November 16, 1987

LEAD: A Continental Airlines DC-9 jetliner crashed this afternoon while taking off in a severe snowstorm here, killing 26 people and injuring 56, officials said.

LEAD: On Your Own: Skiing. If you give your skis a regular tuneup, you'll be able to leave your skiing partners in a cloud of powder, page C10. Keeping Fit. Many scientists agree that, to be fit, you should burn 2,000 calories a week. How to stoke your furnace, page C11.

LEAD: Diplomats who glance up on their way to the handball court or the hair salon at the new American embassy residential compound in Moscow see a defiant exclamation overhead.

LEAD: Market results on a recent morning at the Hunts Point Terminal in the Bronx were, as always, mixed: radishes and papayas closed higher, spinach and cantaloupes took a dive, while leeks and lemons held about steady.

LEAD: The authorities are investigating at least 11 cases in which elderly patients at a Long Island hospital either died or encountered serious breathing difficulties while under the care of the same registered nurse, the president of the hospital said yesterday.

LEAD: As calls for a new international meeting to help reassure world financial markets have increased in recent days, so has the debate about whether a currency agreement reached last February was the underlying cause of the stock market plunge last month.

LEAD: The Kerr-McGee Corporation, after years of tests and studies, is spraying thousands of acres of pastureland in eastern Oklahoma with a fertilizer recycled from radioactive wastes.

LEAD: Having suffered for months from a dearth of new bond issues and ruinous price-cutting, municipal bond departments on Wall Street predict a further contraction of the industry.

LEAD: In the last weeks of her life, 5-year-old Tamika Greene had repeatedly been whipped with an electric cord, forced to overeat until she threw up, and finally poisoned. Last summer, her father was convicted in Manhattan of murdering her and another child.

LEAD: Conflicting Computer Policy Although the U.S. barred M.I.T. from buying a Japanese computer, the Air Force had previously installed a unit from the same company. Page D1. Arc Is a Space Illusion An enormous blue arc in the distant universe turns out be an optical illusion, astronomers said.

LEAD: The military contracting industry, which was riding high only several years ago as the Reagan Administration pursued the largest arms buildup in American peacetime history, is now heading into what may be its most difficult and competitive era.

LEAD: While most of her classmates are still asleep, Tareebia Wakley is up at 6 A.M. each weekday to get ready for a 45-minute bus ride from a motel in Poughkeepsie to Oakside Elementary School here.