May 22, 1986

International The President, upholding arms sales to Saudi Arabia, vetoed a Congressional resolution that would block them. A threatened filibuster by legislators opposed to the sale of the advanced weapons to the Saudis forced the Senate to postpone a vote on overriding the President's veto until next week. [ Page A1, Column 6. ] Israel sought a U.S. mission to the Middle East led by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. A special envoy of Prime Minister Shimon Peres asked for the visit to ease Israeli-Egyptian tensions and revive long-stalled Middle East peace efforts. Mr. Shultz was noncommital. [ A1:4. ]

Because of an editing error, a dispatch yesterday from Starke, Fla., about the execution of a murderer, misattributed a statement. A defense lawyer, not Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., said the Justice needed additional time to study the case because of ''lingering doubt'' about the defendant's guilt.

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday provided the most detailed picture yet of the scheme through which Dennis B. Levine is accused of reaping more than $12 million in illegal trading profits. The S.E.C. filed papers with the United States District Court in Manhattan that include hundreds of pages of statements taken in the last few days from employees of the three Wall Street firms where Mr. Levine worked between 1980 and 1985 and at Bank Leu, a Swiss-based bank through whose Bahamian subsidiary Mr. Levine is said to have made his trades. According to the statements, it was not only Mr. Levine, but also some Bank Leu employees who used Mr. Levine's inside information to guide their stock trades. These are said to include Bernard Meier, who was account officer for Mr. Levine, and Bruno Pletscher, the general manager, who has been granted immunity from prosecution The S.E.C. also said it plans to present evidence of illegal insider trading by Mr. Levine in as many as 23 separate stocks. According to the S.E.C., Mr. Levine worked on mergers or acquisitions involving 10 of the stocks and gained access to important inside information on the other 13 when those companies retained one of the three Wall Street firms - Drexel Burnham Lambert; Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Company, and Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, now part of Shearson Lehman Brothers.

The Economy Consumer prices fell for a third consecutive month. The 0.3 percent decline in April, which sent prices to their biggest three-month drop since the late 1940's, reflected depressed oil prices. However, some economists said that most of the effect of the lower oil prices has been felt, and they predicted at least a 4 percent rate of inflation for the rest of the year. [ Page D1. ] In the New York-northeastern New Jersey area, a record decline in energy prices led to a 0.3 percent drop in the index. [ D21. ]

City legislation that would bar landlords and real-estate agents from turning away families because they include children was approved unanimously yesterday by a City Council committee. Committee members said the bill came in response to rising discrimination against families, particularly single mothers with children, seeking housing. Many landlords and real-estate agents either turn away people with children or permit only certain numbers or ages of children, according to council members and city officials. The proposed legislation, which is expected to be approved by the City Council, would expand the city's Human Rights Law, which prevents discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, age, marital status or sexual orientation.

The days were ''barely tolerable,'' the nights were ''hell.'' But eight crew members of the sunken schooner Pride of Baltimore held on to a life raft and to one another for four days and seven hours, and came home today to Maryland. They had expected to sail into New York Harbor on July 4, accompanying a flotilla of tall ships for the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration. They returned here instead, to Martin State Airport, weary and subdued, for even as their family and friends welcomed them, the survivors could hardly bear to talk of their four mates left behind in the chimera of the sea.

''I don't believe that there is anyone going hungry in America simply by reason of denial or lack of ability to feed them; it is by people not knowing where or how to get this help.'' -President Reagan. [ A1:2. ]

The Consumer Price Index, continuing to reflect the collapse in oil prices, fell three-tenths of 1 percent in April, the Labor Department reported today. This was the third consecutive monthly decline, the first time this has happened since 1954. The last three months, moreover, have shown the biggest drop in prices at the retail level for such a period since late 1948 and early 1949. Although the benefits of lower oil prices are expected to continue to work through the economy and be reflected in the overall price level, most analysts agreed that because oil prices have firmed for now, today's report was almost certain to be the last to show absolute declines.

A few months ago, say residents of this city of 600,000 in western Mexico, the country's most-wanted drug trafficker came to town on a Saturday afternoon for the coming-out party of a 15-year-old girl. While the trafficker, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, was enjoying the party in a public hall, a dozen green vans paraded through the city. In each were four or five men, armed with machine guns and other weapons and presumed to be Mr. Felix Gallardo's confederates. Eventually, they drove out of town as quietly as they had arrived, unchallenged and unmolested.

President Reagan today strongly defended his Administration's budget priorities by asserting that America's hungry were suffering not from the unavailability of assistance, but from a lack of knowledge of where or how to get help. The President said that between the efforts of the Government and charitable groups, ''I don't believe that there is anyone going hungry in America simply by reason of denial or lack of ability to feed them; it is by people not knowing where or how to get this help.'' At the same time, Mr. Reagan said his Administration's insistence on increasing military spending was necessary in view of the Soviet Union's goal of ''world revolution'' to bring about a Communist state. Soviet Military Buildup Cited The President said that in the last five years the Soviet Union had outbuilt the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by ''50 times'' in such military hardware as fighter planes, bombers, tanks and ballistic missiles.

The Koch administration plans to scrap its five-year effort to rebuild the Wollman Memorial skating rink in Central Park and try again with a whole different system. The new approach, using a traditional, time-tested technology instead of the advanced one that refused to work, would add between $2 million and $3 million to a project that has already cost $12 million, according to administration officials. It would, if all goes according to schedule, yield a usable rink by the winter of 1987. It was also disclosed yesterday that in February the city's Department of Investigation completed its inquiry into one aspect of the rink's reconstruction and turned over its findings to the Internal Revenue Service.

THE first time Steven Starkman saw the house his wife, Cherie, wanted to buy in Englewood, N.J., he hated it. Later, after buying it for more than $200,000, he blamed his first impression on the weather. ''We went on a dark, rainy day,'' he said. ''The ceilings were falling apart. It had this ancient paint job, a Statue of Liberty green that might have looked good in the 1930's. The kitchen was from the 1950's. And they had painted artificial wood panels onto the dining room walls.'' ''The second time we went,'' he said, ''it was a sunny day. I could see it for what it could be.''