High Soviet and American officials talked for five hours about virtually every issue that has divided the two countries. Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko of the Soviet Union met in Stockholm where they are attending the 35-nation East-West conference on security in Europe. Aides described the talks as “serious” despite a speech Mr. Gromyko made earlier in the day denouncing the United States as the main threat to peace.
An American educator was killed in Beirut by unidentified gunmen. Malcolm H. Kerr, the president of the American University there, died after being shot twice in the head. A caller who said he was from a group called Islamic Holy War, took responsibility for the killing and vowed that “not a single American or Frenchman will remain on this soil.”
Iraqi jets intercepted Iranian warplanes today while they were bombing a city in northern Iraq, and shot down one of them, Iraq said. An Iraqi communique said the Iranian plane was seen crashing in Iranian territory. It said the Iranian planes had bombed the outskirts of the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Soleimanieh, killing 2 people, wounding 18 others and destroying two houses. Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, which is monitored in Beirut, did not mention any air activity against Iraq in the last 24 hours. But the agency reported clashes in the Piranshahr region in which it said Iranian forces killed two Iraqi soldiers.
The agency also reported artillery exchanges with the Iraqi forces in the central sector of the front and across the Shatt al Arab waterway in the south.
Israel’s top science official said his government decided to develop its nuclear capacity three decades ago but stopped short of building weapons in order to prevent the growth of a “nuclear Middle East.” Science Minister Yuval Neeman, a physicist who was the first chairman of Israel’s Atomic Energy Agency, said Israel decided in the early 1950s “to be ready just in case” Arab nations developed nuclear weapons.
Many Mideast observers believe that Israel, which has two nuclear reactors, possesses some kind of rudimentary nuclear arsenal. Officially, Israel has pledged never to introduce nuclear weapons into the region.
The Islamic nations invited Egypt to resume its place as a founding member of the world Islamic organization on the condition that it endorse all joint Arab positions on the Middle East. The proposal, by delegates to the summit meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Casablanca, Morocco, in effect asks Egypt to reject the Camp David peace accords with Israel without formally renouncing them. The Egyptian government is considered unlikely to agree to the condition. The last Islamic summit, in 1981, suspended Egypt from membership because of the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli treaty.
More than half the heroin seized in the United States originates in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, while Turkey is a major route for smuggling it to the West, a group of U.S. congressmen said in Ankara, Turkey. But the delegation, on a swing through the Far East, Turkey and Italy on a fact-finding tour, said no evidence has been produced to refute the Turkish government’s claim that poppy-growing for illicit drug production has been virtually wiped out in Turkey, once one of the world’s biggest producers.
France’s Foreign Minister warned that the problems facing the European Economic Community could destroy the 10-nation organization. In a keynote speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Claude Cheysson said that the 25-year-old organization “has fallen short of its original objectives.”
Air France Flight 171, a Boeing 747 flying from Karachi to Dhahran on a Manila-Paris flight suffered an in-flight explosion, blowing a 2-meter-by-2-meter hole in the right cargo hold no. 4 and releasing cabin pressure. The plane made a 5,000-foot emergency descent and returned to Karachi. The plane was repaired. Authorities in Karachi said they were investigating whether the suitcase had contained a bomb. An Air France spokesman in Paris said the blast apparently ‘was not a criminal act.’ The Paris-bound Air France flight AF-171 carried 246 passengers and 15 crew. It originated in Manila and stopped in Bangkok before heading to Karachi, sources said. They said 64 passengers had boarded the plane in Karachi.
At least 77 miners were killed when fire broke out in Japan’s largest coal mine, filling a section more than 700 feet beneath the ocean floor with smoke and deadly gas. Another seven miners were still missing, officials of the Mitsui Mining Co. said after the disaster at the Miike Mine off the island of Kyushu. Twelve miners were rescued and more than 600 escaped.
China has expressed satisfaction with Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang’s visit to the United States, with People’s Daily calling his trip “significant and fruitful.” An editorial in the Communist Party daily said Mr. Zhao, who is now in Canada, had achieved his goal “to seek increased mutual understanding, stabilize the relations between China and the United States, enhance Chinese-United States friendship and help to preserve world peace.” The editorial said United States support for the Chinese Nationalists in Taiwan was a “major obstacle” to the development of relations between Peking and Washington. But it offset this by stressing that other progress had been made in scientific and industrial cooperation, including the loosening of restrictions on the transfer of American technology.
The article was typical of the extensive treatment that Prime Minister Zhao’s visit has been given in newspapers and on television, where it dominated the evening news. The tenor of the reports suggested that Peking had become better disposed toward President Reagan, who is scheduled to make a visit to China in April.
A U.S. Army engineer said it was possible that the helicopter in which he was riding strayed into Nicaraguan airspace, but Captain Christopher Maitin and another engineer, Captain Robert Green, told newsmen they did not realize anything was amiss until the craft was fired on. The helicopter crash-landed on a Honduran road near the Nicaraguan border January 11, and pilot Jeffry C. Schwab was shot to death as he dived into a ditch for cover. Maitin and Green, pointing to 15 bullet holes in the craft, told reporters in Honduras that the helicopter was fired on for two or three minutes in the air and three to five minutes on the ground. Nicaragua says its forces fired on it over Nicaragua, then briefly after it landed.
The handling of Radio Marti and another Reagan Administration initiative in the United States Information Agency was criticized by an official advisory commission. The panel said the inclusion of Radio Marti in the Voice of America was “questionable public policy” that “could cast doubt on the Voice of America’s most important and fragile asset — its credibility.”
Leftist guerrillas who kidnapped Russell M. Stendal in Colombia on August 14 have freed the 28-year-old American missionary and farmer, the United States Embassy said today. Mr. Stendal was in good condition and had not been harmed, the embassy said. The embassy’s press officer said that Mr. Stendal was freed earlier this month, but that he did not have details because there was apparently an agreement between the kidnappers and the Stendal family that there would be no publicity. The Stendals are Christian missionaries who came to Colombia in 1964 from Minneapolis. The Bogota daily El Tiempo said today that the Stendal family had paid a large ransom.
The first general strike in 11 years, called in defiance of the military dictatorship, virtually paralyzed the Uruguayan capital today. The Government responded by banning the confederation of 150 unions that called the strike and sending riot policemen to eject workers occupying factories. The confederation called the 24-hour walkout to support demands for wage increases, union rights for public employees, freedom for political prisoners and respect for democratic liberties. The streets of Montevideo were nearly deserted. Not a single bus was to be seen. Factories and stores were shuttered. Commercial activity was limited to a few bars and pharmacies. Reports from Uruguay’s sparsely populated interior indicated the strike was less successful there. President Gregorio Alvarez, an army general, issued a decree dissolving the union confederation and ordering news organizations not to publish any news of the strike.
The 11-year-old Uruguayan military regime warned citizens Monday to ignore the strike call. General Alvarez has promised general elections in November and the transfer of power to civilian authorities in March 1985. But he has also prohibited public political activity and imposed strict news censorship. The strike call was supported by three outlawed political parties, the Socialists, Communists and Christian Democrats. But the three legal parties — the Colorado, National and Civic Union — called the strike “inopportune.”
The head of UNESCO hopes that the United States “after reconsidering the whole situation, will decide to remain” in the organization and give it “full and whole-hearted cooperation.” In a letter to Secretary of State George P. Schultz, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, the Secretary-General of UNESCO, emphasized the need to maintain the universality of the organization.
Acid rain pollution, previously detected only in North America and Northern Europe, is now affecting parts of the Southern Hemisphere, a conservation group reports. The soil in parts of Brazil has become severely acidified, although research has not determined the exact cause, according to a report by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Refineries, power stations and other industrial sites around Johannesburg are probably responsible for acid rain in South Africa, the report said.
President Reagan holds a meeting with Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia.
House hearings have been canceled into how the 1980 Reagan campaign obtained secret papers used to brief President Carter. Representative Donald J. Albosta, a Democrat who heads the Congressional investigation into the affair, said he was acting to avoid “partisan bickering and a media extravaganza” in the 1984 Presidential campaign.
President Reagan accepts Attorney General William French Smith’s resignation. Smith wants to return to private life. No announcement is to be made until after the weekend.
The President and First Lady enjoy the company of their friend Stuart Spencer at dinner.
Walter F. Mondale leads John Glenn by 47 percent to 16 percent, the largest margin yet in the latest Gallup Poll. But Mr. Glenn’s strategists contend that national surveys are not reflecting their candidate’s potential in the early primary and caucus states, where he is concentrating most of his time and resources. The Gallup survey came one day after the Ohio Senator attacked as “unprofessional and irresponsible” an ABC News/Washington Post poll that showed Mondale may have gained the most, and Mr. Glenn the least, from last Sunday’s debate among the eight major Democratic Presidential contenders at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. In the latest Gallup Poll, interviews with 434 Democrats began last Friday and ended on Sunday in the hours immediately after the debate, which was carried live by the Public Broadcasting Service. George Gallup Jr., however, said the number of respondents who had watched the debate, in which Mr. Glenn and Mr. Mondale engaged in a shouting confrontation, was not large enough to affect materially the survey’s findings. The margin of error was 6 percentage points.
The Gallup results also showed Jesse Jackson, the only black candidate in the Democratic field, holding on to third place with 11 percent. Senator Alan Cranston of California and George McGovern, the party’s 1972 Presidential nominee, each got 3 percent; former Governor Reubin Askew of Florida received 2 percent, and Senators Gary Hart of Colorado and Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina 1 percent each.
Jury selection must be open to the press and the public, the Supreme Court ruled. The 9 to 0 decision said that judges may close their courtrooms only in the “rare” circumstances when “closure is essential to preserve higher values” and when those values cannot be protected by less drastic alternatives. The decision, written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, overturned the order of a trial judge in California excluding the public and the press from all but three days of a six-week-long jury selection. The Press-Enterprise Company, a newspaper publisher in Riverside, California, appealed to the Supreme Court after the California appellate courts refused to overturn the order. The case was a murder trial in which the defendant was eventually sentenced to death. The trial judge believed the closed jury selection was necessary to protect the privacy of potential jurors.
Conservative Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), proclaimed “Public Enemy No. 1” by the National Organization for Women, formally kicked off his campaign for a third term with a declaration that he will not sell his soul to get reelected. The looming campaign between Helms and Governor James B. Hunt Jr. promises to be the most expensive statewide race in the nation this year. It is considered a classic confrontation between a leader from the most conservative wing of the Republican Party and a moderate Democrat influential in national party affairs.
Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole said the Administration wants to help private industry expand its activities into space. Addressing the annual meeting in Washington of the Transportation Research Board, Dole predicted that commercial space travel will mushroom into a $10-billion industry over the next decade. She said a special office will be established to seek removal of regulatory barriers and to attract more private investments in space. Its purpose will be “not to regulate commercial space but to deregulate it,” she said.
The cost of an immigration bill backed by President Reagan would be “unacceptable,” according to David A. Stockman, director of the Office of Management and Budget. In a recent memorandum to members of the Cabinet Council on Legal Policy, Mr. Stockman said the Senate-passed version of the comprehensive immigration bill would cost $10.1 billion between 1984-89 and the House version would cost $13.3 billion for that same period.
A fundamentalist minister came home by helicopter to Louisville, Nebraska, two months after fleeing to avoid arrest for running an illegal church school and vowed not to surrender. A warrant for the Rev. Everett Sileven’s arrest was issued November 23 when he failed to appear at a court hearing on the operation of the fundamentalist Faith Christian School. Sileven, who held a news conference before being quickly ushered into his Faith Baptist Church by supporters, refused to say if he would resist arrest. No law enforcement officials were present.
Two federal juries awarded more than $1.6 million in damages to relatives of persons killed in the 1982 crash of a Pan Am jetliner near New Orleans International Airport. The awards brought to more than $2.1 million the damages handed down so far in four cases stemming from the nation’s second-worst air crash, which killed 154 persons in July 1982. In the latest verdicts, the family of Willie and Patricia Goudeau of Marksville, Louisiana, won a total of $650,000, while the family of Phillip Louis Greenwood of Slidell, Louisiana, won $1 million. More than 180 other suits are pending.
About 150 law-enforcement officers from as far away as South Carolina and California gathered in Monroe, Louisiana today to compare notes on the life and crimes of two men who have said they killed at least 200 people in the past 35 years. The two men discussed at the three-day conference are Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Elwood Toole, described by the police as drifters. The sessions may expand to cover other “traveling people” who may have committed random murders. This is the second such conference. In an October conference attended by about 50 officers, the authorities linked Mr. Lucas and Mr. Toole to 69 unsolved murders in nine states. This time, with about 20 states represented, officials hope they can create an itinerary of the wanderings of the two.
Kevin H. White, when he was Mayor of Boston, started the city on a course of running up deficits that threaten to reach more than $40 million by the next fiscal year, according to a report prepared by a team of financial experts for Raymond Flynn, the new Mayor. The city will be forced to lay off workers unless it can reverse the unfavorable trend in the budget, the experts concluded. “It perhaps means that sometime in May the city will be perilously close to running out of money,” Mr. Flynn said. He added that analysts found that 65 percent of the city agencies spent more than 50 percent of their allocations in the first six months of the fiscal year.
State and Federal officials announced plans today to spend $29 million over three years to improve what the Justice Department has called “egregious and flagrant conditions” at Michigan’s three largest prisons. The settlement is the first obtained by the department under a 1980 law giving it power to move against shoddy state and local prisons and other institutions. The 58-page plan, approved by Michigan’s Corrections Commission, would avert a federal lawsuit over charges of unconstitutional prison conditions. Frank Kelley, the State Attorney General, said such a lawsuit could cost Michigan $270 million to $570 million to build new prisons if the state lost, an outcome he called a near certainty. The program provides for better medical services, sanitation, fire protection and access to law libraries, and the easing of overcrowding.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1269.37 (-2.09).
Born:
Justin Thomas, MLB pitcher (Seattle Mariners, Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees), in Toledo, Ohio.
Benji Schwimmer, American dancer and choreographer (“So You Think You Can Dance”), in Newport Beach, California.
Kristy Lee Cook, American country singer (“American Idol”, season 7), in Seattle, Washington.
Seung-Hui Cho, South Korean-born spree killer (Virginia Tech), in Onyang-dong, South Korea (d. 2007).
Died:
Malcolm H. Kerr, 52, 9th President of American University of Beirut, shot by terrorists.
History Diaries 