LEAD: Prices of precious metals continued to advance yesterday, fueled by the Middle East crisis. Gold jumped to more than $400 an ounce for the first time in five months.

  Gold Rises Above $400; 5-Month High

LEAD: Hundreds of correction officers, protesting the assault and robbery of another officer by inmates last week, blocked the entrance to Rikers Island yesterday.

Guards, Angered by Assault by Inmates, Block Entrance to Rikers

LEAD: ''Thomas, do you care if your peanut butter sandwiches are squished?'' Nancy Inglis called to her 9-year-old, racing to get him ready for day camp. The humidity was so bad that the white bread had swollen. ''Oh, well,'' she said, smooshing in two sandwiches. The stove said 7:07.

Our Towns;   Parents Work, So Camp Means Catching the 7:37

LEAD: A four-alarm fire in an electrical substation knocked out power to the skyscrapers of lower Manhattan yesterday, disrupting financial markets, darkening trading floors, trapping hundreds of people in elevators and forcing thousands of others to walk down endless shadowy flights of stairs lighted by emergency beacons.

Con Ed Fire Knocks Out Power, Disrupting Wall St. and Subways

LEAD: A strike against the United Parcel Service of America Inc., the world's largest package shipper, was averted today when drivers and handlers rejected the recommendation of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' leadership and narrowly ratified a new three-year contract.

Labor Pact Is Ratified At U.P.S.

LEAD: A Federal judge in Brooklyn took the first steps yesterday toward carrying out a national plan for resolving asbestos personal injury cases. Federal District Judge Jack B. Weinstein said that he had appointed Marvin E. Frankel, a former Federal judge, as a special master to conduct hearings on part of the plan.

Ex-Judge Named to Study Action Under Asbestos Plan

LEAD: A Federal judge yesterday blocked enforcement of a law that would have prevented telephone customers in New York from reaching ''dial a porn'' numbers without first requesting access to the services.

Judge Blocks Law on Access To Sex Calls

LEAD: In isolated pockets of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, it is possible to gaze for miles and lose track of the century.

Environmentalism vs. Jobs Troubles Taos

LEAD: With George Steinbrenner having to surrender day-to-day control of the Yankees next Monday, there are signs that the succession process is in disarray. The Yankee owner's 18 limited partners are scrambling for solutions even as they prepare to gather in Cleveland tomorrow to select a new general partner.

Steinbrenner Son and Yanks: New Doubts Over Succession

LEAD: The international embargo on Iraqi trade tightened noticeably today when an Iraqi tanker sailed away from a Red Sea port without taking on crude oil, and two or three other ships, according to the White House, failed to land Iraqi-bound cargoes in the Middle East.

U.S. MILITARY FORCE POURS IN;   Americans Escape

LEAD: Huge, super-efficient drift nets of the kind that ignited a storm of international protest in the Pacific Ocean have been spotted for the first time in the Atlantic near the Caribbean, raising fears that Atlantic marine life could be threatened and that commercial and sport fisheries important to the eastern United States could be devastated.

LARGE DRIFT NETS MOVE TO ATLANTIC

LEAD: The American Express Company, the nation's largest financial-services concern, is aggressively challenging the Western Union Corporation at a business it pioneered and has long dominated: wiring money.

2 Giants Battle in Wiring Money

LEAD: THOUSANDS of surgeons are learning a new technique for removing gallbladders that could greatly simplify the operations now performed on some 500,000 Americans each year.

Complicated Surgery Through Tiny Incisions

LEAD: People who work in the same field and are of similar age and education are finding that their wages, once very close, now extend across a much wider range, new studies of Labor Department data show.

Unequal Pay Widespread in U.S.

BUSINESS DIGEST, TUESDAY, AUGUST, 14, 1990

LEAD: THE power of subliminal messages is taken as an article of faith by many people. Critics of advertising often take for granted the power of ''hidden persuaders.'' Many parents stand convinced that messages buried in rock music are poisoning their children's minds. And for vendors of audio tapes, the power of the imperceptible exhortation to strengthen memory or take off pounds is more than an article of faith - it is a profit center.

Research Probes What the Mind Senses Unaware

LEAD:    Navy Cuts Seawolf Plan       In a move expected to save $7 billion in military spending through 1994, the Pentagon plans to cut in half the program of building new Seawolf attack submarines and to reduce the purchase of destroyers. Page A14.       The Growing Gap in Wages       There are several new theories that explain the gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and poorest Americans, which is now the widest since World War II, even after adjusting for inflation.

INSIDE

LEAD: Because of the Feast of the Assumption, alternate-side parking rules will be suspended in New York City tomorrow.

Parking Rules

LEAD: Shaeri Reinsilber left her husband at home in Toronto and drove eight hours with a girlfriend to the Catskills resort region here for one thing and one thing only: the food.

Bankruptcy and Success Meet in Catskills Hotels

LEAD: SATELLITE monitoring shows that Antarctica has shed more than 11,000 of its 5 million square miles of ice since the 1970's, and scientists say further study is needed to determine whether the findings indicate that global warming is melting polar ice.

Antarctica Sheds Ice and Scientists Wonder Why

LEAD: Iraq has transferred between $3 billion and $4 billion in gold bullion, foreign currencies and goods seized from Kuwaiti financial and commercial institutions to Baghdad, Arab bankers in London and the Persian Gulf region said today.

  Iraqis Are Reported to Send Home $3 Billion Taken From Kuwaitis

LEAD: The Persian Gulf crisis is recasting the United States' relations with two of its oldest Middle East allies, Israel and Jordan.      Upset by the support

U.S. MILITARY FORCE POURS IN;   U.S. Alliances Recast

LEAD: Kuwait's London-based overseas marketing and refining company said today that it was negotiating with Saudi Arabia to supply some of the 400,000 barrels of crude oil and refined products that it had received from Kuwait each day before the Iraqi invasion.

Kuwaiti Oil Concern Seeks Saudi Supply

LEAD: Old MacDonald, presumably, had a rooster to wake up to (45 decibels from across the barnyard). In New York City, he could not hear the crowing for the noise.

Above the Clamor of the City, More Clamor

LEAD: Donald J. Trump will use the First Boston Corporation rather than Merrill Lynch & Company to reorganize some of his casino debt, people involved in the negotiations said yesterday.

August 14, 1990

Headlines from August 14, 1990

Gold Rises Above $400; 5-Month High

Guards, Angered by Assault by Inmates, Block Entrance to Rikers

Our Towns; Parents Work, So Camp Means Catching the 7:37

Con Ed Fire Knocks Out Power, Disrupting Wall St. and Subways

Labor Pact Is Ratified At U.P.S.

Billboard 200

Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em

Wilson Phillips

Flesh And Blood

Step By Step

I'm Breathless: Music From And Inspired By The Film Dick Tracy (Soundtrack)

Historical Context for August 14, 1990