LEAD: The Bush Adminstration's ban on imports of military-style assault rifles has created a bonanza for some small and medium-sized American gun manufacturers, which are selling semiautomatic weapons as fast as their assembly lines can make them.

Gun Import Ban Enriches Small U.S. Arms Makers

LEAD: Although he has been campaigning for weeks, Mayor Edward I. Koch finally made his candidacy official yesterday, catching even his closest advisers by surprise.

Unexpectedly, Koch Declares His Candidacy

LEAD: The Senate today approved an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws aimed at guaranteeing more visas for skilled workers with no family ties in the United States and at increasing immigration from Western Europe.

Senate Votes to Ease Immigration For Professionals and Europeans

LEAD: What began as a quiet lobbying effort by the Grumman Corporation and Congressmen from Long Island to save the F-14 fighter has erupted into a test of wills with Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Cheney Takes On L.I. Lobby in F-14 Dispute

LEAD: A Federal District judge today upheld an emergency order by the Chicago Board of Trade to curb trading in soybean futures contracts. The ruling was a setback to Ferruzzi Finanziaria S.p.A., an Italian conglomerate that faces multimillion-dollar losses as a result of the order by the world's largest commodity exchange.

Court Upholds Soybean Ruling

LEAD: The committee seeking a new New York City schools chancellor has expanded its search to include several candidates who have never run urban school systems, education officials said.

Search for Schools Chancellor Widens

LEAD: Completing a $5.3 billion package of revenue-raising measures, the House Ways and Means Committee proposed today to speed up repeal of the interest deduction on consumer loans.

Tax Panel Takes Step On Interest

LEAD: IT may well be that the French Revolution inspires more unadulterated enthusiasm among Americans than it does among the French, who have tended to view 1789 and its stormy aftermath with a skeptical eye. Parisians reportedly have reacted laconically to this year's wide array of bicentennial celebrations, perhaps in part because there is nothing like a consensus concerning the monarchy, the Terror, Napoleon or even the extent to which the storming of the Bastille, 200 years ago today, furthered the cause of the working class.

Art Exhibitions Celebrate France's Turning Point

LEAD: Eager to breathe some life into its third-world debt policy on the eve of the seven-nation economic summit conference, officials of the Bush Administration said today that they were preparing to grant Mexico a short-term loan of $1 billion to $2 billion.

U.S. PREPARES LOAN TO ENABLE MEXICO TO MEET PAYMENTS

WEEKENDER GUIDE

LEAD: As divisions inside the Roman Catholic Church appear to deepen, dissident theologians across Western Europe have begun openly challenging the conservative teachings and highly centralized leadership of Pope John Paul II.

Theologians in Europe Challenge Pope's Conservative Leadership

LEAD: A small private plane, its pilot apparently unconscious, raced down the East Coast on automatic controls for a thousand miles today as military jets and rescue craft scrambled in pursuit.

Stricken Pilot Is Safe as Wandering Plane Crashes

LEAD: A dispute between a prominent Harvard Law School professor and a combative judge in Rhode Island provides a rare glimpse into the machinery for disciplining Federal judges.

At the Bar; A Glimpse at the Secrets of Penalizing Judges

LEAD: Detective William Pinho Sr., a 23-year veteran of the 320-member Elizabeth police force, says he hates to see his son and namesake leave the department, but he thinks that maybe it is not altogether a bad thing.

Our Towns; Suburbs Beckon Officers Spurned By a City's Crisis

LEAD: In a late effort to bolster its presence in Europe, the Honda Motor Company said today that it would buy 20 percent of the Rover Group P.L.C., the British car-making subsidiary of British Aerospace P.L.C., and that it would build a manufacturing plant in Britain.

Honda Raises Its Stake in Europe

LEAD: Senate conferees offered a compromise today to their House counterparts on the rescue plan for the savings industry, but the conference stalled in confusion and procedural gridlock.

Savings Plan Compromise Is Offered

LEAD: Three electronics experts were arrested Wednesday on charges of seeking to supply the Irish Republican Army with sophisticated bomb detonators and components of anti-helicopter rockets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said today.

3 ARRESTED IN U.S. IN I.R.A. BOMB CASE

LEAD: ''WHEN Serious Fun started in 1987, it was like storming the Bastille, with the rabble-rousing artists of the U.S. and particularly the Lower East Side storming the gates of Lincoln Center,'' said Jed Wheeler, in a rather timely metaphor for the three-week festival of contemporary dance, music, theater and performance art that he has produced and that opens today at Alice Tully

Showcasting the Latest, All in Serious Fun

LEAD: Unilever, whose many consumer products include Lipton tea, All detergent and Signal mouthwash, said yesterday that it had revived an agreement to buy Faberge Inc.'s toiletries, cosmetics and fragrance businesses for $1.55 billion in cash. The deal would include Faberge's Elizabeth Arden subsidiary.

Unilever's $1.55 Billion Deal To Buy Faberge Is Revived

LEAD: A children's advocacy group filed suit against New York City and State child-welfare officials yesterday, saying they have failed to provide appropriate care for babies with medical problems who do not need to be hospitalized.

Hospitalization Of Sick Infants Faulted in Suit

LEAD: Four former housing officials who got more than $130 million in renovation contracts present a case study of how development grants were awarded in the Reagan Administration.

H.U.D. Grants Under Reagan: A Case Study in Connections

LEAD: Ferruzzi Finanziaria S.p.A. of Italy, whose American grain-trading arm is at the center of a storm in the commodity markets, has hardly been shy about making waves in recent years.

Ferruzzi's Bold Growth Has Made Big Waves

LEAD: After years of a complicated and at times tense relationship with the Rev.

Medal for Jackson Is His 'Validation'

LEAD:  Cuban General Executed  Four Cuban Army officers, including a highly decorated general, were put to death for conspiring to ship drugs to the United States. Page A3.  Koch's Plans Slip Out  After weeks of campaigning, Mayor Koch declared his candidacy for re-election on a radio program.

July 14, 1989

Headlines from July 14, 1989

Gun Import Ban Enriches Small U.S. Arms Makers

Unexpectedly, Koch Declares His Candidacy

Senate Votes to Ease Immigration For Professionals and Europeans

Cheney Takes On L.I. Lobby in F-14 Dispute

Court Upholds Soybean Ruling

Billboard 200

The Raw & The Cooked

Don't Be Cruel

Full Moon Fever

Hangin' Tough

Girl You Know It's True

Historical Context for July 14, 1989