Druze militiamen won a major victory over Lebanese Army units in the mountains southeast of Beirut. After 18 hours of ground fighting, artillery duels and air strikes, the army’s Fourth Brigade said it had been forced to abandon strategic positions along a ridge overlooking the capital.
Syria is supplying the Druze militias in Lebanon with large amounts of ammunition and small arms, according to Walid Jumblat, the Druze leader. He said the aim of the weeklong supply operation was ultimately to bring about the resignation of President Amin Gemayel.
President Reagan hosts both President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, and King Hussein of Jordan to discuss the peace process. No progress toward negotiations over the future of the Jordan River’s West Bank was reported by Administration officials after a White House meeting. President Reagan had sought the help of both President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hussein of Jordan to begin new talks with Israel on what he called “an exchange of territory for peace.”
Persian Gulf waters are the world’s worst-polluted with oil and industrial waste, the director of the U.N. Environment Program. Mustafa Tolba, told a regional conference in Bahrain. The pollution comes not just from leaking Iranian. wells, which still spew crude oil into the sea after being hit months ago by Iraqi attacks, Tolba said, but also from a growing number of industrial plants that discharge waste into the gulf. He added that a closer watch must be kept by patrol boats on tanker captains who clean their vessels’ tanks with gulf water.
The Afghan Army, withered by desertions and casualties in its war against guerrillas, is conducting its most widespread search for conscripts since the pro-Moscow coup in Kabul in 1978, Western diplomats said today. The army, which numbered more than 80,000 troops before the coup but now stands at about half that total, is using television announcements, a pay bonus system and outright coercion to get men into the army and keep them there, the diplomats quoted reports from their embassies in Kabul as saying. The new measures complement the regular use of gangs sweeping cities checking draft-age men and signing them up immediately, they said.
Vice President Bush conferred with Konstantin U. Chernenko in Moscow and said afterward that the new Soviet leader agreed on the need to place Soviet-American relations “upon a more constructive path.” Mr. Bush said he had delivered a conciliatory letter to Mr. Chernenko from President Reagan.
Yuri V. Andropov was buried in Red Square amid the same somber military grandeur that marked the funeral of Leonid I. Brezhnev, his predecessor as Soviet leader, 15 months ago.
A world food crisis. predicted a decade ago, is now only a remote possibility, according to a report to the U.N. World Food Council. The 32-page report says that chronic hunger still affects millions, with the problem shifting from Asia to Africa. However, the major assumption made at the 1974 World Food Conference — that population growth would outpace grain production, creating scarcity and drastically raising prices — has proven wrong, it said.
The body of a man has been found on a road in Armagh, Northern Ireland, where the Irish Republican Army operates, and the outlawed group said he had been executed as an informer. The guerrillas said in a statement telephoned to news organizations in Belfast that the victim, Jimmy Young, a Roman Catholic, had admitted supplying police with information on IRA bombings, weapons caches and training bases since August, 1981. The almost exclusively Catholic IRA has been. hurt over the last 2½ years by more than a score of informers.
President Reagan speaks with the new Labor Party leader from England, Neil Kinnock.
The Swedish Navy dropped 10 depth charges today on what it suspects was a foreign submarine lying off the Karlskrona naval base in southern Sweden, a military spokesman said, but there was no indication the navy hit its target. The spokesman said the Karlskrona naval command had also been authorized to activate minefields on the seabed around the base, but could not confirm whether such action had already been carried out. The Swedish Navy began searching last weekend for a possible submarine intruder off Karlskrona, where a Soviet submarine ran aground in November 1981. The spokesman said the navy was convinced that a submarine was lying south of the base, which remains free of ice in winter.
South Korean representatives met delegates from North Korea at Panmunjom for the first time in 32 years and delivered a reply to a proposal by the Communist government for peace talks. The contents of the message were not released. but authoritative sources in Seoul said the South Koreans repeated their demand that initial direct talks be limited to the two Korean governments. Last month, authorities in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, proposed two rounds of talks — the first between North Korea and the United States leading to a peace treaty, then between the two Korean states aimed at reunification.
China plans to mollify its generals by holding a big military parade in Peking to mark the 35th anniversary of Communist rule, diplomatic sources said today. It will be the first such parade since the 1960’s. One diplomat said the parade would serve to smooth the ruffled feathers of military leaders chafing at their reduced role in modern-day China. Detachments of the three branches of the army, in new uniforms and showing off their latest weapons, will march past the country’s leadership gathered in Tiananmen square, the sources said. It was in the huge square, from the Gate of Heavenly Peace, that Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic on October 1, 1949. The army regularly staged Soviet- style military parades in the early years of Communist rule, but the tradition died out in the early 1960’s.
A Salvadoran judge ordered five former national guardsmen to stand trial for the 1980 murders of four American churchwomen. Judge Luis Alonso Melara of the 2nd Appeals Court said a jury trial could begin within two months if the defendants do not appeal to the 13-member Supreme Court, their only remaining option. A lower court judge ordered the case to trial on two previous occasions, but appeals interfered. Concern over delays in the case — and in a case involving the 1981 murder of two U.S. labor advisers — has led Congress to consider holding up U.S. aid.
Argentina said it filed a complaint with the U.N. Security Council that British fighter jets buzzed Argentine fishing boats outside the exclusion zone around the Falkland Islands. Argentina said British planes harassed one boat in November and another on December 24, flying over it at approximately 300 feet. Britain has maintained the exclusion zone of 150 nautical miles since July 14, 1982, when 12,000 Argentine troops surrendered three months after invading the South Atlantic islands.
The U.S. Agency for International Development will recommend completing Grenada’s new airport at a cost of $24 million, Nicholas Brathwaite, head of the island’s interim government, said. A U.S. official said Washington hopes to provide $15 million and other donors the rest. The official said that Cuba, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries had invested $65 million in materials and construction of the airport before the U.S.-led invasion last October.
More than 2,000 students rampaged through Lusaka, Zambia, today, stoning pedestrians and overturning cars to protest the arrests of their union leaders, police and student sources said. The police said several passers-by were injured and seven vehicles badly damaged in the riot, which capped several weeks of tension between the students and the administration at the University of Zambia. One child riding in a car was seriously hurt by rocks and underwent emergency surgery at the University Teaching hospital, the police said. Student sources said students were incensed by the arrests of several union leaders at dawn, but the police said the students were demonstrating against a new meal-card system on campus that effectively prevents visitors from eating in the university restaurant.
Revision of a censorship plan has been ordered by President Reagan, according to an Administration official. The official said that Mr. Reagan had decided to suspend key provisions of a national security order he issued last March to impose lifelong censorship on more than 128,000 officials and to greatly expand the use of lie-detector tests, while the Administration sought to negotiate a compromise with Congress.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the nation’s toughest restriction on the pesticide EDB, ruling that state limits on use of the chemical in food could be stricter than federal guidelines. The justices overruled a lower court judge and said state health officials acted properly February 6 in issuing an emergency ban on products containing 10 parts per billion or more of ethylene dibromide, or EDB, a pesticide used on grain products. Around the nation, other states including New Jersey, Maine, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, and Alabama have ordered EDB-tainted products off store shelves.
The pesticide EDB is often found in grain products in stores and on most imported fruits, especially citrus fruits, papayas and mangoes, according to recent tests by government agencies. The tests showed that meat and milk products and most domestic fruits and vegetables were unlikely to contain EDB, or ethyl dibromide, which is a potent cancer-causing agent in test animals.
The character of election campaigns at the Congressional, state and local levels is undergoing a major change as a result of the development of small, affordable computers of great capacity. The long-term promise of the advanced microcomputer is to make it feasible for almost anyone with a few thousand dollars to campaign for office.
The Reagan Presidential papers and museum will be located on Stanford University’s campus, under a agreement between university officials and the White House. The accord was achieved after the issue of a proposed Ronald Reagan Public Affairs Institute was put aside.
A promising new treatment for a rare form of emphysema will undergo human testing later this year under a special status granted by the Food and Drug Administration. Alpha-I Antitrypsin, or AAT, is the first genetically engineered product to be designated as an “orphan drug,” a status created to encourage development of drugs for rare diseases that otherwise would not be economical to produce. Under the Orphan Drug Act of 1983, developers get tax breaks on money they spend on research for drugs with limited markets.
A dozen states, continuing to recover from the 1981-1982 recession, suffered unemployment at double-digit levels in December. the Labor Department reported. But 11 of those states had rates below the levels in December, 1982, when national unemployment stood at a peak rate of 10.5%, based on raw, seasonally unadjusted figures. The rate went up from December, 1982, to December. 1983, only in Alaska and in the District of Columbia.
Striking dockworkers in Baltimore voted overwhelmingly to accept a contract that was rejected last week and return to work. officials of the International Longshoremen’s Assn. said. Union members said the strike would officially end today at 7 p.m. local time. The final tally — 685 in favor, 139 opposed — did not include members of Baltimore’s largest ILA local, 333, where voting was canceled after threats of violence against two union officials trying to organize the election. Meanwhile, talks in two of the three other strikebound East Coast ports pointed toward an end to the six-day-old strike there.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced that it has decided not to issue nationwide air quality standards for a class of chemicals known as “polycyclic organic matter.” The agency acknowledged that the soot compounds carry a threat of cancer and genetic damage, but said many of the chemicals involved have not been adequately tested to determine. the extent of the health hazard. The chemicals are emitted in soot particles from wood and coal stoves. fireplaces, motor vehicles, aircraft, incinerators and coke ovens.
David, the 12-year-old “bubble boy” born without immunity to disease, is in “serious but stable” condition with an ulcer, vomiting and diarrhea, and is being fed intravenously, a spokeswoman for Baylor College of Medicine said in Houston. David had been able to eat some food normally for several days until Tuesday, she said, adding that doctors do not know what caused the ulcer. David, whose last name has never been disclosed, was born without immunity to disease, and until last week had spent his entire life inside a series of sterile room-sized plastic bubbles.
Defense attorneys in Georgetown, Texas today unexpectedly rested their case without calling the defendant, Genene Jones, to testify about the death of a 15-month- old girl in her care. Miss Jones, who is charged with the girl’s murder, still could testify in the rebuttal portion of the defense presentation. Court was recessed shortly after convening today before the prosecutors begin presenting their rebuttal witnesses. On Monday, a toxicologist and a pediatrician, testifying in the fifth week of Miss Jones’s trial, bolstered defense attorneys’ contentions that Chelsea McClellan died of natural causes. Miss Jones, a 33-year-old vocational nurse, is accused of killing the baby by injecting her with the paralyzing drug, succinylcholine.
Catherine Stubblefield Wilson, a 44- year-old Los Angeles mother of five, pleaded guilty today to one felony count of distributing child pornography before a trial on the charge began. The development came after a day of conferences between the prosecutors, lawyers for Miss Wilson and Judge Diane Wayne of Superior Court. Mrs. Wilson could be sentenced to up to four years in prison. The judge set sentencing for April 12. The prosecutor, Lael Rubin, said three misdemeanor counts of possessing obscene materials would be dropped at sentencing. Judge Wayne said she had agreed to sentence Miss Wilson to a Federal institution. Last October, a federal court jury deadlocked, 11 to 1, in favor of convicting Miss Wilson on charges of using the mail system unlawfully and violating the Federal Child Exploitation Act. A mistrial was declared and a retrial on the Federal charge was reset for April.
An 18-year-old expert in Mayan archeology has become the youngest person to win a MacArthur Foundation “no strings attached” award, which will entitle him to $128,000 tax-free to pursue any endeavor he chooses over the next five years. The Chicago-based foundation has committed $22 million to awarding prizes since 1981 to “exceptionally talented individuals.”
Metal institutional tables, contaminated with radiation emitting hourly levels equal to several chest or dental X-rays, are being discovered by the thousands in hotels and restaurants around the nation. Contaminated tables have been found in Missouri, California, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana and Washington State. State health officials, armed with Geiger counters, are searching schools, restaurants and nursing homes for the tables made with recycled metal exposed to radioactive Cobalt-60 that contaminated a Mexican junkyard. The tables were institutional and none were sold residentially, officials stressed.
British singer Elton John (36) marries Renate Blauel at Darling Point, New South Wales, Australia; they divorce in 1988.
The Houston Astros sign infielder Enos Cabell, back from Detroit, as a free agent. A popular Astro during his six seasons (1975-1980) which he spent mostly as a third baseman, Cabell becomes the regular first baseman and bats .310 with eight homers. He is dealt to the Dodgers early in the 1985 season.
Canadian speed skater Gaétan Boucher takes out the 1,000m gold medal at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; also wins 1,500m; narrowly beats Soviet skater Sergey Khlebnikov in both events.
President Reagan phones Debbie Armstrong and Christin Cooper, the U.S. gold and silver medalists who competed in yesterday’s women’s Olympic ski slalom.
A perfect score of 6.0 for artistic impression was voted by all nine judges for Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean of Britain. The couple won the ice-dancing gold medal in the XIV Olympic Winter Games for their slow, sensuous interpretation of Ravel’s “Bolero.” Soviet couples won the silver and bronze medals.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1163.84 (+13.71).
Born:
Justin Miller, NFL kick returner and cornerback (Pro Bowl, 2006; New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Detroit Lions), in Owensboro, Kentucky.
Justin Harrell, NFL defensive tackle (Green Bay Packers), in Martin, Tennessee.
Bernice Mosby, WNBA forward (Washington Mystics), in Avon Park, Florida.
Died:
Elmer Keith, 84, American firearms enthusiast and author (“Guns & Ammo”).
Mubarak went “off message” to criticize Israel. Hussein was surprised and uncomfortable; Reagan is visibly annoyed.
History Diaries 