Two bomb blasts in Beirut killed at least 19 people, including a French soldier, and wounded more than 40 people. A pickup truck packed with explosives blew up outside a French military command post in East Beirut five minutes after a bomb exploded in a crowded hotel bar in West Beirut.
A report disputed key explanations offered by General Paul X. Kelley, the Marine Corps commandant, in Congressional testimony last month on the October 23 bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut. The House subcommittee that investigated the truck bombing, which killed 241 American servicemen, issued the full text of its 78-page report.
A Bulgarian charged with complicity in the 1981 attack on Pope John Paul II was released from jail and placed under house arrest because of health problems said to require medical treatment. Sergei I. Antonov, the Bulgarian charged with complicity in the shooting of Pope John Paul II, was released from a Rome prison because of poor health and placed under house arrest. “This is the most beautiful day of my life,” he said as he was taken to an apartment where Bulgarian diplomats often stay. Antonov, station manager in Rome for the Bulgarian state airline, was arrested November 25, 1982, and charged with helping Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Ağca shoot the Pope on May 13, 1981. Bulgaria has repeatedly denied his involvement in the shooting.
British police arrested four people in the search for the Irish terrorists who triggered a car bomb outside London’s famed department store, Harrods, that killed five people and injured 91. Police said the four, who were not identified, were seized in raids in London and were known as sympathizers of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but were not directly involved in the incident last Saturday.
Security has been tightened at American installations in Europe to prevent terrorist attacks, U.S. military commanders announced in Frankfurt, West Germany. The precautions, which officials said are not in response to a specific threat, include checking identities of those entering U.S. facilities and placing temporary barricades at entrances to military compounds.
A criminal court in Budapest, Hungary, convicted a prominent dissident publisher of assaulting two policemen and gave him a six-month suspended sentence. Gabor Demszky, a co-publisher of the underground magazine Beszeloe, pleaded innocent and said he will appeal. The publication has been critical of the Communist government. Non-conformist intellectuals in Budapest said the trial was a high point in a crackdown against dissent that has intensified during the past year.
Sweden barred a shipment of 30 tons of American-made computer components from being sent to the Soviet Union today, classifying the cargo as “war material.” The Government said the shipment would leave Sweden only if its manufacturer, the Digital Equipment Corporation, of Maynard, Mass., requested its return. Four containers holding the computer equipment have been kept under police guard in the southern port of Helsingborg since they were impounded a month ago.
Dr. Zwi Schlesinger, an Israeli cardiologist, said yesterday at a news conference in New York that Anatoly B. Shcharansky, who is serving a prison sentence at Chistopol in the Soviet Union, suffers from a heart condition and must be hospitalized. The doctor based his diagnosis on descriptions of chest pains and arrhythmia that Mr. Shcharansky has mentioned in letters to relatives. Dr. Schlesinger said that, if an Israeli prisoner with this condition were brought to him, “it wouldn’t matter if he were a traffic offender or a terrorist sentenced to life, such a patient has to be hospitalized.” Mr. Shcharansky was convicted in 1978 on charges of treason in the form of espionage and was sentenced to 3 years in prison, to be followed by 10 years in a labor camp. After having served the prison term, he was sentenced in 1981 to return to prison for another three years.
Salvadoran army troops led by elite U.S.-trained battalions attacked left-wing guerrilla strongholds in one of the biggest lightning raids of the four-year-old civil war, an army spokesman said. The spokesman said 3,000 troops were involved in an airborne assault in largely guerrilla-controlled Morazan province. Meanwhile, Roberto D’Aubuisson, leader of El Salvador’s rightists and a man who has been linked to Salvadoran death squads, reportedly met with Defense Minister Carlos Vides Casanova on the crackdown on human rights abuses demanded by the United States.
The Nicaraguan government said “it appears” that anti-Sandinista rebels killed an American-born bishop who resisted efforts to abduct him and nearly 500 residents of a northeastern village. The state radio identified the Roman Catholic bishop as Monsignor Salvador Schlaefer, 63, of the Caribbean port of Bluefields. There was no confirmation of his death from church officials. In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the bishop had been. leading a group of Miskito Indians toward Honduras and away from fighting in Nicaragua. Another American, Father Wendelin Shafer, 64, also was reported abducted.
More than 6,000 Grenadians sent a petition to the island’s governor general, Sir Paul Scoon, requesting that the United States be asked to maintain its presence on Grenada for at least five years. The petition urges Washington to “accept this country in some form of association that can amicably be worked out for a reasonable period.” At present, the petition said, Grenadians are confused and do not understand “true democracy” because they have lived “for the past 20 years under two terrible leaderships — dictatorship and communism.”
An estimated 4,000 workers have walked off their jobs at Suriname’s two largest industrial enterprises to back demands for talks with Government officials about lowering taxes. The action, which is being viewed here as a direct challenge to the left-wing military Government of Lieutenant Colonel Desi Bouterse, has shut down Suriname’s bauxite-processing operations in Paranam, about 20 miles from here. Bauxite, used to make aluminum, is the backbone of the economy of this former Dutch colony on the northern coast of South America, bringing in 80 percent of its foreign earnings. It is the first labor unrest since 15 opposition political leaders were killed here a year ago after a series of strikes and demands for a return to democratic rule. This time, the workers are protesting higher taxes on Christmas bonuses and tax increases scheduled to take effect in January.
The bauxite workers are the most highly paid, highly skilled and tightly organized in the country, and their action has stopped production at the Suriname Aluminum Company bauxite processing plant and the Billiton Corporation bauxite mine, both in Paranam. Taxes ‘Are Too Much’ The Suriname Aluminum Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America. Billiton is owned by the Royal Dutch Shell Company. Although mediation efforts have begun, the mood of workers at the Suriname Aluminum Company was defiant.
The Polisario Front, the guerrilla group that is fighting Morocco for the independence of Western Sahara, said today that Moroccan forces had begun a major offensive in the territory with 25,000 troops. In a communiqu2 circulated by the Algerian press agency, the Polisario Front said the troops were backed by tanks and other armored vehicles and several types of combat aircraft. Fighting was under way west of Amgala and 30 miles from the phosphate mines at Bou Craa, the communique added.
President Reagan meets with the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Arab Republic of Egypt General Kamal Hasan Ali.
Economic growth seems to have moderated in the last three months of the year to a pace that the Reagan Administration says can be sustained through 1984 and beyond, the Government reported. The Administration seized the opportunity to urge the Federal Reserve Board to relax the tight interest-rate policy it has been following since the summer.
Workmen erected new concrete waist-high barriers at a White House gate leading to the West Wing, where President Reagan and his most senior advisers have their offices. Deputy Press Secretary Peter Roussel said that the new barriers were just a continuation of recent efforts to discourage terrorist attacks like the truck bombing that killed 241 American servicemen in Beirut. The new barriers are similar to those placed earlier at other entrances to the executive mansion.
President Reagan visits all offices on the 2nd floor of the west wing of the White House.
The federal panel investigating former Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt’s controversial coal-leasing policies broke ranks with its chairman and moved to scrap large parts of a report that found little fault with Watt’s program. Three of the panel’s five members complained that the draft did not reflect their views but instead read like a defense of Watt. The three directed the staff to make extensive revisions and resubmit the report next month.
Eighteen Democratic members of the House urged President Reagan to fire Charles Z. Wick, director of the U.S. Information Agency, for suggesting that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher opposed the American invasion of Grenada because she is a woman. “When the appointee who engages in this bizarre behavior is the person in charge of our information policy abroad, we have a situation equivalent to the appointment of a pyromaniac as a fire warden,” the lawmakers said in a letter originated by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts). Wick made the remark on December 2 when appearing before the California Press Association in San Francisco.
An idle steel mill in Chicago, the South Works, epitomizes a massive change in American industry and the decimation of the lives of many workers and their communities. The United States Steel Corporation said it would spend $225 million to build a new, high technology mill if the workers there agreed to contract concessions involving pay and work rules. But the local union says it will not consider the concessions.
George A. Sawyer rebutted a report in The New York Times that while he was an Assistant Secretary of the Navy he approved noncompetitive contracts for his former employer, John J. McMullen Associates. Mr. Sawyer said that while in the Navy post he removed himself from all contract decisions affecting McMullen Associates.
Saying he didn’t “condone their actions,” a prosecutor in Charleston, South Carolina, dismissed obstruction of justice charges against four employees of television station WCSC, which broadcast a murder suspect’s photo. News anchorman Bill Sharpe, news director Debi Chard, station manager Mark Pierce and reporter Tim Lake were arrested Tuesday, handcuffed, fingerprinted and booked before being released on their own recognizance. The station the night before had broadcast a high school yearbook picture of Charles Edward Blake, 20, after authorities asked the news media not to use his picture until rape victims could see a police lineup in about two weeks.
The sinking of a giant drilling rig in a storm off Newfoundland 22 months ago was caused mainly by poor human response to a broken porthole and short-circuited controls, according to the Coast Guard. All 84 men aboard the rig perished. High seas that broke an unprotected porthole and fouled the electrical system probably caused the capsizing of the world’s largest offshore drilling rig off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982, the U.S. Coast Guard said. All 84 crewmen aboard are believed to have tried to evacuate the rig but died in the water, even though rescue ships were alongside the rig Ocean Ranger when it sank, a 350-page report said. The report said the owner, Ocean Drilling & Exploration Co., was fined $25,100 for not having the rig properly inspected.
Massachusetts taxpayers will be able to voluntarily check off a donation on their income tax forms to help families with relatives in need of life-saving organ transplants through a bill signed by Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. The organ transplant fund “will help defray the extraordinary costs of transplant operations,” Dukakis said.
A panel of three Federal judges ordered today that the lines of Mississippi’s Second Congressional District be redrawn to increase the district’s black population. Presiding Judge Charles Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who read the ruling, said he and Federal District Judges William Keady and L. T. Senter had not had access to demographers’ expertise but had drawn lines they believed were fair. Judge Clark said the three were trying to achieve a 57.8 percent black population in the district and a 52.9 percent black voting-age population. He said the panel also wanted to keep incumbents in their respective districts and cause only minor population deviations in the remaining districts.
Six persons indicted in Chicago last week as part of a sweeping investigation into alleged corruption in the Cook County courts pleaded not guilty during arraignments in federal court. Two special federal grand juries returned indictments last week against 10 judges, lawyers and court workers. The indictments detailed 165 counts of extortion and mail fraud. If convicted, the 10 defendants face between 5 and 20 years in prison on each count. A trial date was set for March 21. Operation Greylord included the use of court-ordered electronic eavesdropping devices inside the chambers of at least two judges.
Reports that too much carcinogen was being found in flour, pancake mixes and other widely used food products are being investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency, a spokesman said. The substance is ethylene dibromide, a cancer-causing pesticide.
Emulating the Soviet space program in at least two respects was recommended in a new Congressional study. The study concluded that the United States leads the Soviet Union in most areas of space technology, but that it could profit by equaling or surpassing Moscow’s more clearly defined long-range goals in space and the more evolutionary way in which Moscow develops new systems out of old ones.
Most Presidents have used spirits, if only for “flavorings,” particularly during Christmastime. A new book by Albert J. Menendez provides the recipes for President George Washington’s eggnog, Thomas Jefferson’s spiced hot toddy, Ulysses S. Grant’s Roman punch, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s favored fruitcake and the Dwight D. Eisenhower’s’ flaming plum pudding.
Snow and ice storms struck the Southwest and the Midwest on the eve of winter yesterday, nearly shutting down Dallas, blacking out 68,000 homes in Arkansas and making roads slippery from Illinois to Louisiana. A surge of cold air pushed across the northern Rockies into the northern and central Great Plains, lowering temperatures to 41 below at Butte, Montana, and 37 below at Casper, Wyoming. The cold also covered the Northeast, where it was 30 below at Diamand Pond, New Hampshire. At least 53 deaths from Washington to Mississippi have been blamed on the cold, snow, ice and rain this week. Winter officially started today at 5:30 A.M., Eastern standard time.
American “MAS*H” actress Loretta Swit weds (46) American actor Dennis Holahan (41); they divorce in 1995.
Musical “Tap Dance Kid” opens at Broadhurst Theater NYC for 669 performances.
NCAA rules rescinded last 2-minute men’s basketball free throw rule.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1254.97 (+13.01).
Born:
Steven Yeun, Korean American actor (Glen-“The Walking Dead”; “Minari”), in Seoul, South Korea.
John Mayberry, Jr., MLB outfielder, pinch hitter, and first baseman (Philadelphia Phillies, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Mets), in Kansas City, Missouri. His father, John Mayberry, Sr., was a major league player from 1968 to 1982.
Taylor Teagarden, MLB catcher (Texas Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs), in Dallas, Texas.
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