The President accepted full blame for the lack of security measures that permitted the terrorist bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut. While acknowledging that the marines were ill-prepared to deal with the October 23 truck bombing that took 241 lives, Mr. Reagan said their commanders “have already suffered quite enough” and ought not to be punished. Officials said that a 166-page report by a special Pentagon commission that has not been made public concluded that the entire military chain of command, including admirals and generals, shares blame for failing to take proper security precautions.
The American marines guarding the Beirut airport went into their highest state of alert after artillery shells landed near their compound. The alert lasted 90 minutes and, according to a spokesman, there were no American casualties.
Jesse L. Jackson said he might cancel plans to visit Syria to seek the release of a captured American airman if President Reagan asked him not to go. Mr. Reagan indicated he had misgivings about the planned trip because such private missions “can be counterproductive.”
Arabs’ images of Jews are harshest among the people living in refugee camps controlled by Israel. Behind walls and concrete barricades, a hatred of the Jews of Israel seethes quietly but intensely. It is in the refugee camps that future “freedom fighters” for the Palestinian cause are indoctrinated by their elders and their environment.
A U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO is in prospect. State Department officials said President Reagan had decided to order the American withdrawal at the end of next year unless the United Nations agency alters substantially practices that the Administration finds objectional.
The Afghan Government offered again today to send home the 105,000 Soviet troops in the country if it received international guarantees that all resistance to its rule would stop. However, a key resistance leader vowed that the rebels would fight until they drove Moscow’s forces out. The Government made the offer on Kabul Radio on the fourth anniversary of Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The broadcast was monitored here. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, of the fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami Party, immediately rejected any political settlement with the Soviet Union, and accused Moscow of trying to hoodwink the world with its proposal.
President Reagan said today that “the tragedy of Afghanistan” had created serious international tension and he called on Moscow to restore Afghan independence. In a written statement he also said guerrilla forces resisting the Soviet Union “have given new meaning to the words courage, determination and strength.”
The 10-nation European Economic Community issued a statement today condemning the continued Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Elsewhere, Afghan exiles in Europe, Iran and New York demonstrated for Soviet withdrawal.
Pope John Paul II and the assailant who gravely wounded him in 1981 sat in a Rome prison cell for 20 minutes, alone, in quiet conversation. Later, the Pope told reporters, “I spoke to him as I would speak to a brother whom I have forgiven and who enjoys my confidence.”
Two of 24 Polish political prisoners released as a “humanitarian gesture” must return to their cells after the holidays, a government spokesman said. The statement was at variance with figures given by Polish Primate Archbishop Jozef Glemp and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa. Glemp, in announcing the prisoner release in a Christmas sermon, said about 30 prisoners had been freed, and Walesa said Monday that he thought four of those released would have to return to jail next month.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz will be in Stockholm for the January 16 opening session of the Conference on Disarmament in Europe, the State Department formally announced. Hopes have been raised that Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko could meet at the conference to help reduce East-West tensions exacerbated by the Soviets’ recent withdrawal from disarmament talks. A State Department spokesman said Shultz is willing to have such a meeting, but does not know whether Gromyko will attend.
The Greek Government announced today that the status and operations of the Voice of America and United States military broadcasts in Greece are to be re-examined and revised. This review of American broadcasts in Greece will be made in accordance with the provisions of the new five-year American-Greek Economic and Defense Cooperation Agreement, according to a government spokesman, Dimitris Maroudas. American sources here had expected the Socialist government to initiate talks over the broadcasts in the wake of the signing of the base agreement Sept. 8, since the operations agreements have long expired.
South Korea will resume non-political exchanges with the Soviet Union in hopes of improving relations strained by the Soviet downing of a Korean jetliner that killed all 269 people aboard, Foreign Ministry officials said. The officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, acknowledged that some problems involving compensation for the jetliner incident have yet to be resolved but added that exchanges with Moscow will be resumed on a “gradual basis.”
Philippines President Ferdinand E. Marcos pardoned or commuted the sentences of 280 prisoners, including an American and a Swiss national jailed for drug offenses, in a Christmas clemency order, the presidential palace announced. A spokesman said the 280 did not include prisoners held for subversion or other political charges. The two foreigners, identified only as Bankie Barnes of the United States and Philippe Robert of Switzerland, will be deported, he said.
The Government said today that a “foreign hand” was interfering in its inquiry into the killing of Benigno S. Aquino Jr., President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s chief political rival. The report did not identify the reported “foreign hand.” Earlier, military lawyers filed a $285,000 criminal libel suit against Reuben Regalado, a 25-year-old Philippine Airlines ground worker, who disputed the Government’s version of the August 21 airport assassination. In an NBC News report from Tokyo Friday, Mr. Regalado, was quoted as saying the accused assassin, Rolando Galman, was being “restrained” by soldiers when the killing occurred. Military lawyers said Mr. Regalado’s allegations were “malicious” and “false,” since on October 5 he signed a sworn statement saying he did not see the shooting. Mr. Regalado is the first civilian witness to dispute the Government version. He is reportedly hiding in a foreign country.
El Salvador’s Constituent Assembly extended to June 30, 1984, the third phase of a land reform program aimed at undercutting the appeal of leftist rebels. The assembly said this would be the final extension. The third phase applies to farms of 75 to 245 acres, and permits peasants to claim title to up to 17 acres that they have been farming as sharecroppers or renters. So far, only 48,000 of an estimated 100,000 eligible peasants have claimed title. Earlier this month, the assembly sharply curtailed the second phase of the U.S.-backed program, which covers farms of 600 to 1,200 acres.
Peru ordered seven police officers and two top prison officials to stand trial for negligent homicide in the shooting death of an American nun who was held hostage during an attempted prison escape. Irish-born Joan Mary Sawyer, 51, a naturalized U.S. citizen and a member of the Chicago-based Missionary Sisters of St. Colomban, died December 14 when police opened fire on an ambulance bearing escaping inmates and three American nuns held hostage. Eight prisoners from Lima’s Lurigancho prison also died.
The United States urged all sides in the spreading conflict in southern Africa to exercise restraint and avoid jeopardizing a South African proposal for disengagement of forces in Angola. South Africa says it has penetrated 120 miles into Angola in an operation against what it called a mobilization of black nationalist guerrillas opposing South African rule in Namibia (South-West Africa). Angola, meanwhile, said it shot down two South African jets on bombing raids that killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds.
The Energy Department said it will be at least three years late in meeting a congressional deadline for picking a site for the nation’s first nuclear waste burial dump. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, passed by Congress a year ago and signed by President Reagan last January, requires that the President recommend a site by March 31, 1987. In a draft plan, however, the department said it will not have selected a place to bury the thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from the nation’s nuclear power plants until December, 1990.
Charles Z. Wick has secretly taped office telephone conversations with Government officials, his staff at the United States Information Agency and friends, according to aides and transcripts of the conversations. After six of the callers said they had been secretly taped, Mr. Wick, the director of the agency, issued a statement saying he had recorded “a small percentage” of his telephone conversations and had not always informed the other party.
The President and the First Lady travel to Los Angeles, California.
A propane gas fire devastated an area of Buffalo, New York. At least 6 people were killed, 4 of them firefighters, and more than 70 civilians were injured last night when two propane gas explosions at a warehouse heavily damaged a four-block section of downtown Buffalo, fire officials said. Four firefighters were reported missing and at least a dozen people were trapped under rubble, officials said. They added that a shower of broken glass, bricks and flames melted parts of fire engines and demolished at least a dozen nearby homes. The explosions knocked out windows more than a mile away and shook homes in a four-mile radius. Flames charred a bakery and more than 20 nearby houses. The street in front of the warehouse was covered with a knee-high layer of bricks and other wreckage, and clouds of black smoke billowed over the neighborhood, about a mile east of Lake Erie.
House Banking Committee Chairman Fernand J. St. Germain (D-Rhode Island) called for a congressional investigation of new consumer fees imposed by banks on Social Security check cashing and other services. “It is clear the American consumer cannot rely on the bank regulators for any protection from unconscionable service charges,” St. Germain said. He was referring to a ruling by the comptroller of the currency earlier this month, affecting California banks, which said a national bank could impose any deposit account service charge it wished, regardless of state laws. St. Germain also said banks in his state and elsewhere plan to impose a $2 fee for cashing Social Security checks for non-bank customers, effective January 1.
The Center for Auto Safety filed suit against the government, saying a rule that forces states to allow giant double-trailer trucks on their highways endangers the lives of motorists. Federal legislation says that states may not bar oversize rigs from certain parts of interstate and other highways that are “capable of safely accommodating” the extra-long trucks. The lawsuit by the Ralph Nader group charges that the temporary routes the government has designated “do not meet the four-lane, divided, fully controlled access standard for ‘qualifying’ highways as earlier defined” by the Federal Highway Administration.
The government confirmed that it has been looking into hundreds of reported accidents involving sudden, uncontrolled acceleration of some General Motors cars — but that after five years, it still doesn’t know the cause of the problem. A spokesman for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said General Motors’ mid- and full-size cars covering model years 1971 through 1983 have been the subject of a longstanding engineering analysis by the agency.
U.S. Steel announced it was closing three plants in Chicago, Cleveland, Trenton and parts of more than a dozen others elsewhere, eliminating 15,430 jobs. The moves by the nation’s largest steelmaker will reduce its capacity by 16 percent.
Jesse L. Jackson pledged that if elected President he would press the enforcement of civil rights laws at home and embark on a peace policy abroad. In an interview, Mr. Jackson also said he would freeze military spending and abandon the MX missile and the B-1 bomber.
A Texas concern that specializes in fighting oil fires entered the battle today against a three-day-old oil tank blaze that has caused more than $10 million in damage, officials said. Boots-Coots Inc. of Houston flew four experts to the scene south of Lima, Ohio and two other firefighters were on the way from Louisville, Ky., said J.T. Baker, a superintendent for the Mid-Valley Pipeline Company.
Three men were charged with murder and armed robbery today after two carloads of travelers were attacked on an interstate highway, the police said. The violence began late Monday night when four armed robbers forced a car off Interstate 55 in central Illinois and robbed the car’s occupants and killed a 12-year-old boy, the authorities said. The men then chased a second automobile and shot out its tires, the Illinois State Police in Springfield said, but they were scared off as they were about to rob its two occupants. Two suspects were arrested when they went to the Decatur Police Department seeking shelter after being turned away from a Salvation Army facility early Tuesday, said Police Lieut. Joseph Meyers. Another suspect was taken into custody in Decatur. All are from St. Louis.
The City of Albuquerque will buy $3,100 worth of video game machines to ease tensions in the City-County Jail, officials said. “A casual study of residents using these machines demonstrates that ‘blowing up an asteroid’ can and does replace the need or desire to blow up the jail,” jail caseworker Gordon Bennell said. The city hopes that the games — kept in the day rooms — will relax tensions at the usually overcrowded jail.
The spread of a deadly virus to a turkey flock near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, led authorities to make their biggest expansion yet of a poultry quarantine in southeastern Pennsylvania. The federal-state quarantine was expanded to 5,100 square miles in all, an increase of 2,000 square miles, a state Agriculture Department spokesman said.
A young woman who lost control of her car on a southern California mountain highway and plunged 225 feet into a ravine on Christmas Eve was discovered 48 hours later and rescued, the authorities said late Monday. The woman, 23-year-old Glorida Heath, was reported in satisfactory condition. Officer Steve Lee said passersby heard Miss Heath screaming for help Monday afternoon from inside the demolished car on Mount Disappointment.
The California Supreme Court refused today to hear an emergency appeal seeking to stop a hospital from force- feeding Elizabeth Bouvia and to block it from discharging the quadriplegic, who wants to starve herself to death. Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union asked the state’s highest court to hear several petitions on an emergency basis, contending that an immediate decision was needed to prevent the 26-year-old woman, who also has cerebral palsy, from being discharged against her will from Riverside County General Hospital. Mrs. Bouvia insists that she wants to die in the care of the hospital. The Supreme Court, in San Francisco, transferred the petitions to the State Court of Appeal in San Bernardino, saying there was no reason to bypass normal channels.
Thousands of youths are locked up each year in adult jails despite a federal law that discourage the practice and a federal court ruling that has found it unconstitutional. A study completed in 1980 said that 480,000 youths were jailed that year with adults.
The freeze left a wake of record-low temperatures and bitter hardship around the nation. The cold was blamed for more than 300 deaths, but it was credited with saving lives over the weekend by keeping many motorists off the roads.
Ballon d’Or: Juventus’ French midfielder Michel Platini claims first of 3 trophies for Europe’s best football player ahead of Liverpool midfielder Kenny Dalgleish and Vejle BK striker Allan Simonsen.
In the 2nd Aloha Bowl in Honolulu, the Penn State Nittany Lions defeated the Washington Huskies, 13—10.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1263.71 (+13.21).
Born:
Cole Hamels, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions-Phillies, 2008; World Series MVP, 2008; All-Star, 2007, 2011, 2012, 2016; Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers, Chicago Cubs, Atlanta Braves), in San Diego, California.
Ricky Brown, NFL linebacker (Oakland Raiders), in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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