November 18, 1986

More than 700 taxicab drivers blocked highways and streets in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens in a slow-moving rush-hour parade yesterday morning. The demonstration heightened tensions in a longstanding dispute between the taxi industry and Mayor Koch, who threatened to punish the participants. Leaders of the drivers' coalition, who have been pressing for their first major fare increase since 1980, said that they would ask drivers to refuse to pick up passengers at Penn Station starting Wednesday and that they would add a second site next week. If a fare increase is not granted by Dec. 10, they said, they will block major shopping streets in Manhattan.

The First Interstate Bancorp today decided to press ahead with its efforts to acquire the ailing BankAmerica Corporation. The decision by First Interstate's board of directors is likely to increase the pressure on BankAmerica to accept or reject First Interstate's bid on its merits. It is also expected to raise the level of hostility between the two companies. BankAmerica, in an effort to deflect the $3.4 billion offer without rejecting it outright, had asked First Interstate on Nov. 3 to withdraw to give BankAmerica more time to study its options. But the First Interstate board, meeting in Los Angeles today, voted unanimously not to withdraw.

An Echo of World War II The Supreme Court agreed to review a case involving Federal liability to pay damages to Japanese-Americans interned in World War II.

Long prison sentences were imposed yesterday on Carmine Persico, his son and six others convicted in June as leaders of the Colombo family of the Mafia. Mr. Persico, identified as the crime family's boss, received a 39-year sentence. He was also awaiting the jury's verdict in a related racketeering trial focusing on a ruling Mafia commission. Both cases were in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

The shock of the widening insider trading scandal created a somber mood on Wall Street yesterday, with stocks involved in takeover situations being sold wildly while the bulk of the market moved lower in a more gentle fashion. Experts had been uncertain how the financial community would react to the news, disclosed after the markets closed on Friday, that Ivan F. Boesky, the most prominent takeover speculator, had agreed to surrender $100 million in assets to settle civil charges that he profited from advance knowledge of upcoming takeovers. In addition, Mr. Boesky was said to have implicated other major Wall Street figures. The markets in the United States actually took their cue from Europe, where stock prices tumbled as the Boesky affair seemed to undermine confidence and created an opportune time to take profits. ''There's no doubt that the Boesky situation was a fairly substantial psychological negative,'' said Jack Conlon, head trader at E.F. Hutton & Company.