November 11, 1986

A huge discharge of toxic chemicals into the Rhine is confronting Europe with one of its worst ecological disasters in recent years. Tonight, French television reported that more than 1,000 tons of chemicals, including eight tons of mercury, spilled into the river 10 days ago after a fire at a chemical storage warehouse in Basel, Switzerland. The environmental protection office in Basel has put the figure at 10 to 30 tons of chemicals. Spokesmen in France, West Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland -the four countries through which the Rhine flows - said today that it was in danger of becoming a ''dead'' river as the chemicals kill off fish and destroy the ecological system of the vital waterway.

Vyacheslav M. Molotov, one of Stalin's closest aides and a member of the Soviet leadership from 1921 to 1957, died Saturday at the age of 96, the Government press agency Tass announced today. A terse announcement said Molotov had died ''after a lengthy and grave disease,'' and described him as the head of Government from 1930 to 1941 and as a First Deputy Prime Minister from 1941 to 1957. It gave no indication of funeral arrangements. A LIFETIME OF HISTORY Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a living chronicle of Bolshevik power. A schoolboy Marxist conspirator in 1905, he became a plotter of the revolution in 1917, a bureaucrat who shared power with Stalin through intrigues, cruel economic policies, purges that swept away millions of victims, and then war with Nazi Germany.

Growing numbers of middle-class New Yorkers addicted to cocaine are showing up at private treatment centers here and in other cities around the country. Many say they traveled thousands of miles because the New York area lacked residential drug treatment they could afford. At St. Mary's Hospital and Rehabilitation Center here, which charges $175 a day for a 28-day stay, New Yorkers recount desperate and confusing calls to private hospitals near home that charged up to $850 a day for residential care. 'Exorbitantly Expensive' ''To me it seemed ridiculous that I would have to go to Minnesota to get treated for drug addiction,'' said Bruce, a 26-year-old Westchester man who was a store manager before he became a crack addict last spring. ''My impression was that New York had all the medical and psychiatric facilities - anyone who was anyone was in New York. But they were exorbitantly expensive.''

New York City's Police Department suffers from serious management problems and should adopt a comprehensive set of changes in the way officers are recruited, trained and promoted, a special mayoral committee said yesterday. At the top of the committee's list were criticism of what it called an ''outmoded'' Civil Service system and the recommendation that in its pursuit of a qualified, racially balanced force, the department cease hiring and promoting officers exclusively on the basis of written examinations. Instead, some promotions should be made at the discretion of the Police Commissioner, and ''preferential treatment'' should be given to potential recruits with college degrees, as well as to those proficient in another language, the report said. 'Systemic' Problems ''We believe, based on the court's rejection of several entry-level and promotional exams over recent years, that the problems of irrelevance and unfairness in testing are systemic,'' concluded the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Police Management and Personnel Policy, headed by John E. Zuccotti, a lawyer and former first deputy mayor. ''They are the inherent results of a Civil Service system that is archaic, rule-bound, uninformed and unimaginative.''

The nation's oldest biomedical research institution said today that it participated in experiments in Argentina last summer involving field testing of genetically engineered vaccines for animals without the knowledge or approval of the Argentine or United States Governments. The test, involving a living rabies vaccine, stirred criticism in Argentina. And Federal officials and scientists in the United States said it raised questions about the adequacy of a new Reagan Administration program to regulate the products of biotechnology research. The Wistar Institute of Philadelphia, which conducted the test in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization, said it was not required to inform either government because Argentina has no rules governing the biotechnology industry and the United States rules did not apply. #20 Cows Inoculated In the test, 20 cows were inoculated in July with a gene-altered viral vaccine at an agricultural station in Azul, Argentina.