December 25, 1984

The ashes of Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov were lodged in the Kremlin wall today in a bitterly cold ceremony marked by the absence of the Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko. It was unclear whether Mr. Chernenko had stayed away because of ill health or because of the temperature, which dropped to just below zero Fahrenheit and set the normally stoic troops massed in Red Square to stamping and hopping in place. Two days earlier, paying respects at Marshal Ustinov's bier, Mr. Chernenko had looked pale and unsteady. Diplomats said it would have made sense for him to stay away today, given his history of lung problems. But they also recalled that absences from such ceremonies in the past have signaled failing health for Soviet leaders.

The New York City police were flooded with telephone calls yesterday from people expressing support for a man who shot four teen-agers who investigators said had tried to get $5 from him on a subway car last Saturday. The calls came into a hot line that the police had set up for information that might lead them to the neatly dressed man in wire-rim glasses who disappeared into a dark subway tunnel in lower Manhattan after the shooting. Hundreds of the callers praised him. Some volunteered to help pay for the gunman's defense if he was arrested, and a few suggested that he should run for mayor.

Arbitrators today handed down terms for a new contract for postal workers that includes modest wage increases but sharply lower starting pay for new employees. The award marked the first time outside referees have settled a collective bargaining dispute within the Federal Government. It ended five months of stalemate between the Postal Service and its two largest unions, the National Association of Letter Carriers and the American Postal Workers Union. The unanimous award by the five arbitrators, which by law is binding on both the Postal Service and the unions, is retroactive to July 21, the day after the old contract expired.

A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Shimon Peres was visiting a school in Ashkelon, a town known politically as Ariel Sharon country and a place where, in the past, Mr. Peres ran the risk of being pelted with tomatoes. This time, though, when the Prime Minister stepped into the crowd of Sephardic Jewish students, they hurled not tomatoes but chants of ''Peres! Peres!'' - as though he were the town's favorite son. Mr. Peres's face brightened with embarrassment at the cheers. He is not accustomed to such open adulation, but it has been coming his way lately as never before.

Burglars broke into the vault of an armored-car company in Perth Amboy, N.J., and made off with $3 million to $4 million in cash and checks from large retail stores, the authorities said yesterday. The burglars struck the York Armored Car and Courier Corporation sometime between 7:30 P.M. Sunday and 4:25 A.M. yesterday, and got away with dozens of bags filled with the stores' receipts from the busy pre- Christmas weekend, said Alan A. Rockoff, the Middlesex County Prosecutor. The burglars, he said, broke through a window, turned off two electronic alarm systems and drilled through a foot of brick, mortar and steel mesh to get into the vault.