He’s Gearing Up for Another Try

--After nine years of failing his driving test, Hranislav Mirkovic will try, try again--for the 79th time--to pass the examination. “They told me I was close to passing this time, my 78th try,” Mirkovic, 54, told a newspaper in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. “If that is the truth, then I don’t need much indeed. If necessary, I will take the test 100 times.” Mirkovic, who lives in the village of Kuzmin, said he did at one time have a license to drive a tractor, but quit renewing it several years ago. He was so confident he could pass the test that he bought a car. “Now both the tractor and car sit idle mostly,” he said. “I don’t dare go into the street or even the field. I must ask friends to drive for me. My wife does not drive, and my child is still small. So I have to carry on with this trouble, my life’s greatest.”

--A group of schoolchildren bearing fur hats and bottles of vodka for their parents returned home to Portland, Me., after a trip to the Soviet Union in the footsteps of their late schoolmate, amateur peace ambassador Samantha Smith. Organizers of the trip had hoped it would spark a series of cultural exchanges between U.S. and Soviet youngsters. The trip was “exhausting but very productive,” said chaperon William Preble. Samantha, who died last August at age 13 in a plane crash, toured the Soviet Union in 1983 at the invitation of then-leader Yuri V. Andropov.

--Someone who found a Gucci purse containing $2,300 in cash dropped the purse with money intact into a U.S. Postal Service collection box, where mail carrier William Tropea found it among the post cards and letters while making his rounds in Manhattan. By checking papers in the purse, the Postal Service was able to return it to its owner, Midori Silva of Santos, Brazil, who was visiting New York for Liberty Weekend. Silva said the purse must have dropped out when she opened the door of a rented limousine in which she was touring the city.

--President Reagan will present awards to painter Willem de Kooning, singer Marian Anderson, film director Frank Capra, composer Aaron Copland, writer Eudora Welty, choreographer Agnes de Mille and actress Eva Le Gallienne as he recognizes 12 artists and arts patrons. The ceremony Monday will mark the second presentation of the National Medal of Arts, proposed by Reagan in 1983 to honor those who, he said, “are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States.”