LEAD: Sgt. Norman Horowitz waved through the window of the blue police van at the elderly neighborhood beautician. ''Hi, pretty lady,'' he boomed. She flashed a gap-toothed grin and waved back.

Oldest New Idea for Policing: Walking a Beat to Stop Crime

LEAD: Reflecting its expansion into refining and distribution, Saudi Arabia's oil company has emerged as the largest oil company in the world, the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said in its issue that was published today.

The Rising Dominance of OPEC

LEAD: The United States Army, facing major cuts in its forces stationed in Europe and a declining budget, has proposed reshaping itself largely into a fast-reaction force based in the continental United States, senior Army officials say.

ARMY, FACING CUTS, REPORTED SEEKING TO RESHAPE ITSELF

LEAD: New York's most prestigious lawyers' organization, the City Bar Association, is preparing to name its first black president.

Bar Group Ready to Name First Black President

LEAD: Twice a week, a health worker comes to Susan Glantz's home in Alexandria Township, N.J., and gives her a two-hour break from the strain of caring for her 85-year-old mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's disease.

New Programs Ease Burden Of Caring for Aged Relatives

LEAD: Fighting chronic fatigue caused by thin air and deadly cold, scientists here are assembling a new type of telescope that may reveal the mysterious origin of cosmic rays.

South Pole Emerging As Center of Astronomy

LEAD: In a decision that leaves patent rights to a valuable new genetically engineered drug still in hot dispute, a Federal magistrate in Boston ruled yesterday that two competing biotechnology companies have valid patents.

Anemia Drug Rights Go to 2 Makers

LEAD: In a secret operation that began just before dawn, 100 Hong Kong prison officers, many dressed in riot gear, today herded 51 Vietnamese refugees aboard a plane bound for Hanoi in the first forced repatriation of boat people to the country that they risked their lives fleeing.

Hong Kong Forcibly Returns 51 Boat People

LEAD: A lawsuit filed by a physician before he died of AIDS in June is forcing a court review of the rights of ill doctors to continue to treat patients and perform surgery without informing patients of their condition.

Should a Hospital Tell Patients if a Surgeon Has AIDS?

LEAD: Taking account of foreign concerns, Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany softened a vital element of his vision of German unity today as representatives of the four wartime occupying powers met here and insisted on ''the importance of stability'' in Eastern Europe.

Upheaval in the East; Bonn Leader Softens His Plan for German Unity

LEAD: WITH hearts, kidneys, livers and pancreases being transplanted almost routinely, surgeons are now forging ahead to give combinations of organs - as many as five at a time - to treat a wide variety of conditions ranging from birth defects to diabetes and cancer.

With New Boldness, Surgeons Create Patchwork Patients

LEAD: Yielding to popular demands for more democracy, Bulgaria's new leader said today that the Communist Party's monopoly on power should be abandoned and that free parliamentary elections should be held by next spring.

Upheaval in the East; Bulgaria's Communist Chief Plans To Relax Grip and Hold Elections

LEAD: As Poland, Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European nations move away from communism, they are confronting a thorny problem: what to do with the thousands of managers hand-picked by the Communist Party to run their nations' enterprises.

A Thorny East Bloc Issue: Replacing Hated Managers

LEAD:  Soviet Shift on Middle East  Moscow has moved away from a policy of confrontation in the Middle East, signaling it prefers to work with Washington in the region. Page A10.  Iowa's Captain Testifies  The captain of the battleship said he was not certain who caused the fatal explosion last April.

INSIDE

LEAD: Patrolman Michael Zaicek is 27 years old and has been a member of the Yorktown police force for three years. He is getting married soon, and until three months ago had been sharing a house with several others and commuting 15 miles to work. Since he was a police officer and didn't own a house, he was eligible for one of the first seven units up for sale under the affordable housing program in this northern Westchester

Our Towns; Housing Distress: When Mortgages Are Out of Reach

LEAD:  COMPANIES  The head of Columbia Savings and Loan is resigning as part of a sweeping effort to disentangle the institution's huge ''junk bond'' portfolio from its savings and loan business. Thomas Spiegel, the primary architect of Columbia's strategy, said he would devote his time to setting up and managing an operation that would own the junk bond portfolio.

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Robert E. Peary's polar expedition reached the North Pole in 1909 just as the explorer said, according to a study made public today that used new scientific methods to re-examine the evidence.

Peary Made It to the Pole After All, Study Concludes

LEAD: The chairman and chief executive of the Columbia Savings and Loan Association, Thomas Spiegel, said today that he would resign at the end of the year as part of a sweeping effort to disentangle the huge ''junk bond'' portfolio of the institution from its savings and loan business.

A Savings Resignation Over 'Junk'

LEAD: The BellSouth Corporation agreed today to terminate its merger agreement with the Lin Broadcasting Corporation, whose board recommended last week that Lin merge instead with McCaw Cellular Communications Inc.

BellSouth Terminates Pact With Lin

LEAD: Howard (Pappy) Mason was convicted in a Federal court yesterday of directing a racketeering enterprise - a violent crack operation in Jamaica, Queens - and of ordering the 1988 murder of a young New York City police officer to maintain and enhance his criminal position.

Dealer Guilty Of Ordering Officer Killed

LEAD: CHUCK Hansen lives in Sunnyvale, Calif., with 20 doves, 60 pigeons and about 5,000 (at last count) once-secret documents that detail the era when the United States exploded hundreds of nuclear weapons that filled the sky with blinding fire and radioactive clouds.

From Cold War to Nuclear Nostalgia

LEAD: The leadership of East Germany's national sports authority has agreed to resign, three newspapers reported. Page A16.

Reform in East German Sports

LEAD: Seven miles of Great South Bay separate the ''mainland'' here from a handful of other communities in Islip Township - those on Fire Island. A conflicting vision of the future is threatening to widen that watery gulf, pitting summer residents on the island against year-round residents on the mainland.

Back-to-Nature Plan Pits Islanders vs. 'Mainlanders'

LEAD: The Pentagon budget cuts proposed by the Bush Administration are rattling the entire weapons industry, but nowhere are the tremors being felt more strongly than at the headquarters of the Grumman Corporation here.

Grumman Girds for Arms Cuts

LEAD: ''Peary was not a fake or a fraud and he did reach the North Pole. He was where he said he was when he said he was.''  -Thomas D. Davies, on a new study of Admiral Peary's Arctic exploration.  [ A1:2. ]

December 12, 1989

Headlines from December 12, 1989

Oldest New Idea for Policing: Walking a Beat to Stop Crime

The Rising Dominance of OPEC

ARMY, FACING CUTS, REPORTED SEEKING TO RESHAPE ITSELF

Bar Group Ready to Name First Black President

New Programs Ease Burden Of Caring for Aged Relatives

Billboard 200

Girl You Know It's True

Storm Front

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814

Forever Your Girl

Hangin' Tough

Historical Context for December 12, 1989