1986 Year

A key prosecution witness in the Lockerbie bombing trial told a Scottish court Tuesday that one of the two Libyans accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 had kept TNT explosives in his desk drawer at an office in Malta's Luqa Airport, where the bomb allegedly originated. The witness, identified by the pseudonym Abdul Majid Abdul Razkaz Abdul-Salam Giaka, is a former Libyan spy who became a CIA mole four months before the December 1988 bombing that killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

Nearly lost in the debate over whether Oxnard should merge its police and fire services is the simple fact that the city has been down a similar road before. And some of those who traveled that road now say the city once again is barreling toward a dead end. In a cost-cutting experiment in 1986, the Oxnard City Council formed a Public Safety Department and consolidated the administrative duties of the police and fire departments.

Sometimes when she practices a space shuttle procedure, Barbara Morgan has flashbacks to when she was Christa McAuliffe's understudy. The moments of sadness pass quickly. She prefers not to talk about them. "There are also times when I can think of lots of really fun stuff that happened too," says Morgan, perking up. McAuliffe, NASA's effervescent teacher-in-space designee from Concord, N.H.

Whether the serial killer known as the Original Night Stalker is still alive, nobody knows. But 30 years after a couple died while housesitting in Goleta, investigators have confirmed through DNA testing what they long suspected: The man who killed them is the same one they believe responsible for a decades-long crime spree that started with dozens of rapes in Northern California and ended with as many as 10 slayings in Santa Barbara, Ventura and...

When Ivan F. Boesky's book, "Merger Mania," came out in 1985, it was thick with fancy arithmetic that purported to explain how Wall Street's most powerful arbitrager, or speculator in takeover stocks, had made his millions. People who read it thought Boesky was a pretty smart guy. They had second thoughts the following year, however, when Boesky pleaded guilty to a list of insider trading violations and gave up $100 million in fines and illegal profits.

Beware of the Breath Blasters: Victor Vomit, Ms. Morningmouth and their various cousins. Of the tens of thousands of playthings evaluated in 15 years of surveying toys, "the products of the sickest mind" are these 4-inch figures that stink according to their names, the Americans for Democratic Action declared this week in its annual "Toy Box/Trash Box" evaluation of new toys.

President Reagan has proclaimed 1986 "The Year of the Flag," and June 14 Flag Day, the White House announced.