Blockade

BEIRUT -- Dodging artillery bombardments, a wave of civilians fled southern Lebanon yesterday as Israeli guns targeted villages and gunboats blockaded Beirut in an intensifying sweep against Islamic guerrillas.Members of the Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Party of God militia, responded by firing more Katyusha rockets into northern Israel. Thousands of Israeli civilians slept in bomb shelters, but Israeli commanders said the latest salvos caused no injuries.Anti-aircraft fire arched over Beirut during the night in anticipation of an Israeli raid that did not materialize.

HAVANA -- As the United States goes through another Cuban crisis, I am in Cuba teaching geriatric medicine for the Ministry of Health and at an international medical conference with leading doctors from Europe and South America.Havana has greatly changed in the last two years. With market reforms, enterprising Cubans have opened many restaurants, coffee shops, repair shops and car dealerships. Pharmacy shelves are stocked.The endearing 1950s Chevies are still plentiful, but many newer cars, motorcycles and bicycles fight them for parking spaces.

Don Treshman, who this summer moved his national anti-abortion group Rescue America from Houston to Baltimore, says he has the medical records of Maryland abortion patients and will be writing them soon, offering counseling "to help them get over what they've done."The records, he said, were retrieved from the trash of an area clinic.Abortion rights advocates, however, doubt that Mr. Treshman really has such documents.If he does have medical records, they said, the documents did not come from the trash.

JERUSALEM -- The Israeli squeeze on Lebanon continued yesterday as Israeli artillery opened fire on the southern part of the country and Israeli gunships maintained their three-week blockade of nearly 50 miles of Lebanese coast.Three Lebanese were killed in artillery bombardments that were aimed north of an Israeli-controlled strip in southern Lebanon, according to reports broadcast by state-run Israel Radio, which said the artillery was aimed at "terrorists."The Israeli blockade includes the Mediterranean ports of Sidon, Tyre and Damour, just 12 miles south of Beirut.

JERUSALEM -- Fearful that the Lebanese government is trying to undermine its self-proclaimed security zone in southern Lebanon, Israel expanded yesterday a 2-week-old blockade of ports south of Beirut, Israel's chief negotiator with Lebanon confirmed."

MOSCOW -- Seeking to break the economic blockade imposed in 1991 by the United Nations, Iraq went public yesterday with a very visible campaign to woo Russia away from the West.The Iraqi ambassador, Ghafil Jassim Hussein, invited Russian reporters to the embassy for an unprecedented news conference, during which he appealed to anti-American feeling, described the dire problems of ordinary Iraqis that have been caused by the blockade, and dangled the prospect of billion-dollar deals for Russia's own struggling economy.

MIAMI -- Between the bags of beans, rice and plantains in the small La Bodega supermarket in Miami's "Little Havana," you'll find Cuban-Americans split over President Clinton's decision to block the boat people from landing here, to end family reunion visits and cut off money transfers.To J. L. Correa, retired former owner of the store in southwest Miami, Mr. Clinton has made a "big mistake" in closing the door to Cubans.A poll in the Spanish-language editions of the Miami Herald yesterday suggested that 62 percent of Cuban-Americans opposed the decision to detain the boat people at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Cold War is over, and the Howard County Friends of Central America hopes it can help end a 33-year-old blockade of Cuba that activists say has long outlived its purpose."

WASHINGTON -- Fed up with escalating violence at abortion clinics, the Senate voted 69 to 30 yesterday to impose stiff new penalties for blocking access to a clinic, threatening its doctors or vandalizing its property.Opponents like Republican Sen. Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire argued that the measure treats peaceful protesters as felons and would lead to "putting nuns in jail." But supporters disagreed, insisting it's the constitutional right to an abortion that is truly under attack through a national campaign of intimidation and violence.

Crime SolutionsIn response to Willis Case Rowe's letter of Oct. 21, criticizing my letter of Oct. 13 welcoming National Guardsmen to city streets: Please let me rephrase myself.What I meant to say, and what many city residents no doubt read into my letter, is that I would applaud any attempts by any authority to curb crime in the city, even if it meant walking by a guardsman every morning as I took my children to school.Maybe the answer to crime isn't to station a guardsman on every corner.