Aussie Chief Admits Womanizing

--Two weeks after his 33rd wedding anniversary, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke tearfully admitted in a television interview that he had been unfaithful to his wife, Hazel. “You have been accused of being a womanizer. What do they mean by womanizer?” reporter Clive Robertson asked. Hawke replied: “They mean I was unfaithful to my wife,” then admitted in tears that he had been. But the prime minister said that his indiscretion was in the past and that “I guess there are not many women who would have put up with me all that time. But my love for her never changes. I have always loved Hazel, always will.” Hawke, 58, also spoke of his past drinking, which he has said stopped in 1979. Biographer Blanche d’Alpuget says he earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records when he drank 2 1/2 pints of beer in 12 seconds while a student at Oxford. Hawke is seeking an unprecedented fourth term as the Labor Party candidate in 1990. Liberal Party leader John Howard refused to comment on the confession, but some opponents have called it a political gimmick.

--Two space shuttle astronauts and a teen-age girl were among those honored when the Harmon International Aviation Awards were presented for the first time in several years. Vance D. Brand was commander of the shuttle Columbia on its November, 1982, mission. Paul J. Weitz commanded Challenger on its maiden flight in 1983. The teen-age winner was Stephanie Shinn of Moses Lake, Wash., who was only 13 in 1983 when she became the youngest person ever to set a world aviation mark, capturing a duration record for a flight in an ultra-light balloon. Vice President Dan Quayle attended the Washington ceremony where the awards, named for the late Clifford B. Harmon, a wealthy sportsman and aviator, were announced. Other winners included Donald P. Taylor of Hemet, Calif., who built an aircraft and flew it over the magnetic and geographic North Poles in 1983, and Capt. Brooke Knapp of Los Angeles, who established or broke 59 national or world records the same year, 41 of them in a single round-the-world flight.

--Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter proclaimed a “Vegetable Enjoyment Day.” The Tennessee Vegetarian Society has had a bone to pick with the governor in the past because he refused repeated requests to declare Oct. 1 as “World Vegetarian Day” and last year even declared October to be “Beef Month.” Lige Weill, president of the vegetarian group, said of the vegetable day: “It’s a starter, I guess. I think they’re trying to make peace with us.”