Konstantin U. Chernenko was chosen by the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee to succeed Yuri V. Andropov as its General Secretary. His assumption of the post automatically made the 72-year-old Mr. Chernenko the Soviet Union’s preeminent leader. The appointment marked what appeared to be a remarkable political comeback for Mr. Chernenko.
Konstantin U. Chernenko is a Bolshevik of the old mold. He is widely regarded in Moscow as an ideologue low on formal education or managerial experience, but high on propaganda and party loyalty.
Washington said it welcomed some apparently conciliatory comments in a speech by the new Soviet leader. American officials said some of Konstantin U. Chernenko’s comments yesterday suggested that the door might be open to reviving a Soviet-American dialogue. Senior Reagan Administration officials said they expected Mr. Chernenko to move cautiously in foreign relations.
The President assured King Hussein of Jordan that his decision to pull back the marines from Beirut did not imply a weakening of his commitment to Jordan and Lebanon in their struggles against Syria. Mr. Reagan is to follow up today’s White House meeting with King Hussein with a meeting tomorrow with both King Hussein and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.
President Reagan writes that a lasting peace process in the Middle East will largely be based on King Hussein of Jordan’s willingness to participate in the talks.
Egypt and Libya have agreed to stop concentrating troops on their border, and Libya has indicated that it might not oppose Egypt’s readmission to the Arab League, Arab diplomatic sources said in Rabat, the Moroccan capital. The developments occurred during a meeting in Rabat last week between visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Khaddaf Eddam, a special envoy of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, the sources said. Egyptian-Libyan relations had been tense for years, even before Egypt’s expulsion from the Arab League, which followed its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
Iran and Iraq shelled towns on each other’s borders for a second successive day. At the same time, Iran described a military drive into northeast Iraq as the start of a major offensive in the 40-month-long Persian Gulf war. Iraq reported that Iranian forces shelled Basra and six Iraqi border towns, and the Iranian government said five civilians were killed by Iraqi shelling of Abadan and Khorramshahr. Iran also reported capturing 40 square miles of Iraqi territory in the northern front of the 3½-year-old Persian Gulf war and labeled it the start of a new offensive code-named Liberation of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Iranian President Ali Khamenei said in a speech that his country should use oil as a weapon by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which much of the West’s oil passes.
Czechoslovak and Polish dissidents jointly appealed for Western help to achieve the release of political prisoners, emigre sources in Vienna reported. “We call on all people who value freedom and human dignity to support us in our fight for the liberation of political prisoners,” said a statement signed by 46 prominent human rights activists in the two Communist countries-including Zbigniew Bujak, the underground Solidarity leader; former Prague foreign minister, Jiri Hajek, and playwright Vaclav Havel, also a Czechoslovak.
Former Polish Premier Piotr Jaroszewicz and his deputy, Tadeusz Wrzaszczyk, will be tried by a state tribunal for mismanaging the economy while in power, the Polish Parliament decreed. Jaroszewicz, 74, premier for 10 years, was dismissed from office and from the Politburo in 1980 during public outrage over the economy that led to the formation of the now-outlawed Solidarity union.
President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, speaking amid growing speculation about Pakistan’s nuclear research, said today that his government had no plans to make a nuclear bomb. Speculation about the direction of Pakistan’s nuclear program, which was begun in the mid-1970’s, revived last Thursday when Islamabad’s top atomic scientist, Abdul Qadir Khan, was quoted as saying that Pakistan had broken the Western monopoly on enriching uranium, which might enable it to build a nuclear bomb. The official press agency quoted Mr. Khan today as saying his comments were misinterpreted. He stressed that Pakistan’s nuclear program was entirely for peaceful purposes. The press agency quoted President Zia as saying that Pakistan wanted nuclear technology for peaceful ends only and no other purpose.
[Ed: Lying sacks of crap.]
Pakistani students hurling rocks and setting tire barricades aflame battled police in two large cities in the second straight day of protests against recent martial law decree that banned student unions and confiscated the unions’ funds. Police in Karachi lobbed tear-gas canisters to break up demonstrations and arrested 90 students. Violence was also reported in Lahore with 12 students injured.
Communist-led Cambodian guerrillas have attacked Battambang, a western Cambodian provincial capital, destroying an ammunition dump and burning four fuel dumps, according to reports here today. Vietnamese planes had to take to the air when the city’s airstrip was attacked, according to guerrilla sources. The assault was conducted on Saturday night and Sunday morning and took the Vietnamese defenders by surprise, the sources said.
El Salvador lacks effective means to prevent the diversion of United States aid funds, according to a confidential report prepared last year for the Agency for International Development. One result, according to the 100-page report, is that a Salvadoran importer can ”obtain foreign exchange for transfers to his offshore accounts.”
Leftist guerrillas ambushed a Peruvian army patrol on Sunday and killed one soldier a block from police headquarters in this city, which is the base for anti-subversion troops, police sources said today. About 50 people were immediately arrested, witnesses said. The police said members of the Maoist Shining Path guerrilla group surprised the patrol about noon and sprayed the soldiers with machine guns before fleeing. One soldier was also wounded.
A 15-year-old black female student died and several others were injured when South African police, using tear gas, clashed with students boycotting classes in the black township of Atteridgeville, outside the capital of Pretoria. Witnesses said Emma Sathekge was run over by a police vehicle in the schoolyard and suffered internal injuries. Last week, three black high schools near Pretoria and Johannesburg were closed after thousands of students boycotted classes to protest corporal punishment and to demand a greater voice in deciding how the schools are run.
The leader of Namibia’s principal guerrilla group said he is ready to discuss a cease-fire with South Africa if the talks are held on “neutral territory.” Sam Nujoma, head of the Marxist South-West Africa People’s Organization, spoke after meeting in Paris with French External Relations Minister Claude Cheysson. “SWAPO has accepted in principle to hold discussions with South Africa,” Nujoma recalled, adding, “but only on neutral territory — whether Geneva, Paris or elsewhere.” He rejected any talks with “puppets,” a reference to the 10 or so Namibian political parties favored by South Africa.
The airline inspector force of the Federal Aviation Administration will be increased by more than 30 percent, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole said. In making the announcement, she noted the recent temporary groundings of three small airlines for safety reasons.
An accord for safeguarding water has been reached between two conservation organizations and the Environmental Protection Agency. Under the out-of-court agreement, the agency will develop a national plan for controlling the discharge of waste into underground water and to have control programs operating in every state by October 29. The Environmental Protection Agency has reached an agreement with environmentalists that establishes a national plan for controlling billions of gallons of wastes discharged each year into underground water supplies, it was disclosed. The out-of-court agreement between the EPA and two conservation groups pledges the government to have programs operating in every state and territory by October 29 for controlling the “injection” of toxic chemicals into underground water supplies.
Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson said that he is considering an invitation from the leftist government of Nicaragua to attend a national celebration in that country February 21. “I have not made the determination to go,” Jackson told reporters in Forsyth, Georgia, as he campaigned through the state. He said he had received the invitation from the Nicaraguan ambassador to attend a 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the leftist Sandinistas, who now run the Central American country, and that he “will make a decision on it by week’s end.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun rejected an emergency request by attorneys to free from a Nebraska jail six fathers of students attending the controversial Faith Christian School. Noting that the Nebraska Supreme Court on February 9 dismissed appeals by the six men, who have been jailed since November 23, “for lack of an appealable order,” Blackmun said, “I have no jurisdiction to act.” Faith Christian School of Louisville, Nebraska, has been engulfed in legal controversy because its teachers have not attained state certification.
A new device that could allow 150,000 Americans to avoid surgery each year by crushing their kidney stones with underwater shock waves will be tested at six medical centers across the nation in the next few months, doctors announced at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The $1.6-million device, which was developed in West Germany and has a 99% success rate, has been authorized by the Food and Drug Administration only for experimental use at the U.S. hospitals, Dr. Stephen Dretler said.
A conservative research organization offered a new economic plan that includes deep cuts in corporate taxes, freezing the minimum wage, and a nationwide system of toll routes and bridges. The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for Jobs and Industrial Growth,” heavily. weighted against government regulation, also would liberalize tax treatment of Individual Retirement Accounts, allow industries to buy and sell the “right” to pollute and give federal backing to company unions.
Retired Sgt. 1st Class Lawrence Joel became the first black Medal of Honor holder of the Vietnam War to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in a solemn ceremony shrouded in fog. Joel died of diabetes at 55 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, February 4. After ceremonies attended by 34 members of his family and 25 retired and active duty soldiers from the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade, with which he served, Joel became the 323rd Medal of Honor hero to be buried at Arlington, whose rolling hills overlook the Potomac River and the nation’s capital. Joel retired April 30, 1973, after 27 years in the Army.
Pistols were in play in a day marked by confrontation in Houston. The victims survived, however, and some lessons were learned by all involved, including many students who were new at keeping law and order. That was just what the city’s Police Department had planned in its three-year-old training course called ”Shoot/Don’t Shoot.”
6-year-old Texan Stormie Jones gets her first heart and liver transplant. When Stormie reached three months of age, discolored bumps began to appear on her skin. A multitude of doctors were unable to find the cause. During this time, the bumps began getting more painful. In the summer of 1983, her mother took her to a specialist who took a biopsy of the bumps and found them to contain nearly pure cholesterol. The specialist then referred Stormie to David Bilheimer, a cholesterol specialist at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Bilheimer determined that Stormie suffered from a genetic condition known as homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia, which raised her cholesterol levels to more than seven times that of a normal six-year-old. After being put on a low cholesterol diet, Stormie suffered a heart attack and underwent double-bypass heart surgery that October. She suffered a second heart attack almost two months later, requiring a second by-pass operation and an artificial mitral valve. Susie Jones was also told that her daughter had less than a year to live.
Based on research conducted by two Dallas physicians in the late 70’s that linked cholesterol production to the liver, Bilheimer suggested a liver transplant for Stormie, to be performed at Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital (now UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh). There were very specific reasons for performing a combined heart and liver transplant in this young girl. Due to her inherited condition, Stormie’s liver was unable to remove cholesterol, i.e. LDL-cholesterol, from her bloodstream. As a result, her LDL-cholesterol levels became very high and caused her two heart attacks by age six. On the other hand, the transplanted liver, being normal and healthy, was able to clear the LDL-cholesterol from her blood. Indeed, after the transplant, Stormie’s LDL-cholesterol declined by 81% — from an astounding 988 to a near-normal 184 mg per deciliter. Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, recognizing the previous damage already done to Stormie’s heart, did not believe a liver transplant alone could save her. Since she was going to require lifelong immunosuppressant therapy anyway to prevent rejection of her transplanted liver, and since her heart had been severely damaged by her previous heart attacks, it was decided to also perform a heart transplant.
On February 14, 1984, under the direction of Dr. Starzl, Drs. Byers W. Shaw Jr. and Henry T. Bahnson replaced the six-year-old’s heart and liver at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The case was part of the research on cholesterol and the liver that won Joseph L. Goldstein and Michael S. Brown the Nobel prize in medicine in 1985. Stormie would live six more years before she succumbed to rejection of the new heart.
Albert Einstein was a child prodigy who was remarkably gifted in mathematics and excelled in physics, academic records show. The records, contained in a collection of the great theorist’s papers being prepared for publication at Princeton, confirm that Einstein was conversant in college physics before he was 11 years old, contrary to a popular legend that has given comfort to countless slow starters.
The way mothers interact with children is one of several recently studied factors that are shedding light on the origins and development of coronary-prone Type A behavior. The findings are expected to produce guidelines for discouraging the expression of the more destructive aspects of Type A behavior as well as for treating those already afflicted.
A military space-shuttle mission planned for July 14 has been canceled, an Air Force spokesman said. The spokesman declined to give a reason. National Aeronautics and Space Administration sources have said, however, that the flight was in jeopardy because its military payload was to have used a rocket that failed last April and the rocket has not yet been cleared for flight. Meanwhile, engineers checking launch platforms in the cargo bay of space shuttle Challenger said they found no clues to the failure of two communications satellites to reach their proper orbits during the last flight.
Karin Enke of East Germany wins her second gold medal of the Sarajevo Winter Games, winning the women’s 1,000-meter in an Olympic record 1:21.61; she also wins the 1,500-meter gold. ”The 1,500-meter race was much tougher, as it was more pressure on the nerves,” Miss Enke said. ”This one was comparatively easy, as I already had two medals going into it. If the ice conditions would have been better, I could have gone two seconds faster and aimed for the world record.”
Swedish cross country skier Gunde Svan wins 15k event, the first of 2 gold medals at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; also wins 4 x 10k relay gold.
The United States won two medals in the women’s giant slalom at the XIV Olympic Winter Games in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Debbie Armstrong captured the gold medal and Christin Cooper took the silver. The United States, which had won only one medal in the first four days of full-scale competition at the XIV Olympic Winter Games, picked up two more today when Debbie Armstrong won the gold and Christin Cooper the silver in the women’s giant slalom. The race marked the first time that Americans had ever taken the first two places in an Olympic skiing event. It also brought the first Olympic skiing gold medal to the United States since Barbara Ann Cochran won the women’s slalom in 1972 at Sapporo, Japan. The American women almost achieved a sweep in the giant slalom. Tamara McKinney of Squaw Valley, California, who finished first in the overall standing on the World Cup circuit last year, was fourth in today’s race, trailing Perrine Pelen of France, the bronze medalist, by 43-hundredths of a second.
Meanwhile, the United States’ medal hopes brightened on another front. Scott Hamilton of Denver was in the lead after the first of three days of competition by male figure skaters.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1150.13 (-10.57).
Born:
Brett Hayes, MLB catcher (Florida-Miami Marlins, Kansas City Royals, Cleveland Indians), in Pasadena, California.
Matt Buschmann, MLB pitcher (Arizona Diamondbacks), in St. Louis, Missouri.
LaToya Bond, WNBA guard (Charlotte Sting, Indiana Fever), in Decatur, Illinois.
History Diaries 