February 15, 1986

The bodies of 10 opposition party supporters have been found mutilated and decapitated in Quirino Province in recent days in continuing election-related violence, opposition party officials said today. The opposition called for help from Lieut. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, commander of the national constabulary, who has a reputation as a professional military man who does not always go along with the wishes of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. On Thursday, General Ramos ordered the arrest of the commander of a military constabulary in Antique Province on Panay Island in connection with the killing of Evelio Javier, a leader of the presidential campaign of Corazon C. Aquino. Marcos Blames Clergy There was no immediate response to the plea to General Ramos, although President Marcos charged in an interview that it was his opponents, particularly the Roman Catholic clergy and Communist guerrillas, who were killing and terrorizing his supporters.

Waves of heavy snowfall, improved snow-making equipment and a strong economy are giving the ski industry hope for another record season in attendance and revenue. The National Ski Areas Association predicts that if the current weather conditions prevail through early April, beginning with this long holiday weekend, the nation's 600 ski areas could log as many as 58 million skier visits. Last season, according to the association, 51.4 million skier visits, a record, generated gross revenues of $1.5 billion. Yet there is a growing concern among ski-area operators that the stability of their industry is being threatened. Dramatic increases in rates for liability insurance since last season - more than 400 percent in some cases - and a decrease in the number of agencies willing to underwrite ski areas have cut deeply into the profit margin of many operations. These conditions have helped force some areas to operate without insurance, some to insure themselves through investments, and some, like two small ski areas in New York, Silvermine in Bear Mountain State Park and Honey Hill in Warsaw, near Buffalo, to go out of business.

Space agency officials tonight released a precise chronology of strange, rapid-fire events leading up to the last fiery seconds of the space shuttle Challenger. The chronology, compiled from photographs and sensors transmitting data from the spacecraft, paints a terrifying picture of a space flight that began to go awry less than half a second after the ignition of the shuttle's solid-fuel booster rockets. Then, like a sputtering fuse, signs of impending disaster appear and disappear until a cascade of events culminates in the giant fireball that consumed the Challenger and its seven crew members. Sudden Flash in Sky Perhaps the most mysterious new finding of the study, compiled by space agency investigators over the last two weeks, is the sudden appearance of a whitish cloud alongside the external fuel tank 73.175 seconds into flight.

The Roman Catholic bishops of the Philippines today described the presidential election a week ago as ''unparalleled'' in its fraud and endorsed nonviolent resistance to the expected outcome. The National Assembly, which is controlled by supporters of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, moved today to the verge of proclaiming him the winner, giving him a lead of 54 percent to 46 percent for Corazon C. Aquino, with 97 percent of the votes counted. The Assembly was due to resume counting Saturday, but it was not clear how soon it would make its expected proclamation of a Marcos victory. Those who cite fraud, including American observers who monitored the election, point to a host of abuses, including widespread violence, stealing of ballot boxes by soldiers and incidents of Government computer workers walking off the job, saying their tallies were being tampered with. In an interview tonight on American television, Mr. Marcos responded angrily to the bishops' statement, blaming ''priests and nuns'' for the violence, fraud and intimidation of which his followers have been accused. ''So now it turns out that if there was any fraud, it was committed by them,'' he said.

This is the story of how two sudden deaths restored 10 lives and how medical technology and some silk stitches have forever linked the lives, deaths and bodies of these complete strangers. It is a tale of two healthy women who died unexpectedly and the grieving families left behind, and of 10 average people who now lead new lives, with parts of those women inside their bodies. Once organ transplants were considered a medical marvel. Now, without much public awareness, transplanting organs from one person into another has become an everyday, every-hour medical routine around the country. Complicated heart transplants occur almost daily. Kidneys are transplanted every 75 minutes, corneas every 22.