Major U.S. military aid for Israel has been agreed on, according to Reagan Administration officials. They said Israel would receive $1.4 billion in military assistance in the next fiscal year, none of which has to be repaid, as part of a global policy shift in disbursing military funds. Egypt is to receive $1.1 billion in grants. Breaking with the approach of lending money to governments at prevailing market rates to buy American military equipment, the Administration now intends to give the assistance either free of charge or at subsidized rates.
The battleship USS New Jersey fired its five-inch guns in support of marines who were under attack from Muslim Druze militia positions in hills overlooking Beirut. No American casualties were reported. Earlier, members of the French and British contingents in Beirut were also attacked. Two French soldiers were killed and three were wounded.
A three-month siege was lifted at the mountain town of Deir al Qamar, Lebanon, and 2,500 Christian militiamen were evacuated along with the first of several thousand civilians. Thousands of Christians had sought sanctuary in the town from heavy fighting and then were prevented from leaving. Druze militiamen agreed to end the siege as a Christmastime gesture.
Enhanced security arrangements for the American Embassy in Kuwait were approved just a week before a truck-bomb attack there killed 5 people and injured 37, the State Department said. Officials said the embassy proposed changes to improve security three months ago.
Iraq said its jets attacked “selected targets” today in the southwest Iranian city of Ilam and the border town of Dehloran. The official Iraqi press agency quoted a military spokesman as saying the raids were further retaliation for Monday’s wave of bombings in Kuwait. Iraq accused Iran of being behind the Kuwait attacks, in which at least seven people were killed. Teheran has denied any involvement.
More East-West arms talks ended. The Vienna negotiations on reducing conventional armed forces in Central Europe were recessed, with Warsaw Pact nations refusing to agree to a date for their resumption. The action marked the third time in recent weeks that East-West arms negotiations were broken off with the Soviet bloc denouncing the deployment of new medium-range nuclear missiles in NATO countries.
West Germany’s Constitutional Court granted the Bonn government permission to conduct a controversial national census, but the court placed restrictions on the use of the information gathered. The decision appears to end a legal battle mounted by opponents who charge that the census constitutes an invasion of privacy and a violation of civil rights. The decision came eight months after the court ordered the census postponed to study a petition challenging its constitutionality. A Bonn government spokesman said the census “will probably be conducted at some point next year.”
The West German Defense Ministry called for the enlistment of thousands of women volunteers — the first such recruitment since World War II — to help maintain the troop strength of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s largest army in Europe. Peter-Kurt Wuerzbach, the No. 2 man in the ministry, told West German radio that “10,000 to 15,000 women soldiers” will be needed to keep the army close to its present 495,000 troops. Planning for the recruitment of women should have begun long ago, he said, adding that such a move must be “talked out” in Parliament and by the public.
The Irish government announced a decision not to fund a half-built international airport for Roman Catholic pilgrims on their way to a shrine to the Virgin Mary in County Mayo. More than $7.91 million from the government and local sponsors has been spent on the airport project, begun after Pope John Paul II visited the shrine in the western village of Knock in 1979. Another $3.95 million is needed, but the government said it will not go ahead with the project, which critics say will become a white elephant. The republic already has three international airports.
President Reagan meets with Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau to discuss nuclear disarmament. Trudeau was pleased by what he said was encouragement from President Reagan for his efforts to reduce tensions and renew the arms control discussions between NATO and the Soviet Union. The Canadian Prime Minister conferred with Mr. Reagan at the White House for an hour.
The last 190 U.S. combat troops left Grenada, leaving about 300 noncombat soldiers to support Caribbean peacekeeping forces there. “We leave with a great deal of confidence that things are going to be good in Grenada,” said the commander, Major General Jack B. Farris, before trotting across the Cuban-built airstrip at Point Salines to join his men on the C-141 transport plane. “We wouldn’t be leaving if we didn’t think the security situation was good.” The plane took off in a light drizzle at 10:24 A.M. It was headed directly for Polk Air Force Base, near Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The Jamaica Labor Party swept national elections boycotted by the Socialist opposition Thursday, giving Prime Minister Edward Seaga an unprecedented one-party Parliament. Mr. Saega’s conservative Labor Party had been assured of control of Parliament on November 29, when nominations closed with opposing candidates in only six of the 60 constituencies. The turnout was light. Complete but unofficial returns showed no more than 45 percent of those registered voted in any contested constituency. The governing party’s candidates won by wide margins over independent and fringe-party opponents. The police said there were no disturbances during the voting.
Eight convicts and an American nun they took hostage were shot to death during an attempted escape from an overcrowded Lima prison, Peruvian authorities said. Police said that Irish-born Joan Mary Sawyer, 51, a naturalized U.S. citizen and a sister of the Missionary Sisters of St. Colomban, died in a shootout with police after an ambulance stolen by the convicts crashed into a bus shortly after the jailbreak.
At least 17 people died in a remote Amazon district after contractors working for a Brazilian government utility used a defoliant similar to the Agent Orange employed by U.S. forces in Vietnam, officials of Brazil’s Para state said. “We have evidence that as many as 42 people may have died from the effects of Tordon-155 poisoning,” an official of the state’s agriculture department said.
Argentina’s new government, having forced more than half the generals and two-thirds of the admirals in the armed forces to retire, said today that it was removing internal security from military hands. The government published bills reciting what the military may and may not do and changing the military code of justice. President Raul Alfonsin’s elected government began the changes to insure tighter civilian control over the military.
The blue airport uniform worn by the purported assassin of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. came from a wardrobe of disguises maintained by the military, a lawyer for the accused man’s family said today. The lawyer, Lupino Lazaro, made his statement before a fact-finding panel investigating the opposition leader’s killing. Authorities say they killed Rolando Galman after he shot Mr. Aquino as he stepped off a plane August 21. Captain Llewelyn Kavinta of the security command has testified that it uses disguises, including airport uniforms, to combat hijackings. Captain Kavinta said they were “not exactly” similar to Mr. Galman’s.
A plan to reverse Siberian rivers has been quietly shelved by the Kremlin after decades of study. According to Soviet technical journals, scientists have concluded that the multibillion-dollar project to divert water from Siberia to the Central Asian desert for cotton irrigation would be too costly and of dubious benefit.
The White House announced that Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang will make a long-planned state visit to the United States on January 10, the highest-level Chinese visit in four years and one expected to lead to a reciprocal trip by President Reagan to China next April. The Administration, criticized at its outset by the Peking government as pro-Taiwan, has been trying to continue the improvement in U.S.-China relations fostered by the Nixon and Carter administrations.
South Africa offered to “begin a disengagement of forces” on the Namibia-Angola border as the first step in an independence settlement for Namibia (South-West Africa). In a message to U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha reaffirmed that the Pretoria government is ready to begin the process of leading the former U.N.-mandated territory to independence if Cuban forces are removed from Angola. He added that a truce involving South African, Cuban and Angolan troops and guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organization could begin January 21 and last 30 days or longer.
President Reagan lights the National Christmas Tree. A 7-year-old terminally ill girl who wanted Christmas lights ‘seen all the way to heaven’ helped President Reagan push the button that lit the national Christmas tree Thursday. Reagan then picked up Amy Benham of Westport, Washington, so she could see the 500 lights on the 30-foot Colorado blue spruce on the Ellipse just beyond the South grounds of the White House.
An extensive Justice Department investigation into purported unauthorized disclosures of U.S. military and diplomatic strategy in Lebanon has ended without finding the source of the leak or determining whether national security was compromised, Administration officials said. “There is no evidence that reporters were told anything we didn’t want them to know,” one official said. The inquiry triggered a confrontation between then-national security adviser William P. Clark and White House chief of staff. James A. Baker III.
An internal investigation charged that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has discriminated against Latinos by gearing its policies and programs toward helping blacks. A report presented to the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee said that Asians, American Indians, women and the elderly also are slighted. The lack of Latinos, and others, at the EEOC headquarters in supervisory positions “has led to a perception that the agency, and civil rights in general, are black issues,” said the report, presented by Commissioner Tony Gallegos, former Commissioner Armando Rodriguez and Michael Martinez, the commission’s deputy general counsel.
Federal crash tests released on 1983 model cars show that in two-thirds of the 35-m.p.h. crashes, the driver or passenger would have been killed or seriously injured despite the use of seat belts. The tests, using instrumented dummies strapped into the cars, covered 17 vehicles from subcompacts and full-size cars to station wagons and trucks. The least safe car of the 17 was the subcompact Ford EXP; the safest was the Pontiac Firebird.
Aides to former President Richard M. Nixon urged a federal judge to block the government’s planned release of 1.5 million pages of potentially embarrassing documents from the Nixon White House. Attorney Stan Mortenson argued that the rules Congress set for releasing the documents were politically motivated and unconstitutional.
President Reagan asked Congress to provide $1.8 billion in a supplemental appropriation to cover the cost of a pay raise for military and civilian Defense Department employees beginning January 1. The military was to have received a 4% pay increase April 1 unless civilian government employees were given one earlier. Reagan decided to give all civilian government employees a 3.5% pay raise on January 1.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced plans to give 700 localities across the nation $40 million to supplement and extend emergency programs to provide food and shelter for the poor. At least $100,000 will go to each state, the agency said. Other funds will go to localities with unemployment rates of more than 8.1% and at least 18,000 jobless residents, and to areas with unemployment rates of more than 13% and between 1,000 and 17,999 jobless residents.
A drop in agricultural exports is at the heart of the crisis in American farming and in the foreclosures of bankrupt Middle Western farms. American farmers are now locked into a cycle of overproduction, falling prices and dependence on Government subsidies.
A second American was executed in one week. John Eldon Smith, a 53-year-old insurance salesman convicted of a double murder, was electrocuted in Jackson, Georgia, after nine years of appeals. He made no final statement, and his face betrayed no emotion. About 40 executions are expected next year.
Two canoeists ended an epic journey by water in and around North America that lasted three and a half years and covered 28,000 miles. Verlen Kruger, who is 61 years old, and 30-year-old Steven Q. Landick came home to Lansing, Michigan, by way of the Grand River.
The toxic pesticide EDB has been found in more samples of grain products, Florida state officials said today. Agriculture Commissioner Doyle Conner’s office released a list of 20 additional grain products found to be tainted by EDB, which has caused cancer in laboratory animals. The state agency identified the companies marketing the EDB-tainted grain products as Olde Tyme Foods Inc. of Dallas, R. H. Hammond of Hialeah and Martha White Foods Inc. of Nashville, Tennessee. The tainted material will be removed from the marketplace by the companies and the state has blocked further sales of products identified as having traces of EDB, a state official said.
A Koch-Weinberger dispute intensified as New York Mayor Koch said that FBI agents came to City Hall last week to learn his source for a translation of a Lebanese newspaper article that sparked his long-running disagreement with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger. In a letter to William H. Webster, director of the bureau, Mr. Koch suggested that Mr. Weinberger was behind the FBI investigation and that the request for information was an attempt “to stifle my constitutional rights” to comment on national policy.
Wendy Wasserstein’s play “Isn’t It Romantic” premieres in NYC.
Severe penalties for drug use were imposed on four players by Bowie Kuhn, the baseball commissioner. Commissioner Kuhn suspends convicted Kansas City Royals Willie Wilson, Willie Aikens, and Jerry Martin, and Dodgers pitcher Steve Howe for one season without pay for their use of illegal drugs. The suspensions will be shortened by an arbitrator and lifted on May 15th.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1236.78 (-9.86).
Born:
Camilla Luddington, British-American actress (Dr. Jo Wilson-“Grey’s Anatomy”), in Ascot, England, United Kingdom.
Wang Hao, Chinese table tennis player (World Championship gold 2009; Olympic silver, 2004, 2008, 2012), in Changchun, Jilin Province, China.
Sophia Young-Malcolm, Vincentian-American WNBA forward (WNBA All-Star, 2006, 2007, 2009; San Antonio Silver Stars), in Kingston, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
William Kershaw, NFL linebacker (Kansas City Chiefs, Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins), in Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Dontell Jefferson, NBA shooting guard (Charlotte Bobcats) in Lithonia, Georgia.
Amy had Hodgkin’s Disease, and wrote a letter to the Make-a-Wish group asking to be part of the ceremony. The organization tries to make wishes come true for children who are terminally ill. When physicians diagnosed seven-year-old Amy Benham with Hodgkin’s disease in May 1983, her parents asked her to choose three wishes. Amy requested a playhouse large enough to accommodate her and her two younger sisters, a canopy bed, and the opportunity to help President Reagan light the White House Christmas tree. She wrote a letter to the Make a Wish Foundation asking “The Christmas tree that light up for our country must be seen all the way to heaven. I would wish so much to help President Reagan turn on those Christmas lights.” The foundation came through for Amy, and the White House invited her to attend the lighting ceremony scheduled for December 15, 1983.
Amy and her mother arrived at the White House, where she was allowed to sit at the President’s desk in the Oval Office. At five in the afternoon, she stood with Reagan at the diplomatic entrance to the White House where the switch had been placed for the lighting. Before Amy flipped the switch, Reagan read a portion of her letter and added, “Well Amy, the nicest Christmas present I could receive is helping your dream come true. When you press the button over here, the whole world will know Amy Benham lit up the skies sending Americans love, hope and joy all the way to heaven and making the angels sing.” Reagan then picked her up to allow her turn on the 500 lights which had been festooned on the 30-foot Colorado blue spruce that had been placed on the Ellipse near the south grounds of the White House. An ebullient Amy Benham returned to her home in Washington State to find a canopy bed and a backyard playhouse all donated by local merchants and remarked: “I’ve got all these wishes already, and I’m only 7 years old. I got Christmas cards from people all over the country, people we don’t even know. There was even one from Santa Claus.”
History Diaries 