March 10, 1982

An international banking syndicate is seeking American bank participation in a $130 million loan to Nicaragua, according to bank officials and an official of the Government of Nicaragua. But the Nicaraguan official, visiting this country to drum up support for the loan, accused the Reagan Administration of putting pressure on leading banks not to provide financing for his country. Aid flows from the United States to Nicaragua have been suspended because Washington has charged that Managua's Marxist Government has been providing military aid to leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, a charge the Nicaraguans deny. The loan is being organized by a London-based consortium named Intermex. Its members include the Bank of America, the Deutsche Bank of West Germany, the Union Bank of Switzerland, the Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank of Tokyo and the Banco Nacional de Mexico.

The Senate majority leader said today that there was ''almost no support'' among Republicans for a resolution to censure rather than expel Senator Harrison A. Williams Jr. The leader, Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, said that a ''whip count'' of the 53 Republican Senators showed that Censure motion, page B2. the censure resolution was failing. The Senators, Mr. Baker said, were not polled on their feelings about expulsion.

On the morning of Feb. 9, the skies were clear and the weather balmy when a Japan Air Lines DC-8 plunged into Tokyo Bay 300 yards short of the Haneda Airport runway, killing 24 people. A few days afterward, Yasumoto Takagi, president of Japan Air Lines, embarked on a sojourn of obligation that in Japan is the expected behavior of a top executive whose company is involved in such a tragedy. Mr. Takagi visited the families of most of the crash victims, apologizing profusely and paying homage on his knees before the Buddhist funeral altars in the homes of the bereaved. The Government is still investigating the crash, but the circumstances could scarcely have been more unusual, and all the evidence so far points to pilot error.

Several interest groups for the elderly and others now say they might accept smaller Federal benefits than planned so long as the reductions were part of a broad effort to curb spending that shared the sacrifice fairly. This sentiment, in response to several Congressional proposals to freeze or cut certain benefit programs, is being reflected in the groups' internal discussions and has in some cases been conveyed to Congress and the Reagan Administration. It contrasts with the strong and widespread opposition last year to the President's idea of tightening the eligibility rules for Social Security. The programs are those under which people are entitled to benefits as long as they meet certain eligibility criteria. Such entitlements, sometimes referred to as uncontrollables or automatic spending, account for about half the Federal budget, with Social Security itself accounting for nearly half the entitlements and with Medicare, the Federal health program for the elderly, accounting for billions of dollars more.

An article in Business Day on Monday about romance publishers incorrectly identified the parent company of Avon Books. Avon is a division of the Hearst Corporation.