The Reagan Administration is uncertain how to respond to Soviet violations of arms control agreements but is discussing whether it should “now feel liberated from our obligations,” a high Pentagon official said. Richard N. Perle, assistant secretary of defense, said the Soviet violations are forcing “unilateral disarmament… upon us.” If the trend continues, he said, the United States may have to consider resorting to defense without treaties. “Arms control is not an end in itself,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
A Soviet cruiser with 460 men aboard refused help from a U.S. aircraft carrier after catching fire while shadowing North Atlantic Treaty Organization maneuvers off Norway, the top officer for the exercise reported. U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf, commander of NATO’s Teamwork ’84 war games, said black smoke billowed from the Soviet Kresta II class cruiser as it trailed the 60,000-ton U.S. carrier USS Independence (CV-62). A NATO spokesman in London said the Soviet cruiser. which was not named, was on fire for about three hours but was later observed cruising normally.
King Hussein of Jordan ruled out direct negotiations with Israel any time soon. He also said the United States, through one-sided support for Israel, had lost its credibility as a mediator in efforts to resolve Arab-Israeli differences.
King Hussein’s criticism of President Reagan’s policies, one day after Mr. Reagan defended Jordan before a pro-Israeli audience, will probably discourage any American initiatives in the Middle East for some time, according to a Reagan Administration official.
The Israeli government will establish 16 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank this year despite calls for a freeze by President Reagan, a Cabinet official said. Science Minister Yuval Neeman, chairman of the government’s settlement committee, told Israel radio he expects private firms to build an additional five to 10 settlements in the West Bank. There are 32,000 Israelis in about 100 settlements in the territories, captured in the 1967 war. The government is projecting a population of 100,000 by 1986.
Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast Sinn Fein’s leader was wounded by gunfire along with three companions as they rode in a car in central Belfast. The four men, who included the chief of the political wing of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, Gerry Adams, were reported in satisfactory condition.
A court barred militant coal miners today from using “flying pickets” — men who move swiftly from place to place, as needed — to extend a strike to all of Britain. Miners from Yorkshire, leading the stoppage that has closed 132 of the country’s 172 mines, had begun large- scale picketing to stop other miners from going to work in neighboring coalfields. At a private sitting, the High Court granted the state-owned National Coal Board an injunction to stop the Yorkshire miners from picketing pits other than their own.
Many Yorkshire miners quit picketing in other counties in response to the order, but it was unclear whether their leaders would obey the injunction, The Associated Press said. The president of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill, said the court decision would only stiffen the men’s resolve.
President Reagan meets with Prime Minister Soares of Portugal. President Reagan assured visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Mario Soares that the United States will help him revive Portugal’s battered economy. “The United States will do all that is feasible to help Portugal meet its difficult economic challenges.” Reagan pledged after nearly two hours of talks at the White House. The two leaders dealt with economic concerns at length and touched only briefly on problems in former Portuguese territories in southern Africa, a senior Administration official said.
A Rome appeals court ordered a Bulgarian returned to prison to await a possible trial for complicity in the shooting of Pope John Paul II. The Court of Cassation upheld a decision by the Court of Liberty in January that Sergei Ivanov Antonov, 36, must be transferred from house arrest in his Rome apartment back to prison. Antonov, Rome station chief of the Bulgarian state airline, was arrested in November, 1982, and charged with aiding Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Ağca in the attack on the Pope on May 13, 1981. Ağca is serving a life term for shooting the pontiff.
Judge Ilario Martella, the chief investigator in the case, had ordered Mr. Antonov released from jail based on doctors’ reports that he was suffering severe mental and physical deterioration in prison. Another judge contested the release. Judge Martella recently turned over a 20,000-page report to another judge who has yet to rule whether Mr. Antonov and others charged in the case must stand trial.
Spain deployed about 800 paramilitary Civil Guards at the French border today to escort French truck convoys into Spain and prevent further attacks by Basque fishermen who have burned at least 16 vehicles since Sunday. The fishermen were protesting a March 7 attack by the French Navy on two Spanish Basque boats fishing illegally in the Bay of Biscay. Nine fishermen were hurt when a shell hit one boat’s bridge. Foreign Minister Fernando Moran told Parliament today that Spain would go to international courts, if necessary, to obtain a “sufficient” explanation of the incident from France.
Gary Kasparov won the third game in the world chess semi-finals against Vasily Smyslov in Vilnius, Lithuania, taking a one-game advantage for the right to play Soviet world champion Anatoly Karpov, Tass reported. Kasparov, playing white, defeated Smyslov on the 41st move, the official news agency said. The first two games in the 16-game match between the two Soviet grandmasters ended in draws.
Proposed changes in UNESCO were submitted to the United Nations agency by the United States and 23 other industrial countries. The United States has said it will leave UNESCO at the end of the year unless significant changes are made.
Requests for urgent military aid for El Salvador and for Nicaraguan insurgents were approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Republican-controlled panel reversed earlier decisions against the Reagan Administration’s requests in a series of votes that broke mainly along party lines.
Two young men with pistols shot a conservative Salvadoran lawmaker seven times as he left a law class in San Salvador. The assassination of Hector Tulio Flores Larin, 46, was the fifth of a legislator in less than two years. A witness said that Flores Larin was on the sidewalk outside the National University Law School when he was approached by the two young men who pulled pistols, shot him and walked away. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the killing. Flores Larin was a member of the National Conciliation Party.
The military was in full control today of the main governing body in the West African state of Guinea Bissau after the dismissal Tuesday night of the nation’s civilian Vice President. Bissau state radio said the President, Brigadier General Joao Bernardo Vieira, had ousted Victor Saude Maria, the Vice President of the Council of the Revolution, replacing him with Brigadier General Paulo Correia. Mr. Saude Maria, a leader in the fight against Portugal before independence in 1974, was the last remaining civilian in the Council, the supreme governing body set up after a 1980 coup. A communique said Mr. Saude Maria had been removed for “serious motives.” It gave no other details.
The Democratic Presidential race moved toward the key states of the industrial Middle West as Walter F. Mondale’s campaign began to feel a financial squeeze that could hobble his effort to break Gary Hart’s momentum at a crucial phase of their battle for the party’s nomination. Meanwhile, late results showed that Mr. Mondale had edged into a lead in delegates from Tuesday’s important primaries and caucuses.
An aide to Edwin Meese 3rd has said he cannot locate a document requested by House investigators, according to Congressional materials. The document referred to a so-called Watergate-era “bagman” who called the Presidential Counselor during the 1980 Presidential campaign.
A delay in the confirmation vote of Edwin Meese 3d is foreseen by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. They said they wanted to question almost everyone involved in providing financial help for him before they voted on his nomination to be Attorney General.
President Reagan meets with the Senate Republicans to discuss the budget and deficit reduction package.
Senate Republican leaders, after meeting with President Reagan, said they were closer to an agreement to trim the defense spending increase that Reagan has proposed for next year. “I’m reasonably optimistic that we’ll be able to work out our differences,” Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tennessee) said. Defense reductions are critical to congressional approval of a package of spending cuts and tax increases that would reduce looming budget deficits, estimated at about $600 billion over the next three years.
President Reagan places a call to Morgan Llewellyn, the author of “Lean on Ireland.”
The NASA space shuttle Challenger moves to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, for mating with its external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters for the STS 41-C mission.
An attempt to schedule a quick Senate vote on a constitutional school prayer amendment fell apart when one senator — Alan J. Dixon (D-Illinois) — protested he was being denied the right to vote on any version other than the one President Reagan wants. Senate Majority Leader Howard H. Baker Jr. (R-Tennessee) tried to get unanimous consent to schedule a vote for this afternoon on an amendment favored by Reagan that would permit vocal organized prayer in the classrooms. Baker’s request would have permitted no amendments other than one that would bar government officials from composing any school prayer.
Crucial U.S. defense systems overseas could fail in a crisis because the civilian technicians needed to keep them operating might leave when the shooting starts, a House subcommittee was told. General Accounting Office official Robert M. Gilroy said there are up to 6,000 civilians working overseas in key jobs. “There is concern that essential civilians… may not be willing to remain if the likelihood of war increases or if a conflict starts,” he told the panel.
It will take President Reagan two more years to decide what to do about acid rain, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency predicted. Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus defended the President’s deliberation in an appearance before the House Science and Technology Committee on behalf of the EPA’s proposed budget. Last year. Ruckelshaus recommended a modest sulfur dioxide emission control program to the President, but he was overruled by advisers who favor stepped-up research. Many scientists think sulfur dioxide is the principal cause of acid rain, which kills fish, trees and lakes.
Two states, two cities and four environmental-advocacy groups formally asked the Environmental Protection Agency to ban or sharply limit the use of lead in gasoline starting 20 months from now. The petition from Illinois, Massachusetts, Chicago, New York and the groups also asked for a ban on EDB and its sister chemical, ethylene dichloride or EDC, in gasoline. It said that 85% of the two chemicals produced in the United States is used in leaded gasoline.
One of six men on trial in the alleged barroom gang rape of a young woman testified that he climbed on top of her after she agreed to “fool around,” but they never had sex. Defendant Daniel Silva told a jury in Fall River, Massachusetts, that the woman unbuttoned her own pants as they embraced in Big Dan’s Tavern on March 6, 1983. When she said she wanted to “fool around” with him, he carried her over to the pool table, but when he attempted to have sex with her, he could not, he said.
The chief prosecutor’s illness today forced postponement of final arguments in the manslaughter trial of a Miami police officer, Luis Alvarez, whose shooting of a young black man in a video arcade set off a three-day riot. Abraham Laeser, an assistant state attorney, was ill with the flu, his secretary reported. Judge David Gersten set a new time for final arguments at 10 AM Thursday. Patrolman Alvarez, 24 years old, is charged with “gross negligence” in the shooting death of Nevell Johnson Jr., 20, whom he was searching for a concealed handgun at a game room in Miami’s Overtown slum in 1982.
Efforts to improve race ties in Boston have been pressed by Mayor Raymond L. Flynn. In the latest significant move, Mayor Flynn went to the home of a widow of a black man who was shot by two white police officers in 1975 and presented her with a check for $843,498 in damages that had been awarded by a jury.
California Governor George Deukmejian has vetoed a measure outlawing job discrimination against homosexuals, with the comment that California residents are “deeply divided” on the issue. The Republican Governor’s veto ended 12 days of intense lobbying about the homosexual rights measure that caused a flood of nearly 10,000 letters and telephone calls a day to Mr. Deukmejian’s office. In his veto message, the Governor said he recognized that Californians “are deeply divided regarding this issue,” but that there was not sufficient evidence of discrimination against homosexuals to justify the statute. Supporters of the bill marched in protest and vowed to work for the defeat of the Governor and of conservative lawmakers who opposed the measure. About 350 activists staged a protest march Tuesday night in San Francisco, shouting obscenities at the Governor and toting signs venting their feelings.
Civilians who maintain weapons and military communications overseas are under no obligation to stay on their jobs if hostilities break out, according to officials of the General Accounting Office. They told a House subcommittee that the civilian technicians, who are provided by the companies that build the weapons, number in the thousands.
Automobile owners’ tampering with emissions control devices, particularly catalytic converters, is a major concern of the Environmental Protection Agency, agency officials say. As a result, they want to speed a virtual phase-out of leaded gasoline by the late 1980’s, instead of 1992 as now planned.
A community of gigantic clams, tube worms several feet tall and other exotic creatures has been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico west of Florida, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Such creatures were previously thought to exist only where superheated water erupts from the floor of the Pacific.
The actress Penny Marshall was briefly held hostage in her Hollywood home by two teenage burglars dressed as Japanese warriors and armed with a samurai sword, the police said today. Miss Marshall, who played Laverne De Fazio on television’s “Laverne and Shirley” show, was not hurt, and the burglars were arrested by the police after fleeing the home. Detective Don Riggio said the teen- agers were seen Tuesday evening on Hollywood streets dressed in the black clothing that is the uniform of the semi-mythical Japanese ninja criminal society but that they were not stopped or questioned by police. “It’s not really that unusual if you’ve been here awhile,” Detective Riggio said. The suspects, Daniel Sheppard, 19 years old, and Anthony Pierson, 18, were charged with robbery and held in lieu of $20,000 bail each.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1166.04 (+1.26).
Born:
Dan Crenshaw, American politician (Rep. – R- Texas) and former Navy SEAL, in Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Ahmad Brooks, NFL linebacker (Pro Bowl, 2013; Cincinnati Bengals, San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers), in Fairfax, Virginia.
Randor Bierd, Dominican MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Ambrosia Anderson, WNBA forward (Connecticut Sun, New York Liberty), in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Liesel Matthews [Pritzker], American former child actress (“A Little Princess”), in Chicago, Illinois.
Died:
Aurelio Peccei, 75, Italian industrialist and chairman (Club of Rome).
History Diaries 