September 15, 1992

An Atlanta courtroom today became the eye of the storm in the dispute over United States policy toward Iraq, as the defense lawyer in a multibillion-dollar bank fraud case accused the Bush Administration of manipulating the case to conceal "blunders" in its relationship with Iraq. Bobby Lee Cook is the Georgia lawyer who represents Christopher P. Drogoul, the 43-year-old banker accused of illegally extending billions of dollars in loans and credits to Iraq from the Atlanta branch of a Rome-based bank. Mr. Cook transformed a routine sentencing hearing today into a mini-trial. In his opening statement, Mr. Cook sought to portray his client as the victim of a scheme orchestrated at the highest levels of the American Government, a charge strenuously denied by prosecutors.

SIXTEEN years ago Dr. William G. Tifft found evidence of an astonishing phenomenon: the shifts in the spectra of light coming from distant galaxies are grouped in abrupt, regular steps, not a smoothly random distribution. The observation was so heretical and difficult to explain that it was dismissed by most scientists. It was as if galaxies could travel only at specific speeds, jumping abruptly from one speed to another, without passing through the intermediate speeds.

SCHOLARS of vertebrate evolution may endlessly ponder why the dinosaurs died and how reptiles gave rise to mammals, but for botanists the most glorious mystery of all is the origin of the first flowering plants. Today, flowering plants, or angiosperms, are the lords of the botanical kingdom, greatly outnumbering nonflowering plants and defining the contours of nearly every terrestrial habitat on earth, from the American plains to the Amazon rain forest.

The German interest-rate cuts, however limited, were greeted by investors in the United States with the hope that an economic tide had turned. Stock prices took their biggest leap since Dec. 23, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising 70.52 points, or 2.1 percent, to 3,376.22. Bond prices rose more modestly.

THE 1992 CAMPAIGN AFTER WEISS'S DEATH, CONFUSION Representative Ted Weiss, the 64-year-old unreconstructed liberal who had long represented the West Side of Manhattan in Congress, died yesterday on the eve of today's primary -- prompting Democratic leaders to plead with voters to support a dead man rather than risk electing the fringe candidate who was Mr. Weiss's sole rival. Under the arcane provisions of New York's election laws, Democratic leaders can choose his successor only if Mr. Weiss wins today against Arthur R. Block, a challenger from the New Alliance Party. A1. In Albany Legislature, incumbency reigns. B6.