Yuri V. Andropov responded to President Reagan’s call for improved relations with the Soviet Union by saying that the Kremlin valued a dialogue with Washington but that it needed “practical deeds” from the American side to persuade it that Washington was serious. In a written text presented as an interview with Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, Mr. Andropov offered no new Soviet positions on medium-range nuclear missiles or on other issues that have worsened Soviet-American relations. But his remarks were less harsh than other recent pronouncements by the Soviet leadership, notably the speech made in Stockholm last week by Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
Iraq has taken delivery of long-range, Soviet-made SS-12 missiles, adding significant teeth to its threats to strike Iranian oil installations and other targets, diplomatic sources in Baghdad reported. Iraq already has shorter-range Soviet Scud and French Exocet missiles. The SS-12s, with an effective range of up to 500 miles, mark a major enhancement of the Iraqi arsenal, the sources said. Iraqi officials have repeatedly said that Iraq would attack Iranian oil installations if the Tehran government launched a new offensive in the 40-month-old Persian Gulf war
Helmut Kohl arrived in Israel amid exceptionally tight security and small, angry demonstrations against the West German Chancellor by survivors of the Nazi scourge.
A cut in Cuban troops in Ethiopia was reported by Western diplomats in Addis Ababa. They said that Cuba, whose backing helped Ethiopia win a war against Somalia six years ago, was reducing its troop strength there from 10,500 men to fewer than 3,000 by June.
Acknowledging its role as arms supplier to anti-government factions in Lebanon, the Libyan regime warned of stepped-up attacks on elements of the multinational peacekeeping force in Beirut. “We provided weapons for all” opponents of the Beirut government and the peace force, Abdel-Salam Jalloud, a key aide to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, said in an interview with the Kuwaiti news agency. Jalloud added that Libya has been working with Syria and the Soviet Union “to create a qualitative change in the region.” Soviet-supplied Syrian troops hold much of northern and eastern Lebanon.
A military indictment charged today that Mehmet Ali Ağca, who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, killed a Turkish journalist in 1979 on orders from figures linked to the Turkish criminal underworld. Colonel Hanefi Oncul, the chief military prosecutor of the Istanbul martial law command, made public the indictment involving 11 suspects linked to the killing of the journalist, Abdi Ipekci, on an Istanbul street. The indictment says Mr. Ağca told investigators that figures in the Turkish underworld asked him to kill Mr. Ipekci because the editor was working on a story about their network, which deals in illegal guns and drugs, and its ties to Bulgaria. According to the indictment, Mr. Ağca told Turkish investigators in Rome that Abuzer Ugurlu, a leading member of the Turkish underworld, instigated the slaying of Mr. Ipekci.
A Polish ambulance attendant confessed that he dealt a possibly fatal blow to a teen-age Solidarity union supporter who died after being detained by police, the official Polish news agency PAP reported. The death last May of Grzegorz Przemyk, 19, accused by police of being drunk and unruly, caused a storm of anti-police sentiment, and the funeral attracted an estimated 20,000 mourners. Two policemen, two male ambulance attendants and two doctors have been indicted in the case. PAP did not reveal the name of the attendant who allegedly confessed to having struck the youth.
Customs agents in southern Sweden halted and impounded a shipment of advanced American optical equipment bound for East Germany, a spokesman said today. Experts were called to Malmo, where the seven boxes were seized, to determine if their contents should be considered military equipment, the Swedish customs spokesman said by telephone from Malmo. Sweden returned tons of American- made computer equipment to the United States two weeks ago after investigators classified it as advanced military equipment. The computer items, reportedly en route to the Soviet Union via East Germany, arrived in Sweden after shipment through South Africa and West Germany. The optical equipment reached England from the United States and was transported onward across France, Belgium and the Netherlands before reaching Sweden. Customs agents opened the boxes after noting the circuitous route.
A Greek- owned freighter capsized in the English Channel today, drowning at least 16 seamen. One crew member was missing and feared dead. The storms raging across Britain and Ireland have killed 49 people since January 11. Coast guard officials said most of those who drowned in the sinking of the 2,997-ton Radiant Med were Indonesians or Filipinos. The vessel’s captain, whose name was not released, was among the dead. Five Indian officers and three Filipino seamen saved themselves by clambering into a lifeboat early Tuesday as the Liberian-registered freighter capsized soon after midnight in gale force winds and 30-foot waves. It sank 14 miles south of Guernsey in the Channel Islands.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has overruled a Cabinet decision and directed that Japan spend at least 6.5% more on defense this year, officials reported. The Cabinet had tentatively endorsed a Finance Ministry proposal for a 5.1% increase in military spending in fiscal 1984, but critics said that figure was too low. Japan’s Defense Agency pressed the Finance Ministry to reconsider, officials said, and Nakasone overruled the Cabinet decision.
Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang arrived back in China today from a 17-day tour of the United States and Canada. China’s state-run television interrupted its regular programs to broadcast live coverage of Mr. Zhao’s arrival in Shanghai from Vancouver, Canada. Mr. Zhao, 64 years old, was the first Chinese prime minister to visit the United States. He caught a cold at the end of his trip but looked fit when he stepped off the plane. He spent January 7 through January 16 in the United States, stopping in Hawaii, Williamsburg, Va., Washington, San Francisco and New York City. He visited Canada from January 17-23.
Guatemala is a “nation of prisoners” afflicted by increasing death threats, regimentation of life and forced military service, Americas Watch, a human rights group specializing in Latin America, charged. In a report based on seven months of research in Guatemala, the group called on the world to deal with Guatemala “as a pariah nation” and urged the United States and other countries to deny it any military or economic assistance. Four members of Americas Watch met with Guatemala’s leader, General Oscar Mejia Victores, to discuss their findings. He denied the charges of human rights abuses.
Thousands of protesters, some with banners demanding the overthrow of the “U.S.-backed Marcos regime,” marched through Manila’s financial district to urge a boycott of the May elections in the Philippines. Opposition leaders have called for a boycott unless President Ferdinand E. Marcos agrees to curtail his authoritarian rule.
Supporters of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, shouting slogans against “police excess.” hurled stones at officers during protests in the town of Rajauri in Kashmir state, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. About 200 people were reported injured. Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah has charged that Gandhi’s Congress-I Party, the nation’s ruling party, is staging the demonstrations to spark violence and topple the local ruling party, the National Conference.
New initiatives on South-West Africa are planned by Washington, according to State Department officials. They said the United States would soon open an intensive diplomatic effort to seek a formula for ending South African control of South-West Africa along with a parallel withdrawal of Cuban troops from neighboring Angola.
A year of only 3.8 percent inflation ended as consumer prices rose three-tenths of 1 percent last month, the Labor Department reported. It was the least inflation recorded by the Consumer Price Index since 1972, during the Nixon Administration’s wage and price controls. The department attributed much of the decline to stabilized oil prices.
Major changes in the tax system are likely to be proposed by President Reagan early next year, if he is re-elected, in an effort to reduce Federal budget deficits, Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan predicted. The changes, the Secretary said, could include a “simplified” tax system that would eliminate many present income tax deductions and also lower tax rates.
President Reagan reviews a poll with good news: he has the highest final year approval rating since President Eisenhower. The President has strong approval while Senator John Glenn has faded sharply because of public doubts about his experience, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll. Walter F. Mondale, far ahead as the choice of Democrats for the Presidency, was rated nearly on a par with Mr. Reagan on personal characteristics that voters normally consider important for the Presidency. But Mr. Reagan, helped by a surging economy, held a lead over him.
President Reagan enjoys lunch and a Q & A session with Republican Senators. President Reagan told Western senators he is dropping plans to establish uniform cost-sharing formulas for water development projects and will negotiate formulas for each enterprise. The President told Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nevada) and other senators that water development agencies — mainly the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers — will determine how much of the cost of projects will be paid by local and state governments.
The State Department said it accidentally shipped even more secret information to a local prison last year than it previously admitted. An official said typewriters with secrets still stored in their computerized memories were shipped to the Lorton maximum security prison, in addition to a 1959 document and a drawer full of highly classified papers. “But there is no indication now that there is any danger that national security was compromised,” a department official said.
A government safety board finished its investigation into last May’s near-ditching into the Atlantic Ocean of an Eastern Airlines jumbo jet with 172 persons aboard. The National Transportation Safety Board faulted the airline and the Federal Aviation Administration for failing to uncover and correct serious maintenance lapses. The board said FAA inspectors missed errors that had led to a dozen cases in which engines on Eastern jets had to be shut down during flight because the engines lost oil when critical seals were installed improperly or left off altogether.
A key labor-management ruling was issued by the National Labor Relations Board. Reversing a 1982 decision made before President Reagan’s appointees took their seats, the board ruled that companies could move from a union to a nonunion plant during the term of a collective bargaining contract unless the contract specifically prohibited it.
More money for acid rain research will be sought by President Reagan in his proposed 1985 budget, according to Government officials. But they said Mr. Reagan would not recommend any program to control the pollution that causes acid rain, which, scientific studies have found, is killing fresh water life in the Northeast and Canada.
Precedents banning prior restraints on publication were cited by a federal appeals court as it lifted a temporary order it had imposed against a law book company from publishing an opinion by a federal judge that was critical of the Justice Department’s handling of a tax-fraud case. The shift means that the publisher may now include the opinion by District Judge Fred M. Winner of Denver in the permanent bound volumes of a standard legal reference.
The new Archbishop of Boston is Bishop Bernard F. Law. He holds a Harvard degree, is an activist on civil rights and has expertise in ecumenism. The 52-year-old prelate has headed the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in Missouri for 10 years. Law, bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau diocese in southern Missouri, was named by Pope John Paul II to succeed Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, who died in September after heart surgery. Law, generally considered a moderate in church affairs, was director of ecumenical affairs for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops before being named to the Missouri post.
Government safety officials said today that they could decide by February 15 whether to allow the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to start up despite scores of new reports about the safety of the facility’s design and construction. However, officials of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a House subcommittee that at least 15 of the assertions about the California plant would have to be resolved first.
A private Washington, D.C., consumer group said it is seeking a federal court order to remove aspartame, the new artificial sweetener used by about 50 million Americans, from store shelves until health questions can be answered. A spokesman for the Community Nutrition Institute said a lawsuit was filed in federal court in December after the Food and Drug Administration turned down a petition that it extend its investigation of the sweetener. Aspartame is widely used in soft drinks, powdered drink mixes, gum and cereals. Best known under the brand name Nutrasweet, it is much sweeter than sugar, without the aftertaste of saccharin.
Racially biased intelligence tests cannot be used as a measuring stick for placing black schoolchildren in California in “dead end” classes for the mentally retarded, a federal appeals court has ruled. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the schools either must come up with an intelligence test that does not favor white students, or refrain from using standardized tests to determine which children are slow learners. In a 1981 trial before Federal District Judge Robert Peckham of San Francisco, it was found that standardized I.Q. tests are racially and culturally biased.
The directors of a Park Avenue cooperative apartment building in New York City cleared the way for a vote by residents next week on whether they want former President Richard M. Nixon as a neighbor. Nixon, who has lived in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, since 1981, has tentatively concluded a deal to pay $1.8 million for a 12-room apartment at Park and 72nd Street.
The parents of a 4-year-old boy who was crushed beneath the wheels of a stagecoach at Knott’s Berry Farm are being sued by the amusement park for “negligent parenting,” the family’s attorney said. The child, Shawn Kramer of Mesa, Arizona, is being treated at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, where he is “hooked to two machines to survive,” the lawyer, Mark Roseman, said Monday. The boy suffered a broken jaw, broken leg and collapsed lung when he was crushed under the wheels of a horse-drawn stagecoach in a visit to the park Thanksgiving weekend. His parents, Craig and Alice Kramer, filed suit December 22 asserting that park officials were negligent in loading passengers on the ride and failing to install a barrier to prevent toddlers from walking under the coach. Knott’s, the oldest theme-oriented amusement park in the country, filed a cross-complaint in Orange County Superior Court on January 17, Mr. Roseman said.
An ice storm created a morning disaster area in major cities of the Northeast, stranding thousands of commuters for hours as cars, trucks and buses collided helplessly on a thick, glassy blanket of ice. But later in the day temperatures soared, creating another disaster as the precipitation turned into thick fog that closed one airport and elsewhere delayed flights. Hundreds of schools were closed as snow fell from the Virginias to northern New England. Two men were killed in accidents. Elsewhere, most of the nation enjoyed a respite from the record subzero cold of last week, with temperatures rising into the 40s in the Dakotas and Montana.
Apple Computer Inc unveils its revolutionary Macintosh personal computer.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1242.88 (-1.57).
Born:
Scott Kazmir, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2006, 2008, 2014; Tampa Bay Devil Rays/Rays, Los Angeles Angels, Cleveland Indians, Oakland As, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants), in Houston, Texas
Parys Haralson, NFL defensive end and linebacker (San Francisco 49ers, New Orleans Saints), in Flora, Mississippi (d. 2021).
Witold Kiełtyka, Polish drummer (Decapitated), born in Krosno, Poland (d. 2007)
History Diaries 