February 4, 1981

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger said today that the Reagan Administration wanted to do everything it could to improve Saudi Arabian defenses and would treat with sympathy any request by Israel for stationing of American forces on Israeli territory, although he said he regarded such a step as hypothetical. In his first full-scale news conference since taking office, Mr. Weinberger also said he favored production and deployment of the neutron bomb, which is relatively low in blast effect but high in lethal radiation, and kills without causing as much material damage as other nuclear weapons. That would reverse a policy of the Carter Administration, but Mr. Weinberger said such action would come only after consultation with allies. 'Sudden Change' Criticized The new Defense Secretary criticized the Carter Administration for what he called ''the sudden change'' in which President Carter decided not to deploy the neutron bomb ''to the consternation of the German Government as well as many others.''

Five men were charged in Manhattan yesterday with using secret information from employees of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, two prominent investment banking houses, to buy stock in major companies that were ''the targets of confidential merger and acquisition discussions.'' Two of the men, E. Jacques Courtois Jr. and Adrian Antoniu, worked in key positions in mergers and acquisitions at the two investment banking firms. Both firms issued statements stressing that they were innocent victims of the reported scheme. John S. Martin Jr., the United States Attorney in Manhattan, thanked the two investment houses for cooperating in the Federal investigation, which began after the New York Stock Exchange noticed some suspicious trading patterns.

''We cannot ignore, let alone accept, the fact that, under the direction not of the workers but of instigators, Solidarity is being steered in the direction of political opposition.'' - Stanislaw Kania, Polish party leader. (A3:1.)

Long before Dennis W. McCarthy opened a brightly painted turquoise-and-white refinery here in 1975, the Federal Government had begun to build a vast regulatory framework to help keep the nation's small independent refineries in business. First came the ''tickets,'' which, starting in the late 1950's, gave them a share of oil imports without having to pay the duty. Then, after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, came a host of other special favors. But all that is gone now. Last week, President Reagan ordered the immediate abolition of most remaining controls over the price and allocation of oil in this country. A few minor rules remain until the end of March.

''F EED a cold, starve a fever,'' may be an adage much out of fashion, but at our house the first part of that recommendation still is considered gospel. (The second part we regard as highly suspect.) Although the current conventional wisdom offered by doctors is to eat only when you feel like eating, we stubbornly harbor the belief that taking nourishment is a positive vital life sign, much to be encouraged. The only real problem is to choose food or drink that is appealing enough to stand up to the classic symptoms of the cold: a stuffy, aching head, the congested nasal passages that knock out the sense of smell and so the sense of taste, and the general hot-cold malaise that tends to make ordinary food seem uninteresting.