LEAD: In its largest intervention ever in a three-month period, the Federal Reserve sold $11.9 billion worth of dollars, including $2 billion in two days, in its effort to curb the rise of the dollar in May, June and July.

Fed Dollar Sales Set 3-Month Record

LEAD: The National Party, which has dominated South Africa's politics for 41 years, suffered substantial losses to conservative and liberal challengers in voting for the white House of Parliament on Wednesday, but maintained power by a slender margin.

PRETORIA'S RULERS LOSE MANY SEATS BUT RETAIN POWER

LEAD: ONCE there was a little boy who crayoned tick-tack-toe grids on the gray wool living-room rug: yard after yard of little squares, little O's and little X's. When his mother walked in, she realized just how much could be done with only one crayon.

Enough Burnt Sienna to Circle the Globe

LEAD: The white 18-year-old accused as the gunman in the killing of a black youth in Brooklyn was indicted yesterday on two counts of second-degree murder.

Bensonhurst Youth Is Indicted as Gunman

LEAD: A few days after Mayor Edward I. Koch formally declared his candidacy, 5,000 posters disclosing details about the city's $5.2 billion housing program went up in the subways. Naturally, the posters mentioned the Mayor's name. They even bore his picture.

Campaign Matters; Koch, of Course, Might Label This Mayoral Matters

LEAD: Eddie Antar, the reclusive entrepreneur who at Crazy Eddie Inc. brought widespread discounting to retail electronics, was accused yesterday by the Securities and Exchange Commission of securities fraud and illegal insider trading.

S.E.C. Files Fraud Case On Retailer

LEAD: A diplomatic cable made public today disclosed that the Bush Administration might soften its opposition to membership for the Soviet Union and China in the organization that manages the world trading system.

SOVIETS AND CHINA MAY SEE SOFTENING FROM U.S. ON GATT

LEAD: In an ambitious experiment in child-care assistance, seven large New York employers have joined to place child-care workers in the homes of employees whose usual arrangements have been disrupted.

7 Employers Join to Provide Child Care at Home in a Crisis

LEAD: A half-mile apart on Richmond Avenue on Staten Island, a K Mart store and a Sears store are battling for the budget-minded shopper. It is a competition taking place in hundreds of cities nationwide as the nation's two biggest retailers, once very different in size and focus, have converged in many ways in the last year.

Sears and K Mart Go Head to Head

LEAD: West Germany's Economics Minister, Helmut Haussmann, will approve Daimler-Benz A.G.'s controversial takeover of Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm G.m.b.H., overriding objections from antitrust authorities to create a gigantic aerospace and armaments group, Government sources said today.

Approval Seen for Daimler On Messerschmitt Merger

LEAD: STREAMLINED furniture and white walls are usually prescribed as space-expanding devices for the small, architecturally bland apartments that are a reality of urban living.

Small Spaces Packed with Big Ideas

LEAD: The Daily News has endorsed Richard Ravitch for the Democratic mayoral nomination after a weeklong dispute in which the publisher was dissuaded from his first choice, Mayor Edward I. Koch, by strong opposition from top editorial staff members. They wanted the newspaper to endorse Borough President David N.

Mayoral Pick Creates Fight Within Paper

LEAD: The chairman of Italy's largest state-owned bank came under strong pressure to resign today following disclosure that the bank's branch in Atlanta issued more than $1 billion in unauthorized export credits to Iraq.

Italian Bank's Unauthorized Credits to Iraq

LEAD: An asbestos-lined steam pipe burst in the street with a loud boom on Manhattan's Upper West Side last night, sending a geyser of steam into the air that an official said contained asbestos.

Another Blast Spews Asbestos On the West Side

LEAD: Still perspiring from their foot chase of a crack dealer, Officers Charles Fernandez and Adam L. Burden caught their breath while listening to President Bush's drug speech over the radio in their darkened car. ''Another Band-Aid approach,'' Officer Fernandez said.

On Battleground of the Street, Few See a Victory Over Drugs

LEAD: The Cuomo administration's chief health official has proposed establishing an insurance system that would guarantee basic health care to every resident of New York State.

New York Health Chief Proposes Medical Insurance for All in State

LEAD: The United States evacuated its embassy in Beirut today after the Lebanese Christian army commander reportedly threatened to take Americans hostage and settle Lebanon's problems with ''Christian terrorism.''

Americans at Lebanon Embassy Pull Out Amid Christian Threats

LEAD: This once-powerful industrial city on the Delaware River has been so battered, drained and gutted that there is little left today except neighborhoods of the extraordinarily poor and their government.

Camden Forces Its Suburbs To Ask, What If a City Dies?

LEAD: Wherever he goes in these last days of the primary campaign - Chinatown, Harlem or the Bronx - David N. Dinkins has been incorporating the lessons of Yusuf K. Hawkins's death, often departing from his set speech to talk about the need to bind the wounds left by the killing of the black teen-ager by a gang of white youths from

Dinkins Stresses His Appeal for Harmony

LEAD:  Evangelist's Trial Resumes  After psychiatric evaluation found he had suffered a ''panic attack,'' not mental illness, Jim Bakker was ruled competent to stand trial. Page A18.  Trouble for Crazy Eddie  The S.E.C. accused Eddie Antar, founder of the electronics chain, of insider trading and fraud.

INSIDE

LEAD:  INTERNATIONAL  A diplomatic cable revealed that the U.S. may soften its opposition to membership for the Soviet Union and China in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which manages the world trading system. Such a move could offer both Moscow and Beijing a framework for normalizing trade relations with other countries.

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Georges Simenon, the masterly Belgian novelist whose Inspector Maigret mysteries and many other highly regarded works made him one of the most widely published authors of the century, died in his sleep Monday night at his home in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 86 years old and had been in declining health for several years.

Georges Simenon Dies at 86; Creator of Inspector Maigret

LEAD: The Semiconductor Industry Association has seven professional staff members, a small budget and no office in Washington. Its vice president in charge of Government affairs had never set foot in the nation's capital, even as a tourist, until he took the job.

A Small Lobby's Large Voice

LEAD: In the mid-19th-century, as the Industrial Revolution roared along in Britain, uncounted millions of cast-iron fireplace mantels in myriad styles rolled off production lines. There were floral designs, geometric patterns and classical Greek columns. There were evocations of Georgian formality and, with the arrival of the 20th century, Art Nouveau and Art

Rediscovering the Charms of Cast-Iron Fireplaces

LEAD: Responding to aggressive discounting of vehicles left at the end of the model year, American automobile buyers lifted the sales of domestically built cars by more than 22 percent in late August.

Vehicle Sales Jumped By 22% in Late August

Jonathan Michael Majors is an American actor. A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Majors rose to prominence for starring in the drama films The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) and Da 5 Bloods (2020), and the HBO horror series Lovecraft Country (2020), for which he received a nomination from the Primetime Emmy Awards.

Jonathan Majors, American actor

Jonathan_Majors

Mikhail Emmanuilovich Goldstein was a German composer, violinist and violin teacher of German-Jewish origin, brother of prominent violinist Boris Goldstein. His great uncle was the physicist Eugen Goldstein.

September 7, 1989

Headlines from September 7, 1989

Fed Dollar Sales Set 3-Month Record

PRETORIA'S RULERS LOSE MANY SEATS BUT RETAIN POWER

Enough Burnt Sienna to Circle the Globe

Bensonhurst Youth Is Indicted as Gunman

Campaign Matters; Koch, of Course, Might Label This Mayoral Matters

Billboard 200

Hangin' Tough

Repeat Offender

Forever Your Girl

Girl You Know It's True

Batman (Soundtrack)

Notable Births

Notable Deaths

Historical Context for September 7, 1989