LEAD: United States weather forecasters are lagging significantly behind their European counterparts in the international competition to improve global forecasts, according to meteorologists on both sides of the Atlantic.

U.S. IS LAGGING ON FORECASTING WORLD WEATHER

LEAD: NEW JERSEY'S much-heralded Medically Needy Program is bogged down in red tape, covers too few clients and services and is plagued by high administrative costs, according to state and county officials and client advocates who testified before a State Senate committee here last week.

STATE MEDICAL PROGRAM FOR THE NEEDY ASSAILED

LEAD: A former Augustinian academy that later became a retreat house -a sprawling Spanish-style structure in the Grymes Hill section of Staten Island - once epitomized tranquility. But it is now caught in a fierce tug-of-war between two developers, both fighting to acquire the 19-acre site to create a vast colony of condominiums.

POSTINGS: Tug-of-War on Staten Island; A Battle for a Colony of Condominiums

LEAD: SEVERAL recent developments have led to uncertainty over the amount of aid Long Island will receive from the state's $1.45 billion Environmental Quality Bond Act.

CLEANUP ALLOTMENT UNCERTAIN

LEAD: The Reagan Administration's clandestine dealings with Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels grew out of a well-concealed program established in the White House at least four years ago to conduct covert foreign policy initiatives, according to many present and former Government officials.

IRAN SALES LINKED TO WIDE PROGRAM OF COVERT POLICIES

LEAD: AN artist or craftsman working alone often cannot afford the kind of retail space that will best expose his work to the buying public. With the cost of leasing even a small store on a main shopping thoroughfare prohibitive, his only outlets have been craft fairs, outdoor markets or perhaps - at the expense of a share of the profits - a consignment arrangement with a local art dealer or craft shop.

TALKING: Small Outlets; Setting Up Shop at A Mall

LEAD: SHOPPING centers age fast, especially in Southern California, and updating old ones often costs more than they are worth. But in the Crenshaw area of this city, a local developer and the city hope to confound that problem at a cost of $100 million by reviving and expanding the state's first regional shopping mall.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Los Angeles; Resurrecting A Failed Mall

LEAD: Facing unionism, pork farms, country music and Yankee pride, a record number of Japanese are moving to the industrial Middle West, turning weed-filled lots into automobile plants and bringing sushi and shabu shabu to small-town America.

INFLUX OF JAPANESE CHANGING STYLE OF MIDWEST

LEAD: A MAN, taking notes, hovers near the bar at Biscayne Babies, a popular haunt for young revelers in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. In Miami's Casablanca-like climate of international intrigue, he could be mistaken for a spy as he strains to hear exchanges between the bartenders and waitresses above the background din of rock music.

BACARDI'S GLASS IS HALF EMPTY

LEAD: UNTIL Henry David Thoreau in the middle of the 19th century, America had no great literature of place and scarcely even the beginnings of such a tradition. Here is an extraordinary cultural phenomenon once we begin to think about it, since it tells us that Americans after 200 years had not yet learned to make significant artistic use of the magnificent lands they called their own.

LITERATURE LOST IN THE THICKETS

LEAD: ''Why do you write?'' I was asked by an officer of the secret police in Warsaw. ''An intelligent man does not write. An intelligent man does not leave any traces.''

POLISH ODYSSEY: WARSAW TO OFF BROADWAY

LEAD: The 14 1/2-hour production of ''Amerika,'' beginning a weeklong run tonight at 9, has been a costly exercise for the ABC Network division of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. In dollars, the mini-series, set in a Soviet-occupied United States in 1997, has added up to at least $40 million, or somewhere around $2.8 million per 49-minute (before commercials) hour.

'AMERKIA' - SLOGGING THROUGH A MUDDLE

LEAD: A sudden souring of Brazil's economic situation has seriously eroded political and popular support for President Jose Sarney, tumbling the country into its worst crisis since civilian rule returned two years ago.

ECONOMIC CRISIS ERODES SUPPORT FOR BRAZIL CHIEF

LEAD: Some 250 buses still roll in and out of the terminal in Merrick, L.I., run for the last 30 years by Harran Transportation Company. But by April, when the company moves to West Babylon, L.I., the only vehicles seen at the three-acre site will be trucks hauling building materials as a cooperative development called Barclay Townhouses at

POSTINGS: 47 Town-House Units; New Co-op For Merrick

LEAD: Even to the untrained eye the trend is clear -both litigation concerning art and legislation to regulate it are growing at a rapid pace. A two-volume book, ''Art Law,'' by Stephen E. Weill and Franklin Feldman, discusses 146 court cases concerning the arts that have been brought since 1797, the year of the earliest English case.

AS THE STAKES IN THE ART WORLD RISE, SO DO LAWS AND LAWSUITS

PROSPECTS

LEAD: ''THERE are, indeed, few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country,'' Robert Louis Stevenson once observed. Windmills, he wrote, ''put a spirit of romance into the tamest landscape.''

WINDMILLS INSPIRE RESTORATION DRIVE IN NORTH CASTLE

LEAD: BEFORE its first practice session each autumn, the North Carolina basketball squad gathers for a meeting that Coach Dean Smith says ''sets the tone'' for the coming season. As part of the day's events, freshmen sit by with eyes closed while the other players decide which newcomer will carry the coaches' aged film projector on road trips.

REID DOMINATING AS HE LEARNS

LEAD: RONALD Reagan, twice elected on a promise to cut back social programs, may be remembered as the President who set in motion a historic expansion of Medicare, the Federal health insurance program for 31 million elderly and disabled people.

REAGAN, APOSTLE OF LESS, ASSURES EXPANDED HEALTH CARE FOR ELDERLY

LEAD: THE AGELESS SELF Sources of Meaning in Late Life. By Sharon R. Kaufman. 208 pp. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. $22.50.

DOING BATTLE WITH LIFE

LEAD: The Administration is deeply divided over a White House proposal that would give states broad new authority to waive Federal laws defining eligibility for benefits under health, education, welfare, housing and veterans' programs.

REAGAN AIDES SPLIT OVER BENEFIT PLAN IN HANDS OF STATES

LEAD: Four top financial executives stood before a Federal judge last week on insider trading charges. But it is becoming more and more evident that it is Wall Street itself, and its role in the corporate takeover boom of recent years, that is facing trial.

WITH KEY EXECUTIVES' ARREST, WALL STREET FACES CHALLENGE

LEAD: AFTER several false starts, an effort to revive an idled 650,000-square-foot Playskool plant on this city's economically scarred Northwest side is finally taking shape.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Chicago; Factory Comes Back Into Play

LEAD: A TOUCH of Hollywood and of Boston's Faneuil Hall is coming to this home of the Grand Ole Opry with the $25 million Fountain Square project. It is under development by Aladdin Resources, a local concern, and William Jackson Ewing of Baltimore.

NATIONAL NOTEBOOK: Nashville;
A Square That Won't Be

LEAD: Hizma, Israeli-occupied West Bank Just outside this tiny Arab hamlet in the Judean hills, a hand-painted sign reading ''Dreamers Commune'' points the way to the newest Israeli settlement in occupied territory. Perched on a hardscrabble hillside 10 miles north of Jerusalem, this stockade-like settlement, with a watchtower at its center, looks to be more out of the Wild West than the West Bank.

February 15, 1987

Headlines from February 15, 1987

U.S. IS LAGGING ON FORECASTING WORLD WEATHER

STATE MEDICAL PROGRAM FOR THE NEEDY ASSAILED

POSTINGS: Tug-of-War on Staten Island; A Battle for a Colony of Condominiums

CLEANUP ALLOTMENT UNCERTAIN

IRAN SALES LINKED TO WIDE PROGRAM OF COVERT POLICIES

Billboard 200

Slippery When Wet

Licensed To Ill

Different Light

Night Songs

The Way It Is

Historical Context for February 15, 1987