August 3, 1992

After two orphans were killed in a sniper attack on a bus bound for Germany on Saturday night, the surviving young refugees resumed their journey today and immediately fell afoul of the "ethnic cleansing" policies of the Serbian nationalists besieging this city. The children, many of them infants and all younger than 4 years old, were secured to the bench seats of an old intercity bus with torn sheets when automatic rifle fire burst out at dusk as the bus traveled a stretch known to Sarajevans as Sniper Alley.

New Order Unsettles Israel Though it is not blind to what it has gained, Israel frets that the end of the cold war has diminished its importance in Washington's eyes. Page A8. Japanese Rethink Reactors Warned that a glut of plutonium could pose environmental and security threats, Japan is rethinking construction of breeder reactors. Page A3. More Woes for Mets

The roster for the Mets, under fate's grim assault all season, was savaged again yesterday. Bobby Bonilla and Howard Johnson, suffering fractures of a rib and a wrist, were both disabled indefinitely. And so the question, one asked often and in anger for so long, was asked again with unprecedented urgency: With what remains of the Mets, what remains of the season?

The peacemakers who run the United Nations are fighting again. Not since the days of Dag Hammarskjold, the Secretary General from Sweden, who locked horns three decades ago with the Soviet delegation over policy on the Congo, have the Security Council's permanent members been confronted with a Secretary General so determined to shape the international organization.

NEW YORK CITY NEW TACTICS IN DRUG WAR Frustrated with soaring arrests and no discernible improvement in New York City's drug problem, Police Commissioner Lee P. Brown has quietly shifted emphasis away from the once-vaunted Tactical Narcotics Teams that swept into neighborhoods to arrest street-level dealers. Instead the Commissioner is focusing on stopping higher-level drug traffickers, while at the same time putting more uniformed officers on foot patrol to try to assure residents that the streets are not being abandoned to street-level dealers. A1. UNCERTAINTY ON TIMES SQUARE PLAN Conceding that the moment has come and gone for the vast redevelopment of Times Square, state and city officials are close to postponing indefinitely the four giant office towers that were supposed to lead 42d Street to a new day but ended up victims of a devastated market. Rather than hold the Times Square Center project to the current timetable, which would probably force construction of the first skyscraper to begin next year, officials are asking the developers to revitalize, for retail and entertainment use, the four sites where the towers were to rise. A1. SEEKING CLUES TO JET ACCIDENT Federal investigators have turned their attention to maintenance records from the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar that burned at Kennedy International Airport after an aborted takeoff last week, seeking more clues about a broken wing and a possible false warning to the crew that the jet was about to stall. Under the stress of the landing, a large metal spar that formed one wall of the right wing's fuel tank cracked. B3. KILLINGS STUN NEIGHBORHOOD IN QUEENS The slayings of a couple in Bayswater, Queens, have stunned residents of the quiet neighborhood, where one of the victims, a real-estate broker, was an esteemed civic leader who knew everyone's name and had often helped new neighbors find their homes and move in. The news that the police arrested two people, including one the broker had helped, left residents even more distraught. B3. MAGNET SCHOOL FOR STARRETT CITY A school for 1,000 young Soviet emigres will open in Canarsie, Brooklyn, next month with two goals: to assimilate the students into American and Jewish culture and to persuade their parents to apply for apartments in the adjoining Starrett City housing development, which leased the school land for its new building. The school is the latest lure to white applicants as Starrett City tries to mitigate the United States Supreme Court's ruling that racial quotas to maintain integration at the development violated Federal law. Metro Matters, B3. 3-YEAR-OLD FALLS 10 STORIES A 3-year-old girl was in critical condition yesterday after she leaned against a poorly secured window guard and fell 10 stories to the lawn outside a Brooklyn housing project, the police said. The girl's father had removed the guard, which normally covered the lower half of the window, and then put it back without securing it, the police said. B3. REGION A PATIO MIRACLE LURES BELIEVERS Ever since Joseph Januszkiewicz told people that the Virgin Mary appeared on his patio in Marlboro, N.J., in May and promised that she would return the first Sunday every month, word has spread and the usually quiet town in Monmouth County has bustled with thousands of the faithful -- all asking for directions to Mr. Januszkiewicz's place. After last month, when 3,000 people showed up to see Mr. Januszkiewicz's apparition, the Marlboro Police Department decided it had better be prepared. B4. CHURCH SEEKS INTRA-RACIAL TIES In an old stone church Parkill, N.Y., a small congregation is setting out to show the world that the walls separating blacks in suburbia from those in the city can come tumbling down. The parishioners of the St. Charles African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church used to anguish over youths caught up in street violence. But it took the riots in Los Angeles and later the disturbances in Washington Heights, they say, to shake up their congregation, composed mainly of middle-class professionals, educators and retirees. The 130 church members stopped talking about what they thought needed to be done and moved into action. B5. The Traffic Map B4 Chronicle B4