March 24, 1981

International A planned aid program for Pakistan was disclosed by Reagan Administration officials. They said that the Administration had tentatively decided to offer Pakistan about $500 million in military and economic assistance in the coming fiscal year. That is more than double the amount that was offered by the Carter Administration and rejected by the Pakistanis as insufficient. (Page A1, Column 3.) An increase in aid to Zimbabwe, to a total of about $225 million over the next three years, has been backed by the Reagan Administration. The pledge to seek Congressional approval for the increase is to be made public today at a conference called by Prime Minister Robert Mugabe in Salisbury to seek international support for a three-year development program costing about $2 billion. (A1:1-2.)

The United Mine Workers of America and the major coal operators in Appalachia and the Middle West agreed today on a proposed new contract after five hours of overnight bargaining. The tentative settlement appeared so responsive to the membership's wishes that Sam M. Church Jr., president of the union, hinted today that he might try to avoid any strike by the soft-coal miners. The union negotiators won a wage increase estimated by the union at 36 percent over three years, raising the top scale from $88 to $110.88 a day by 1983. Probably more significant, however, was the deletion or preservation of a number of nonwage provisions that the union had sought, including pension improvements, the end of an unpopular arbitration system and the continuation, against strong industry pressure, of a ban on Sunday mining.

The Supreme Court ruled today that a state may require a doctor to inform a teen-aged girl's parents before performing an abortion on her or face criminal penalties, at least when the girl is still living at home and dependent on her parents. The 6-to-3 decision turned back a constitutional challenge to a Utah law that requires a doctor to notify the parents, ''if possible,'' before performing an abortion on a minor. The challenge was brought by a 15-year-old pregnant girl whose doctor agreed with her that it would not be in her best interests to tell her parents. But he refused to perform the abortion she requested because of the criminal liability.

pine forest in Upton, L.I. It is leagues away from Woods Hole, but in the mind of George Woodwell, the Center's director, the circle and its significance are quite close. It was on the Long Island grounds of the Brookhaven National Laboratory where he worked that some 20 years ago Dr. Woodwell began what is now recognized as a landmark ecological experiment: determining what effects varied amounts of ionizing radiation have on the flora and fauna of a forest ecosystem. Ionizing radiation is the type of radiation released in atom bomb explosions that causes changes in the structure of molecules and in the function of cells that make up all living organisms. A block of radioactive cesium l37 suspended on a pole was used by Dr. Woodwell and his colleagues as the source of radiation. ''What we found out was that there was a pattern of disturbancecaused effects that no one had known about before,'' Dr. Woodwell said as he walked around his comfortably cluttered office in Loeb Hall, a building owned by the Marine Biological Laboratory and housing the 35-member staff of the Ecosystems Center.

The Reagan Administration has tentatively decided to offer Pakistan about $500 million in military and economic assistance for the next fiscal year, Administration officials said today. The figure is more than twice the amount that was offered by the Carter Administration and rejected by Pakistan as insufficient. But Administration officials and Congressional sources said they were uncertain whether Pakistan, concerned about being seen as closely aligned to Washington, would accept the proposed program. To limit embarrassment to either Pakistan or the Reagan Administration, officials have been reluctant to discuss the program publicly.