October 10, 1981

A group of present and former New York City investigators has charged that city officials consistently hindered their efforts to investigate large-sca le fraud in the city's f ood-stamp program. The group includes the former chief of the largest fraud-prevention unit in the Human Resources Administration. In interviews this week, the investigators - all of whom had extensive experience with Federal or city government before joining the Human Resources Administration - said they believed that city employees were involved in organized theft from the program. They said that whenever their investigations focused on organized criminal activity and city employees, they were told they were limited to investigating fraud by recipients. The investigators now say that instead of looking into the fraud, the city is persecuting them for having talked to reporters about their charges of obstruction.

Faced with stiffening resistance in Congress to further budget cuts, the Reagan Administration is planning immediate reductions on its own, averaging 12 percent in most areas outside the military, by seeking to have spending deferred. Edwin L. Dale Jr., the spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said today that the Administration would make the cuts itself by instituting administrative deferrals. However, such proposed reductions could be overturned by a majority vote of either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

The Nobel Prize for medicine was awarded yesterday to one scientist at the California Institue of Technology and two at Harvard University for research that has proved vital to understanding the organization of the brain. Dr. Roger W. Sperry, 68 years old, of Caltech, was honored for research demonstrating that the right and left hemispheres of the human brain had different, sometimes virtually independent functions. The total award came to about $18,000, and Dr. Sperry received half of this. The other half of the prize, officially called the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, went to Dr. David H. Hubel, 55, and Dr. Torsten N. Wiesel, 57, of Harvard for studies of the complex manner in which the brain processes visual information. 'I was Afraid of That!'

The Voyager 2 spacecraft discovered a cloud of electrified gases circling Saturn that is 300 times hotter than the Sun's outer regions and the hottest spot ever detected in the solar system, a team of space scientists reported yesterday. The discovery was not only surprising but also extraordinarily provocative because of the mystery it raises as to the origin of the cloud. It added yet another puzzle to the many that Saturn has posed to observers on Earth as the result of spacecraft exploration in recent years. Dr. S.@M. Krimigis of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, who headed the research team, said in a telephone interview that there was no obvious explanation for the phenomenal temperatures. Another unusual solar event was reported yesterday by scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, who found evidence in satellite data of a violent collision by a comet with the Sun two years ago. (Page 11.)

After 24 hours of clashes between policemen and Moslem fundamentalists, quiet returned today to this southern city. Policemen reinforced by soldiers brought in yesterday and today were hunting remaining snipers. According to officials, at least 20 people - 14 policemen and 6 Moslem fundamentalists - were killed in the fighting that began at dawn yesterday with an attack on security forces here. Some intermittent firing was reported this morning.