February 6, 1981

The automatic window-washing equipment that crawls up and down the twin 110-story towers of the World Trade Center has been turned off, and the cleanliness of 43,600 once-glistening windows is being left to the mercies of nature. Ships entering New York Harbor are being asked to top off their water tanks in other ports rather than fill up with New York or New Jersey water. Half the faucets in the Port Authority bus terminal have been turned off, washrooms in the World Trade Center are being fitted with 5,000 water-flow restrictors and 1,600 New Jersey commuter buses, 600 Port Authority vehicles and 300 PATH cars are going dirty. A 20% Cut in Water Usage Is Sought The measures have been ordered by the Port Authority, one of the major water users in the metropolitan area. It has been asked to submit a report today - as have New York City's municipal agencies - to the city's Office of Civil Preparedness to show how it can cut back its water usage 20 percent by April 1.

When Charles L. Brown became chairman of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company two years ago, he quickly established that he would not be bound by telephone company tradition. Instead of moving into the office that for decades had been occupied by the head of the Bell empire, Mr. Brown stayed in the slightly more modest office overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge that had served him when he was president of the company. ''It's brighter here,'' he explained. An appropriate decision, some would say, for the executive with a mandate to bring the Bell System into an enlightened era of competition. In fact, Mr. Brown has already earned high marks for changing the posture of the telephone company. Analysts, Government regulators and the company's directors agree that he has moved the company toward acceptance of the fact that A.T.&T. will no longer monopolize the phone industry. And his competitors say he has healed some of the bitter rifts that have divided the telecommunications industry for a decade.

The National Bank of North America, the nation's 30th-largest bank, reported yesterday that it lost $10.77 million before taxes in the fourth quarter. Because of $10.43 million in tax credits, the bank's accounts showed a net loss of only $345,000 in the fourth quarter of 1980. The tax credits would be meaningful only if the bank were to generate enough taxable income in the future to make full use of them. In the period a year earlier, it reported net income of $2.79 million, including a tax credit of $2.2 million.

Former Gov. Ella T. Grasso of Connecticut, the first woman to be elected governor in her own right in the United States, died here today. She was 61 years old. Mrs. Grasso, who fell ill with cancer halfway through her second term, was pronounced dead at 6:03 P.M. at Hartford Hospital. After surgery for the removal of her ovaries and radiation treatments failed to stop the spread of cancer, Mrs. Grasso announced last Dec. 4 that she would resign on New Year's Eve, and she was succeeded by William A. O'Neill, the Lieutenant Governor. Successor Issues Statement In a statement tonight, Governor O'Neill said: ''We in Connecticut have been most fortunate to have known, worked with and been the beneficiaries of all her good works, throughout her lifetime. She will not be replaced, because she is irreplaceable, nor will she ever be forgotten. My own personal heart is breaking.''

The unsolved shotgun slaying of two hunters in the wooded hills of Orange County in 1952 was reopened today with the arrest of a 54-year-old Newburgh man whose sister, authorities said, broke a 28-year vow of silence to turn him in. The police, assisted by a 94-year-old man who was police chief of Sloatsburg at the time, announced the indictment and arrest of John Youmans, an unemployed construction worker, for the murders of the hunters, Robert Nugent, 43, the Ramapo Town Clerk, and Charles Simpson, 38, treasurer of the North Jersey Trust Company. In a case that stunned residents, baffled authorities and drew wide public attention, the victims, who had been out hunting squirrels, were found sprawled near their jeep on a forest path in the Ramapo Mountains three miles west of Tuxedo on Oct. 26, 1952. The carcass of a buck was found near the bodies, and the police had theorized that the men were slain by a hunter who had bagged the animal illegally, two weeks before the deer-hunting season was to open. Mr. Youmans was one of a number of persons questioned about the crime at the time.