February 19, 1994

Two weeks after Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani declared a moratorium on the billion-dollar reconstruction of Kings County Hospital, his administration and state officials say they plan a thorough redesign of the project in order to produce a smaller, more efficient institution. The call for a redesign of the city's largest public hospital, coming after a decade generally acknowledged to have been wasted on delay, mismanagement and poor planning, is certain to postpone the long-awaited project in East Flatbush even further.

Citing a threat of violence against a lesbian couple, Attorney General Janet Reno today ordered Federal civil rights mediators from the Justice Department to take up their first case involving the harassment of gay people. Ms. Reno sent the mediators to Ovett, Miss., a town of 1,200 people in the southeastern part of the state, where some residents have organized to try to force out a lesbian couple who founded a women's camp last summer on 120 acres of a former pig farm.

If anyone knows how to take advantage of wrinkles in the tax rules, it is the bean counters at the Internal Revenue Service. So it should come as no surprise that they have figured out how the top officials at the agency can avoid paying hundreds of dollars in extra taxes this year to cover the value of parking free in the I.R.S. garage. To do so, the agency had to violate principles it laid down eight years ago on how the value of taxable fringe benefits should be calculated. It wrote a one-year grace period into the enforcement rules of a new law and then figured the worth of I.R.S. parking in such a favorable way that the executives who use it owe no additional taxes.

A New Look at Unesco The United States is considering rejoining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which it abandoned during the Reagan Administration. Page 5. 14 Miles of Frustration A stretch along the Mexico border near San Diego has become a symbol of the losing battle against illegal immigration and the focus of new attempts to control it. Page 6. In Moscow, Fight for a Site As President Yeltsin and lawmakers jostle for power, finding a permanent home for the Parliament has become a major battleground. Page 2. Nanny Sentenced in Killing A Westchester nanny who admitted killing a baby was sentenced to 8 1/3-to-25 years in prison. Page 21.

Long-term interest rates shot sharply higher yesterday for the second consecutive day, leaving the nation's central bank in a bind that it is probably finding very uncomfortable. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is likely to face some hard questions -- and criticism -- from Congress on Tuesday when he presents his annual review of the bank's interest-rate policy.