Virginia Beach Va

A former press secretary to Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) pleaded guilty to conspiring to disclose contents of an illegally taped telephone call of then-Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder. Steven D. Johnson, 34, was fined $5,000, the maximum for the charge. The tape concerned reports linking Robb to drug parties in Virginia Beach, Va. Robb denied attending any such parties. But Wilder, in a transcript of the tape, said he believed the reports would destroy Robb politically.

A Navy bomber trailing flames crashed on takeoff, skidded across a country road and plowed into a station wagon, killing the woman driver and the plane's two crew members. Debris from the flaming wreckage at the Oceana Naval Air Station at Virginia Beach, Va., was scattered over a wide area and Navy officials quickly cordoned off the A6-E Intruder crash site. Witnesses said the plane's tail section was on fire when it went down. The cause of the crash was under investigation.

With robust finances and well-trained public work forces, Austin, Texas, and Phoenix are the best-managed major American cities, according to an analysis by Syracuse University. The study rated the municipal governments of the nation's 35 largest cities in terms of revenue, assigning grades from A to F on five management criteria: finances, human resources, capital, information technology and results. Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Virginia Beach, Va., averaged B+.

Fawn Hall, introduced to America's television viewers during the Iran-Contra affair, will be taking some viewers to the beach this spring. Hall, who was Oliver L. North's secretary when he was an aide at the National Security Council, was in Pittsburgh on Tuesday doing pre-production work for KDKA-TV's "Evening Magazine" program. Hall's assignment is to report on three beach resorts favored by Pittsburgh vacationers. The segments, featuring Ocean City, Md., Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Four of the 39 hijacked hostages were missing Saturday when the group was assembled for interviews in a fenced schoolyard near Beirut airport. According to reports, Lebanese security sources said the missing Americans are captives of Hezbollah (Party of God), chief rival of the Amal faction in Lebanon's Shia community, as "guarantees" for the hijackers of TWA Flight 847. The missing men were identified as Robert G. Brown, 42, of Stow, Mass.; Richard Herzberg, 33, of Virginia Beach, Va.