April 7, 1992

AMONG humans, a visit with the in-laws can rank as one of life's little blisters, an experience just slightly more agreeable than, say, a CAT scan. But humans have nothing on the white-breasted bee eaters of Kenya. These birds are such outrageous relations that when a young, newlywed female moves into her husband's territory, ready to lay her eggs and get a family under way, her parents-in-law will do everything in their power to wrench the young couple asunder.

Guns drawn, Secret Service agents and local police officers kicked down the door of an apartment in a Phoenix suburb in January and plunged straight into the biggest case of telephone fraud ever. Half a world away, Palestinians in the occupied territories of Israel were making long-distance calls to other Middle Eastern countries. And unsuspecting cellular phone subscribers in Arizona were footing the bill. Law enforcement authorities said they had broken up an elaborate scheme to skirt an Arab boycott of calls from Israel. In the raid, and a related one in Phoenix, they seized 35 cellular phones, 10,000 microchips and notebooks filled with electronic codes that could allow high-tech bandits to pose as legitimate customers.

A Federal appeals court ruled that a psychoanalyst can go to trial with a libel suit against The New Yorker magazine and a writer. Page A20.

Mount Sinai Medical Center has agreed to take over a city contract to provide doctors to Queens Hospital Center in a deal brokered by state health officials that will cost $6.9 million a year more than the current contract. The deal ends a search for a new source of medical residents that began in November, when Long Island Jewish Medical Center said it was ending its 26-year contract with the city-run Queens hospital on the ground that it was not a good training ground for medical specialists.

The General Motors Corporation demoted its president yesterday and removed its chairman, Robert C. Stempel, from his post as head of a powerful board committee in an unusual display of power by outside directors. Still reeling from the biggest loss in American corporate history, G.M. named John (Jack) F. Smith Jr., 53 years old, as president and chief operating officer. He replaces Lloyd E. Reuss. Mr. Smith had been a vice chairman in charge of international operations.