LEAD: Recent discoveries have dimmed hopes that a new class of superconductors will ever find wide use, despite predictions two years ago that they could bring vast economic benefits.

SUPERCONDUCTORS SHOWING A FLAW THAT DIMS HOPE

LEAD: Kiyoko Tucker braces herself when she walks into Hermes, or Chanel, or Tiffany's.

For Japanese Living in New York city, (Influence Grows)

LEAD:  Vodka Market Bucks Trend  When most of the liquor business has been stagnant, the vibrant $450 million premium vodka market has lured several new entrants. Page D1.  Lendl Suffers Upset  Seventeen-year-old Michael Chang suffered from cramps, but defeated top-seeded Ivan Lendl at the French Tennis Open.

INSIDE

LEAD: Rejecting an appeal by Michael R. Milken and his brother, the Supreme Court yesterday cleared the way for Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. to reach a final settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a wide array of securities-law infractions.

High Court Helps Assure Drexel Pact

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Several big United States corporations, including I.B.M., Xerox and Dow Chemical, pulled their non-Chinese employees out of Beijing yesterday or closed offices as a result of the weekend violence.

Employees Taken Out Of Beijing

LEAD: The long search by the unions at Eastern Airlines to find a buyer for the airline and wrest its control away from Frank Lorenzo suffered a major setback yesterday when a Chicago commodities trader failed to put together a takeover deal.

Eastern Unions Set Back As Bid for Takeover Fails

LEAD: MATHEMATICIANS still cannot square the circle using only a compass and straightedge, a problem first posed by the ancient Greeks and later proved to have no solution.

Squaring the Circle: New Light on Old Riddle

LEAD: President Bush today ordered a suspension of American military sales to China in response to what he called the ''violent and bloody'' crackdown against demonstrators in Beijing.

PRESIDENT SPURNS OTHER SANCTIONS

LEAD: FOR years it was considered a mark of healthy development for infants at around nine months of age to show distress at the presence of a stranger. Indeed, the dogma that ''stranger anxiety'' is a major milestone in an infant's emotional growth is still espoused in most books of advice for parents, and in many textbooks on child psychology.

New Research Overturns A Milestone Of Infancy

LEAD: Inspired by the strong sales of Absolut vodka at a time when most of the liquor business has been stagnant, several major companies have plunged into the $450 million premium vodka market.

Vodka Import Boom: New Entries Rush In

LEAD: The body of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the soul of Iran's Islamic fundamentalist revolution, lay surrounded by hundreds of thousands of weeping, chanting mourners today. Even in death, he managed one last denunciation of his enemies.

Final Tirade Heard as Throngs Mourn Khomeini

LEAD: Rudolph W. Giuliani has decided to take a leave of absence from his law firm to avoid further controversy in his campaign for mayor, top Giuliani aides said yesterday.

Giuliani Plans Earlier Leave From His Firm

LEAD: AN unexpected electromagnetic phenomenon threatens to block the most dramatic potential applications of high-temperature superconductors, researchers say.

Hopes for Superconductivity Begin to Fade

LEAD: Chinese troops took up what seemed to be defensive positions here on Monday that suggested they feared attack from other army units, and there were reports that clashes between units had already occurred on the outskirts of the capital.

SHOOTING OF CIVILIANS GOES ON; BUSH BARS ARMS SALES TO CHINA

LEAD: The Communist Party acknowledged tonight that the Solidarity movement had achieved a ''decisive majority'' of the popular votes in the Polish parliamentary elections, and it challenged the victors to join in a coalition government.

Communists Conceding A Victory for Solidarity And Call for a Coalition

LEAD: Theophillis Houston stood on the boardwalk on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens and gazed inland at the section of Arverne around Beach 68th Street. As beachgoers talked and laughed on the sand at the edge of the Atlantic, Mr. Houston, a longtime Arverne resident, tried to envision the ''new town'' that New York

'New Town': Oasis or Mirage In Rockaways?

LEAD: AN anthropologist has concluded that the exalted samurai, the legendary warriors who were idealized as the epitome of everything Japanese, were actually descended from the lowly Ainu, an ethnic group that is considered primitive by most Japanese and is often the target of their discrimination.

Exalted Warriors, Humble Roots

LEAD: The woods will miss Dan Smiley. So will his research assistants, Anna Forster and Paul Huth. Before the memorial service for their boss Friday, the two took a walk along North Lookout, a ridgetop path Mr. Smiley loved most at dawn, when bird song filled the valley. Miss Forster listened. ''Hermit thrush,'' she said.

Our Towns; Naturalist Dies But His Legacy Still Blooms

LEAD: When Hanson P.L.C. bought the SCM Corporation for $930 million in 1986, many analysts and executives thought the acquisitive British industrial conglomerate had overpaid. But every few months since then, it seems, Hanson has announced a stunning new deal for SCM assets to show the skeptics how wrong they were.

Hanson Coup: Smith Corona Offer

LEAD: In an important legal victory for freelance artists and writers, the Supreme Court ruled that such artists ordinarily retain the right to copyright what they create. The Court held that the right applies as long as the artists were not in a conventional employment relationship with the organization that commissioned their work.

Freelance Workers Gain on Copyrights

LEAD: Candidates vying to lead the House of Representatives into a new era of Congressional ethics and campaign financing are themselves among the lawmakers whose incomes and political funds have benefited most from the current system.

House Leadership Candidates Are Among Top Fund-Raisers

LEAD: In a move that reflected the general decline in interest rates, the nation's leading banks yesterday lowered their prime lending rate half a percentage point, to 11 percent.

Prime Rate Cut 1/2 Point, To 11%

LEAD: In a major civil rights ruling, a sharply divided Supreme Court today made it substantially easier for employers to defend hiring and promotion practices that have an unfavorable impact on women and members of racial minorities.

Court, Ruling 5 to 4, Eases Burden On Employers in Some Bias Suits

LEAD: This morning, most likely for the last time, men with broad backs and rough hands went down to the water's edge here and in Manhattan and Brooklyn looking for work on the piers and berths of New York Harbor.

June 6, 1989

Headlines from June 6, 1989

SUPERCONDUCTORS SHOWING A FLAW THAT DIMS HOPE

For Japanese Living in New York city, (Influence Grows)

INSIDE

High Court Helps Assure Drexel Pact

BUSINESS DIGEST

Billboard 200

The Raw & The Cooked

Like A Prayer

Beaches

G N' R Lies

Don't Be Cruel

Historical Context for June 6, 1989