August 7, 1988

LEAD: THE potential consequences of a dispute over whether Mount Kisco has the right to condemn a parcel of property it is leasing to a carting company has added impetus to the efforts by other northern Westchester communities to find a joint solution to their garbage-removal problems.

LEAD: President Reagan has agreed to freeze emission levels of nitrogen oxide, an important air pollutant, for at least the next seven years. The action will allow the United States to join in a major international treaty to reduce acid rain.

LEAD: Barrie Dowdeswell, general manager of the Royal Victoria Infirmary here, stands at the front line of Britain's troubled National Health Service, once viewed as a world model of a successful national medical service.

LEAD: LIKE many other movie palaces of the 1920's, the Alhambra Theater suffered indignities to its original architecture over the years. When sound came to films, acoustical plaster was applied over elaborate wall stenciling and other design details. In the mid-50's the ornate proscenium was covered by a

LEAD: Publicly, the United States has praised President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica for leading the quest for peace in Central America. But privately, Reagan Administration officials have taken steps to embarrass and undermine him, and have derisively referred to him as ''the laureate,'' according to political leaders here and in Washington.

LEAD: AT a time when many individual investors have fled the stock market in fear, one pack of investors is feverishly raising cash to buy up stocks. Leveraged buyout investors, who buy companies with borrowed capital and then resell them for hefty profits, are furiously piling up billions of dollars.

LEAD: DEBATE over Governor Cuomo's proposed settlement with the Long Island Lighting Company to close the Shoreham nuclear plant showed signs of going into extra innings last week, after seeming so close to ending.

LEAD: THERE was a ground-breaking ceremony here last week for a $37 million Arizona-style health spa that will rise on a historic 120-acre estate in the lush countryside of Berkshire County.

LEAD: THE Mount Vernon City Council, facing a vote on a project that would provide transitional housing for the homeless, could pave the way Wednesday night for construction of the first of a series of such projects to be built in Westchester.

LEAD: MANY of the nation's savings institutions are in big trouble, saddled with hemorrhaging portfolios of bad loans. In Texas and California alone, the Government may have to ante up tens of billions of dollars to keep depositors at savings and loan institutions from losing money. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance

LEAD: Hollins College, a small, 150-year-old women's college nestled in a quiet valley in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, seems at first glance an unlikely literary center. Though respected in higher education circles, Hollins is not widely known outside the South; many of those who have heard of it tend to dismiss it as a tony finishing school for the daughters of Sun

LEAD: By RACHELLE GARBARINE