BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – The leader of Moslems in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and his aide were shot and killed Wednesday, five weeks after the imam distanced himself from Iran’s death sentence for author Salman Rushdie.

Imam Abdullah Al Ahdal, a 36-year-old Saudi Arabian and moderate Moslem, and Salem El Behir, a 40-year-old Tunisian who headed the Brussels mosque’s social services and library, were shot at close range in the imam’s office in the mosque, police said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility, and no arrests were made. Police said there were no witnesses and that no one heard the gunshots.

The two men each were shot twice, once in the head and once in the neck, police said. Unconfirmed reports said three hooded men were seen jumping from a van, entering the mosque and then coming out again.

Oil spill difficult to contain

VALDEZ, Alaska (AP) – The worst oil spill in U.S. history has spread beyond 500 hundred square miles in one of the nation’s most productive fishing regions, officials said Wednesday, as crews all but abandoned hope of containment.

A former oil industry official charged that cutbacks had left operators of the Port of Valdez with ill-maintained booms, no barge to take on oil and virtually no properly trained people to respond to the disaster.

Three top administration officials met with representatives of the oil industry, state and federal agencies to assess the cleanup of 10.1 million gallons of crude oil spilled from the 987-foot tanker Exxon Valdez.

Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Bill Reilly, Coast Guard Commandant Paul Yost and Gov. Steve Cowper flew by helicopter over oil-stained beaches late Tuesday, but the federal officials declined to comment.

acketeering indictment

NEW YORK (AP) – A federal grand jury charged Michael R. Milken, the high priest of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.‘s high-yield “junk” bond department, with racketeering and securities violations Wednesday in the largest criminal indictment resulting from the Ivan Boesky insider-trading investigation.

Also named as defendants in the 98-count indictment were Milken’s brother, Lowell J. Milken, who is also employed at Drexel’s Beverly Hills, Calif., office, and a former Drexel trader, Bruce L. Newberg.

The long-awaited indictmet charges the three with a multimillion-dollar racketeering conspiracy using Drexel’s high-yield bond department through a series of securities fraud schemes.

Milken heads the “junk” bond department and is one of the most dynamic financiers of the decade. Said to be one of the country’s wealthiest people, he reportedly makes $200 million a year, mostly in a yearly bonus paid the following year.

Cocaine costs man his car

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – A Chicago man who was found dumping a small amount of cocaine onto the floor of his 1946 Buick after police stopped him for a traffic violation will have to give up the car, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

Two lower courts had ruled that Cook County authorities could not seize the car under the state’s Contraband Control Act, which allows officials to confiscate cars, boats or airplanes used in drug trafficking. The lower courts had said the law doesn’t apply to people carrying small amounts of controlled substances.

But the Supreme Court declined to address that broader issue, focusing instead on car owner Samuel Smith’s apparent attempts to hide the drug at the time of his arrest.

Smith was pulled over by Chicago police on the city’s south side in March 1986 for failure to stop at a stop sign. When officers approached the car, they saw Smith emptying a packet of white powder – later found to be cocaine – onto the floor.

City’s mistake costs grant

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) – This cash-strapped city lost a $780,000 state grant to repair its crumbling sewers because officials failed to apply for the grant, a state report says.

The money then went to other communities, said officials of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Gov. James R. Thompson included the $780,000 sewer grant for East St. Louis in a 1987 list of projects to be funded by the Build Illinois program, the IEPA said. Agency officials said the city was contacted a number of times about the grant.

“But no one ever applied for it,” said Rich Warrington, a IEPA lawyer.