LEAD: A top executive at Apple Computer Inc. has resigned in what could be the start of an overhaul of the company's American sales and marketing organization, industry officials said this weekend.

Key Resignation Reported at Apple

LEAD: The crew of the Colombian jetliner that crashed Thursday on Long Island told regional air traffic controllers that the plane was short of fuel and asked for priority clearance to land, but the information was not passed on to the local controllers who guided the plane's final descent, Federal investigators said tonight.

OFFICIALS CITE GAP IN COMMUNICATIONS IN AVIANCA CRASH

LEAD: Shouting anti-Communist and anti-Government slogans, about 20,000 people marched today to the headquarters of the ruling Council of National Salvation for an opposition rally that revealed the widening split over the country's political course.

  20,000 Stage a Rally in Rumania To Protest Against the New Rulers

LEAD: A police officer shot an unarmed Brooklyn teen-ager in the back, killing him, as she was arresting him Saturday evening, the police said yesterday.

Police Officer Fatally Shoots Youth in Back

LEAD: The charges against earnings taken by some oil companies in the most recent quarter to deal with environmental problems are a warning that pollution standards will be increasingly costly to meet and that more such charges are likely.

Warning by Big Oil;   Larger Bites From Profits Expected Because of Environmental Standards

LEAD: News of his court victory arrived, appropriately enough, on the television set Joe Walley had bought with the proceeds of his trade: panhandling.

Subway Panhandlers See Little From Legal Victory

LEAD: Reversing a three-month decline, orders for American-made machine tools jumped 14 percent in December. For the year, however, machine tool orders were down 21.7 percent from their level for 1988.

Tool Orders Rose by 14% In December

BUSINESS DIGEST

LEAD: Saying that New York State's court system is at risk of breaking down, a group representing virtually every bar association in the New York City area is calling for the state to allot $991 million for the courts.

Cuomo Urged To Increase Court Budget

LEAD: Poland's Communist Party, after ruling the country for 45 years, voted to dissolve itself. Party delegates had decided to create a new democratic, left-of-center party in the hope of winning public support, but a group of about 100 dissidents broke off to form a competing Social Democratic Party.

Poland's Communists Vote to Dissolve Party

LEAD: In a court battle over the future of Peach Lake, two suburban imperatives are colliding in this remote corner of Westchester County: the need for affordable housing and the yearning for open spaces.

Affordable Housing Issue Ruffles Idyllic Westchester

LEAD: After a performance everyone agreed was marvelous, Joe Montana responded in his typical aw-shucks manner.

All in a Day's Work for 49ers' Quarterback

LEAD: Ron Blazer is paid to watch television - and take notes.

  Screeners Help Advertisers Avoid Prime-Time Trouble

LEAD: In redundantly spectacular fashion, the San Francisco 49ers trounced the Denver Broncos, 55-10, here today in Super Bowl XXIV, leaving no doubt that the superior team of the last decade enters the new one with the same zeal and the same excellence.

The Big Easy: Fat City for Montana and 49ers;   Broncos Fall, 55-10, And So Do Records

LEAD: When word spread recently that the Administration's budget would be presented this year in one large book instead of the usual collection of smaller volumes, the response around town, from Congress and the bureaucracy, from lobbyists and reporters, was the same: What is Darman up to now?

Budget Director is Praised As Smart and Faulted for It

LEAD: The San Francisco 49ers, capturing the National Football League title for the fourth time in a decade, enhanced their status as one of the great sports franchises with a record-breaking 55-10 trouncing of the Denver Broncos yesterday in Super Bowl XXIV.

Montana's Passing Leads 49ers in Super Bowl Rout

LEAD: On April 1, 1989, Dowie Pringle was arrested after a neighbor in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn said Mr. Pringle threatened him with a loaded .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

Metro Matters;   Why a Sure Way To End Up in Jail Is Not So Sure

LEAD: Meeting late into the night, the Government and all major political groups in East Germany agreed today to hold the country's first democratic elections on March 18 instead of in May, and to form a coalition government until then.

  VOTE IS MOVED UP BY EAST GERMANS; COALITION WIDENED

LEAD: A long-awaited study of malpractice in New York hospitals, perhaps the most comprehensive ever conducted in the United States, concludes that thousands of hospital deaths and tens of thousands of injuries are tied to negligence each year but that relatively few victims seek recourse in the courts.

More Malpractice Than Lawsuits, New York Medical Study Suggests

LEAD: It was Shadow's coming out party, her initiation into the Tiny Diablas girls' gang in the Watts district, and she was dressed in the height of gang fashion: narrow corduroy pants, a sweatshirt in the gang color purple, extravagantly teased hair and exaggerated black-red makeup.

Life in Girls' Gang: Colors and Bloody Noses

LEAD: The Imperial Corporation of America, one of California's largest savings and loans companies, made a series of spectacular mistakes in the last few years, including betting heavily on speculative high-yield ''junk bonds,'' buying a portfolio of consumer loans that went sour and financing the importer of the ill-fated

Savings Unit Seeks 2d Chance

LEAD: Leading molecular biologists say a technique promoted by the nation's top law-enforcement agency for identifying suspects in criminal trials through the analysis of genetic material is too unreliable to be used in court.

Some Scientists Doubt the Value Of 'Genetic Fingerprint' Evidence

LEAD: The rush toward political reform has swept through the nations of Eastern Europe with startling speed. But their attempt to move from the central planning of Communism toward free markets promises to be a much slower, more difficult and socially divisive transition.

  Slow Pace For Reform In East Bloc

LEAD:    Blunders on the Caspian       The story of the collapse of Soviet authority in Azerbaijan in the face of nationalism is a chronicle of missed signals and misjudgments. Page A8.       Panamanians Greet Quayle       Vice President Dan Quayle, warmly welcomed in Panama, said the American invasion force would be withdrawn as soon as possible.

INSIDE

LEAD: Caterpillar Inc., the largest maker of earth-moving machinery, has named Donald V. Fites as its chairman and chief executive, effective July 1. It also reorganized the executive suite, eliminating the posts of president and executive vice president, in a move to push decision-making further down the ranks.

January 29, 1990

Headlines from January 29, 1990

Key Resignation Reported at Apple

OFFICIALS CITE GAP IN COMMUNICATIONS IN AVIANCA CRASH

20,000 Stage a Rally in Rumania To Protest Against the New Rulers

Police Officer Fatally Shoots Youth in Back

Warning by Big Oil; Larger Bites From Profits Expected Because of Environmental Standards

Billboard 200

...But Seriously

Forever Your Girl

Girl You Know It's True

Storm Front

Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814

Historical Context for January 29, 1990