LEAD: Pravda does not carry cigarette advertising. But last month it became a vehicle for America's largest tobacco company, Philip Morris U.S.A.

Philip Morris Enlists Pravda in Its Campaign

LEAD: Federal budget officials have drafted a proposal to convert the world-famous laboratories of the National Institutes of Health into a private research center financed with money from the Government, industry and foundations, according to confidential budget documents.

U.S. Weighs Turning Agency Into Private Health Institute

LEAD: Judge Anthony M. Kennedy completed his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today to the congratulations of both Democrats and Republicans who predicted that he would easily be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

SENATORS PREDICT FAST CONFIRMATION OF JUDGE KENNEDY

LEAD: The worldwide bull market made global securities dealing a hot investment concept in the 1980's. But with the October collapse of markets worldwide, professional and individual investors are pulling back from what they now fear has become a ''globalization of insecurities.''

INVESTORS RETREATING FROM FOREIGN MARKETS

LEAD: Boston Properties, the development company at the center of a plan to erect a double-towered skyscraper at Columbus Circle, will hire a new architect to redesign the project, according to officials of the developer.

New Architect To Redesign Coliseum Plan

LEAD: FEW things are more boring to read than compilations of recipes, whether they have been brought together as favorites of the compiler - always a person of note, though not always in food - or as illustrations of the thousand different ways to (1) prepare hamburger, (2) use a blender, or (3) entertain for two.

Cookbooks To Cherish

LEAD: The nation's factories, mines and utilities operated at 81.7 percent of capacity in November, the highest level in more than three years, the Government said today.

U.S. Industry Operating at 3-Year High

LEAD: The financier Carl C. Icahn said yesterday that he would oppose any reorganization plan that gives a committee of Texaco shareholders the authority to appoint members to the company's board.

Committee And Icahn In Dispute

LEAD: IT is a Christmas Eve ritual handed down from mother to son. Every year, Ed Giobbi, the artist and cookbook author, serves a holiday feast of seven fish dishes (seven for the seven sacraments). Each dish is cooked in a different manner -broiled, fried, baked and so on - or uses a different main ingredient.

A Seven-Course Feast of Fish

LEAD: The Mexican Government is struggling to regain control of an economic crisis that has unleashed a new round of record inflation, caused Mexicans to shun the peso and send their savings abroad, and stirred up labor discontent.

Mexico's Tough Economic Crisis

LEAD: After being imprisoned 26 months as a convicted rapist, Marion Coakley heard himself declared an innocent man yesterday by a judge and prosecutors in a brief hearing in a Bronx courtroom.

26 Months In a Prison, Wrongly

LEAD: AT the age of 23, Markus Farbinger, the pastry chef at Le Cirque in New York, is acclaimed as among the most daring and gifted patissiers to arrive on the American restaurant scene in years.

Pastry Chef's Christmas Delights

LEAD: Bronx prosecutors and at least three city agencies are investigating the death of a 28-year-old Bronx woman who, according to her companion and lawyers for her family, was severely beaten earlier this month in a confrontation with the police. The police deny those allegations.

Role of the Police Studied In Death of Bronx Woman

LEAD: The Environmental Protection Agency announced today that it would allow continued use of the herbicide alachlor with some restrictions. After four years of study, the agency has decided that the chemical does not pose an ''unreasonable'' risk of cancer in humans.

E.P.A. to Allow Use of Herbicide, Citing 'Reasonable' Health Risk

LEAD: ''Kill us all!'' taunted the young Palestinians throwing rocks at the Israeli soldiers. ''Come and kill us all or get out!''

'Kill Us or Get Out!' Arabs Taunt As Rocks and Bullets Fly in Gaza

LEAD: President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said today that Nicaragua would continue to maintain a large standing army and a force of 600,000 or more men in reserve, even if it ''normalizes'' relations with the United States and its neighbors.

Nicaragua to Keep Big Military Force, Its Leader Declares

LEAD: The United States will cut its 1988 sugar imports by 25 percent, to the lowest level in more than 100 years, the Reagan Administration announced today. The action is expected to increase prices for consumers and hurt the debt-burdened economies of some of America's trading partners among developing nations.

U.S. Cutting Sugar Imports In Blow to Trading Partners

LEAD: Last spring Ben Cohen went to catch a train at 59th Street and Columbus Circle, heading for the Brooklyn Botanical Garden, and he was dumbstruck by ''the filth, the disrepair, the degrading effect on your sensibilities.''

For Ben & Jerry, A Frustrating Bid To Aid Subways

LEAD: Every Friday morning at 7 o'clock, heart transplant surgeons at Presbyterian Hospital gather with other staff members in a small 14th-floor conference room to decide over coffee and doughnuts the fate of dozens of patients waiting for a transplanted heart.

Doctors' Quandary: Picking Who Gets a Heart

INSIDE

BUSINESS DIGEST: WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1987

LEAD: Governor Kean's plans for the state to take over failing school districts have been blocked in the Legislature again, but he has vowed to move against those districts in court, and this city is at the top of his list.

KEAN AND JERSEY CITY MAYOR CLASH ON SCHOOLS

LEAD: Gary Hart resumed his Presidential campaign today, shocking Democratic leaders and the six others seeking the party's nomination. He vowed to ''let the people decide'' on his candidacy.

HART, IN SURPRISE, RESUMES CAMPAIGN FOR WHITE HOUSE

LEAD: Oil prices fell again on world markets yesterday after OPEC decided to extend its current production and pricing levels through the middle of next year.

OPEC Pact Sends Oil Price Down

LEAD: When Giorgio Ronchi was a high school student in Milan, Italy, he spent his senior year in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as a foreign exchange student. That began a close association with things American.

Memorex Chief Calls Telex Deal a Good Fit

Mame Biram Diouf is a Senegalese professional footballer who plays as a striker for Turkish TFF First League club Ankara Keçiörengücü.

Mame Biram Diouf, Senegalese footballer

Mame_Biram_Diouf

Beau Dowler is a former Australian rules football player who played with the Hawthorn Football Club in the Australian Football League.

Beau Dowler, Australian footballer

Beau_Dowler

Hallee Leah Hirsh is an American actress known for her roles as Mattie Grace Johnson on JAG, Daley in the children's series Flight 29 Down, and as the adolescent and young adult Rachel Greene on ER.

December 16, 1987

Headlines from December 16, 1987

Philip Morris Enlists Pravda in Its Campaign

U.S. Weighs Turning Agency Into Private Health Institute

SENATORS PREDICT FAST CONFIRMATION OF JUDGE KENNEDY

INVESTORS RETREATING FROM FOREIGN MARKETS

New Architect To Redesign Coliseum Plan

Billboard 200

Dirty Dancing

Bad

Faith

Whitesnake

A Momentary Lapse Of Reason

Notable Births

Historical Context for December 16, 1987