Moscow has formally protested to the United States about what it said was a wide range of American violations of arms treaties with the Soviet Union, including the first and second agreements on limiting strategic nuclear weapons.
Iraq warned that its forces will attack any vessels approaching Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. Commodore Abed Mohammed Abdullah, commander of the Iraqi navy, also told a group of foreign reporters during a press conference in the southern region of the Iran-Iraq war front that his forces have mined the approach to the Iranian port of Bandar Khomeini.
Iraq turned over 190 Iranian prisoners of war to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Ankara airport today and an Iranian airliner arrived to take them home, officials said. Diplomats said they expected the freed prisoners to be flown to Tehran. A spokesman for the Iraqi Embassy in Ankara said the Iranian plane arrived empty and that no Iraqi prisoners were being exchanged for those freed by Baghdad. Iraqi officials completed the turnover of the Iranian prisoners to the Red Cross by midafternoon after an Iraqi Airlines plane brought them from Baghdad, said the Iraqi spokesman, Yunus Vahfiq Mohammed.
Chadian rebels have accused France of an “open declaration of war” against the insurgents through its redeployment of French troops into rebel-held territory in the north of the Central African nation. They vowed to retaliate with the aid of Libya. A communique released by rebel leader Goukouni Oueddei said he has asked Libya to prepare for direct military intervention in Chad as a result of the action by French forces backing the government of President Hissen Habre. France moved its defense line about 60 miles closer to rebel bases after the shooting down last week of a French jet in which the pilot was killed.
Jewish attacks against Arabs have alarmed Israeli political and religious leaders in the aftermath of an attempted attack last week on the holiest Muslim shrine in Jerusalem. The police released information indicating that a group of Jewish extremists might have been trying to plant explosives at the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque.
Allegations that war criminals fled with the help of the Vatican after World War II were rebutted by two church historians. The Vatican said the historians’ statements constituted a “clear reply” to the accusations. The historians denied statements in a 1947 report released recently by the State Department that the Holy See aided German Nazis and Italian Fascists to escape and was a prime mover of illegal immigrants from Europe after World War II.
The Vatican declined official comment on a 1947 U.S. report charging that it helped Nazis and Fascists escape after World War II, but it offered an oblique denial, saying that two church historians who dismissed the document “already have given a sufficiently clear reply.” One of the historians, Father Robert Graham, told the Italian news agency ANSA that the charges were “propagandistic maneuvers” by people who “never lose the occasion to crucify” the Roman Catholic Church.
The killing of a military officer in Madrid made terrorism a main cause of national concern in Spain. Two gunmen believed to be Basque terrorists killed Lieutenant General Guillermo Quintana Lacaci, 67 years old and semi-retired, outside his home. His wife was wounded, but only slightly. Police said no one claimed responsibility for the attack against Quintana and his wife, Maria, 58, who was shot in the legs, but the four gunmen were believed to be members of the ETA Basque separatist movement. The assailants escaped in a car. Quintana, a former head of the Madrid military district, was credited with helping to foil a 1981 coup attempt by military officers when he refused to allow his troops to take part.
Youths hurled gasoline bombs at police and set fire to a department store, causing minor damage in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in clashes marking the 12th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday”-when British soldiers killed 13 Roman Catholic civil rights marchers who had defied a government ban. In the new outbreak, the youths attacked police vehicles and hurled stones after a peaceful march by about 3,000 demonstrators in the predominantly Catholic city. Police fired plastic bullets to disperse the demonstrators.
Government arbitrators intervened today in a labor dispute that has shut down production of The Times of London and The Sunday Times, but there were no signs of a quick settlement. A spokesman for the Government’s arbitration service said it had been in touch with officials on both sides of the dispute to arrange talks after News International, which owns the two newspapers, said the shutdown put it in financial “jeopardy.” The parent company is owned by the Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch. Arthur Brittenden, spokesman for Times Newspapers, said the management board would reply Monday to the arbitration service’s overtures.
Although jailed for life for carrying out a coup in 1967, Greece’s ex-dictator, George Papadopoulos, announced today that he was sponsoring a new right-wing political party, the National Political Union. In a recorded speech smuggled out of Korydallos Prison near Athens, the former army colonel said he had decided to speak out after nine years behind bars because the situation in Greece had deteriorated dangerously, both politically and economically. About 5,000 people gathered at a hotel here to hear speakers announce the party’s formation.
Guatemala will get helicopter parts worth $2 million from the United States, the State Department announced, despite a Congressional ban on military assistance to the country. The parts would be used for Guatemala’s aging fleet of United States-made military helicopters. The first official sale of military equipment to that country since 1977 would not be a violation of the Congressional ban because the sale would be a cash transaction, the State Department said.
The Salvadoran Communist Party claimed that the country’s rebel coalition inflicted about 15,000 government casualties in the last three years of fighting, a figure equal to about half of the U.S.-supported army’s total manpower. In a statement read on the guerrillas’ Radio Venceremos, party leader Shafik Jorge Handal also said the rebels took 2,350 prisoners of war and confiscated 5,700 weapons during the same period. Handal is one of five top rebel commanders of the guerrilla Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
The auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of San Salvador denounced leftist guerrillas for killing an American woman at a roadblock, calling it an act of “inhuman violence.” In his sermon in the capital’s Metropolitan Cathedral, Bishop Gregorio Rosa Chavez said that Linda L. Cancel of Culver City, Calif., “had nothing to do with this unmerciful war.” Cancel, 23, was shot to death Thursday at a guerrilla roadblock on the Pan American Highway in eastern El Salvador.
Forceful recruitment in El Salvador has added hundreds of young people to the Army’s troops. The mayor of a provincial capital in the northeastern part of the country said that about 600 youths had been picked up by military patrols since early January. But an officer at a local military garrison said the number was half that estimated by the mayor.
A Conservative and a Social Democrat placed first and second in Ecuadorean presidential elections today and will face each other in a runoff May 6. Seven other candidates were eliminated. With 50 percent of the vote counted, Leon Febres-Cordero, the Conservative Party’s candidate, led the field with 27.8 percent. Rodrigo Borja, a Social Democrat, was second with 23.3 percent, unofficial returns from the National Press Center showed. A centrist, Angel Duarte, was the only other candidate even close, with 13.9 percent of the vote. Because no candidate won a majority, the top two finishers face a runoff to replace President Osvaldo Hurtado, who was not in the race.
President Reagan will run for a second term, he announced in a five-minute television address. After describing the main accomplishments of his first term, Mr. Reagan told viewers that he and Vice President Bush “would like to have your continued support and cooperation in completing what we began three years ago.”
About eight hours before the President announced that he would stand for re- election, Nancy Reagan issued a statement that was a model of ambiguity. “It was a mutual decision,” she said. “I support him fully. I’m very proud of him and all he has accomplished in a very short space of time.” Mrs. Reagan’s statement was relayed in midafternoon through her press secretary, Sheila Tate. The First Lady was in a “very upbeat mood,” Mrs. Tate said.
The Reagan campaign’s central issue will be President Reagan’s leadership, indicated by the direction in which his dramatic tax-cutting policies have guided the economy and the wisdom of his force-oriented activism in foreign affairs, Democratic and Republican strategists say.
The President and First Lady enjoy dinner with their daughter, Maureen.
Tougher rules facing most taxpayers this year are intended to help reduce the Federal deficit. Revisions in the 1983 Federal income tax forms present a mixed picture. On balance, in terms of total dollars, changes that are favorable to taxpayers will prevail by a margin of perhaps 5 to 1. But many taxpayers will be harder hit this year — especially those who had hoped to claim deductions for medical expenses or casualty losses and upper-income people who thought they had managed to trim their tax bill to little or nothing.
Thomas P. DeCair, chief spokesman for the Justice Department, said he plans to leave government along with his boss, Attorney General William French Smith. A veteran of the White House press office during the Watergate scandal, DeCair, 38, said Smith’s decision to resign “provided an opportunity to do something I’d planned to do for some time.” DeCair said he would seek a position either in corporate communications or international business affairs.
Declaring that the federal government is in a “financial mess,” a conservative research group has come up with proposals to cut the budget deficit by about $119 billion in the upcoming fiscal year. Among the programs the Heritage Foundation report targeted for trimming or eliminating are the $1,000 income tax exemption for the elderly, Medicare benefits, food stamps, child nutrition, tobacco price supports and other farm subsidies, and legal services for the poor.
Three consumer groups said they are suing the Federal Communications Commission, demanding that the agency order the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. to refund up to $99 million in profits the company earned in 1978. The suit charges that the FCC failed to properly regulate AT&T’s profit margin. The legal action is being taken by the Telecommunications Research and Action Center, the Consumer Federation of America and the Missouri Public Interest Group.
Arizona’s water management law was passed in 1980 but its first management plan, adding specific restrictions to the broad goal of cutting the state’s water consumption in half by 2025, are only now being released in draft form and the complaints are coming in. The plan would limit water consumption for grass on golf courses, swimming pools, and ponds and lakes, which are prestige attractions in home developments.
A bomb exploded at a Motorola Inc. office in New York, causing extensive damage to the building but no injuries, police said. Police said an anonymous male caller told United Press International that the device had been set. The bomb, a canvas satchel with the word “bomb” scrawled across it, was attached to the building’s garage door handle. The caller said: “This is the United Freedom Front… and we are continuing our campaign against warmongers and profiteers. We are the United Freedom Front. U.S. out of El Salvador.”
A year’s campaigning and cajoling by Governor Lamar Alexander has turned bitter opposition by the state’s largest teacher union to support for his merit-pay plan for teachers. After counting enough votes in the Legislature to pass the proposal, the Tennessee Education Association agreed Saturday to back both the merit-pay bill and the $351 million in taxes the plan is estimated to cost. The finance committees of the State Senate and House are to take the matter up Tuesday, concentrating on a one-cent increase in the 4.5 percent sales tax to raise $281 million a year and $70 million in increased business taxes. The state, which spends more than $1 billion a year on public education, will add another $1 billion in the next three years under Governor Alexander’s plan.
The McDonnell Douglas Corporation, whose plant in Long Beach, California has been struck by the United Automobile Workers, said it will begin hiring replacement employees Monday. “We’re going ahead on Monday with our plans for taking applications,” said Don Hanson, a plant spokesman, adding that the company would be “hiring replacements for those U.A.W. members who have not returned to work.” McDonnell Douglas asserted that more than 52 percent of its striking workers, threatened with losing their jobs, have returned to work.
A foundation has awarded grants totaling $16.35 million to 25 health care facilities across the nation to develop programs for keeping the elderly with chronic health problems out of institutions, it was announced in Princeton, New Jersey. David E. Rogers, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the hospitals that were awarded grants have shown a willingness to replace institutional medical care for the elderly with home nursing care and services in nutrition, transportation and home management. Among those receiving grants are: UCLA School of Medicine, $149,976, San Francisco Department of Health, $149,720, and Mount Zion Hospital, San Francisco, $249,975.
A 63-year- old man who was killed when a bomb exploded in a newspaper vending box had told classmates at a community college two years ago that he once infiltrated the American Nazi Party and Ku Klux Klan for the government. A Federal prosecutor said the investigation was uncovering “too many coincidences,” and that the bombing was looking “less and less random,” The Dallas Times Herald reported today. Ward S. Keeton, dressed in a bathrobe, was killed early Friday when he opened a Dallas Morning News vending box near his apartment and a bomb went off. Neighbors said he lived alone and bought a paper at the same time each morning.
A young woman jailed for violating a probation condition that she have no more children for 15 years has been freed after a businessman complaining of “Big Brother” court tactics posted bond. Jackie Fourthman had been behind bars since December 25 because neither she nor her family and friends could afford to post the $10,000 bail. She left the Pasco County Jail Thursday after a shipyard owner, Louis Preziosi, posted the bond and she caught a bus back home to Buffalo, Indiana. “I just can’t see how the state can decide when someone can breed and when you can’t – that’s Big Brother,” said Mr. Preziosi, 49 years old, of Atlantic Sandblasting and Coating Inc.
Mrs. Fourthman was 20 when she pleaded guilty in March 1982 to third- degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of her 7-month-old son, Jeremy. James Burchell, 29, the father, was found guilty of the same charges by a Circuit Court jury. Investigators said the baby died of complications resulting from malnutrition, dehydration and severe sunburn. Circuit Judge Wayne Cobb put the couple on 15 years’ probation and prohibited them from having children in that time.
Connecticut will swear in lawyers Tuesday to act as referees in non-jury trials in an unprecedented program aimed at unclogging the state’s backlog of civil cases. Chief Justice John Speziale will administer the oath of office to 60 members of the Connecticut bar appointed as referees, who can recommend but not rule. It also is the first time civil non-jury cases above $15,000 can be heard by someone other than a judge or a retired judge acting as a referee.
An out-of-work roofer who set himself on fire to protest high unemployment has filed a $4 million suit against a television news crew that filmed the incident. Cecil Andrews of Jacksonville, Alabama, asserts in the suit that he was “mentally or physically incapacitated” and that the television crew was negligent in not trying to stop him. The suit seeks $4 million from newsmen with WHMA-TV and the Anniston Broadcasting Company, owner of the station at the time.
A blustery storm struck the Upper Midwest with up to half a foot of snow and headed for the Northeast as winds gusting to hurricane force blew across the Rockies. The storm left up to six inches of snow in the eastern Dakotas, southwestern Minnesota and eastern Iowa and threatened to leave that much in Illinois and Indiana on its eastward trek. Forecasters said some areas could expect near-blizzard conditions, with snow driven by winds gusting to more than 30 m.p.h. Snow and freezing rain fell across the Ohio Valley and into Pennsylvania and New York, and officials posted travel advisories from the Dakotas to Michigan.
“Wonder Woman” actress Lynda Carter (33) marries Robert Altman (58).
34th NBA All-Star Game, Denver, Colorado: East beats West, 154—145 (OT); MVP: Isiah Thomas, Detroit Pistons, guard. This year sees the first All-Star Saturday; Legends Classic, West wins, 64—63. The first Slam-Dunk contest winner is Larry Nance.
NFL Pro Bowl, Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, Hawaii: NFC beats AFC, 45—3; MVP: Joe Theismann, Washington Redskins, quarterback.
Died:
Edzard Schaper, 76, German author (“Der Henker” [‘The Hangman’]; “The Fourth King”) who wrote about Estonia and Christianity and was sentenced to death by both the Soviet Union and Germany.
Frances Goodrich, 93, American actress and dramatist (“Diary of Anne Frank”), of lung cancer.
History Diaries 