World Notes

LEBANON A New Level of Horror

In a city largely numbed by the unending cycle of violent death, last Saturday's car bombing produced a ripple of shocked disbelief. At 11:45 a.m., a car, believed to be a white Mercedes, exploded outside a supermarket crowded with women and children in predominantly Christian East Beirut. The blast killed as many as 50 people and injured nearly 100 others, several of whom were trapped in an underground storage room. The blast touched off a raging fire in the six-story apartment building housing the supermarket, and a pillar of black smoke towered above the area. Explosives experts believe that the car had been packed with about 550 lbs. of dynamite that was detonated by remote control.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. But it was the culmination of an especially bloody week in the city. On Wednesday, another car bomb had exploded in East Beirut, killing 15 people, many of them children, and shattering a six-story apartment building. Scores of civilians also fell victim to artillery and mortar exchanges between rival Christian and Muslim forces. WEST GERMANY Fatal Identity

Specialist Four Edward F. Pimental, 20, left his barracks at Camp Pieri in Wiesbaden on the evening of Aug. 7 for a few hours of fun at the Western Saloon, a favorite haunt of U.S. soldiers at the base. He had a drink with a dark-haired woman dressed in blue jeans, who appeared to be with a tall mustachioed man she called Jeff. Pimental left with the couple. Next morning he was found dead, shot in the back of the neck with a large-caliber gun. Minutes after his body was found, a terrorist car bomb exploded inside the U.S. Rhein-Main Air Base some 20 miles away, killing two people, both Americans, and injuring 21.

At first police theorized that Jeff could have been Pimental's killer. But last week the Frankfurt office of the Reuters news agency received a copy of a letter from the Red Army Faction, a West German terrorist group, and the French extremist organization Direct Action claiming responsibility for the air-base bombing. More startling, the envelope contained Pimental's green military identification card. The West German authorities now think they may have an explanation for how the terrorists managed to drive their bomb-laden car past the guards at the air base: they might simply have flashed Pimental's ID card. FRANCE A Working Vacation

Suntanned but in a stormy mood, 490 Deputies of the French National Assembly last week left their vacation villas and returned to Paris at the bidding of Socialist President Francois Mitterrand. The summons came two days after France's legislative review panel rejected as unconstitutional part of a plan to organize regional elections in New Caledonia, a major step toward making the country's Pacific territory independent. The review panel said that the bill, which would have maintained New Caledonia's defense and economic links with France while dividing the island into four voting regions, favored native Kanaks at the expense of French settlers, known as caldoches.

After the French Deputies had convened, the Socialist majority sent to the Senate a modified bill that would increase the representation of the heavily French-populated capital, Noumea, from 18 to 21 seats in the new 46-member Territorial Congress. Mitterrand's party endured some sarcastic criticism. Said Jacques Toubon, secretary general of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party: "You are a seashore government conducting summertime policies." Mitterrand, however, was visiting friends in the Dordogne countryside in southwestern France. CHINA Tough but "Equal" Justice

Richard Ondrik, 34, sat glumly last week in the Intermediate People's Court in Harbin as a judge declared him guilty of accidentally starting a fire by smoking in bed at the Swan Hotel. Ten people died in the blaze. The American businessman was sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $51,700 fine. Two Chinese hotel employees, whose negligence allowed the fire to spread, also received jail terms. Harbin's chief judge, Pei Xing, told the official Xinhua News Agency that the case demonstrated that in China "everyone is equal before the law." The court, he said, had given Ondrik "a light sentence and had fixed a rational sum for him to pay in compensation." Ondrik filed an appeal last week.

The verdict was based largely on the testimony of Chinese investigators who surmised that Ondrik had fallen asleep while smoking in bed and thus was primarily responsible for the April 18 blaze. Ondrik, however, claimed that it was not his habit to smoke in bed. The American won the respect of Chief Judge Pei, who called him "quite honest" and said Ondrik had promised to work to pay back the damages. VIET NAM Return of the Fallen

The 26 small wooden boxes, each with a folded American flag on top, rested on tables on the tarmac at Hanoi's Noi Bai Airport. One by one they were loaded onto a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport while an honor guard of 18 U.S. military personnel saluted. Inside each box were the remains of a U.S. serviceman killed during the Viet Nam War and previously listed as missing in action. They were eventually flown to the U.S. Joint Casualty Resolution Center in Honolulu for positive identification. The occasion marked the largest such transfer since the war ended a decade ago. Before last week, Viet Nam had returned 99 sets of U.S. servicemen's remains. An estimated 1,820 U.S. military personnel are still unaccounted for in Viet Nam.

The goal of Hanoi's cooperation is to gain U.S. diplomatic recognition, as well as access to Western aid that would help its weak economy. But while the U.S. is pleased at the rising numbers of missing accounted for, Secretary of State George Shultz's view has not changed: "The only way for a real [U.S.-Viet Nam] rapprochement is obvious--let Viet Nam get out of Cambodia."