The Soviet Union’s industrial output grew by 4% in 1983 to exceed the growth target for the first year of President Yuri V. Andropov’s campaign for increased efficiency, a government report disclosed. The Central Statistics Office reported that national income, the Soviet equivalent of gross national product, rose by 3.1% and labor productivity by 3.5% over last year’s results. Western analysts cautioned that the 1983 figures do not indicate a massive upsurge in the Soviet economy because they are compared with figures for 1982, one of the Soviet Union’s worst years in economic development since World War II.
President Yuri V. Andropov, who has not been seen in public since Aug. 18, has been officially named as a candidate for the 1,500-seat Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union’s rubber-stamp Parliament, in an election to be held March 4. Andropov, believed to be seriously ill but said to be still firmly in control of Soviet affairs, and the other candidates are assured of election, since there are no opposing candidates. Meanwhile, Frank Swaelen, president of Belgium’s Flemish Social Christian Party, said in Brussels upon his return from a visit to Moscow that he was told by Soviet officials that Andropov would emerge from seclusion next month to make a major foreign policy speech in connection with the election.
Jordan welcomes U.S. military aid, and needs it, King Hussein said. But he said Jordanian forces would be used only in self-defense or at the request of Arab allies and not at the bidding of the United States. Reagan Administration officials said last week that they were discussing with Jordanian officials plans to renew an effort to get Congressional approval for a $220 million plan to supply Jordan with equipment for an 8,000-member regional strike force.
Syrian President Hafez Assad, looking fully recovered from a November heart attack, formally announced he had resumed his duties with harsh denunciation of “American and Zionist imperialism.” Assad, 54, made his announcement in a broadcast carried by state-run Damascus radio and television. Looking fit and speaking in a clear voice, Assad said peace talks with Israel would be impossible. He also criticized the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization as “those who are running after imperialism.”
Western news organizations were criticized today at a conference of information ministers from third world countries on how to improve the way they are portrayed in the world’s press. About 60 countries are attending and all have said that news reports are unfair to them and that the reason is that four Western news agencies dominate world coverage. To bolster a news exchange operated by 50 third world news agencies, Egypt today proposed a meeting of information and telecommunications ministers in Cairo during March or April to cut communications tariffs. The declaration of the current conference is expected to call for such cuts, conference officials said.
French soldiers in Chad took control of an expanded zone of operations with a helicopter reconnaissance mission over the new defense zone, the Defense Ministry announced in Paris. The ministry said the troops encountered “no hostile presence” as it reconnoitered the new zone beneath a defense line linking the Chadian government outposts of Oum Chalouba and Koro Toro. Military analysts said the new security line could be reached by fighter aircraft based in southern Libya.
Pakistan said today that two Afghan MIG jets bombed and rocketed a remote Pakistani border village on Friday, killing 40 civilians and wounding up to 60 others, according to preliminary reports. The casualties are the largest in Afghan border violations reported by Pakistan since the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan more than four years ago. A Government statement said the Soviet-built aircraft dropped one bomb and fired about 100 rockets at the village of Angur Adda in South Waziristan 210 miles west of Islamabad. The dead included five Afghan refugees, the Government said.
An Afghan exile leader reported Friday that at least two officials of Afghanistan’s ruling Communist Party had been jailed in Kabul for conspiring to sabotage a plane that was scheduled to take President Babrak Karmal to Moscow earlier this month. The unidentified officials were arrested at the Kabul airport before the 57-year-old Mr. Karmal flew to Moscow on an Afghan airliner for an unannounced visit January 9, the exile leader, Saeed Mohammad Maiwand, said, quoting a traveler from his homeland.
The commander of Iraq’s Third Army Corps in Basra said today that Iran was preparing to attack southern Iraq and that this strategic port was a possible target. Basra is on the Shatt al Arab waterway at the northern end of the Persian Gulf. The commander, Major General Maher Abed al-Rashid, told foreign reporters at his headquarters near Basra that Iran had mobilized three Revolutionary Guard divisions to support regular army troops for the attack. The two countries have been at war since September 1980.
Visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl slipped a note — its contents unknown — into a crack of Jerusalem’s Western Wall at the end of a tour of the city’s Christian, Muslim and Jewish holy sites. The wall, sometimes called the Wailing Wall, is Judaism’s holiest site because it is the only remaining piece of the biblical Second Temple. Later, Kohl ascended the Temple Mount and entered the Dome of the Rock shrine and the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Twenty former West German army generals attacked Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s center-right coalition government for its dismissal of the deputy commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a security risk because he had allegedly visited homosexual establishments. The group demanded in a statement that West German General Guenter Kiessling be allowed to confront the evidence that led to his dismissal December 31.
United States diplomats, local government officials and human rights activists here say the number of people who have disappeared after being abducted in El Salvador has dropped in recent weeks. But there is disagreement over the significance of the development given the continuing problem with this and other forms of political terrorism. There is also uncertainty about whether critical statements by the Reagan Administration and the Salvadorans about the country’s human rights situation are responsible for the recent change. “It’s really early to say whether what we’ve been doing lately has had any impact,” an official at the American Embassy said. “There’s more of a consciousness that the thing should be stopped, but the big quandary is how to put the genie back in the bottle. It’s just out of control.”
In El Salvador, top military leaders have publicly condemned rightist terror, and the army has issued regulations forbidding torture, clandestine prisons and the practice of making arrests while dressed in civilian clothes. Colonel Carlos Reynaldo Lopez Nuila, director of the National Police, said the Government wanted death squads to “disappear forever,” and he announced that an official investigation of the squads was being planned. But the political violence remains widespread, with the kidnapping of civilians by armed gangs still common if somewhat less frequent. According to the office of Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, there were 21 disappearances in December, as against 48 in September.
Striking Bolivian workers accepted a wage increase offered by the government of President Hernan Siles Zuazo. The government offered to increase the $62 monthly minimum by 57%, retroactive to December 1, and to freeze prices of basic goods for four months. The unions had sought a minimum wage of $300 tied to inflation. Bolivia’s labor crisis was set off in November when the leftist government announced an austerity program.
Policemen backed by fire engines stopped several thousand anti-Government demonstrators marching into Manila today to protest a national referendum held Friday on constitutional amendments. Supporters of the slain opposition leader, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., led by his brother Butz, were halted at the city’s edge by the police, who said they had no license for a rally. They set out Friday from Tarlac, the Aquino hometown. Their destination was Manila Airport, where former Senator Aquino was killed in August. In clashes related to the referendum, 13 people have been killed and 11 hurt. The paramilitary constabulary said this was fewer than usual for Philippine voting.
Peking will buy Western technology and equipment worth $1 billion under agreements to be signed this year, according to a senior Chinese economic official. The official, Yuan Baohua, deputy chairman of the State Economic Commission, said at a meeting of international bankers and businessmen in Davos, Switzerland, that Peking intended to sign 1,000 contracts for such purchases.
Ottawa will support nine Canadians in their long-pending suit against the United States for compensation for being used as unknowing subjects in psychiatric experiments in Montreal 27 years ago. The Government announcement followed a television program that suggested that it had acted timidly in the case.
President Reagan makes a national radio address about the U.S. space program. President Reagan, in his weekly radio address, said the manned orbiting space station he has proposed would open opportunities for greater commerce, and he encouraged international participation in the project. The President reportedly has written to Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone to ask for Japan’s participation in the space station work. In the Democratic response, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico) said that although the President’s space initiative was commendable, the Administration should focus on the more basic challenge of ensuring peace. He urged moves to help ease U.S.-Soviet tensions.
Some nuclear explosions at the underground test site in the Nevada desert have been concealed by the Reagan Administration for about a year. The tests were made known by Government officials and scientists at Federal laboratories that design nuclear weapons. They signify a break with a former Government policy of announcing all tests.
The Air Force and the Navy will gain the most from the proposed $305.7 billion military budget that President Reagan will submit to Congress Wednesday, according to Defense Department documents. The proposed Air Force budget has been set at $108.7 billion, a 15 percent growth in real terms, taking expected inflation into account. The proposed Navy budget is $101.3 billion, a 13 percent increase. The Army’s budget would grow only 10 percent, to $77.9 billion. Substantial enlistment increases are proposed for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marine Corps.
The Reagan re-election campaign is building up for action. Optimism is in the air, but it is guarded. “We’re expecting a very close, very tough race, and we’re preparing for that kind of race,” said James A. Baker 3rd, the White House chief of staff. But no one knows for certain whether President Reagan will run again until he makes his announcement on television at 10:55 tomorrow night.
President Reagan attends the Alfalfa Club Dinner.
Walter F. Mondale, saying he was eager to debate President Reagan, accused the President today of “serving wealthy and powerful special interests” and opposing programs aimed at helping women, children, the elderly and the poor. In a blunt, free-wheeling response to Mr. Reagan’s criticism that Democratic candidates were trying to “buy support” with promises to special interests, Mr. Mondale said, “Nobody has served the wealthy and powerful special interests with more devotion for more years than Mr. Reagan.”
“If I stand for feeding hungry children, which he opposes, is that some sort of seamy pledge to the American people?” asked the former Vice President, who is seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination. “If I want to control health care costs so that senior citizens have a chance for decent health care, is that considered an ignoble promise? If I stand for enforcing environmental laws, is that a special interest?”
The U.S. Senate joined 33 House Democrats Friday in asking a federal court to overturn what President Reagan maintains was a pocket veto of a Congressional requirement that he certify human rights progress in El Salvador. But in intervening in the suit, the Senate made clear that it was concerned solely with the constitutional issues and would not make arguments to the Federal District Court on the merits of trying to make military aid to El Salvador conditional on the human rights certification. The House members filed their suit in the District Court on January 4. As the resolution was approved Thursday night, Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., the majority leader, said the underlying issue involved the constitutional powers of both houses and not the human rights certification.
Questions have been raised on PUSH, the multimillion-dollar conglomerate led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson before he entered the Presidential race, by Federal auditors and state officials. Public records show accusations of unpaid debts, misspent funds and repeated failures to file required reports. Records also show that the PUSH Foundation received $100,000 from the Arab League in 1981.
Rep. Tony Coelho (D-California) said he will introduce legislation giving President Reagan a line-item veto-but only for this election year and only if Reagan agrees to freeze defense spending. Coelho, chairman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee, said the President would be forced to “make the tough decisions” and face the voters afterward. “Is he going to be the one to tell the dairy farmers they can’t have their subsidies?” Coelho asked. In his State of the Union address last week, Reagan asked for the power to eliminate specific spending items from legislation without striking down an entire bill. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the President might accept the deal.
The Administration has a list of proposals for cutting the federal deficit by $100 billion over three years, Secretary of the Treasury Donald T. Regan said in Washington, indicating that tax increases would not be welcome. He blamed Congress for failing to make deeper budget cuts in previous years and said President Reagan’s proposals “will not be in the budget bill” to be released Wednesday, acknowledging that the fiscal 1985 spending plan “will show deficits that by any standard are large and should be cut further.”
Local telephone rates have risen by $2.5 billion nationwide since January, 1983, a report released by the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee shows. Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Michigan) said the survey also identified another $5.6 billion worth of rate hike requests pending in 21 states. “If state regulators grant awards according to their recent pattern, local customers will face an additional $2.6 billion in rate increases in the near future,” Dingell said. The report follows by just one day a 44-40 Senate vote that killed a bill that would have declared a two-year moratorium on the payment of telephone “access charges” by consumers.
The Commission on Fair Market Value Policy for Federal Coal Leasing decided to lower its draft recommendation for the amount of coal to be put on the market. The report, to be presented to Congress this week, had called for a limit of 5 billion tons on the mining rights to be leased over the next two years. On the recommendation of panel member Andrew Brimmer, however, the commission decided to drop that figure to 4 billion. Brimmer said he was concerned that a potential 7.87 billion tons — the Interior Department’s proposed high figure plus outstanding prospector applications — “would flood the market and depress revenues to the government.”
The handcuffed body of a Customs agent who had been abducted from a Rio Grande bridge was discovered near the border today, and a man later stopped for questioning about the killing shot himself to death, the authorities said. The body of the agent, Richard Latham, was found outside the border city of Eagle Pass, 55 miles southeast of Del Rio, where he was kidnapped Friday when he stopped a van carrying four armed men who were believed to have robbed a Mexican jewelry store. Later today, in this far southwest Texas town about 140 miles from where the body was found, the police stopped a car with three people for questioning. One of the passengers fired a pistol and shot himself, dying instantly, according to the Department of Public Safety. The two other men in the car were taken into custody. The agent’s gun was later found in the car, along with a bag of jewelry, officers said.
A credit card fraud ring uncovered in the Southeast is part of a nationwide organization of Nigerian nationals who use foreign student visas to gain credit, Art Moore, an Athens, Georgia, police detective, said. An Athens newspaper reported on an investigation by Moore and other law enforcement authorities of the alleged credit scam. Three men have been arrested and three other suspects have been identified but are believed to have left the country, authorities said. The newspaper said that in California it is estimated that organized fraud and counterfeiting by Nigerian criminals has reached $200 million a year.
Michael Jackson, hospitalized with burns caused by fireworks that ignited his hair while he was filming a television commercial, was discharged from a hospital today. Mr. Jackson, 25 years old, was dancing down a stairway at the Shrine Auditorium Friday night for a Pepsi-Cola commercial when a special effects smoke bomb apparently misfired. “There was supposed to be an explosion for his big entrance,” said Daryoush Maze, 25, an extra in the cast. “An explosion went off and there was blue smoke all around his head and neck. There were no flames, just blue smoke from all the stuff he had in his hair.” Mr. Jackson was treated briefly at Cedars Sinai Medical Center, then transferred to the Brotman Memorial Hospital Burn Center, where he was treated for second-degree burns and a small spot of third-degree burn.
A record 295,000 dominoes are toppled in Fuerth, West Germany.
41st Golden Globes: Terms of Endearment, Tom Courtenay, Robert Duvall, & Shirley MacLaine win.
Edmonton center Wayne Gretzky’s NHL record point scoring streak ends at 51 games when Oilers beaten 4-2 by LA Kings; Gretzky totals 61-92-153 during the period.
Born:
Andre Iguodala, NBA small forward, shooting guard, and power forward (NBA Champions-Warriors, 2015 [MVP], 2017, 2018, 2022; NBA All-Star, 2012; Philadelphia 76ers, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat), in Springfield, Illinois.
Stephen Gostkowski, NFL kicker (NFL Champions-Patriots, Super Bowls 49, 51, 53, 2014, 2016, 2018; Pro Bowl, 2008, 2013-2015; New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans), in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Died:
John Macvane, 71, American war correspondent and newscaster (United or Not).
History Diaries 