British novelist Penelope Lively publishes Moon Tiger.

Au revoir les enfants {Goodbye Children), by Louis Malle, is released.

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci releases The Last Emperor.

Mbongeni Ngema's Sarafina! debuts at Johannesburg's Market theater.

The United States regains the America's Cup when Stars and Stripes sweeps Australia's Kookaburra III in international sailboat racing.

Nearly eighty thousand square miles of Amazonian rain forest are burned in eighty days by Brazilian landowners, sparking environmental fears that razing the forest will contribute to a global "greenhouse effect."

Canadian officials sign the Meech Lake Accord, granting Quebec special status as a "distinct society," beginning a ratification process that is to be completed by 1990.

South African politics are rent by a bloody civil war between Zulus led by Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Party and Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

4 Jan.

The Communist Party of China expels dissidents.

22 Feb.

Syrian troops seize West Beirut in an...