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MORTARS HIT HEATHROW FOR THIRD TIME Four mortar shells hit Heathrow Airport yesterday, but none exploded in the third attack in a week on the world's busiest international airport. Police said no planes were landing or taking off at the time of the attack and there were no reports of injuries or damage. The attack came despite a dramatic increase in security at the airport including armed police patrols which was ordered after two similar attacks in which mortars shells also did not explode. The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for one of them. After the first attack, Gerry Adams, the leader of the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, said there would be more attacks if Britain did not move to accommodate IRA-Sinn Fein demands for fresh talks with the British government. In December the British and Irish governments offered Sinn Fein a place in peace talks if the IRA first ended its 24-year campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland. St. Patrick's Day parade

Organizers of Boston's annual St. Patrick's Day parade announced Saturday that they will cancel next week's parade to protest a court order allowing gays and lesbians to march. An organizer said gay marchers would be excluded when the parade resumes next year. But Mayor Thomas Menino has said the city will sponsor the parade next year and will include the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group of Boston. It obtained injunctions to march in 1992 and 1993. Intel loses case

A federal jury in a closely watched copyright case decided against computer chip giant Intel Corporation on Thursday in its second lawsuit against archrival Advanced Micro Devices. Jurors found that AMD, one of the few competitors Intel faces, did have the right to copy Intel's chip operation software. Intel claims AMD copied the code illegally. But AMD argued that a cross-licensing agreement gave them the right. Intel won the first trial, but the verdict was thrown out when a judge decided Intel withheld key documents. World Bank measures

Controversial reform measures are starting to reverse decades of falling living standards in Africa, the World Bank said in a report released yesterday. But it stressed that much more needs to be done to restore growth to the world's poorest continent. The report said that six nations Burkino Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe saw an average increase of almost two percentage points in their growth rate. This brought average growth for the 29 nations involved up from a negative level to 1.1 percent a year in 1987-91. Nine countries registered a small improvement in overall economic performance, while the 11 others saw a deterioration.