The final phase of the withdrawal of the United States Marines from the international airport in Beirut began with the departure of a combat unit consisting of 163 men and eight 155-millimeter howitzers. The first phase, which began two weeks ago, withdrew all the noncombat support equipment. The second phase removed nonessential personnel and combat-related staff. The combat unit was the first of the front-line troops to head back for their Sixth Fleet vessels, Colonel Edward McDonald, an army spokesman said. The withdrawal will continue through Sunday.
As night fell, the state-run Beirut radio and Lebanese Army officials said American naval guns had opened fire on Syrian positions in the mountains east of the capital. The Lebanese radio report said the naval gunfire began after “large-scale artillery duels” broke out in the mountains between the Lebanese Army and anti-Government militia forces. There were also reports of increased fighting along the so-called green line dividing predominantly Muslim West Beirut from the large Christian eastern half. In Washington, a Defense Department spokesman said the destroyer USS Caron fired 90 five-inch shells in response to two separate artillery attacks against marines still on the ground. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Hudson, the spokesman, said the “hostile artillery fire ceased immediately after receiving the return fire.”
Druze and Shiite militias are said to be joining an Israeli-backed brigade in southern Lebanon. The brigade is known as the Southern Lebanese Army and its main function, according to the Israelis, is to help keep Palestinian guerrillas from returning to the area. The unit evolved from the Israeli-supported militia led by Major Saad Haddad, the longtime Israeli ally who died January 14.
Civilian targets were attacked by both Iraq and Iran in air raids on towns along their border, according to reports from both sides. Heavy fighting was also reported in the marshlands of the southern front in the Persian Gulf war. An Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad said Iranian warplanes attacked four towns in the north and south of the country, killing 7 people and wounding more than 50. One plane was reported shot down. Iran’s national press agency said at least 15 people were killed and several were wounded in Iraqi raids on the border towns of Ilam and Baneh, where it said a school and hospital were hit. The claims from both sides were monitored here, but there was no independent confirmation.
Iran said that in its offensive into the marshlands north of the Iraqi port of Basra, its troops repelled four Iraqi counterattacks and shot down one plane and seven helicopters today. The Iranian report said more than 6,500 Iraqi troops had been killed and 800 captured since it began the offensive last Wednesday.
Iraq said tonight that its forces had killed nearly 7,000 Iranian troops in the last 24 hours in fierce fighting on the southern front. A communique issued by the Iraqi military said two Iranian jets and seven helicopter gunships were also shot down during a day in which Iran carried out air raids against towns in northern and southern Iraq. The communique said more than 3,500 Iranians were killed in a two- pronged attack early today on the left and right flanks of the Iraqi Fourth Army Corps in the Misan sector of the front. In the Third Corps area east of the port city of Basra, Iraq said its forces killed 3,376 Iranian troops. The communique said hundreds were also captured in the latest series of attacks in an Iranian offensive that started Wednesday. The communique said Iraqi jets carried out 281 sorties on the southern front, with one plane lost. It said planes and helicopter gunships shot down seven Iranian helicopters, including two Chinook helicopters and three Cobra gunships.
Iran executed 10 high-ranking members of a military cell of the Communist Tudeh Party, including the former commander of the Iranian navy, Captain Bahram Afzali. The 10 were convicted of being spies. In a yearlong crackdown on the outlawed pro-Moscow party, scores of members have been executed in recent months on charges they spied for the Soviet Union and plotted to overthrow the fundamentalist Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran has also expelled at least 18 Soviet diplomats.
President Reagan speaks with former President Richard M. Nixon about relations with General Secretary Chernenko of Russia.
The Soviet Minister of Civil Aviation accused the United States and its allies today of declaring war on Aeroflot through sanctions, “open provocations and terroristic acts” against the Soviet airline. The official, Boris P. Bugayev, said in an interview carried by the official press agency Tass, “War with Aeroflot is a part of an anti-Soviet hysteria whipped up by the Reagan Administration and its Western partners.” Mr. Bugayev particularly attacked the American ban on Aeroflot flights and charged that “on orders from their overseas bosses, sanctions against Aeroflot were undertaken by some other Western states.” Several Western countries banned Aeroflot flights for a while after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean jetliner last September, killing 269 people. The American ban on Aeroflot flights was imposed after the declaration of martial law in Poland in December 1981.
Swedish officials ordered land forces on full alert after naval vessels detected more traces of an underwater intruder near the sensitive Karlskrona naval base, about 180 miles south of Stockholm. “There are so many indications that something is here,” said Lieutenant Colonel Evert Dahlen of the Swedish defense staff. “But we don’t know exactly what.” The search was taking place less than five miles from a narrow bay where a Soviet submarine ran aground in October, 1981, causing a chill in Swedish-Soviet relations.
South Korean tennis players traveled to China, and there was speculation that the trip might lead to normal relations between the two old adversaries in the same way that “ping-pong diplomacy” in 1971 started the long process toward U.S. diplomatic ties with Peking. The athletic competition March 2-4, the Davis Cup eastern zone elimination round, is to be held in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming. It will be the first such visit by South Koreans that China has allowed since the Korean War of 1950-53. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese “volunteers” fought alongside North Koreans against the South during that conflict.
South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan lifted a ban on political activity by 202 dissidents in what the government billed as a move toward greater national stability and harmony. However, a government statement said that 99 leading dissidents would remain under an eight-year ban until 1988. The clemency order came in advance of parliamentary elections expected this year or next.
Four people, reportedly Hindus, were killed near the holy Sikh city of Amritsar in a fresh wave of violence that shattered attempts by security forces to establish some order in Punjab state, the Press Trust of India reported. A right-wing Hindu group called for a strike in New Delhi on Monday, when Sikh leaders plan to burn the country’s constitution in front of the Parliament building. The Sikhs, who reject idolatry and the caste system, want to be reclassified by the Indian government as members of a separate religion.
Fidel Castro boasted that the Marxist governments of Nicaragua and Cuba “are stronger today than ever” despite the U.S.-led invasion of Grenada, Cuba’s official news agency reported. The Cuban president made the statement at the 15th Cuban Workers’ Union Congress, attended by 2,000 national delegates and representatives from 115 foreign trade unions. Castro also attacked U.S. policy in Europe. “Washington’s policy is increasingly aggressive, as demonstrated by the decision to install medium-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe against the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc,” he said.
Top Pentagon officials who have direct official contact with Congress have been told to get advance clearance of their communications on Central America from the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Michael I. Burch said the order is designed “to make sure that we all speak with one voice,” an indication of the Reagan Administration’s sensitivity to continuing congressional criticism of its Central American policy.
The Papal Nuncio in Chile, Archbishop Angelo Sodano, has criticized the military Government, saying it lacked courtesy and respect for Pope John Paul II in refusing to grant safe-conduct to four leftist guerrillas who sought asylum in the Vatican mission. “Each day that passes, each week that passes, is a greater lack of respect for the Holy See,” Archbishop Sodano said Friday after a meeting with Foreign Minister Jaime del Valle. The guerrillas entered the mission armed nearly six weeks ago, asserting that their lives were in danger. The Vatican granted them asylum after they handed over their weapons. The Government says the four must stand trial on charges of killing the military Governor of Santiago last year. Church sources said the charges were filed after the four were given asylum.
At least 100 men, women and children were reported killed today in an oil pipeline explosion that destroyed part of a shantytown on the outskirts of a southern Brazilian town. The police in the town, Cubatao, 30 miles southeast of Sao Paulo, said about 100 bodies had been recovered and rescue workers were searching for more. Another 150 people, some in critical condition, were taken to a hospital for treatment of burns, the Cubatao police said by telephone. The explosion and pipeline rupture occurred close to the shantytown shortly after midnight, the police said. The fire spread quickly, destroying 300 huts, which the police said housed around 2,400 people. The cause of the rupture of the pipeline, which passes within 50 yards of the hut settlement, was not immediately known.
The New Hampshire primary vote Tuesday is expected to help decide whether the nomination contest among the eight Democratic Presidential candidates will last for three weeks or three months. Most of the campaign strategists agree that a landslide victory by Walter F. Mondale will put him in a position to nail down the nomination in short order. But his advisers acknowledge that he is the first choice of only about 35 percent of the likely primary voters in a state with a strong history of upsetting frontrunners.
President Reagan addresses the nation about prayer in schools. President Reagan charged that opposition to prayer in public schools is a form of religious intolerance that has turned the First Amendment on its head. In his weekly radio speech, a paid political program broadcast from Camp David, Maryland, Reagan urged Congress to give the two-thirds approval needed to amend the Constitution to allow “voluntary vocal prayer” in public schools. The measure comes before the Senate this week. He also attacked the 1962 Supreme Court decision and ensuing rulings that outlawed state-sponsored prayer in the nation’s schools.
Telling elderly people that his call for a new generation of leadership “encompasses all generations,” Senator Gary Hart of Colorado said today that President Reagan, if re-elected, “will further try to erode the Social Security system” to pay for “the dangerous and unnecessary nuclear arms race with the Russians.” Mr. Hart, who is seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination, spoke at a housing complex for the elderly here in sparsely populated northern New Hampshire. Asked later if he were not indulging in scare tactics, Mr. Hart said: “I fundamentally believe that this Administration, given a second term, will escalate the arms race over what it was in the first term, and you’ll see a major effort to dismantle social programs to finance that.” He added that unless the President “cuts the defense budget, and he won’t, he has no other choice but Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”
Only five of 13 automobiles tested by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have passed all government safety criteria, the Center for Auto Safety reported in Washington, and those five scored surprisingly well. The private consumer group said the five 1984 model autos meeting the safety criteria at crash speeds of 35 m.p.h. were the Chevrolet Cavalier convertible, Pontiac Fiero, Dodge Daytona, Chevrolet Corvette and the AMC Jeep CJ-7. The worst performers were the Pontiac Parisienne, Plymouth Colt Vista van and two-door Plymouth Conquest.
The recession cost the typical American worker $366 in 1982, according to a study by the former chief economist of the Commerce Department. Courtenay Slater estimated that the 9.7% unemployment rate in 1982 reduced total earnings of American workers by about $72 billion. If unemployment had been 5.8%, as it was in 1979, there would have been no loss, Slater said. She chose 1979 because it was the last year she considered to have reasonably full employment.
A killer who became notorious four decades ago for pleading with authorities to “catch me before I kill more” will remain in prison under a ruling by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court reversed a magistrate’s decision that William Heirens should be released on the grounds he had been rehabilitated, without regard to the seriousness of the crime or society’s demand for retribution. Heirens was a 17-year-old University of Chicago freshman when 6-year-old Suzanne Degnan was kidnaped and slain 38 years ago. Heirens was convicted of her murder and also the murders of Frances Brown, 33, and Josephine Ross, 43. He was captured after scrawling in lipstick on Brown’s apartment wall: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I can’t control myself.”
“The weight of the evidence” shows that a North Carolina company that supplies parts to nuclear power plants falsified signatures on quality control documents, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in Washington. An NRC spokesman said investigators made the discovery after receiving allegations that signatures were being forged at the Bahnson Co. of Winston-Salem, North Carolina., on documentation associated with heating, ventilating and air-conditioning parts.
A paralyzed former police officer could receive more than $3 million in cash and property in a compromise settlement with the City of South Tucson, ending a four-year fight over a personal injury judgment. The settlement, which includes a $1.5 million bond issue to pay the former officer, Roy Garcia, is subject to approval by Federal District Judge Richard Bilby as part of the city’s municipal debt reorganization plan.
The pact, reached Thursday, brings to an end Mr. Garcia’s efforts since 1980 to obtain payment of a $3.59 million judgment from the community because of injuries he suffered on duty. He was shot and paralyzed from the waist down in October 1978. The city, which is one mile square, sought the protection of the bankruptcy laws last year after Mr. Garcia, its biggest creditor, turned down several settlement offers.
Jeffrey M. Gluck, a youthful magazine publisher with a history of saving troubled publications, has completed purchase of the 131-year-old St. Louis Globe-Democrat from the Newhouse Co. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Gluck, 31, who previously bought the Saturday Review and two smaller magazines and made them profitable, was in St. Louis preparing for Monday’s editions, the first under his leadership. Also on Monday, the rival St. Louis Post-Dispatch will switch from afternoon to morning publication, pitting the city’s two dailies in direct competition.
The Amherst College board of trustees announced that it will abolish the school’s fraternities, saying they have no role in improving campus life. The decision followed a five-month study of the college’s eight fraternities. Fraternity members, who held a sit-in and a hunger strike to try to save their organizations, vowed to seek new pledges despite the decision.
Law-enforcement officers conducted a wide search today for two armed fugitives who are said to have committed murders and kidnappings since they fled prison a week ago. The two men, Ronald Freeman, 41 years old, and James Clegg, 30, escaped from a West Tennessee prison last Saturday with three other convicts.
The police say Mr. Freeman and Mr. Clegg killed a Sunday school teacher Tuesday in Brownsville near the prison, kidnapped his wife and released her Wednesday. Arzo Carson, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was making a “supreme effort” in the case. Mr. Clegg, serving a life term as a habitual criminal, and Mr. Freeman, serving 198 years for killing his wife and stepdaughter, were among five inmates who fled the Fort Pillow State Prison. One was captured last Sunday and another was captured Monday.
Sharp electric rate increases are on the way in nine states, reflecting billions of dollars in excess costs at 14 nuclear plants scheduled for completion in the next few years. The expected increases of 25 to 50 percent do not result from failed nuclear power plants, but the completion of delayed projects, some over budget by more than 1,000 percent.
Forests are declining rapidly in the Eastern United States, according to a number of studies and a survey by the United States Forest Service. Evidence gathered so far points to pollution as the chief suspect.
The right to sexual privacy is not absolute, a California appellate court ruled recently in deciding that a Los Angeles nurse could sue a doctor who she says had infected her with genital herpes. The ruling was one of the ways courts are responding to health concerns and changing sexual mores, involving them increasingly in matters that were once considered purely private.
Born:
Susan Dennard, American Young Adult fantasy author (“Something Strange and Deadly”), in Virginia.
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