hundreds of thousands of dollars entrusted to him in the Iran-contra affair, insisting that ''not one cent'' went for his personal use.

Ex-Marines Are Enemies: North Faces His Accuser

LEAD: The outside counsel to the House ethics committee has recommended that Speaker Jim Wright be held in violation of House rules in connection with a publishing arrangement and his financial ties to a Texas developer. These allegations, and a spirited defense from Mr. Wright, are outlined in a document prepared by Wright supporters.

House Lawyer Finds Wright Broke Rules

LEAD: A statistical analysis of all students entering New York City high schools last September shows large percentages of them to be at high risk of dropping out because they were older than average for their grade or had a high absentee rate.

New York's Dropouts-to-Be: A Grim Class Portrait

LEAD: In the commercial aircraft boom, some of the largest airplane orders have been placed by companies whose names never graced a fuselage.

Lessors Thrive on Aircraft Boom

LEAD: William J. Bennett, the Federal narcotics chief, charged today that this city's government had failed to contain the drug epidemic here.

Capital's Government Denounced By Bennett, Opening Drug Drive

LEAD: In its boldest strike against drug trafficking and corruption, the Mexican Government has captured the country's leading cocaine-trafficking figure and taken into custody virtually the entire police force of the city that was his base. Several other senior law enforcement officials were also arrested.

MEXICANS ARREST TOP DRUG FIGURE AND 80 POLICEMEN

LEAD: Returning to the public debt market yesterday after an absence of nearly four years, the Long Island Lighting Company signaled loud and clear that it was back in the land of the living.

In Lilco's Debt Sale, Signs of a New Vigor

LEAD: THEY are everywhere: coffee cups and burger boxes, trash and grocery bags, diapers and margarine tubs and containers for everything from milk to antifreeze - billions of pieces of trash, all made of seemingly indestructible plastic.

Degradable Plastics Show Promise in Fight Against Trash

LEAD: In an industry in which consistency means two hit films in a row, the Paramount Pictures Corporation has risen from a weak performer in the 1970's to become one of the two or three Hollywood studios on which Wall Street counts to deliver solid results year after year.

Paramount Pictures' Success Key to Revamping at G.&W.

LEAD: It looked like a perfect match when the Waterford Glass Group of Ireland purchased Wedgwood P.L.C. for more than $360 million in the fall of 1986. The deal brought together two of the most prestigious names in tableware, with a goal of modernizing production and enhancing their global marketing prowess.

At Waterford, Honeymoon Is Over

LEAD:  'Star Wars' Laser Tested  A powerful $250 million laser designed to shoot down enemy missiles flashed to life in California in the first major ''Star Wars'' ground test during the Bush Administration, Pentagon officials said. Page A16.  Sakharov Gains Candidacy  Andrei Sakharov was nominated for a seat in the new Soviet congress after the Academy of Sciences reversed itself.

INSIDE

LEAD: In 1986 Marion Ragsdale, a retired teacher, paid $40,000 for a plain, two-story country house in this quiet Catskills town. Because her income is modest, Ms. Ragsdale, a widow living in a Manhattan apartment, checked the property taxes first; they were $835, quite reasonable.

Our Towns; Howdy, Stranger, Have a Big Dose Of Realty Taxes

LEAD: Four Puerto Rican nationalists were convicted today on charges stemming from the robbery of $7.1 million from a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford in 1983. A fifth defendant was acquitted.

4 of 5 Men Are Convicted In '83 Wells Fargo Robbery

Torrin Lawrence was an American sprinter who competed in the 400 meters. He ran for the University of Georgia.

April 11, 1989

Headlines from April 11, 1989

3 EASTERN UNIONS BACK CONCESSIONS IN UEBERROTH DEAL

Shevardnadze, Native Son, Goes to Restive Georgia

Officer Kills Man Swinging Gurkha Knife

Article 116789 -- No Title

Disabled Foster-Care Youths Kept in New York Hospitals

Billboard 200

Electric Youth

Don't Be Cruel

Loc-ed After Dark

Traveling Wilburys

Mystery Girl

Notable Births

Historical Context for April 11, 1989