July 10, 1982

The bonds that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to issue to help pay for the rebuilding of the subway system received an investment-grade rating yesterday from one of the two major bond rating agencies. Richard Ravitch, chairman of the M.T.A., hailed the development as a crucial step in the M.T.A.'s $5.8 billion capital improvement program. ''It's great news,'' Mr. Ravitch said. ''Our capital program is now a reality. It means we can sell bonds, and people will lend us money.''

The Reagan Administration today sent Congress an urban policy report that said the states and municipalities themselves were better able than the Federal Government to restore the vitality of cities. The report, signed by Samuel R. Pierce Jr., the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is a revision of a draft report roundly condemned by mayors and then disavowed by President Reagan last month. Much of the language that the mayors objected to was removed or changed: definitions for Federal involvement, for example, that would have ruled out such current Federal programs as general revenue sharing. But the final report asserted, nevertheless, that much of the Federal aid of the last two decades had contributed heavily to the decline of the cities.

When the plane dropped out of the sky, Evelyn Pourchiau was outside her neatly kept brick ranch house with her grandchildren, 9-year-old Kerry and Paul, 5 1/2. They were washing the dog. ''I saw the belly of it,'' said Mrs. Pourchiau, ''and it was spitting and popping like it couldn't get the motor running. There was an explosion and I saw nothing but a big ball of fire and smoke. I looked across the street and my neighbor was rolling out. All her clothes were on fire. Her little girl didn't make it. She's under the carport.''

Farmers tend to look at the world differently from the people they feed. Even in a field full of promise, some will talk of nothing but hard luck. A truckload of healthy sweet corn on its way to market - a sign of prosperity to some - usually reminds a vegetable grower of low prices, high interest rates and the changing fortunes of life between harvests. Ray Samulis has become accustomed to the farmer's lament. He hears it season after season traveling the circuit here in his job as a Burlington County agricultural agent in South Jersey. Farmers, of course, have been complaining about their lot since the days of the horse-drawn plow. ''If every farmer who ever said he was going to quit, quit,'' Mr. Samulis said, ''there wouldn't be any left in this country.''

A Pan American World Airways jet crashed in a residential area just after taking off from New Orleans yesterday afternoon, killing all 145 on board. At least four people on the ground were killed. It was the second-worst airline disaster in United States history. The crash of the Boeing 727 devastated an area of several blocks in Kenner, a suburb less than a mile east of the takeoff runway at New Orleans International Airport. Numerous houses were set ablaze.