Home Court: A criminal court in Lyon,...

Home Court: A criminal court in Lyon, France, agreed this week to allow French author Francoise Sagan, 53, to testify from home during her trial on charges of consuming and transporting cocaine. Sagan, author of the best-seller “Bonjour Tristesse,” had argued that she could not physically attend the trial for health reasons. “On occasion, I have taken a little cocaine, like a lot of people,” Sagan said shortly after the March, 1988, indictment. “But to go from that to dragging me into court--that makes me hallucinate.”

* Free the T-Shirts: In Cape Town, South Africa, the colorful T-shirts of political groups are street vendor Alli Abdulla’s hottest merchandise. Just over a month ago they would have landed him in jail. “I have always wanted to sell political stuff,” he said. Abdulla displays a range of T-shirts that were forbidden before President F.W. de Klerk’s lifting of restrictions on the African National Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress and other groups and individuals.

* New Holiday: Kentucky became the 41st state to adopt a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday when Gov. Wallace Wilkinson signed legislation in Frankfort Monday before a jubilant crowd in the Capitol rotunda. The bill’s chief sponsor, freshman Rep. Leonard Gray of Louisville, called the ceremony “the end of a long march.” Modifying a quotation from the slain civil rights leader, co-sponsor Rep. Porter Hatcher held a page of the legislation aloft and said, “Signed at last; signed at last. Thank God almighty, it’s signed at last.” The state holiday is the third Monday in January.