A timetable for the pullback of most of the American marines in Beirut to ships offshore ”within 30 days” was formally presented to Congress by President Reagan. He said he would like to see a United Nations force operating in their place.
Druze militiamen forced troops of the Lebanese Army out of their remaining positions south of Beirut and linked up with Shiites, leaving the United States Marines nearly surrounded at their airport compound. The Druze leader, Walid Jumblat, said President Amin Gemayel must resign and be tried for ”crimes.”
Abrogation of an accord with Israel is included in an eight-point plan for a political settlement in Lebanon that has been signed by President Amin Gemayel, according to a knowledgeable Reagan Administration official. He said the information had come through Saudi diplomatic channels. Later, he said, the White House learned independently that Mr. Gemayel’s signature on the settlement plan, which was proposed by a Saudi mediator, was ”imminent.”
Israel radio reported that terrorists believed to be Jewish settlers broke into the home of an elderly Arab on the occupied West Bank and chopped off his finger when he would not sign away his 125 acres of land to Israeli buyers. The Jerusalem-based Palestine Press Service identified the Palestinian Arab as Mohammed Nousil, 84, from Garyouss near Tulkarem.
Half a million Iranian soldiers are moving into Iraq in a new offensive.
Konstantin U. Chernenko told Vice President Bush that Moscow and Washington should ensure that regional conflicts do not ”get out of control,” President Reagan reported. In the first detailed discussion of what was said between the Soviet leader and Mr. Bush in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr. Reagan also said that Mr. Chernenko had called for new ”safeguards against any inadvertent use of nuclear weapons.”
French officials are optimistic that the Soviet Union will soon return to nuclear arms negotiations with the United States. A high-level official, returning to Paris after meetings with Soviet leaders in Moscow, said the optimism was based on the tone of the discussions in Moscow and what France sees as signs of change in Soviet attitudes.
A mystery Soviet jet known as Aircraft 101 is believed to be a new supersonic fighter designed to intercept and shoot down U.S.-made cruise missiles, Jane’s Defense Weekly said. The London-based magazine said the four-engine aircraft may be able to carry as many as 30 air-to-air missiles and radar that sees “beyond visual range.” The jet “would seem to offer an effective way of dealing with a massive assault by air- and ground-launched cruise missiles,” said John W. R. Taylor, editor of the authoritative Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft.
The Reagan Administration will appoint a committee to study UNESCO and, if reforms are found, will review its plan to quit the organization at the end of this year, Gregory Newell, assistant secretary of state for international organizations, said. The panel of 11 to 15 is to be chosen from among American educators, scientists and cultural and media figures, he said. The Administration seeks an end to what it says is hostility by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization toward a free press and free markets.
An American diplomat was slain in Rome as his car stopped at a traffic light near his apartment. The murdered man was Leamon R. Hunt, the director general of the multinational force in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Hunt, who was 56 years old, died at San Giovanni Hospital an hour after being hit by bursts of bullets from automatic weapons. His Italian chauffeur, who was unhurt, reportedly told the police that two men of olive complexion had made the attack but that only one had actually fired. Mr. Hunt was on his way home at the time from the headquarters here of the 10-nation multinational force, which includes 800 American soldiers. The force was set up in 1981 to monitor observance of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, which provided for the return of Sinai to Egyptian control. The peace treaty was an outgrowth of the Camp David accords of 1978.
A half hour after the ambush, a Milan radio station received a telephone call from a man who said Mr. Hunt had been killed by a group that wanted ”imperialist forces out of Lebanon” and Italy out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The caller said the group also opposed the installation of American cruise missiles at Comiso, Sicily. The caller, saying that he represented the Fighting Communist Party, said, ”We claim the attack on General Hunt, guarantor of the Camp David accords.” The Fighting Communist Party has been identified with the Red Brigade urban-guerrilla organization, which took responsibility for the kidnapping on December 17, 1981, of Brig. Gen. James L. Dozier in Verona. General Dozier, an American who held a NATO command, was freed January 28, 1982, in Padua after a nationwide hunt. Mr. Hunt was a civilian, having been appointed director of the Sinai force after a Foreign Service career of 32 years.
The Mayor and city councilmen of the Flemish-speaking town of Overijse, near Brussels, Belgium, were arrested last night as a conflict over the use of French and Flemish languages intensified. The police said the officials violated a temporary ban on meetings in Overijse imposed by the Governor of Brabant Province, which surrounds Brussels, to try and stop Belgium’s language conflict from spreading. About 50 Flemish militants, including the city councilmen and their leader, were held briefly and then set free. The police said the ban was effective in halting a protest rally Tuesday night against purported discrimination against French-speaking local officials, forced to take Flemish language tests or face dismissal. But the ban was broken by several hundred Flemish nationalists, led by the Mayor of Overijse, who staged a counterdemonstration.
Sikh militants ambushed a mounted police patrol today and killed one officer in the second day of religious strife in Punjab that has left at least 15 dead and more than 150 injured. The violence between Sikhs and Hindus led to curfews in five cities and prompted Sikh leaders to suspend talks with the government on their demands for more political and economic autonomy for Punjab. The disturbances spread into the neighboring state of Haryana, where the police used tear gas and riot sticks to break up a mob attacking the shop of a Sikh Alkali Dal Party official. The unrest came a day after the fiercest clashes between Hindus and Sikhs since Sikh militants began a campaign for autonomy from the federal government 19 months ago.
A task force on population control recommended that India offer cash payments to couples who agree to be sterilized after having one or two children. It also suggested barring from public office parents of more than three children. Noting that India’s population has more than doubled to 700 million since 1947, the government panel said such rapid growth could dilute the benefits of development for many years. The report said the new family planning strategy may be controversial, adding that this should not preclude its adoption as long as the proposals are not discriminatory.
North Korea rejected South Korea’s call for direct talks on easing tension on the Korean Peninsula, the (North) Korean Central News Agency reported. The agency quoted the North Korean Workers’ (Communist) Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun as saying it is impossible to solve the fundamental Korean problem through talks limited to Seoul and Pyongyang. South Korea proposed the summit meeting in a letter from Prime Minister Chin lee Chong given to North Korean officials at the border village of Panmunjom. It said the talks could later be expanded to include the United States, China, the Soviet Union and Japan.
The leftist Sandinista government said that campaigning for planned 1985 elections in Nicaragua will begin in the second week of March and that each political party will receive a $6 million subsidy. Carlos Nunez, president of the Council of State, also said the government will study the elimination of a two-year-old state of emergency that restricts freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. In the political campaign, all parties will have free access to radio and television, Nunez said.
Most farm cooperatives created under El Salvador’s land reform “are not financially viable,” and their future seems bleak, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Its audit said that many of the cooperatives “had massive capital debt, no working capital, large tracts of land that were non-productive, substantially larger labor forces than needed to operate the units and weak management.”
A spokesman for a Sudanese guerrilla group said today that it made a bazooka attack on a Nile steamer this week and captured 222 soldiers on board. In Khartoum, the official Sudanese press agency said fire had broken out aboard a barge trailed by a Nile steamer with 300 people aboard on Monday. The agency said no casualties were reported. In London, the guerrilla spokesman, Benjamin Ball, said the guerrillas had sunk the steamer and rescued and released 36 civilians. He said the guerrillas were still holding 222 soldiers taken in the incident at Wadh Kei on the White Nile two or three days ago. The Sudanese press agency said the barge caught fire near Adok in the Upper Nile province. ”The steamer’s engineer managed to disconnect the barge from the steamer, avoiding a disaster, and the fire was extinguished,” the agency said.
Talks to preserve a truce in Africa will open today, according to the State Department. The conferees, from the United States, South Africa and Angola, will seek to preserve the current cease-fire between the two southern African countries.
President Reagan meets with Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. President Reagan said today that Federal budget deficits were not a serious threat to the economic recovery and were not the cause of high interest rates. These informal comments at a press breakfast appeared to conflict with what the President said in his Budget Message and his Economic Report and with the views of Martin S. Feldstein, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Reagan was asked if he was sorry he reappointed Paul A. Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board last July. The President did not answer the question directly but gave a noncommittal comment on the Federal Reserve’s policies that raised some doubts about the Administration’s support of the board, doubts White House officials later sought to smooth over. Later, Mr. Reagan met with Mr. Volcker for 45 minutes. A White House official said the meeting was scheduled before today and was ”routine.”
President Reagan presents the George Washington Honor Medal to Police and Citizens Together (PACT) group.
Opposition to a major steel merger was expressed by the Justice Department on antitrust grounds. The department said it would sue to block a proposed consolidation of the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation — the nation’s third and fourth largest steel producers — unless they dropped the plan or significantly altered it.
Ethel Merman died in her Manhattan apartment at the age of 76. The musical-comedy star’s belting voice and brassy style delighted Broadway and movie audiences for more than half a century.
A judge imposed maximum sentences on four defendants in the federal Brink’s conspiracy trial, including 40-year terms for radicals Sekou Odinga, 39, and Silvia Baraldini, 36. The other two defendants — Cecil Ferguson, 37, and Edward Joseph, 31 — each got 12½-year sentences. The four were convicted September 3 of conspiracy charges stemming from the bloody October, 1981, Brink’s armored car robbery and other crimes. Meanwhile, jury selection continued in the New York state trial of Kathy Boudin and Samuel Brown, who are charged with robbery and murder in the $1.6-million armored car holdup in which a guard and two police officers were killed. Three persons, including Boudin’s husband, David Gilbert, were convicted last year in the case and were sentenced to 75 years to life.
Vocational nurse Genene Jones was convicted in Georgetown, Texas, on charges that she killed a 15-month-old girl with an injection of a powerful and hard-to-trace drug. The jury could sentence her to life in prison for the September, 1982, death of Chelsea McClellan. Genene Anne Jones was an American serial killer, thought to be responsible for the deaths of up to 60 infants and children in her care as a licensed vocational nurse during the 1970s and 1980s. She had used injections of digoxin, heparin, and later succinylcholine to induce medical crises in her patients, causing numerous deaths. The exact number of victims remains unknown; hospital officials allegedly misplaced and then destroyed records of Jones’ activities, to prevent further litigation after Jones’ first conviction. The jury took just over three hours to convict Genene Jones, a 33-year-old vocational nurse, of Kerrville, Texas.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service gave Indian Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh immigration preference, bringing the international religious leader closer to permanent U.S. residency. Robert Krueger, director of the Portland, Oregon, INS office, said, “Third preference immigration status was given to Rajneesh as a religious teacher-leader.” Krueger said the decision in no way gives permanent residency to the guru, who resides with about 1,200 followers in the central Oregon town of Rajneeshpuram. Such status is a prerequisite of permanent residency.
A federal judge ordered a dissident branch of the International Longshoremen’s Association to return to work in Baltimore and a tentative agreement was reached that would settle strikes in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. Baltimore’s 3,300 striking longshoremen were scheduled to begin returning to work after the court order. In Philadelphia, a ratification vote was scheduled for this morning. Nearly 6,500 longshoremen in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston and Wilmington have been on strike since last Thursday after they rejected local versions of a three-year master contract.
Five uniformed men packing automatic weapons landed a stolen helicopter on the lawn of a bank in Leesville, Louisiana, stole an estimated $163,000 and then took to the air again, authorities said. A witness who refused to give his name said of the daring mid-morning robbery. “Everybody thought it was a SWAT team.” The robbery took no more than four or five minutes, no shots were fired and no one was injured. Authorities at first refused to estimate how much money was taken, but they noted that the robbery occurred on a military payday at the nearby Ft. Polk Army base.
Pilots searching for the stranded Japanese adventurer Naomi Uemura, the first person to climb Mount McKinley alone in the winter, failed to find him today on the slopes of North America’s tallest mountain. The pilots, Doug Geeting and Lowell Thomas Jr., who took advantage of a break in the clouds to approach McKinley, said they flew over Mr. Uemura’s entire route down the mountain and did not see him. The 44-year-old mountain climber began descending the 20,230-foot peak shortly after reaching the summit on Sunday.
A judge today dismissed a jury and called off a criminal trial involving 20 members of an all-black church because Cochise County would not pay defense costs for indigent defendants. The case involved riot and assault charges against church members accused of participating in a melee on October 23, 1982, with sheriff’s deputies at Miracle Valley near the Mexican border. Two members of the congregation were shot and killed after Cochise County deputies attempted to serve traffic warrants. Cochise County is the target of a $75 million damage suit filed by the Christ Miracle Healing Center and Church, alleging an official policy of discrimination against blacks forced the church to relocate to Chicago. The criminal case was moved to neighboring Pima County to ensure a fair trial. Judge G. Thomas Meehan of Superior Court had planned a series of trials for all 20 defendants, and jury selection began January 10. Judge Meehan said he would decide at a hearing Friday whether to dismiss the charges in such a manner that they could be refiled.
Dr. Albert Sabin, who developed the first oral vaccine against polio, said he will return to his crusade against the crippling disease when he fully recovers from his own bout with paralysis. Sabin, 77, was stricken last May with polyneuritis. Now, three months after saying he doubted whether he would ever walk again, Sabin is back on his feet, with the help of a cane and therapy at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
A new study casts doubt on theories that people can lower their cancer risk by consuming vitamins A and E, nutrients often found in vegetables. The study found no link between cancer and blood levels of these vitamins or of another highly touted nutrient called carotene, which is a source of vitamin A, said Dr. Walter C. Willette of the Harvard School of Public Health, who directed the study. But it may be that something else in fruits and vegetables helps prevent cancer, he said.
Walt Disney Productions seeks to recapture its lost teenage and young adult audiences, which have been avoiding Disney films in recent years. The company said it would label some of its movies not Disney but Touchstone Films. The Disney name will be kept on its traditional movies for young children.
East Germany sweeps the medals in the women’s 3,000m speed skating at the Sarajevo Winter Olympics; Andrea Schöne takes gold ahead of teammates Karin Enke and Gabi Zange. The East Germans scored a sweep of the gold and silver medals in all four of the women’s speed-skating races, taking 9 of the 12 medals. The three others, all bronze, went to skaters from the Soviet Union.
Inger-Helene Nybraaten led Norway to victory today in the four-by-five-kilometer women’s cross-country relay race. The teams consisted of four members, each doing a five-kilometer leg. Czechoslovakia and Finland passed the Soviet Union on the last lap to take the silver and bronze medals. It was the first time since the relay was added to the Olympics in 1956 that Soviet women had not won a medal.
Hans Stangassinger and Franz Wembacher of West Germany won the gold medal in the double luge competition with a combined time of 1 minute and 23.628 seconds for two runs today.
The symbol of the XIV Olympic Winter Games is a little snowflake. They could have added a patch of fog. Holly Flanders, a downhill skiing specialist from Deerfield, New Hampshire, clocked the second-best time in the women’s competition today, but a complete restart was ordered and the race was postponed until Thursday after 10 competitors braved fog and blowing snow that reduced visibility severely. Fog and heavy snow have disrupted the entire Alpine schedule. The women’s downhill had already been postponed four days because of poor weather conditions.
Women’s figure skating began today at the XIV Olympic Winter Games, and United States medal hopes rose and fell at the same time. After the three compulsory figures, Rosalynn Sumners of Edmonds, Washington, led the field of 23 and seemed assured of a medal, probably gold. But the other Americans were far back, Tiffany Chin of Toluca Lake, California, in 12th place and Elaine Zayak of Paramus, New Jersey, in 13th, and their medal chances seemed lost. The competition, delayed an hour by a power failure, lasted six and a half hours. When it had ended, the leader was the 19-year-old Miss Sumners, the world and three-time United States champion. She won one of the three figures and finished second in the other two. Yelena Vodorezova, a 20-year-old Soviet, stood second, though she won two figures and was runner-up in the other.
In third place was Katarina Witt, an 18-year-old East German who looms as Miss Sumners’s major rival. Miss Vodorezova’s strength is compulsory figures, and she cannot match the other leaders in the short and long programs. Miss Witt, the European champion, is strongest in the short program and competitive in the long.
Scott Hamilton of Denver won the men’s compulsory figures and is favored to win the gold medal Thursday night. The last time the United States led in the Olympics in men’s and women’s compulsory figures was in 1956. Tenley Albright and Hayes Alan Jenkins, the compulsory leaders then, went on to win the gold medals.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1158.71 (-5.13).
Born:
Nate Schierholtz, MLB outfielder (World Series Champions-Giants, 2010; San Francisco Giants, Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, Washington Nationals), in Reno, Nevada.
Mitchell Boggs, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions-Cardinals, 2011; St. Louis Cardinals, Colorado Rockies), in Dalton, Georgia.
Gary Clark, Jr. American blues-rock-soul singer-songwriter and guitarist (“This Land”; The Story of Sonny Boy Slim), born in Austin, Texas.
Died:
Ethel Merman, 76, American Tony and Grammy Award-winning stage and screen singer (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”), and actress (“It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”), of brain cancer.
Avon Long, 73, American actor (“Roots: Next Generation”; “The Sting”; “Harry and Tonto”), of cancer.
Leamon Hunt, 56, American Director General of Multinational Force and Observers (international peacekeepers) in Sinai, assassinated by Red Brigade communists in Rome.
[The USA had three pretty good skaters this year, in Rosalyn, Elaine Zayak, and Tiffany Chin, though the last two posted disappointing performances in the compulsories and fell out of the running for medals. But all of them are going to run into the most unlikely of buzzsaws: An East German who is pretty and vivacious and whom the camera adores. This is the Year of Katarina…]
History Diaries 