LEAD: An official medical commission investigating the clash between Georgian protesters and Soviet riot troops has determined that some victims were poisoned by ''chemical agents,'' the Government newspaper Izvestia reported tonight.

Soviets Report Use of Toxic Gas In Putting Down Strife in Georgia

LEAD: Changing a car's motor oil may seem a small and mundane event, hardly the premise for an entire industry. Nevertheless, the nation's biggest car makers have cast an envious gaze on the ''10-minute oil change,'' a growing business born of two-worker households and a decline in the number of garages and gasoline stations with trained mechanics.

Oil Changes: Fast and Competitive

LEAD: Here, in a yellowish, peeling house a few hundred yards from the bridge across the Inn River to Germany, Adolf Hitler was born 100 years ago on Thursday.

Where Hitler's Story Began: Birthplace Alive With Ghosts

LEAD: Bolstered by a surge in long-distance calling and international sales of products and services, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company yesterday reported a 20.7 percent rise in first-quarter earnings.

A.T.&T. Profit Up 20.7% on Surge in Calls

Campaign Matters; The First Task For Hired Guns: Finding City Hall

LEAD: Because of the first and second days of Passover, alternate-side parking rules are suspended in New York City today and tomorrow. Other regulations remain in effect.

Parking Rules

LEAD: A participant in an oil-well deal last year involving House Speaker Jim Wright is seeking to market jet training aircraft to the Air Force and Navy and may have stood to benefit from Mr. Wright's assistance.

Profits From Dry Well Pose Tough Questions for Wright

LEAD: In an effort to resolve challenges to one of the most divisive on real-estate deals ro s in New York City, the developer of the skyscraper proposed for Columbus Circle announced its third version of the project yesterday.

3d and Smallest Coliseum Plan Greeted by Signs of Approval

LEAD: Stan Kokoska is an admitted subversive in a Little League cap, eager to foist the American traditions of sandlot baseball - shouting parents, blind umpires and pint-sized sluggers with dreams of big-league glory - upon the unsuspecting population of Poland.

Exporting Bats, Balls, Gloves (and Big Hopes) to Poland

LEAD: The full Senate today overwhelmingly approved the Bush Administration's savings industry bailout, which calls for spending more than $157 billion in the next 10 years to close or sell off hundreds of insolvent savings and loan associations.

Savings Bill Is Cleared By Senate

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: West Germany has won an agreement from Britain and the United States not to press Bonn to decide on deploying an upgraded short-range nuclear missile until after the German elections in December 1990, West European officials said today.

Bonn Wins a Delay From Allies On the Missile Deployment Issue

INSIDE

LEAD: The Salvadoran Attorney General was killed here today by a bomb put on the roof of his heavily armored car by suspected leftist guerrillas.

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF SALVADOR SLAIN BY BOMB ON A CAR

LEAD: A special committee of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange issued a long list of recommendations today designed to eliminate trading abuse and quell growing public concern that cheating on the floor of the world's second-largest futures market has become all too common.

Merc Panel Issues Proposals To Combat Trading Abuses

LEAD: THINGS are moving in Chicago. Older neighborhoods like Printer's Row, Lincoln Park, River North, Uptown and Bucktown are changing rapidly, thanks to an influx of developers and architects, as well as some who are a bit further afield - people in the design world who are are energetically challenging convention in the way they live.

The New Chicago Style

LEAD: At least 47 sailors were killed today when an explosion and fire tore through a huge gun turret aboard the battleship Iowa about 300 miles northeast of Puerto Rico.

EXPLOSION AND FIRE KILL AT LEAST 47 ON NAVY WARSHIP

LEAD: In cosmic terms, it was a close call.

Big Asteroid Passes Near Earth Unseen In a Rare Close Call

LEAD: A Federal judge yesterday accepted New York City's plan to ease overcrowding in its jails over the next 30 days, but warned that he would watch the city's performance closely to make sure the inmates' living conditions actually improved.

Judge Accepts Plan to Ease Crowded Jails

LEAD: THEY go by names like Water Babies, Diaper Dippers, Wee Wizards, Shrimps and Polliwogs. They are future swimmers of America, infants whose parents believe that the right start in life means diving into group instruction in a pool.

Do Babies Splash, Or Do They Swim?

LEAD: Japan got its first dose of T. Boone Pickens today, and the Texas oilman did not exactly hit it off with a financial community unaccustomed to takeover artists.

Pickens Courting a Wary Tokyo

LEAD: Crude oil prices, sparked by the shutdown of part of a North Sea oil field, rose sharply yesterday, reaching their highest level in more than three years.

Crude Oil And Gasoline Prices Jump

LEAD: Does New York City need a Senate? Or a House of Boroughs, a Borough Council, a Board of Borough Representatives or a new body by any other name to be the second house in a bicameral legislature?

A 2-House Legislature for New York City?

LEAD: With the passage of New York State's $47 billion budget early yesterday morning, state officials congratulated one another on averting a potential fiscal disaster for the coming year. But experts who follow the state's finances warned yesterday that despite the budget accord in Albany, the state's financial condition was likely to remain shaky for several years.

Budget Accord Fails to Dispel Fiscal Worries

LEAD: IN the spring fabric collections now appearing in the decorators' showrooms, color is intense, scale is enormous and rich textures and pattern-on-pattern prints dominate.

In Fabrics, Orchids Upstage the Rose

Vannesa Rosales-Gautier is a Venezuelan activist and teacher from Mérida state.

April 20, 1989

Headlines from April 20, 1989

Soviets Report Use of Toxic Gas In Putting Down Strife in Georgia

Oil Changes: Fast and Competitive

Where Hitler's Story Began: Birthplace Alive With Ghosts

A.T.&T. Profit Up 20.7% on Surge in Calls

Campaign Matters; The First Task For Hired Guns: Finding City Hall

Billboard 200

Like A Prayer

Loc-ed After Dark

Electric Youth

Don't Be Cruel

The Raw & The Cooked

Notable Births

Historical Context for April 20, 1989