ON THE TOPOLOGY OF SOME QUASI-PROJECTIVE SURFACES

Let X be a surface with isolated singularities in the complex projective space P-3 and let Y denote the smooth part of X. In this note we discuss, mostly on specific examples, some aspects of the topology of such quasi-projective surfaces Y : the fundamental groups and the associated Galois coverings, the second homotopy groups and the mixed Hodge structure on the first cohomology group.