Exiled Czech novelist Milan Kundera publishes The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

L'Amant, by French novelist Marguerite Duras, is published.

Mario Vargas Llosa publishes Historia de Mayta (translated as The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta).

French sculptor Jean Dubuffet unveils his Monument with Standing Beast before the new State of Illinois building in Chicago.

Louis Ducreux stars in Bertrand Tavernier's A Sunday in the Country.

Famine and drought in sub-Saharan Africa kill three hundred thousand.

British pop star Bob Geldof organizes Band Aid, a high-profile pop-music charity for African famine victims.

Japan endures a scare as extortionists claim to have poisoned candy.

Western experts estimate that casualties from the ongoing Iran-Iraq War have killed one hundred thousand Iranians and fifty thousand Iraqis.

U.S., French, and Italian peacekeeping forces leave Lebanon.

The World Court denounces the mining of Nicaraguan export harbors by the United States as a violation of international...