American warships bombarded Syrian and Druze gun batteries in Lebanon for more than nine hours in the heaviest and most sustained United States military action since the marines arrived in Beirut 16 months ago. Western military informants said the battleship New Jersey fired more than 200 16-inch shells. The Pentagon said the destroyer Caron also joined in the bombardment. The Christian Phalangist radio said the barrage knocked out 30 gun batteries along with a Druze command post.
Britain withdrew its troops from Beirut. The 115 Britons went to the port city of Junieh, where helicopters met them and flew them to the aircraft carrier Reliant.
Italy ordered a gradual pullback of its 1,600-man force in Beirut, but said it would continue to protect the Palestinian refugee camps in its charge. Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini instructed his aides to begin preparing for the pullback under “maximum security” conditions.
France is maintaining its troops in Beirut for now and has not decided on withdrawing them, according to French officials. They said the troops were staying at their posts but had halted their patrols.
Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. protested President Reagan’s authorization for American naval and air forces to shell Syrian and Druze artillery positions firing into the Beirut area. The House Speaker was among several Congressional leaders who said the new policy exceeded the constraints of the Lebanon war powers resolution adopted by Congress last fall or who deplored the new policy as both illegal and unwise.
President Reagan’s authorization of unlimited naval and air strikes in response to any shelling of Beirut from Syrian lines was made in part to deter Syria from attacking the American marines now that they are to be moved from the capital to United States ships offshore, according to senior Administration officials. One State Department official said “it is important that the Syrians get the message that they should not try to humiliate the United States by targeting the marines.”
The White House cautioned Syria against concluding that the decision to move the American marines offshore represented “any lessening of the determination” of the United States to support the Lebanese Government. As President Reagan began a five-day vacation at his ranch near Santa Barbara, his spokesman, Larry Speakes, insisted that the sudden change of policy was not a “cut and run” decision.
Even while attacking critics for advocating “surrender” in Lebanon in recent weeks, President Reagan had decided tentatively to withdraw American marines from their airport compound in Beirut, according to Administration officials. They said that Mr. Reagan set the pullback process in motion on January 21.
A Muslim Druze leader threatened to retaliate against United States diplomats and civilians in Lebanon if American warships continued their “indiscriminate” shelling of Druze villages. Walid Jumblat, the Druze leader, said in Damascus: “We will not allow our people to be killed without taking revenge.”
An assassin fatally shot the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates as he left his home in Paris to be driven to work. It was the second assassination in Paris in two days. A gunman pumped two bullets into the head of the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to France as he left his home on the Left Bank, Paris police said. It was the second fatal attack in 24 hours on people with Middle East connections. Ambassador Khalifa Abdulaziz Mubarak, 37, died of his wounds in a hospital. The Arab Revolutionary Brigades claimed responsibility for the killing. On Tuesday, General Gholam Ali Oveissi, a key figure in the late Shah of Iran’s regime, was shot and killed on a Paris street, along with his brother. Police said the two attacks were almost identical.
Henry A. Kissinger said a proposed massive new aid program for Central America probably would result initially in some waste but that the United States could ill-afford not to make the investment. The former secretary of state appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As chairman of a bipartisan commission picked to recommend U.S. aid policy for Central America, Kissinger has called for $8.4 billion in economic aid for the region over five years and an unspecified major increase in military assistance.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz, winding up a nine-day tour of Central and South America, received a firm expression of solidarity from eastern Caribbean leaders whose forces joined U.S. troops in last October’s invasion of Grenada. Shultz and the Caribbean leaders met in Bridgetown, Barbados, and discussed plans for a regional Caribbean defense force that would be trained and financed by the United States. Shultz is to testify today in Washington before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Three major news organizations told a Pentagon panel that the military should return to its pre-Grenada policy of permitting the press to accompany U.S. troops on military actions and should not impose strict guidelines. Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin Bradlee, New York Times Managing Editor Seymour Topping and Louis D. Boccardi, Associated Press executive vice president, appeared before a panel formed to advise the Joint Chiefs of Staff on future policy. The press was excluded from the early stages of the Grenada invasion.
A Nazi-hunter, Beate Klarsfeld, was arrested today for the second time in nine days as she led a demonstration outside the home of Walter Rauff, the inventor of mobile gas chambers used by the Nazis in World War II. Only a few hours after testifying before a magistrate in connection with last week’s arrest, Miss Klarsfeld went to Mr. Rauff’s house and sat at his front gate, surrounded by placards demanding that he be brought to justice. A policeman who had been waiting inside the house took down the banners and, after a few minutes, carried Miss Klarsfeld to a waiting car. “The police let me go immediately,” she said later, according to United Press International. “I think they are embarrassed by the issue. We have shown that Rauff is living here openly.” Miss Klarsfeld wants the Government of President Augusto Pinochet to expel Mr. Rauff, 77 years old, who has lived in Chile for 25 years.
The Soviet press reported two cases of severe environmental damage. Pravda said that the Dnieper River, one of the nation’s most important, is being destroyed by waste from shipbuilding and fruit processing plants. The influential Literaturnaya Gazeta said that highly toxic waste from a titanium and magnesium production plant at Zaporozhe was simply buried in ditches, giving off clouds of noxious fumes and killing wheat at a nearby farm.
Polish political prisoners have had to share baths with criminals. suffering from viral hepatitis, government officials admitted, adding that the practice has been stopped. The government denied that eight political prisoners at Barczewo prison in northern Poland were ill-treated, as charged in a smuggled letter by Romuald Szeremietiew, a dissident serving a five-year term at the prison.
The Communist leadership has confirmed that an explosion occurred December 7 at a petrochemical plant near Ploiesti, and that the industry minister and his deputy have been dismissed for negligence. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll anywhere from fewer than 10 people to several hundred. The official party daily Scinteia carried a statement by the ruling Political Executive Committee, issued Tuesday, saying that the Minister of the Chemical Industry, Gheorghe Caranfil, and a deputy, Ion Bivolaruhas, had been dismissed. The statement, the first official word on the incident, said the two men had been replaced by Gheorge Dinu, a party secretary in Prahova County, where the explosion occurred, and by Adrian Stoica, a Deputy Minister. The two chemical industry officials were described in the statement as having been negligent in maintaining safety at the plant, of “serious deficiencies” in operating new equipment and failure to maintain “order and discipline.”
The Pope is expected to authorize a “goodwill payment” of $230 million by the Vatican to help compensate banks for losses from the failure of Banco Ambrosiano. The payment would be part of a settlement of claims filed against the bank’s liquidators.
Rivers in West Germany bulging from three days of rain and snow runoff flooded towns in the north and west today, and forecasts predicted more flooding. The police issued emergency flood warnings on nearly every major river. Three people have died in the flooding, which has been described as the worst since World War II. The Rhine swelled to just below catastrophe levels today and threatened all Rhineland cities. Low-lying parts of Bonn and Cologne were already under water.
Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang told Prime Minister Robert J. Hawke of Australia today that China no longer believed it feasible to reunify Korea under one government. Mr. Zhao’s remark was reported by the Australians and confirmed by the Foreign Ministry. It was the clearest signal to date that China recognizes irreconcilable differences between the Chinese-backed Communist north and United States-supported south. Mr. Hawke, after conferring with Mr. Zhao for three hours, said at a news conference: “I put to him the unavoidable reality of two governments, two distinct entities on the Korean Peninsula. That has to be recognized.” A senior Australian official said Mr. Zhao told Mr. Hawke that “it isn’t feasible to reunify the country” under one government.
The South African government forcibly relocated almost 3.5 million people between 1960 and 1982 in “one of the most cruel and devastating effects of apartheid,” a church official said. Roman Catholic Archbishop Dennis Hurley, in a report to the South African Council of Churches, added that another 1.7 million people face compulsory relocation from their homes. “Those who invest in this country must know they are investing to buttress an evil system, a system as evil as the Nazis,” Bishop Desmond Tutu, council secretary general, said.
Soyuz T-10 is launched with a crew of 3 to the Salyut 7 space station. This marks the first time that eight people have been in space simultaneously.
The space agency administrator expressed confidence that the mystery of this week’s satellite rocket failures would be solved before June when the next space shuttle is scheduled to deploy another communications satellite similar to the two that misfired. Government and industry engineers said the prime suspect was the rocket nozzle, which they say may have malfunctioned.
President Reagan meets the First Lady at their ranch, Rancho del Cielo, in California.
The coal leasing program in the Interior Department was badly managed and the government apparently did not receive fair value for the coal sold, according to a commission appointed by James G. Watt. The panel concluded that the program under the former Interior Secretary was “deficient in all of its functions.”
Opposition to ultrasound devices for visualizing the unborn fetus was expressed by a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health. The panel recommended limiting the use of the devices on pregnant women because the safety and benefits of routine screening have not been proved.
Talks on narrowing the budget deficit began between the White House and a bipartisan group of legislators. The Administration offered a package of 14 measures to lower the deficit by $100 billion over three years; the Democrats called it a charade. Both sides said any further talks would focus on military spending.
Paul Volcker said the Fed would not block a rise in rates this year. The chairman of the Fed said budget deficits would have to be cut by $150 billion a year by the end of the decade to reduce the upward pressure they are putting on interest rates.
Lee A. Iacocca said the G.M.-Toyota joint venture could cost 300,000 jobs in the United States. The chairman of Chrysler told a House subcommittee that the plan to build small cars in California could force Chrysler to shift some manufacturing to South Korea or Mexico in order to stay price-competitive.
Significant numbers of secret agents have stopped providing intelligence to the CIA because they fear exposure under requirements of the federal Freedom of Information Act, the deputy director of the agency said. John N. McMahon, urging changes in the law, provided no specific estimate of how many U.S. agents may have quit or refused to be recruited, except to say that there have been “numerous such cases.” In addition, he said, some foreign governments refuse to pass on information to the CIA because they fear public disclosure.
The partner of Police Officer Luis Alvarez testified today that Officer Alvarez shot a young black man in a video game arcade after the victim turned quickly toward him, but he said he never saw the victim reach for a concealed handgun. Officer Alvarez, 24 years old, is charged with manslaughter in the death of Nevill Johnson Jr., 20, a government courier. The shooting, on December 28, 1982, started three days of street violence in a predominantly Black area north of downtown Miami. Louis Cruz, a police officer recruit, said he was standing one to two feet behind his partner, Officer Alvarez, when Mr. Johnson was shot. Mr. Johnson had a small pistol stuck in the rear waistband of his slacks, the officer testified. Officer Cruz said he was following Officer Alvarez’s orders to grab Mr. Johnson’s pistol. Officer Alvarez’s lawyer, Roy Black, says that the police officer shot in self- defense because Mr. Johnson was going for the gun in his waistband. Several witnesses said they never saw Mr. Johnson move toward Officer Alvarez.
A Michigan appeals court ruled that the state can regulate two private Baptist schools in Saginaw County-a decision with broad implications for the state’s other church-run schools. The three-member Court of Appeals panel, overturning a 1982 lower-court decision, unanimously ruled that Michigan can insist that the schools hire certified teachers and provide certain courses of study.
Fire swept through a row house in a Philadelphia working-class neighborhood, killing at least eight persons, including three children, officials said. The victims included two men, one female child and two male children, said a fire department spokeswoman. Information was not available on the other fatalities. Two children were listed in extremely critical condition at St. Christopher’s hospital. Officials said it appeared the victims died of smoke inhalation. The cause of the fire in the Kensington section is under investigation.
The prosecution rested its case Tuesday in the murder trial of Genene Jones, a nurse accused of killing 15-month-old Chelsea Ann McClellan of Kerrville, Tex., with a drug injection. The defense will begin its case Thursday. In testimony today, a grandmother of a child Mrs. Jones is accused of injuring said Mrs. Jones had told her she hoped to prove that a pediatrics intensive care unit was needed in Kerrville. The trial of Mrs. Jones, 33 years old, is in its fourth week. Mrs. Jones is also under indictment for multiple counts of injury to seven children, including the McClellan child, who died on September 17, 1982.
Researchers at a nuclear warheads factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, have helped develop a “Star Wars” laser weapon designed to destroy enemy targets in the sky “almost instantaneously.” government documents show. Highly polished metal mirrors used to turn and focus the powerful laser beams were made at the Energy Department’s Y-12 plant for the Air Force in secret research in the last decade, officials said. In a series of military tests in the last nine months, high-energy lasers successfully knocked out flying target drones, officials said. The program was disclosed under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
The nation’s high schools need to be overhauled and admit only students who have mastered basic skills and who want to learn, said a scathing report by Theodore R. Sizer, former headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and former dean of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. The report dealt with education’s biggest headache, disruptions by students who go to school only because state laws require them to until they are 16 or 17. Compulsory attendance by unwilling students has been blamed by many analysts for disruption in high schools.
Drinking water from wells near one of the nation’s worst chemical dumps apparently caused childhood leukemia, birth defects and other children’s diseases, Harvard researchers said in Boston. Their discovery of “a consistent pattern of positive associations” in suburban Woburn results from the largest study ever conducted on the effects of industrial toxins in a single geographic area. The wells were closed five years ago.
Dioxin in soil can be up to half as deadly to animals as the pure chemical, substantiating assumptions. that there is a potential health risk to those living around sites where it has been dumped, a new study said. Researchers fed dioxin-tainted dirt from Times Beach and another site in Missouri to guinea pigs and rats in measured doses. They found that it took only about two to four times as much dioxin mixed with soil to kill or otherwise affect the animals as it I would if the animals had been fed pure dioxin, said Dr. George Lucier, one of the researchers. The results are to be published next month in Science magazine.
The Oakland A’s take New York Yankees pitcher Tim Belcher as Type A free agent compensation. One day after losing Type A free agent Tom Underwood to the Orioles, the A’s “steal” pitcher Tim Belcher from the Yankees as compensation. The number-one selection in last June’s draft, Belcher did not sign with the Twins and was available in the January draft. The Yankees signed him on February 2nd, only to lose him because they had already submitted their list of 26 protected players.
The XIV Winter Olympic Games open in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
Stock prices plummeted in heavy trading. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 24.19 points, the most in 15 months, ending at 1,156.30. The selloff was broadly based, but volume eased a bit, to 96.9 million shares. The monthlong slide in share prices is being attributed to a sudden awareness of the ominous implications of the budget deficits. It contrasts sharply with earlier expectations of an election year rally buoyed by a lively economy.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1156.3 (-24.19).
Born:
Cecily Strong, American actress and comedian (“Saturday Night Live”), in Stringfield, Illinois.
Sean Bergenheim, Finnish NHL left wing (New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Minnesota Wild), in Helsinki, Finland.
Died:
Karel Miljon, 80, Dutch boxer (Olympic bronze 1928).
History Diaries 