Waitresses Bare-ly Serve Doughnut Shop’s Customers

--The South’s first topless doughnut shop opened at dawn with live TV news coverage, a police guard and cold coffee. No one complained about the coffee. A dozen topless waitresses wearing hip-hugger shorts hustled to keep the customers fed with $1 doughnuts and $1 cups of coffee. “The service was good, and so were the doughnuts,” said cab driver Mark Johnson, the first customer at the R Donuts shop. Before noon, more than 500 customers had packed the former fast-food restaurant, such a heavy load that the new $600 coffee machine broke down. “There were all sorts of people there. Old ladies, young ladies, all kinds of men--but no kids,” said Melanie Bell, a free-lance photographer who attended the opening of owner Andy Amory’s R Donuts (R-rated Donuts) shop in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Miami TV station WSVN promised to carry live reports “throughout the day.” The only disharmony came when a gaggle of protesters carrying signs picketed the opening, but they left as soon as the TV camera lights were turned off.

--Benjamin Spock, 82, the tireless liberal activist, has just returned from a weeklong trip to Nicaragua, where he turned over $50,000 raised in the United States for the Sandinista government. “I was most impressed, not only by the sincerity but by the idealism and the spirituality of these people,” he said.

--An Air Force hospital plane on a mercy mission at the behest of American Indians and Congress whisked a 12-year-old girl from her adopted home in Hungary to the United States for treatment of a mysterious, paralyzing disease. The flight for young Trina Tian, who moved to Hungary from Idaho eight years ago, was arranged by Idaho Republican Sens. James A. McClure and Steven D. Symms. Her destination is a Shriner’s hospital in Spokane, Wash. Officials expected her to be in Spokane by the end of the day unless she was too ill to travel farther and needed rest. The $6,300 cost of the trip is being paid by the Bureau of Indian Affairs because Trina is a member of the Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe. McClure said the girl suffers from a mysterious virus that has left both of her legs and her left arm paralyzed and has baffled physicians in Hungary. The girl and her 14-year-old sister, Anna Marie, moved to Budapest with their father when their parents were divorced. Her mother, Rose Davison, is a member of the Indian tribe, which has raised $3,800 for the girl’s medical expenses.