UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 21 — United Nations weapons inspectors reported today that Iraqi authorities have continued to obstruct access to sites long suspected of housing components of Baghdad's chemical and biological weapons programs, despite assurances offered to Secretary General Kofi Annan earlier this month.

Western diplomats said the Security Council would meet Monday in closed session to consider the report, the first comprehensive assessment since the November 14 standoff that brought American and British forces to the brink of military strikes against Iraqi targets. Officials in Washington said all options remained on the table.

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 21 — Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr's appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last Thursday has accelerated the timetable for a full committee vote on articles of impeachment against President Clinton, members of both parties said today. Chairman Henry J. Hyde indicated that drafting could begin as early as the first week of December.

Democratic gains in the November 3 midterm elections — in which the party defied historical patterns by picking up five seats in the House — have not, in the view of senior Republican aides, materially altered the trajectory of the inquiry, though some moderates have privately urged the leadership to consider censure as an alternative.

Deutsche Bank A.G., Germany's largest commercial bank, is in advanced negotiations to acquire Bankers Trust Corporation in a transaction valued at more than $9 billion, executives close to the talks confirmed last night. The combination would create the world's largest financial institution by assets and signal a fundamental restructuring of European investment banking on Wall Street.

A Russian Proton rocket lifted off yesterday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan carrying Zarya, the Functional Cargo Block, marking the first piece of the International Space Station to reach orbit. The 19-ton module, financed by NASA but built by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, will await the December launch of the U.S.-built Unity node aboard the shuttle Endeavour.

Eleven years after "The Bonfire of the Vanities," Tom Wolfe has returned with a 742-page novel of Atlanta real estate, race and ambition that has stormed to the top of the hardcover fiction list and inspired both lavish praise and a remarkably caustic dismissal from John Updike in The New Yorker.