Walesa Has a Striking Thought

Lech Walesa, whose Solidarity trade union helped force the Polish government to adopt sweeping democratic reforms, said he is considering running for the newly created office of president of Poland. “I’m being strongly pressed. Different people are pressing me and I am thinking about being a candidate to the highest (post) that is going to be in Poland,” Walesa said at a news conference in his home city of Gdansk. However, he ruled out running for the newly created 100-member Senate, which will be the East Bloc’s first freely elected legislative chamber, or the existing 460-member Sejm, where the opposition can run for 35% of the seats. The two bodies meet later this year to elect a new president, and the post is expected to go to Communist Party First Secretary Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski due to the majority still guaranteed to the Community Party and its allies in the larger Sejm. If that happens, Walesa said he will probably run in the next presidential election six years from now. “I am a man of big interests,” said Walesa, an electrician who won the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the East Bloc’s first independent trade union during a 1980 strike at the Gdansk shipyard. The opposition and communist authorities reached a historic agreement April 5 to restore the union’s legal status and allow independent candidates to run for parliament in June.

--A feisty German shepherd proved conclusively to his young master that a dog is a boy’s best friend. The pooch, aptly named Buddy, saved 5-year-old Brandon Rodriguez from a vicious pit bulldog that attacked him as the boy played in the front yard of his Fresno home. The pit bull bit Brandon’s leg, and Brandon ran to the house with the dog hanging on. When he opened the door, Buddy rushed out and forced the pit bull away from Brandon. As the two dogs fought, Brandon’s brother, Jerry Myers, 19, killed the pit bull with two shotgun blasts. Brandon was treated at a hospital for three puncture wounds, and Buddy was treated for bites to two paws and minor injuries from two shotgun pellets. Buddy’s reward, in addition to Brandon’s everlasting devotion: a steak breakfast.

--A 5-year-old Mt. Healthy, Ohio, girl who fell an estimated 25 feet from a Ferris wheel when it stopped abruptly was saved from serious injury or death when she fell into her father’s arms. The ride operator had just unfastened the safety bar across the laps of Rachel McAdams and her sister Margot, 6, when the Ferris wheel inexplicably started up. When it abruptly stopped, Rachel lost her balance and fell. She glanced off another of the cars and then her father, Mack, caught her for an instant before she hit the ground. She suffered head bruises and a broken tooth.