May 28, 1992

In hours of testimony on how a New York-based crime organization used murder as a managerial technique, its former boss described in brutal detail yesterday the extent to which the crime family would go to silence "rats" and rivals within its ranks. In his second day on the stand, Alphonse D'Arco told the United States District Court in Brooklyn that "whacking" fellow crime family members, even graying ones who spent a lifetime being loyal to the organization, was commonplace in the underworld he inhabited most of his life. In one case, a canary was stuffed into a murder victim's mouth as a warning to potential informers.

LOOKING FOR TOMORROW'S BETTORS The generation of bettors who regularly visit tracks is aging, and track operators say too few young horse players are showing up to take their places along the rail. B6. NEW YORK CITY MANAGEMENT BY MURDER

To see some of the country's most impressive and delightful advertising, buy a ticket -- not to a museum or a gallery, but to a ball game. Baseball, architecture and design fans have been crowing over Oriole Park at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles, since the $105.4 million stadium opened last month. Simultaneously modern and traditional, it blends elements of baseball's rich past with contemporary features in a fashion that almost prompts visitors to sing "Everything Old Is New Again" rather than "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

European Community governments imposed a partial trade embargo on Serbia and Montenegro today and called on the United Nations to go further and ban oil sales in its own economic sanctions in the hope of forcing an end to Serbian intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their move came just three days after they were publicly admonished by Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d for moving slowly to tackle what he called the "humanitarian nightmare" gripping the former Yugoslav republic since it declared its independence from Belgrade three months ago.

Plagued by conflict and delays, the $14.7 billion English Channel tunnel project has degenerated from a grand symbol of European business integration to a financial morass, with one of the leading contractors suggesting this week that the project could face bankruptcy. The "chunnel," as the 24-mile-long underwater link between Britain and France is sometimes called, was once scheduled to open on June 15 next year. That has been postponed to the last quarter of 1993 at the earliest and may well be put off until 1994 because of financial disagreements and construction delays.

FAME has come suddenly to Jonathan Kaplan, 11 years old, who made his debut on Broadway in late April in the hit musical "Falsettos." One critic called him a young Woody Allen. Another called him a sage. He is nominated for a Tony for best featured actor in a musical. And while Jonny -- as friends and family call him -- is pleased with all of this notice, he is also proud of another accomplishment. Because his teeth have slight separations, he is able to spit a mouthful of water through them. "Looks like a fountain," he said modestly.

International Olympia & York sought British court protection from creditors for Canary Wharf, in a sign that its desperate efforts to keep its global real estate empire intact are falling apart. [ Page A1. ] Technically, the decision will have little or no direct impact on Olympia & York U.S.A. But there may be a serious psychological reaction. [ D2. ] The English Channel tunnel project has degenerated from a grand symbol of European business integration to a financial morass, with one of the leading contractors suggesting this week that the project could face bankruptcy. [ D1. ]

A Federal judge ruled today that New Jersey cannot enforce its system of paying the hospital bills of the poor by increasing the bills of workers covered by self-supporting union health plans. Officials said the ruling affected about 2.4 million workers. They include not only those in the unions that brought the lawsuit but those in all group health-insurance plans that do not involve private insurance companies.

In a bold move, the Sprint Corporation, the nation's third-largest long-distance carrier, said yesterday that it had agreed to buy the Centel Corporation, a major provider of local-telephone as well as cellular service, for about $3 billion worth of Sprint stock. The merger would create a large and broad-based telecommunications company, posing new regulatory issues for state and Federal authorities. No large telephone company currently has interests in all three leading telecommunications sectors: long-distance service, traditional local phone service and cellular telephone service. For the first time since the 1984 breakup of A.T.& T., a single phone company would have the ability to provide virtually all classes of service. No Bell-Type Bans Seen Moreover, analysts noted, the new Sprint juggernaut would not come under the jurisdiction of Federal Judge Harold H. Greene, the overseer of the A.T.& T. breakup into a long-distance company and seven separate Bell local-telephone holding companies. That means that strictures governing the regional Bell companies, like a ban on lucrative equipment manufacturing, would not apply to the new entity.

The House today overwhelmingly passed the most ambitious energy legislation in more than a decade, prohibiting new offshore drilling, toughening building codes to encourage conservation and granting incentives to stimulate solar power or other alternatives for homes and cars. Stitched together by conservation-minded liberals and by conservatives who hoped to reinvigorate the nuclear energy industry, the bill is a patchwork that few lawmakers were entirely happy with. But it is similar in most essential provisions to a Senate measure passed in February, and the end product is likely to touch the lives of virtually all Americans.

William J. Cibes Jr. radiates cheerful humility. The small state agency he heads, the Office of Policy and Management, is really just a technical advisory office for Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr., Mr. Cibes says, or the "lengthened shadow of the Governor," as he puts it. But what a long shadow.

It has been a long time in coming, but with yesterday's sale of $306 million of bonds by Rhode Island, nearly 40,000 victims of the state's banking debacle should soon recover most, but not all, of their deposits. The deposits were frozen on New Year's Day 1991 after the collapse of the private insurance company covering deposits at 45 credit unions and bank-like loan companies in the state.