Heart patient stable

DES MOINES, Iowa - A 7-year-old boy was in stable condition with a new heart transplanted just days before doctors say he would have died of an enlarged heart. Ryan Melone, Iowa's youngest heart transplant patient, was in "critical but stable" condition. He was diagnosed in infancy as having an enlarged heart, said Dr. Steven Phillips, the surgeon who performed the three-hour operation at Mercy Hospital Medical Center.

MOVE charges dropped

PHILADELPHIA - Charges against Ramona Johnson Africa that served as the basis for an arrest warrant that police were trying to serve on May 13 when they ordered her and other members of the radical group MOVE out of their west Philadelphia rowhouse have been dropped. The refusal of Ramona Africa and other MOVE members to surrender resulted in the daylong siege at the house, during which 11 people inside the house were killed and dozens of surrounding homes were destroyed by fire. She had been charged with conspiracy, riot, terroristic threats and other improper influence in official and political matters.

N.Y. raises drinking age

NEW YORK - Beginning today, it will be illegal for anyone under 21 years of age to be sold an alcoholic beverage in New York State. The state joins 31 other states that have set 21 as the minimum drinking age. The rise in the minimum age is intended to reduce the number of alcohol-related deaths on the road, although opinion is not unanimous that it will work. Under a federal law passed in 1984, states that do not adopt 21 as their minimum drinking age by Oct. 1, 1986, will be denied millions of dollars in federal highway aid.

Convict search continues

ATMORE, Ala. - Armed neighbors searched for an escaped convict despised for the alleged rape of a "well-respected woman in the community," and law officers with bloodhounds scoured the countryside to try to find the fugitive first. If residents find Billy Ray Davis before police do, "He may be in trouble," said Escambia County Sheriff Tim Hawsey. Davis, 30, the only one of three Fountain Correctional Center inmates still at large, repeatedly called the sheriff's office to let deputies know he was safe, Hawsey said.

Pregnancy deaths studied

ATLANTA - Deaths related to pregnancy or delivery may be more frequent than previously reported, a new study by the national Centers for Disease Control concludes. A pilot study in seven states - Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Rhode Island - found 39 maternal deaths in 1983, compared with 28 officially reported by those states. That total, reached by combining death records with information from other sources, was 39 percent higher than the number reported by those states' statistical systems.

Publisher held in Miami

MIAMI - The publisher of a politically influential anti-Castro Cuban newspaper was held without bond on charges of selling cocaine to undercover drug agents. Agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said Alberto A. Rodriguez, 63, was the owner and founder of the weekly newspaper Patria.

Airline prices rise, fall

WASHINGTON - Full-service airline fares have risen since the industry was deregulated, but heavy discounting on some routes has offset the increase, lowering the average ticket price paid per mile, congressional auditors say. The General Accounting Office also concluded that while full fares have gone up since passage of the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978, the increases "were lower, on average, than might have been expected under continued regulation."

Lehmann hospitalized

CLEVELAND - A 66-year-old man accused of overseeing the slayings by Nazis of more than 300 people in World War II has been hospitalized and his scheduled deportation may be delayed, officials said. Alexander Lehmann was scheduled to be deported to West Germany today - four years after U.S. Justice Department attorneys charged he oversaw the slayings in 1942 in Zaporozhe in the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union.

Bhopal leak lawsuit filed

LOS ANGELES - A lawyer for nearly 400 residents of Bhopal , India, site of a gas leak that killed 2,000 people a year ago, has filed a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Union Carbide Co. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court by Oliver F. Moench on behalf of Bhopal residents claiming injuries from the leak of methyl isocyanate, seeks $10 million in general damages, $10,000 in special damages, and $10,000 in punitive damages for each plaintiff.