July 10, 1987

LEAD: Abel G. Aganbegyan, a key architect of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's audacious new economic program, likes to travel. ''It's my passion,'' he said, reporting that he covers 150,000 miles a year crisscrossing the Soviet Union on economic missions.

LEAD: Nineteen people were hurt this morning when two ferryboats collided in heavy fog as they crossed Long Island Sound.

LEAD: Barry I. Slotnick, the well-known defense lawyer whose clients have included Bernhard H. Goetz, was attacked yesterday outside his office in lower Manhattan by an unidentified man who fled on a motor scooter, the police said.

LEAD: Every weekday morning, thousands of back country commuters from here and a half-dozen nearby towns work their way down the winding rural roads that lead to an infamous 18-mile stretch of macadam known as Route 7. There they find gridlock in paradise. ''This is crazy,'' said Judy Moore, watching the vehicles stagger past her coffee shop hard by the Danbury-Ridgefield line on Route 7, a primary north-south road in the metropolitan area.

LEAD: Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, testifying for the first time about his involvement with the Wedtech Corporation, told a Senate subcommittee today that he never violated Federal ethics laws. He said a partnership he set up with an investment manager then employed by Wedtech ''involved no conflict of interest.