November 25, 1986

With arrests and indictments up significantly this year, the day is long and arduous at the court complex on Centre Street in lower Manhattan. Last Thursday, one of the busier days of the week for the courts, the machinery came to life at 1:35 A.M. with a marijuana sales case - 15 days in jail on a guilty plea. It ended, 23 1/2 hours later, when a Brooklyn man received 90 days at Rikers Island for picking pockets. Between those points, in courtrooms and complaint rooms, in the offices of assistant district attorneys, probation officers and the police, it was a fairly typical Thursday in the state's busiest court jurisdiction.

The jury in the longest trial in the history of Westchester County, a sexual abuse case that began in March, has presented the presiding judge with a list of holiday requests. The jurors, six men and six women, apparently concerned that the trial would go into 1987, asked County Judge Francis A. Nicolai to insure that they would not be sequestered for deliberations during the Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year's holidays. They also asked that any sequestration be in Westchester, rather than in Rockland County, where juries are often taken. The jurors also listed restaurants they would like to order from during deliberations.

Victor Gotbaum, for 22 years the head of the largest union of New York City workers, will turn over the leadership this week to his hand-picked successor, Stanley Hill. Mr. Gotbaum, who celebrated his 65th birthday on Labor Day, held his last formal meeting yesterday morning with his senior staff - group leaders, he calls them - and announced that as of Wednesday they should present all new issues to Mr. Hill. Tonight the 50-year-old Mr. Hill, the associate director of the union, District Council 37, will be nominated to succeed Mr. Gotbaum. Mr. Hill said yesterday that he knew of no one planning to oppose him, which would let him take over immediately. If a second candidate is nominated, a union election will be held in January, but Mr. Hill, a social worker who rose through the union ranks, said he was confident of the members' support.

The great diaper war will never make the history books. But in the continuing battle for the $3 billion disposable diaper market the momentum has always gone to the marketing giant that has come up with the latest innovation. Sometimes Procter & Gamble has tightened the grip it has had on the market since introducing Pampers 25 years ago, and sometimes Kimberly-Clark's innovations have eaten into P.&G.'s share. The contest is one in which the rules have changed rapidly: from the shape of the diapers to the sophistication of the machines that make them. And each innovation has made life much happier for moms and dads who change more diapers than they can count.

President Reagan held an extraordinary two-hour meeting with advisers today to review the Iran situation as the State Department publicly denounced its isolation from decision-making on Iran and called on the White House to ''undo the damage quickly.'' The results of the meeting at the White House were closely guarded. One aide said it was ''just a discussion of policy'' with no personnel changes apparently decided on. But rumors continued to swirl that Secretary of State George P. Shultz and others might resign or be dismissed. Mr. Reagan, when asked about this before the meeting, denied that he planned any changes. ''I am not firing anybody,'' he said. Unusual Testimony The State Department's continued dissent from the Iran operation occurred during unusual testimony by John C. Whitehead, the department's second-ranking official, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Attracted by sharply discounted fares and longer holiday weekends, travelers are booking flights on most major carriers for the Thanksgiving-to-New Year's period in much greater numbers than last year. Such large carriers as United, American and Delta say they expect to fly planes at capacity during the peak holiday periods even though some have added large numbers of flights. The bookings are up 10 to 15 percent at some airlines, a dramatic gain by industry standards, especially for holiday periods, when airlines have always been able to book flights closer to capacity. For some travelers who did not book months in advance, getting a reservation on short notice is proving frustrating, forcing some people to travel on Thanksgiving morning and come back early on Friday and Saturday when seats are still available.

NO one knows exactly where it began, but last winter a new flu virus appeared in Asia. International flu watchers detected it in China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. The experts named it A/Taiwan for the place where the standard sample, or reference strain, was captured. There was no way of knowing just how dangerous it would be. By the end of spring the virus had spread across the Pacific, appearing widely in the islands of Micronesia and possibly in Australia and New Zealand as well. Like typical flu viruses, it seemed to travel erratically and with amazing speed. As it moved, its course was tracked by the international surveillance network sponsored by the World Health Organization. Isolated cases occurred in Hawaii in June, in Syracuse, N.Y., by mid-September and in Houston in October.

One day late last spring, Duane Kruse says, he was out planting soybeans here in northwestern Illinois when sunset came. As usual, he parked his tractor in the field and went home for dinner. When he returned, Mr. Kruse says, the tractor was gone. His account, compounded by the fears, suspicions and mistrust that have become chronic in this region's financially troubled rural areas, has led to a six-month chain of charges and courtroom confrontations. As a result, for 61 days, Mr. Kruse, a 47-year-old father of four, has been imprisoned in the Carroll County Jail for indirect civil contempt. His sentence was indefinite. His crime: not telling his creditors the whereabouts of his $20,000 collateral, the tractor.

Two children were killed and six others were injured, some seriously, when a fire broke out yesterday in what officials called an unlicensed day care center in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Police and fire officials said the blaze began about 9 A.M. in the basement playroom of a two-story brick and shingle home at 1104 Belmont Avenue. In the minutes before firefighters arrived, neighbors hooked up garden hoses to fight flames that raced through the playroom. Officials said it was crowded with cribs, playpens and mattresses lying on the floor.

THE 19th-century French physicist Andre Marie Ampere had ample reason to choose for his gravestone the epitaph ''Tandem felix'' -Happy, at last. His father's execution in the French Revolution in 1793 left the young Ampere literally speechless for a year and in a prolonged state of deep depression. Later in his tortured life, he was plunged into recurring depressions by the death of his young wife, troubles with his two children and an unhappy second marriage. Yet Ampere was manifestly brilliant. As a young boy he mastered advanced mathematics and taught himself science by memorizing the contents of learned encyclopedias, long passages of which he could recite years later. For his research into electrical and magnetic phenomena he became known as the ''Newton of electricity.'' Through it all, though, Ampere remained a gentle, unsophisticated man often portrayed as the stereotypical absent-minded professor. Once, on his way to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, the myopic Ampere stopped on a bridge to pick up an interesting rock and then, remembering an appointment, pulled a watch from his pocket. Seeing that he was late, Ampere hastily put the rock in his pocket, tossed the watch in the Seine and headed for the Academy.

The Scandal on Wall Street Wall Street arbitragers lost as much as $1 billion in the last week because of sharp drops in the value of takeover-related stocks, traders said. The Ivan F. Boesky insider trading inquiry had cast a pall over the trading of such stocks. Merrill Lynch denied rumors that its arbitrage department had been particularly hard hit. Meanwhile, the S.E.C. denied a report that Mr. Boesky's insider-trading profits totaled more than $200 million. [ Page D1. ]

PIECE by laborious piece, about 200 workers here are taking apart a nuclear power plant in a project that could affect the price of electricity thoughout the country and the financial health of most major utilities. In the process, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the world's first commercial nuclear generating facility, has become a radioactive classroom, a demonstration of the technological and economic feasibility of what is sometimes called ''nuclear power's missing link.'' Disassembling the reactor is a milestone in the atomic age - ''the capstone of the nuclear fuel cycle,'' said Cynthia Pollock, a researcher for Worldwatch, a nonprofit institute that studies the use of resources and energy. ''Most people have never thought about the idea that nuclear plants wear out - far less that they're contaminated. You can't just let plants sit forever.''