Democrats agreed to softer language in a draft resolution being prepared by the House Foreign Affairs Committee that calls for the early removal of the marines from Lebanon. Much of the anti-Administration language will be removed, but the Democratic members of the committee will still call for the “prompt and orderly withdrawal” of the marines, Congressional staff members said.
In house-by-house fighting in Beirut’s southern suburbs between the Lebanese Army and Muslim Shiite militiamen, the Army said it had recaptured three bunkers it lost Thursday. The announcement was supported by Western military sources but denied by the leader of the Shiite Amal, Akif Heydar. He said his militiamen still held several tactical points that control a crossing area between Muslim and Christian areas.
Iraq said today that its navy had destroyed one Iranian gunboat, killing all the crew, and captured another when the gunboats tried to approach Iraqi waters in the Persian Gulf. A military spokesman said the attack followed a series of Iraqi assaults in the Gulf that destroyed eight “enemy naval targets” this week.
Tunisian Prime Minister Mohammed Mzali said today that the government would impose a wide range of austerity measures, including an 11 percent increase in the price of bread, despite last month’s food riots. Mr. Mzali said in an interview that the new measures were approved at a Cabinet meeting Thursday under the chairmanship of President Habib Bourguiba. Mr. Mzali said the standard one-and- a-half-pound loaf of bread, the staple food among the poorest of Tunisia’s seven million inhabitants, would be raised from 10½ to 11½ cents, with a similar increase planned for July. He conceded that the 110 percent increase the government tried to impose on January 1 was “too abrupt” and led to the nationwide rioting in which an estimated 110 Tunisians died.
Mr. Mzali said that despite Mr. Bourguiba’s decision to cancel the increase to help restore calm, the government had no alternative but to take immediate measures to reduce its budget deficit. The government spends $185 million annually on food subsidies. Mr. Mzali described this as “an impossible burden to bear indefinitely,” and said the subsidies would be slowly and progressively reduced, avoiding abrupt price increases likely to arouse public anger. He said the austerity measures also included increased taxes on alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline and luxury goods and a selective $40 tax on Tunisians traveling abroad for pleasure or other private reasons.
One of the two Greek members of the International Olympic Committee, Nicholas Nissiotis, has urged the committee to revoke its approval of a plan under which the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee would sell stretches of the route on which the Olympic flame will be carried next summer from Greece to Los Angeles. Greek officials in Sarajevo for the start of the Winter Games strongly oppose what they contend is commercialization.
The Government of Poland gave the state airline and Polish fishermen permission today to resume business with the United States in areas opened up by the partial lifting of Western economic sanctions. The Reagan Administration announced last month that it would let the national airline LOT make 88 charter flights to the United States this year and that Poles could take up to 100,000 tons of fish from American waters. A communique issued here said, “The Polish Government will not object to interested Polish air and fishing enterprises resuming cooperation with corresponding American companies.” But it repeated demands that the Administration “lift all restrictions” taken against Poland in response to the 1981 imposition of martial law.
A new message said to have been written by the imprisoned Soviet psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin and smuggled out of Russia was made public yesterday. It reported he had been subjected to both mental and physical torture. The message was made public by members of the American Psychiatric Association at a news conference in New York. In 1981 Dr. Koryagin was sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to a labor camp near Perm after he charged that political dissidents were being interned in mental hospitals. His accusations were subsequently published in The Lancet, a British medical journal. His new message said in part: “They threw me in the punishment cell; there they tortured me brutally.” In protest against his treatment at Perm, he said he fasted for more than six months and was force-fed until he ended his hunger strike last July “at the insistence of friends.” An earlier message describing his mistreatment was published last March.
President Reagan meets with Congressional Leadership about his plan to implement the Kissinger Commission’s report on Central America. Military aid to El Salvador would be increased by $312 million over the next two years in a five-year program of aid to Central America proposed by President Reagan. The program’s total cost would $8 billion. The Administration is insisting that the President “control the spigot” of new aid, an official said.
Four United States Army soldiers were killed yesterday and six others were injured when a helicopter crashed in bad weather in a mountainous jungle in Honduras, a United States military spokesman said today. The spokesman, Colonel James Strachan, said the helicopter was transporting seven United States soldiers who had participated in a Honduran field training exercise recently. “At no time was there any indication of hostile action,” the colonel said. The helicopter, a UH-60 Blackhawk, was on the way from Aguacate to San Lorenzo when it disappeared in the vicinity of La Cebadilla, 47 miles northeast of the capital and 35 miles from the Nicaraguan border. Colonel Strachan said the injured and dead could not be evacuated until early this morning because of poor weather.
Three of the survivors are listed in critical condition and three are in stable but guarded condition, Colonel Strachan said. He said they would probably be taken to a United States military hospital in Panama. The names of the dead and injured were withheld pending notification of their families. Colonel Strachan said an investigation would be conducted to determine the cause of the crash. On January 11, Nicaraguan troops shot down a United States Army light observation helicopter after it strayed over Nicaraguan territory. It landed on the Honduran side of the border, where its pilot was killed after taking cover in a ditch.
The exercise in which the soldiers involved in Thursday’s crash had participated marks the final stage of the Big Pine II maneuvers that began last August and that are due to end formally February 8. A new series of exercises, also involving Honduran and United States troops, is to begin soon.
An interim Government charged with repairing Suriname’s economy and restoring press freedom was sworn in today in Paramaribo, the Dutch news agency A.N.P. reported. The Government was agreed upon Thursday by Lieutenant Colonel Desi Bouterse, the leftist leader of the former Dutch colony in South America, and by business and labor groups. The agreement followed weeks of strikes and protests. The Cabinet led by Prime Minister Wim Edenhout is charged with creating “durable democratic structures” and is to pave the way for a full cabinet in about six months, the agency said.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi toured Assam state today and said she would not resume talks with protesters seeking the expulsion of immigrant settlers. In barring talks, Mrs. Gandhi cited the 3,000 or more deaths in clashes in Assam last year. “If they have anything to say, they can meet state officials,” she said of the protesters in an interview. Assamese groups are protesting the influx of more than a million illegal settlers from Bangladesh.
Mrs. Gandhi attended several rallies as she traveled by helicopter across the state. The rallies were peaceful, but riot policemen clashed with youths blockading highways at several places. The police said 350 people had been hurt and 300 arrested. In Gauhati, Assam’s main city, a daylong general strike shut schools, shops and offices.
The Government of Zimbabwe said today that it was sending more troops into the southwestern province of Matabeleland and imposing a dusk-to-dawn curfew in certain areas. The Home Affairs Minister, Simba Mubako, declined to say at news conference whether the announcement marked a new military drive against rebels in the province. “Troops will be increased to whatever level is considered necessary to deal with increased infiltration,” Mr. Mubako said. Earlier today, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe accused South Africa of training rebels to overthrow his government.
President Reagan attends a luncheon for elected Republican Women from the Northeast.
The latest complaint of sexism at the White House comes from a source close to President Reagan — his daughter Maureen. Named five months ago as her father’s adviser on women’s issues, she says that some Administration aides “drive me to nausea” with their reluctance to accept women. In a newspaper interview published Friday, the President’s daughter said that she was particularly angered by comments made by Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds, chief of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Reynolds has said he is leaning toward recommending to the solicitor general that the government join in challenging a federal court ruling in Washington state which ordered that women receive equal pay for jobs of comparable worth. “I don’t think Brad Reynolds speaks for women,” she said in the interview. “And frankly, I don’t see why he speaks at all.”
The Environmental Protection Agency orders a ban on the pesticide EDB for grain products. The E.P.A. banned immediately the use of the pesticide ethylene dibromide on grain products, but said the nation was not facing “a public health emergency.” William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also announced the agency’s determination of maximum safe levels for residues of the pesticide, which is known to be a potent cancer-causing agent.
When President Reagan intervened in a case of great financial interest to Hollywood film producers and television networks, he “acted improperly and undermined the fairness and integrity” of the Federal Communications Commission, Congressional investigators said. The case involved the F.C.C.’s tentative decision to abandon a rule regulating the sale of programs to television.
Senators were told they could “throw away” Martin S. Feldstein’s Economic Report of the President. Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan offered this advice as the long-simmering dispute within the Administration erupted during his testimony before the Senate Budget Committee on the President’s budget proposal for the 1985 fiscal year. Mr. Regan said that the only part of the 343-page Feldstein report that reflected Administration views was the eight-page preface by President Reagan.
General Electric will get 75 percent of an Air Force contract for a new jet engine and 25 percent will be awarded to the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft division of the United Technologies Corporation. The Air Force announcement, ending 18 months of competition between the two companies, reverses the role of Pratt & Whitney, which had been the major supplier of engines for Air Force fighters. The Pentagon said that the intended contract provided the opportunity to negotiate further so-called fixed-price contracts in subsequent years.
The NASA space shuttle Challenger is launched on Shuttle Mission STS-41-B from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The 10th space shuttle flight in almost three years began on schedule, with its crew of five astronauts equipped for an eight-day flight with a jet backpack that are to be used in the first untethered spacewalk. The STS-41-B crew included commander Vance D. Brand, making his second Shuttle flight; pilot Robert L. Gibson; and mission specialists Bruce McCandless II, Ronald E. McNair, and Robert L. Stewart. Two communications satellites were deployed during the flight, the first about 8 hours after launch; that one, Westar 6, was for America’s Western Union. The other, two days later, Palapa B2, was for Indonesia; both were Hughes-built HS-376-series satellites. However, the Payload Assist Modules (PAM) for both satellites malfunctioned, placing them into a lower-than-planned orbit. Both satellites were retrieved successfully in November 1984 during STS-51-A, which was conducted by the orbiter Discovery.
Following STS-9, the flight numbering system for the Space Shuttle program was changed. Because the original successor to STS-9, STS-10, was canceled due to payload delays, the next flight, originally and internally designated STS-11, became STS-41-B as part of the new numbering system.
Two years after this mission, Ronald E. McNair was a crew member of the ill-fated STS-51-L. He and his six colleagues were killed when Challenger disintegrated 14 km (8.7 mi) above the Atlantic Ocean 73 seconds after liftoff.
The national jobless rate declined in January to 7.9 percent of the labor force, the Labor Department reported. The drop of 0.2 percentage points continued a five-month trend that brought the jobless rate to the lowest point since October 1981.
Engineers were grossly negligent in the design and inspection of skywalks at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, the Missouri Attorney General charged in a complaint. More than 100 people were killed when the skywalks collapsed in 1981.
Four black men who were charged with beating two Montgomery, Alabama, white police investigators last year pleaded guilty today to misdemeanor assault charges and drew suspended sentences. Circuit Judge Randall Thomas sentenced the men to six months in jail, but with immediate probation, and ordered them to pay about $11,000 in restitution to the officers, Les Brown and Ed Spivey. The judge ordered the sentences after defense attorneys and prosecutors spent six hours in negotiations. The officers, in plainclothes, were beaten and Officer Brown was shot twice last February 27 after they chased a young black man into a house filled with people who had just returned from a relative’s funeral. Defense lawyers said the officers never identified themselves and the mourners were trying to protect themselves against two armed intruders.
A hungry, dehydrated 7-month-old girl was found by her grandfather when he forced his way into his son’s Philadelphia home and discovered the bound and gagged bodies of the child’s murdered parents, the police said today. The authorities said the slayings of Bradley Hart, 26 years old, and his wife, Fern, 31, apparently occurred in in a burglary. The Rev. B. Samuel Hart told the police he found his granddaughter, Lisa, crawling near her mother’s body. The child was in stable condition at a hospital, a spokesman said. Mr. Hart said he broke into the home in the city’s Mount Airy section Thursday afternoon after his oldest son, Tony, told him that Bradley had been missing for two days. Mr. Hart said he found his son bound at the hands and feet and gagged with tape. His head was in a pail of water.
The United States Pavilion at the 1982 World’s Fair, a drafty, wedge-shaped structure that cost $12.4 million, will be sold to the city of Knoxville for $1 because nobody else wanted to buy it. The General Services Administration said today the pavilion would be sold at the nominal fee for “public education purposes.” The Government agency tried to auction the building last year but no one bid. James Haslam, head of a nonprofit corporation the city set up to handle the matter, said his group was considering converting the pavilion into a science and technology museum, but only if it could pay its own way. The Federal agency estimates that the utility costs at the building would run $15,000 higher than a conventional office building of the same size.
About 70 vehicles, including passenger sedans, oil trucks and a garbage truck, piled up in a series of chain-reaction accidents today on the fog-shrouded Yolo Causeway near Sacramento, California, covering it with debris for two miles. At least two motorists suffered broken legs and others received minor injuries in the pileups that blocked traffic in the westbound lanes of Interstate 80, eight miles west of the state Capitol, said the California Highway Patrol. There were no fatalities. The westbound lanes were closed for four hours.
The Los Angeles City Council voted today to settle an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit over reported police spying, just five days before the long-delayed trial was to begin. The council met in secret for more than three hours, then issued a brief statement saying a proposed $1.8 million out-of-court settlement had been approved by an 8-to-6 vote “subject to approval by all the plaintiffs.” Details of the settlement were not released, but a council member who spoke on the understanding that he would not be identified, said there was no “substantial difference” from an earlier proposal calling for the $1.8 million payment and providing for increased review of police intelligence gathering. The Civil Liberties Union represents 131 groups and individuals who said the Police Department’s now-disbanded Public Disorder Intelligence Division violated their civil rights by spying on legal political and civic activities.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1197.03 (-16.85).
Born:
Elizabeth Holmes, American entrepreneur and convicted fraudster (former CEO of Theranos and once the youngest self-made female billionaire – Forbes 2014), born in Washington, District of Columbia.
Brian Leonard, NFL fullback (St. Louis Rams, Cincinnati Bengals, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New Orleans Saints), in Gouveneur, New York.
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