Divorce Plans Turn Husband Into a Home Wrecker

--A man angry with his wife for filing for divorce obtained a demolition permit and bulldozed their new three-bedroom home into oblivion while she was out of town. Police in Umclaw, Wash., are investigating, but officer Fred Eaton said there may be no case because Raymond Kree Kirkman had purchased an $11.50 demolition permit from City Hall. “I guess he didn’t want me to have anything,” said Sandy Kirkman, 26, surveying the remains of her stylish house that looked as if it had been hit by a tornado. “We separated last summer and on Monday I filed for divorce,” she said. “I told him I wanted to keep the house. . . . It took him only 15 minutes. I had beautiful antiques.” The front entrance and kitchen took the brunt of the attack by the husband, who used a bulldozer and backhoe to level the structure. “When I got the call over the radio,” Eaton said, “I thought it was the usual domestic case where the husband is tearing up the house, you know, throwing things around. When I got there, I made him stop for a minute,” Eaton said. But Kirkman quickly produced his permit and continued bulldozing. The house, built two years ago, was valued at $85,000, said Sandy Kirkman, who lived in the house with her three children. The children were not at home at the time. By the time she reached home, the house was destroyed and her husband was gone. Occasionally crying, she spent the afternoon pulling photographs and clothing of her children from the wreckage.

--The Rt. Hon. Mrs. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Prime Minister and First Lord of The Treasury since 1979, celebrated her 60th birthday quietly with her family at Chequers, her official country residence in southern England. Although she reached the official retirement age for women in Britain, Thatcher has no intention of retiring and has repeatedly spoken of wanting to win a third term of office.

--Irish rock star Bob Geldof has said he will give most of the proceeds of the Live Aid concerts for African famine victims to Ethiopia and Sudan but that Sahel states will get at least $1 million each. Geldof, 33, told reporters after meeting political leader Thomas Sankara in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta): “We will give a million dollars to Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso, perhaps a million and a half to Niger because it is more affected. And the remainder of the money will be used in Sudan and Ethiopia where the situation is very difficult.”