Efforts to separate factions in Lebanon appeared to have bogged down, and Government officials expressed pessimism over the chances of reaching an agreement soon. Syria, which had indicated it favored the proposed accord, appeared to have reversed itself. Also in Beirut, a French paratrooper was killed and two others were wounded in an attack by gunmen.
Officers should be reprimanded for command failures associated with the October 23 truck-bombing of the Marine compound in Beirut, according to a recommendation of Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., Reagan Administration officials said. They said the recommendation, which was submitted to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, called for the issuance of disciplinary letters.
West Bank Palestinians can be appointed members of the Jordanian Parliament under a measure approved by legislators in Amman. King Hussein requested the move, apparently in an effort to reassert responsibility for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory.
Armed men operating from Libya blasted a hole in the pipeline carrying oil from Algeria to Tunisia and shut it down indefinitely, the Tunisian Defense Ministry reported. A statement said the men illegally crossed more than a mile into Tunisia near the village of Henchir el Bassasa to set explosives that blew a hole 12 to 15 feet wide and ignited a 12-hour blaze. Tunisia has protested the incident to the radical Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. The attack followed a week of violent food-price riots in Tunisia. Qaddafi has denied any Libyan involvement in the Tunisian rioting.
Chadian reconciliation talks failed to open as scheduled in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa after Chad’s leader canceled his visit. President Hissen Habre took the step — which will delay any negotiations for at least 24 to 48 hours — because he was incensed that his rival for power, rebel leader and former President Goukouni Oueddei, was given a high-level welcome when he arrived for the talks, sponsored by the Organization of African Unity. Goukouni is backed by Libya. The negotiations are aimed at ending a civil war that has gone on for almost 20 years.
A treaty for peaceful nuclear ties with China is sought by the Reagan Administration. An official said a strong effort would be made to complete negotiations on a treaty for peaceful nuclear cooperation during the current visit to Washington of Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang.
Salvadoran Government planes bombed suspected leftist guerrilla positions today in support of two army search-and-destroy counterinsurgency sweeps in provinces in eastern and northern El Salvador, military officers said. The bombing appeared to be the heaviest since retaliatory air strikes were ordered in response to two yearend rebel attacks that destroyed El Salvador’s most modern army base and biggest bridge. Military officials said two Israeli- made Fuga planes bombed suspected guerrilla positions around the northern Chalatenango Province towns of Dulce Nombre de Maria, Tejutla and San Francisco Morazan. American-supplied A-37 Dragonfly jets bombed guerrilla targets in the region of the Usulutan Province hamlets of Tres Calles and San Agustin, about 60 miles east of San Salvador, military sources said.
President Reagan might ignore an expected recommendation from his commission on Central America to make future military aid to El Salvador contingent on periodic, legally mandated reviews of Salvadoran progress on human rights, according to the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes.
Signaling a possible policy reversal, the Guatemalan army announced that it will consider joining maneuvers with the U.S. Army in Honduras. Colonel Edgar Djampa Dominguez, chief spokesman for the Guatemalan army, said that the participation of troops from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala in the U.S.-backed maneuvers could help promote Central American unity. Guatemala has so far refused to join in eight months of maneuvers, claiming that it needs no help in military training.
Grenada’s interim government announced that it will close embassies in the Soviet Union and Libya, with which it broke relations after the U.S. invasion in October, and reopen missions in Washington and New York. Grenada also said it will close its embassy in Ottawa, Canada, but open a consulate in Toronto, where many Grenadians live.
President Reagan briefs a group of business leaders traveling to Grenada for economic assistance.
Pope John Paul II will announce this week that Argentina and Chile have agreed to accept his 1980 proposals to resolve their century-old dispute over several small islands at the tip of South America, Foreign Ministry sources and diplomats said today. The diplomats said the announcement would be followed by a meeting of the two nations’ Foreign Ministers in Rome, possibly next month, to sign an agreement setting the guidelines for negotiating a treaty governing islands in the Beagle Channel. The Pope’s proposal is reported to award all the disputed islands to Chile. The settlement was worked out in negotiations at the Vatican conducted by Argentina’s previous military Government, the diplomats said. They added that it was left to the newly elected Government of President Raul Alfonsin to announce formal acceptance of the package.
Two police officers in Northern Ireland were slightly wounded today in the first bombing attack in Londonderry this year, the police said. The outlawed Irish Republican Army took responsibility for the bombing attack, which occurred in a rundown building in the center of Londonderry. The bomb was detonated by remote control as a four-member patrol of the Royal Ulster Constabulary police force was walking by the building. The two officers walking on the same side of the street as the building were wounded. The two, one man and one woman, were taken to a hospital for treatment and were later released, the police said.
Sarah Tisdall, a 23-year-old UK Office clerk working for the Foreign Office is sentenced to six month’s imprisonment under the Official Secrets Act for leaking government documents to The Guardian newspaper.
After months of daily blockades of the U.S. Army missile base in Mutlangen, some residents of this southern West German town of 5,000 have launched a drive to get anti-nuclear protesters to leave them in peace. “Not only are they blockading the base but they’re laying siege to our town,” complained Franz Niedermann, who lives a few hundred yards from the base, where new U.S. Pershing 2 nuclear missiles are stationed. A week-old petition drive against the protests has attracted more than 100 signatures.
The so-called “mystery man” photographed with a gun in his hand leaving the scene of the murder of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. at Manila’s airport was a soldier in civilian clothes who was part of the security detail, investigators said. The photographs were introduced last week before a Philippine commission investigating the August 21 assassination of President Ferdinand E. Marcos’ chief rival. The government claims Aquino was killed by a Communist agent who was gunned down by soldiers moments after the assassination.
Guerrillas in Uganda released nine abducted Red Cross workers, but diplomats said two other captives were taken to see a rebel leader deep in the bush. Western diplomats said they understood that the two hostages — Dr. Pierre Perrin, a French physician with the International Red Cross, and an unidentified Uganda staff member — will meet with rebel leader Yoweri Musevini, who is apparently trying to gain publicity for his National Resistance Army.
Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said the Reagan Administration will include in its fiscal 1985 budget plan a call for new efforts to capture some of the billions of tax dollars lost in the “underground economy” of cash-only transactions. Regan expressed concern about the “explosion in the amount of currency in circulation” and said, “If there’s going to be a cash economy, we’re not collecting our share of that.” The Internal Revenue Service estimates that tax cheating may have totaled $81.5 billion in 1981. An additional $9 billion is lost from such illicit sources as gambling, drugs and prostitution, the IRS believes.
President Reagan plans to propose that the next pay raise for federal employees be postponed from October 1 — the start of the fiscal year — to next January, and that it be for 3.5%, thus saving millions of dollars, congressional sources said. Such a plan would match the pay delay the President secured from Congress for the government’s 1.4 million white-collar civil servants in 1983. The President’s February 1 budget request is also expected to include pay raises of 4% or 5% for military personnel.
President Reagan attends a reception for the successful Executive Exchange Program.
President Reagan calls former President Richard Nixon on the occasion of his birthday.
Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell said that corporal punishment should be used in schools only as a last resort and predicted the problem of unruly students will not be solved until the standard of living is raised for minorities. In a White House briefing for reporters on President Reagan’s new push to highlight the problems of school crime and disorder, Bell said that children from disadvantaged backgrounds “are largely those from which we have most of these problems.”
Rita M. Lavelle was sentenced to six months in prison and was fined $10,000 for lying to Congress. A Federal judge also sentenced Miss Lavelle, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxic waste programs, to five years on probation, in which she must perform community service.
Charles Z. Wick handed over to two Congressional committees transcripts and tape recordings of his telephone conversations. They were said to include a conversation with Edwin Meese 3rd, counselor to President Reagan, the acting chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and two television journalists, Walter Cronkite and Sander Vanocur. Mr. Wick is the director of the United States Information Agency.
Antipoverty groups and religious organizations denounced the recommendations of a Presidential commission investigating hunger as the panel modified several proposals in an effort to meet criticism of state and local officials.
A crowd of about 2,000 high school students and their guests gave Lieutenant Robert O. Goodman Jr., the Navy aviator freed by Syria, a tumultuous welcome today at a homecoming celebration at his alma mater. The appearance at Portsmouth High School was the latest of several such celebrations for Lieutenant Goodman, who was held captive a month after his plane was shot down in Lebanon. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a contender for the Democratic Presidential nomination, escorted him home last week.
Air Illinois will resume operations Saturday for the first time since a federal investigation of its maintenance standards prompted cancellation of its flights, but the airline’s survival remains in doubt, the airline president said in Carbondale. Roger Street said Air Illinois lost “well over” $1 million since it grounded its 13-plane fleet December 15. “It’ll take us three or four months to determine whether or not we can pull completely out of this,” he said. The federal inquiry was prompted by the October 11 crash of an Air Illinois flight that killed 10 persons. Before its shutdown, Air Illinois was carrying about 1,100 passengers daily on 120 flights.
The former chairwoman of the NAACP protested that she was not reelected to its board of directors because the organization certified the election of a dead man instead. Margaret Bush Wilson, who as chairwoman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People suspended Executive Director Benjamin L. Hooks last year for eight days, was ninth in order of total votes cast for eight at-large director posts. One of the eight posts went to James H. Kemp of Chicago, who died December 5 as ballots were being sent in by mail.
Jurors were questioned in secret by a judge amid tight security as a federal trial opened in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for nine Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis charged with violating the civil rights of five left-wing radicals who were shot to death at a 1979 demonstration. Five of the nine defendants were acquitted in 1980 of state charges of murder and rioting. The defendants are charged with conspiring to violate the civil rights of five Communist Workers Party members killed at a “Death to the Klan” rally in Greensboro.
A Fairfield, California, judge dismissed child molestation charges against a man today because the 12-year-old involved, his stepdaughter, refused to testify for the prosecution even though she had been held in solitary confinement eight days. Judge John DeRonde of Municipal Court said the action was “an abrogation of justice and denies the state an opportunity to prove its case.” But he and Kenneth Kobrin, a deputy district attorney of Solano County, said the dismissal was necessary because there was no independent confirmation of the charges without the girl’s testimony. “The futility of this is becoming apparent,” Judge DeRonde said.
Nearly three years ago, elderly patients began dying mysteriously in the early morning hours at the Community Hospital of the Valleys in Perris, California. Today, in Riverside Superior Court, prosecutors rested their case against Robert Rubane Diaz, a 45-year-old coronary care nurse who is accused of murdering 12 patients who died in 1981 after admission to intensive care in the Perris hospital and another where Mr. Diaz worked a late-night shift. Judge John H. Barnard will decide the case because Mr. Diaz decided to forgo a jury trial. If convicted, Mr. Diaz could be sentenced to life in prison without parole, or face the death penalty.
Pentagon psychic research spending has totaled millions of dollars, according to three new reports. They said the Defense Department has financed secret projects to investigate extra-sensory phenomena and to learn whether the power of the human mind can be harnessed to perform acts of espionage and war.
California temporarily closed its borders today to fruit treated with the pesticide ethylene dibromide, or EDB, after finding extremely high levels of the chemical in a truckload of oranges imported from Mexico. The moratorium was intended to put pressure on the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to set tolerance levels of EDB in the human diet, said Hans Van Nes, assistant director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture office in Sacramento. “We’re trying to encourage E.P.A. to take a leadership role on this thing,” he said. “Faced with this problem of shipment from Mexico, we advised everyone today that we would not accept any citrus fruit treated with EDB for 21 days. That’ll give us three weeks to work with E.P.A. to set reasonable tolerance levels.”
“TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes” premieres on NBC TV (Whoops).
John Lennon single “Nobody Told Me” is released posthumously.
Rock band Van Halen release their most successful album “1984”
Braves Pascual Perez is arrested for cocaine possession in his native Dominican Republic. Under local law he will remain in jail until his trial, forcing him to miss the beginning of the season. Perez maintains that he was given the packet by a woman he did not know and was unaware of what it contained.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1286.22 (-0.42).
Born:
Bobby Jones, NBA small forward (Philadelphia 76ers, Denver Nuggets, Memphis Grizzlies, Houston Rockets, Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs), in Compton, California.
Dustin Richardson, MLB pitcher (Boston Red Sox), in Newton, Kansas.
Travis Morin, NHL center (Dallas Stars), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
History Diaries 