September 1, 1989

LEAD: Fall is coming and the autumn sense of expectancy is in the air on the 140-acre campus of Phoenix Academy here. Bryant Norman is looking forward to computer classes.

LEAD: The Pentagon said it would dispatch 50 to 100 military personnel to train Colombians to operate and maintain the $65 million worth of arms and equipment promised by President Bush. Page A6.

LEAD: Deep in the heart of Connecticut, television broadcasters here believe, there is a Texas-sized sense of state identity just waiting to kick off its Topsiders and come out fighting. The best means of expressing it, they suggest, is the remote-control channel switcher.

LEAD: In a new effort to turn world opinion against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the United States asserted today that the Panamanian strongman continued to play a major role in the laundering of drug money and the shipment of narcotics through his country.

LEAD: Wednesday's announcement of a new design for the four towers planned for Times Square was a stunning public reversal, less an architectural event than a marketing one, a sort of architectural equivalent of the Coca-Cola Company's abrupt replacement of New Coke. The Times Square towers, too, bombed in the marketplace; though construction had not even begun, critical and public reactions to Philip Johnson and John Burgee's original design were so negative that the New York State Urban Development Corporation and the New York City Public Development

LEAD: The Environmental Protection Agency today imposed tough restrictions on the industrial use of benzene, a major chemical that has been linked to leukemia in adults.

LEAD: LABOR DAY first marched onto the calendar more than a century ago as a celebration of working-class solidarity, yet today the holiday has become summer's bittersweet finale. While other seasons may fade in and out, governed more by climate than calendar, summer comes to an all-too-abrupt end with the arrival of the first Monday in

LEAD: Here are Labor Day holiday schedules. Because of the Labor Day Parade in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue between 44th and 72d Streets will be closed from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. Because of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, Eastern Parkway between Utica and Washington Avenues will be closed from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M.

LEAD: Pilots May Buy United Air The union plans to make a $6.5 billion bid for the airline, Wall Street sources said. In the deal, worth close to $300 a share, British Airways would be a leading investor. Page D1. Deal on East Germans Bonn and Budapest have worked out a plan to allow up to 20,000 East Germans now in Hungary to leave for West Germany, according to West German officials.

LEAD: Just one month ago, most economic forecasters employed by banks and brokerage houses were warning of an imminent recession; now they are celebrating continued growth. Economic miracle? Hardly. Such sudden shifts have more to do with the nature of a forecaster's job than with what is actually happening to the economy.

LEAD: With legislative elections six days away, the South African Government's confrontation with anti-apartheid forces sharpened today. Hundreds of demonstrators were repelled with tear gas and rubber bullets, and the police searched the offices of the country's largest predominantly black trade union federation.

LEAD: The pilots union at United Airlines plans to make an offer to buy the carrier that could be worth $6.5 billion, a Wall Street executive and an investor with major holdings in the airline said yesterday.