March 7, 1990

LEAD: BACK in the days of chaperones and curfews, of vigilant fathers and chaste brides, and of couples smooching on porch swings, engagements offered many a young man and woman the chance to get to know each other better and in greater privacy. And more often than most people admitted, they didn't like what they found, and the engagement ended in tears, recriminations and sometimes a huge bill for a wedding never held.

LEAD: The Bush Administration is drafting highway legislation that would concentrate Federal spending on major national arteries, while imposing on the states costly new responsibilities for building and maintaining local roads.

LEAD: The writer of the following article, a reporter for The New York Times from 1955 to 1965, was among those covering the civil rights march in Selma, Ala., in 1965.

LEAD: The bullets that wounded two detectives during an undercover drug deal in Manhattan on Monday came from their own guns or the gun of a third officer, high-ranking police officials said privately yesterday.

LEAD: Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition Government reached agreement today on steps to reassure Warsaw that a future Germany will accept Poland's western border.