October 11, 1985

According to uncontested testimony, on July 21 at 7:19 A.M., Cheektowaga Patrolman Ken Rusin spotted the Town Supervisor, Daniel Weber, driving north on Union Road, not wearing a seat belt. The patrolman pulled the town official over. ''He looked at me,'' Patrolman Rusin recalled, ''and asked if I knew who he was.'' The patrolman knew. The Supervisor signs the patrolman's paychecks.

ALONG with the baseball playoffs, football and the new season's television situation comedies, starting this weekend nature is offering its own season special - the annual spectacular display of fall foliage sweeping down from the north toward metropolitan New York. The show is open to all willing to make a day trip north, but the closing notices are implicit in the chill of the morning air. The foliage will be approaching its peak this weekend and next, but as October draws to a close, so will the spectacle. By car, train or even bicycle, you can combine a trip to view the turning colors with a sampling of the region's arts and crafts. Suggested below are a dozen such one-day combination trips where you can see a play, attend a fair, pick apples, watch artists at work or even buy or sell skis for the winter ahead.

The four Palestinians aboard the Achille Lauro intended to stay aboard as passengers until the cruise liner reached Ashdod, Israel, and then planned either to shoot up the harbor or take Israelis hostage, according to Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab informants. The Israelis were to be held to bargain for the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The leader of the faction that ordered the operation, Mohammed Abbas, also known as Abul Abbas, is a close associate of Yasir Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was reportedly sent by Mr. Arafat to deal with the hijackers after their original plan to infiltrate Israel at Ashdod had gone awry. Crew Discovered Arms Cache According to the informants, the four members of the group aborted their plans and seized the ship when their weapons were discovered by the crew after the Achille Lauro had left Alexandria on Monday. The informants say the original plan and the hijacking were part of a bungled attempt to exact revenge for Israel's raid last week on the P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis.

FROM a demographic viewpoint, the Caribbean basin might well extend north to New York City. With its well-defined, self-conscious communities of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Trinidadians, Haitians, Jamaicans, Cubans and others, the city is firmly tied to the islands, by culture if not by climate. One organization that is working to strengthen the city's Caribbean identification - and to emphasize the unity-in-diversity of its many groups - is the Caribbean Cultural Center. The center sponsors a festival, called Expressions, in celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture, or what it terms the African diaspora. Expressions '85, the seventh annual festival, will focus on two sets of pan-Caribbean concerts, at Hunter College Auditorium this weekend and at Avery Fisher Hall next weekend. The shows offer an array of dance steps and carnival costumes - related and individualized - as well as all manner of African-derived, European-developed and pan-American-adapted rhythms and melodies.

Reagan Administration officials and legislators reacted exuberantly tonight to the news that American warplanes had seized the four hijackers who apparently killed an elderly American aboard an Italian cruise ship. ''Thank God we've won one,'' said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Democrat of New York. The comment summed up the mood in this startled capital after years of witnessing the Carter and Reagan administrations struggling in vain to cope with Middle East terrorism and attacks against the United States. Iran Crisis Recalled Officials pointed out that it was nearly six years ago that Iranian revolutionaries seized the United States Embassy in Teheran and virtually made a hostage of the Carter Administration. Mr. Carter found himself unable to fulfill his threats against terrorists and, in the case of a military raid to rescue the Americans held hostage in Iran, failed in a humiliating manner.