A United States Marine was killed and three other marines were wounded when their compound at Beirut International Airport was bombarded by anti-Government militiamen. The marine was the first one killed in Lebanon fighting since January 8 and the 259th American serviceman to die here since the arrival of the marines in August 1982. A Marine spokesman, Captain Keith Oliver, said the marine died on a stretcher while waiting to be evacuated by helicopter to the amphibious assault carrier USS Guam for treatment of his wounds.
A spokesman for the Lebanese Shiite Amal militia said fire from the Marine base had killed 2 people and wounded 15 in the Shiite shantytowns of Hayy al Sollom and Burj al Brajneh adjacent to the Marine compound, where some of the militiamen sniping at the Marines were entrenched. “We are sorry about any civilian casualties,” another Marine spokesman, Maj. Dennis Brooks, was quoted as saying after the morning fighting, “but the bottom line is that we are taking fire from this area and we have to defend ourselves.” Soon after the shooting started this morning between the marines and anti-government militiamen — assumed to be Druze and Shiites dug into the hills surrounding the airport —battles erupted between the Lebanese Army and the same anti-government forces all across the southern suburbs of Beirut. The Druze and Shiite militiamen control wide sectors of territory along the southern edge of Beirut and have prevented the Lebanese Army from entering their areas. The marines and the Beirut airport are almost surrounded by these districts outside Government control.
A Kuwaiti who was wounded in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy last month, Najib Rifai, has died in a hospital, raising the death toll to five, government sources said. Rifai was wounded as he stood in line with others to apply for entry visas to the United States. A series of blasts that day rocked the U.S. and French embassies and four other Kuwaiti targets. More than 60 people were hurt.
A tiny opposition faction introduced a bill to dissolve the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, and call early elections. The bill’s sponsor said that “we need only one or two more votes.” The move by the centrist Shinui (Change) faction represents a new challenge to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s government, beleaguered by threatened defections within the ruling coalition.
Three hand grenades issued by the Israeli army were found hidden near the walled Old City of Jerusalem. It was the second discovery of weapons apparently planted by Jewish extremists who are believed to have been plotting to attack Muslim holy sites. A police spokesman, Ziv Rotem, said it appears that the grenades were hidden by the same group that left grenades and other explosives near Temple Mount and the Al Aqsa Mosque on Friday.
President Reagan meets Secretary Schultz and General Rowny about START talks. The chief American negotiator on reducing strategic arms met with President Reagan and said later that the United States and the Soviet Union were in a position “to make a breakthrough” if Moscow agreed to resume the talks in Geneva. In a shift, the negotiator, Edward L. Rowny, said Washington would be willing to consider merging the talks on strategic arms with those on medium-range missiles if the Soviet Union proposed it.
The next generation of nuclear arms is being developed by dozens of young physicists and engineers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. Their dream, they say, is to end the nuclear weapons race.
Several hundred people demonstrated briefly in the Polish city of Wroclaw, and work stoppages were reported at a giant tractor plant near Warsaw, but most Poles reacted calmly to the government’s imposition of food price increases averaging 10%. The government, mindful that previous price boosts had triggered riots and widespread unrest, carefully prepared the nation for the latest increases, which it claims are necessary to offset higher payments to farmers.
George Papadopoulos, the former dictator of Greece who is serving a life prison term for treason, will not be permitted to run for election to the European Parliament, the legislative arm of the 10-nation European Economic Community, a Greek government spokesman said. He said that Papadopoulos, who headed Greece’s military junta from 1967 to 1973, is ineligible because he has been stripped of his civil rights. Papadopoulos had announced his intention to run as a candidate for a newly formed far-right party in a tape recording smuggled from his cell and played for supporters at a rally Sunday.
Greek military officers were assigned today to each of the four American bases in Greece, as agreed to under terms of a United States-Greek military and economic cooperation agreement that was signed in Athens last September. A United States Embassy spokesman said that under the terms of the agreement, the Greek officers had access to all areas of the bases except those dealing with cryptography, or classified communications. Talks are also due to start this week between the two sides on the legal status of the American forces in Greece and on the two relay stations operated here by the Voice of America.
Archbishop Pie Laghi disclosed that he will be the Vatican’s ambassador, or nuncio, to the United States when full diplomatic relations are restored. Laghi, who is the apostolic delegate, or papal representative, to the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, said his appointment will be formally announced after the Senate approves President Reagan’s nomination of William Wilson as ambassador to the Vatican.
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have agreed to pool any knowledge they have about American servicemen missing in action in the Vietnam War, Vietnam’s ambassador to the United Nations, Hoang Bich Son, said. The three Indochinese countries will work with American non-governmental agencies in the search for the missing Americans or their remains, the envoy added. He presented a communique from the three countries that said the move is being taken “out of humanitarian concern and regard for the American people.” The U.S. government has said that about 2,400 U.S. servicemen are still missing from the fighting in Indochina.
Somalia’s state-run radio reported today that six Ethiopian warplanes attacked the northwest region of Somalia, killing 40 people and wounding 80. The Mogadishu radio broadcast, monitored in Nairobi, quoted a Defense Ministry report as saying many victims of today’s raids were high school students in the border town of Borama, 65 miles northwest of the regional capital of Hargeisa. The planes, MIG-21’s and MIG-23’s, also attacked the village of Goroyo-Awl but caused little damage and were repulsed by the village’s air defense forces, the radio said. A brief border conflict broke out in June and July 1982 between Somalia, on Africa’s northeast coast, and Ethiopia.
About 5,000 troops of the United States and Honduras opened a mock anti-guerrilla campaign in the rugged terrain of eastern Honduras. The sweep, scheduled to last a week, will be the final operation in seven-month exercises called Big Pine II, believed to be the longest of their kind ever held in Central America.
Salvadorans are selling U.S. food aid marked “not to be sold or exchanged.” The American food is being sold at a time when the Reagan Administration is preparing to ask Congress for large increases in economic aid to El Salvador.
The information ministers of the movement of nations professing nonalignment complained today of what they described as hostile propaganda by industrial countries against the 101-nation organization and called for “a new world information order.” A declaration approved by a five-day conference, in which 57 countries took part, called on member nations to refuse to allow their press installations to be used for unfavorable reports. In a separate “Jakarta appeal,” the ministers called on the press not to report any news detrimental to the interests of member nations and to avoid all “tendentious reporting.”
The campaign has become the focus of White House operations — planning, scheduling, policy decisions and Presidential appearances — now that President Reagan is a declared candidate for re-election, officials report. They said Mr. Reagan would make perhaps two political trips a month between now and the convening of the Republican National Convention in Dallas on August 20.
A plan to bar a pesticide from foods was being considered by the Reagan Administration in 1981. But the Administration did not act on the proposal after citrus industry representatives pressed at meetings with officials of several agencies for continued use of the pesticide, ethylene dibromide. It has since been widely found in food and water supplies. The meetings were arranged by James H. Lake, a lobbyist who is now a key official in President Reagan’s re-election committee.
Two key Mondale endorsements are expected in the next few days, according to aides to the former Vice President. They said Mr. Mondale would be endorsed for the Democratic Presidential nomination by House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. and Robert Strauss, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
The Arab League donated $200,000 several years ago to two PUSH affiliates, including $100,000 to PUSH for Excellence Inc., an educational organization headed at the time by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to a lawyer representing the Democratic Presidential aspirant.
Democrats stress budget issues as they head into the Presidential election year. The Democrats maintain that the Republicans have spent too much money on the military, given too many tax breaks to the rich and slashed too many domestic social programs. The heart of the Democratic argument, as Representative Jim Wright of Texas put it, is that President Reagan has followed “cruelly deranged” priorities.
Millions of dollars’ worth of recently acquired government equipment is either unused, underutilized or has been diverted to less important uses by Energy Department contractors, a report showed. The study said there is an estimated $9 billion worth of the agency’s property in the hands of private contractors but some of it has not been properly accounted for or cannot be traced. Rep. Mike Synar (D-Oklahoma) said, “What is amazing is that we as a subcommittee started to look at this two years ago and the General Accounting Office set up a task force and now you’ve got the (Energy Department) inspector general coming and finding the same problems exist,” he said. “They don’t know what they’ve got and what it’s worth.”
Pope John Paul II has named Bishop John O’Connor to be the new archbishop of New York, succeeding Cardinal Terence Cooke, who died of leukemia last October, well-informed church sources said. O’Connor, 63, has served as bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania, since May. The announcement was expected to be made today by the church’s Apostolic Delegate.
The number of divorces among American couples dropped in 1982, marking the first decline in two decades, the National Center for Health Statistics reported. About 1.18 million couples, or 5.1 per 1,000 persons, ended their marriages in 1982, according to provisional data. Final data for 1981 shows that there were 1.21 million divorces or 5.3 per 1,000 that year, up from 1.19 million in 1980. Those figures compare with 845,000 divorces in 1972 and 413,000 in 1962.
Wind erosion in the 10 Great Plains states increased 45% in the last two months of 1983 over the same period a year earlier, the Agriculture Department said. The department’s Soil Conservation. Service also reported that on January 1, 14.7-million acres of land were inadequately protected and susceptible to wind erosion. That total was 38% higher than at the same time a year ago. Keith Ticknor, Nebraska resource conservationist, attributed the increases to dry fall weather and short wheat growth before the crop became dormant for the winter.
A long-lost art treasure by Jean-Francois Millet was discovered beneath another of his paintings as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts prepared an exhibit of the French pre-impressionist’s works, museum officials announced. Using X-ray equipment, technicians found Millet’s “The Captivity of the Jews in Babylon” beneath the canvas of the “Young Shepherdess.” “Scholars have been searching for the painting for more than a century,” a museum official said. Another said “Captivity” received harsh reviews from critics in 1848 and then “disappeared,” since it was not unusual for an artist to paint over an unwanted work.
Former United Methodist Bishop A. James Armstrong, who resigned last November as president of the National Council of Churches and as bishop of the denomination’s Indiana area because of an unspecified “personal and family crisis,” has now turned in his ministerial credentials. Armstrong, 59, who was considered one of America’s most influential clergymen, since mid-December has been working in Florida as a college student counselor.
A judge ordered Roger Gauntlett, heir to the Upjohn pharmaceutical fortune, to undergo “chemical castration” by means of an Upjohn drug for sexually assaulting his stepdaughter over a seven-year period. Gauntlett, 41, also was sentenced to five years’ probation-the first year to be spent in the Kalamazoo, Michigan, County Jail. Judge Robert Borsos ordered Gauntlett, 41, to undergo chemical castration through the use of Depo-Provera, an experimental birth-control drug, which causes a diminished sex drive in men.
An all-white jury in Miami heard opening arguments in the manslaughter trial of a police officer whose fatal shooting of a young black man in 1982 touched off street violence. Luis Alvarez, a Miami police officer, shot a young black man not by accident but in self-defense, a jury was told today in opening arguments at Mr. Alvarez’s manslaughter trial. The victim, Nevell Johnson Jr., a 20-year-old government courier, was playing a video game when he was shot. He had a stolen gun in the rear waistband of his slacks. In a Dade County courtroom jammed with more than 100 spectators, Mr. Alvarez’s defense attorney, Roy Black, asserted the officer shot Mr. Johnson because he reached for that gun. The prosecutor, Abe Laeser, said the state would show that Mr. Johnson was not drawing his gun, but only turning slowly to face Mr. Alvarez. Mr. Alvarez flinched and his service revolver, which was cocked, went off, Mr. Laeser said.
A three-judge Federal District Court panel overturned Ohio’s Congressional redistricting plan today, saying it failed to meet the “equal representation” standard of the Constitution. The panel told the Legislature to prepare a revised plan within 45 days. Opponents of the plan had argued that the newly drawn districts had unequal numbers of residents. The ruling “will cause headaches for both parties,” coming as it did only 24 days before the election filing deadline, said Michael Colley, Ohio Republican chairman.
Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, an effort to block a redistricting plan approved by the Legislature was rejected by a federal court today, just a week before the filing deadline there. A three-judge panel, in a 2-to-1 ruling, rejected arguments by the Texas Republican Party and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who said it diluted the strength of black and Hispanic people.
Links between work, stress and the family are being reevaluated. New research findings show that a boss can be a crucial defense against stress, while some research suggests that a family’s support for a worker may make matters worse.
A winter storm considered a near-blizzard in ferocity, with winds gusting to 60 miles an hour, left up to a foot of snow yesterday from Iowa to New England, closing highways with drifts and snarling traffic. “It’s a winter horror story,” said Peter Negro, an Illinois state trooper in Pontiac, Illinois, as snow in the central and northern part of that state forced schools to close. “We’re advising people to stay at home.” In northern Iowa, in addition to the snow, winds during the night gusted to 62 miles an hour at Sioux City and many roads were blocked by snowdrifts.
After failing to trade him, the Mets give veteran slugger Dave Kingman his release. Kingman hit .198 with 13 home runs last year, but will find a new home as Oakland’s designated hitter.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1221.52 (-8.48).
Born:
Jeremy Hermida, MLB rightfielder (Florida Marlins, Boston Red Sox, Oakland A’s, Cincinnati Reds, San Diego Padres), in Atlanta, Georgia.
Died:
Luke Kelly, 43, Irish folk music singer and banjo player (The Dubliners), of a brain tumor.
History Diaries 