July 12, 1983

Ashland Oil made payments totaling $17 million to a former Abu Dhabi official in an unsuccessful effort to retain an oil contract, according to company officials. They said the payments, in 1980 and 1981, had gone to Sadiq Attia, who had connections with Abu Dhabi National Oil, but his exact position is now unclear. The payments are being investigated by two Congressional subcommittees. (Page A1.) Brazil will not be allowed an extension on its July 15 deadline to repay $400 million in bridge loans, according to the Bank for International Settlements. (D7.) Throughout Brazil, as the I.M.F. pushes for tougher austerity measures, workers have been staging strikes with the message that any more austerity will be intolerable. (D1.)

From the September day when he took over the helm at Pan American World Airways two years ago, C. Edward Acker has had to scramble to buy the time he needed to restructure the company. As losses mounted, scaring off travel agents and passengers who feared the company's demise, it looked at times like Mr. Acker might be losing the battle. But with the economy recovering and airline traffic suddenly soaring, Mr. Acker now appears to be winning his fight. Pan Am's passenger loads are rising, and the airline's cash flow is now positive. Even employee morale appears to have turned around. ''We have a much stronger company now,'' said Mr. Acker, who is chairman, president and chief executive officer at Pan Am.

AS hordes of mosquitoes once again descend upon Americans, their numbers swollen in the Northeast and the West by heavy spring rains, reports of ingenious new methods to control this pest promise relief to the evening stroller and porch sitter, the early morning jogger and the sleeper tortured by the insistent hum of a female mosquito in search of a meal. The last decade has given birth to scores of imaginative techniques to battle this 100-million-year-old survivor of countless swats and sprays: from garlic to genetically engineered sterility to the breeding of cannibalistic mosquitoes that do not bite people but devour dozens of the kind that do. Unfortunately, few of these proposals have withstood the ultimate test of preventing people from being bitten. As one researcher wryly put it, ''It kind of makes you long for the days of DDT.'' But even as they have failed thus far to develop powerful new antimosquito ammunition to replace old-fashioned, unpleasant repellent, scientists around the country have learned a great deal about what makes the mosquito tick: its breeding habits, attractions to people, and the workings of its sensory systems, all of which hold the promise of leading one day to something more effective than a belated slap and the blood stain that is evidence of its futility.

The head of the Bank for International Settlements said Brazil would not get an extension for a repayment due Friday. Page D7. RIO DE JANIERO, July 11 - While a negotiating team from the International Monetary Fund is in Brasilia pressing Government leaders to adhere to a strict economic austerity program, workers around the country have been staging wildcat strikes to say they can stand no more. Auto workers in Sao Paulo and metalworkers and oil workers in several cities ended a four-day walkout today in favor of a national day of protest on July 21 that is to take the form of a nationwide strike.

WHEN school districts across the country were searching in the 1970's for ways to help their students learn more, many turned to competency tests as a tool for prodding performance and measuring progress. Today, public school systems in 36 states use minimum competency tests to measure how much students have learned. The schools use these results to determine whether students need remedial education, whether they should be promoted, and, in some cases, whether they should be denied high school diplomas. Some educators, politicians and parents praise such tests as essential for guarding the quality of education. ''It's an invaluable tool,'' said Jim Skelly, a Republican state representative in Arizona who has been a leader of conservatives seeking to revise education in that state. Mr. Skelly has two sons, both of whom went to private schools.