February 15, 1995

GIULIANI SEEKS DEEPEST CUT SINCE 1930'S Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed a financial blueprint for New York City that included the largest percentage reduction in overall spending since the Great Depression and that would drastically reshape municipal government and slash its services to the poor. A1.

In some communities a young man who turned in a man accused of being a terrorist and became eligible for a $2 million bounty would be pointed out as an example of virtue rewarded. Among South African Muslims, however, the prevailing view of Istiayaak Parker, the Cape Town student who reportedly betrayed the man accused of masterminding the World Trade Center bombing, seems to be disbelief and scorn.

SHE arrives, apologizing. The driver took her first to the old La Goulue and she had to ask directions to the new La Goulue, and that is why she is late. "I don't know the town," Elisabeth Maxwell says in her French-accented English. "When I've come I've had to rely on other people's experience. Like a parcel, really, in the hands of my hosts." As she sits, the women at the surrounding tables don't recognize her. In fact, they look right through her. The royal blue suit and watercolored silk scarf at the throat are on the wrong side of chic for the Upper East Side (where it's taupe or die), and her level of concentration is too grim even for the would-be business lunchers, male and female alike, who sneak admiring glances at their own profiles in the mirror as soon as their guests look down.

In a move to trace illegal guns to their sources, the state and Federal governments announced an agreement yesterday under which county prosecutors will give the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms information on all guns used in crimes. The New Jersey Attorney General, Deborah T. Poritz, and Faith S. Hochberg, the United States Attorney for New Jersey, said the Federal agency may then find it easier to go after dealers who sell guns -- or trade them for drugs -- knowing they are likely to be used in crimes.

A Congressional watchdog group plans to use a news conference today to ridicule as pork barrel spending the Ellis Island footbridge, a $15 million project pushed by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg. Citizens Against Government Waste berates the bridge and other Federal projects in its annual "Pig Book."

Citing unfinished F.B.I. background checks, the White House said it would not send the nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. to be Surgeon General to the Senate until mid-March. Administration officials said the delay in the start of hearings would leave Dr. Foster in better shape to confront his critics. Article, page A14.

At first, the view from the bridgekeeper's booth Sunday looked like something out of a picture postcard: a bridge over the Delaware River and a winter sunset with a man, a boy and a dog in silhouette. After a few minutes, the man and the boy bicycled back to Belvidere -- alone. The dog, a handsome black animal with traces of Irish setter, was struggling in the icy waters 25 feet below -- thrown into the river, the police believe, by the man and boy.

Continuing a restructuring that began slightly more than a year ago, the ITT Corporation said yesterday that it would sell three businesses from its ITT Financial Corporation subsidiary to the GE Capital Corporation for $1.8 billion. ITT said last October that it intended to sell its financial services subsidiary and raise a net of $3.3 billion to $3.5 billion in the process. The deal with GE Capital would be the third sale since then.

Scott R. Johnson changed his mind yesterday. The man accused of raping and killing Gail Shollar decided not to testify, after all. The 25-year-old defendant admitted to the November 1992 carjacking, rape and killing in a taped statement to the police, but last week he told the judge that he had not killed Ms. Shollar and wanted to testify in his own defense.

Fresh signs of an economic slowdown appeared today as retail spending at department stores, auto dealers, supermarkets and the like rose in January by a relatively small amount for the second straight month. "It seems as if consumers have slowed up on their purchases," said Kenneth T. Mayland, chief financial economist at the Keycorp National Bank in Cleveland. "Something has changed."

More than 70 communities near nuclear generating plants will become repositories for spent nuclear fuel, the most radioactive of all atomic wastes, for the foreseeable future as a result of a little-noticed Federal appeals court ruling. The January decision means that without public hearings or environmental studies, the utilities will build de facto permanent repositories near their plants, because after decades of searching for a centralized nuclear waste site, the nation is still at least 15 years away from a solution and has found nowhere else to store the 30,000 tons that have already accumulated.

Democrats in the Senate mounted their most concerted challenge to the proposed balanced-budget amendment supported by Republicans, but lost in a close vote. The effort by Democrats, which lost on a vote of 57 to 41, was intended to keep the billions in the Social Security trust fund out of the hands of those trying to reduce the deficit. Article, page A14.