October 9, 1980

BASRA, Iraq, Oct. 8--Iranian troops entrenched in an oil port that the Iraqis are striving to capture have shelled and set afire at least five foreign cargo ships, sinking three of them, according to survivors who managed to swim to the Iraqi shore. At least 20 crewmen were believed to have been killed.

With Pomp and Circumstance, as well as jazz, humor and a festive New York block party, Donna E. Shalala was installed yesterday as the 10th president of Hunter College.

HOUSTON, Oct. 8--In Texas, a state with a reputation for wide-open big-time football, freewheeling high-stakes commerce and rough-and-tumble politics, the Presidential race appears to have suddenly tightened and now shapes up as a close, bruising battle to the finish.

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J. FROM the outside, it looks like any other suburban house. Specious contemporary colonial. Lots of privet. A circular drive with BMW. A compromise kind of house, the type you buy not because you're dying to live in Englewood Cliffs, but because your two children need a yard--instead of asphalt--and you don't want to be more than 15 minutes from New York City.

MILAN, Italy, Oct. 8--When Mariuccia Mandelli moved through the St. Andrew's Restaurant at the Trade Fair here to join her husband, Aldo Pinto, at lunch today, she was followed by applause all the way. It was a salute to a winner.