Lebanon’s unity talks ended in failure as the nation’s eight main factional leaders postponed discussions of their differences indefinitely. Delegates said a major reason for the breakdown was the refusal of the Christian leaders to give the Muslim majority more power.
A Middle East arms aid plan has been dropped by President Reagan, according to Congressional sources. They said he had decided to withdraw an offer to sell advanced antiaircraft missiles to Jordan and Saudi Arabia because of overwhelming Congressional opposition.
Libya threatened to shoot down U.S. AWACS surveillance planes sent to Egypt to help guard against any Libyan raids on Sudan. Libya has denied Sudanese and U.S. charges that it was a Libyan TU-22 that bombed Omdurman, Sudan, last week, and the Libyan news agency said that if the two airborne warning and control system planes assist any form of aggression against Libya, they will be subject. to attack. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak warned Libya that Egyptian forces are ready to repel any Libyan attack on either Egypt or Sudan.
The Arab League and Pakistan followed Jordan’s King Hussein in criticizing strong U.S. backing for Israel. Arab League Secretary General Chedli Klibi warned President Reagan in a toughly-worded letter that excessive support for Israel may cause a deep gulf between Washington and the Arab world. He charged that Washington has sided with Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people. Arab-American relations and international law. Meanwhile, Pakistan, a non-Arab but Muslim nation, warned of profound repercussions in the Islamic world if the U.S. Embassy in Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Iraq said today that its jets and helicopter gunships had attacked Iranian positions east of the southern Iraqi port of Basra. Iran said it shot down an Iraqi MIG-23. In Baghdad, the daily high command communique said Iraqi air attacks inflicted heavy losses on Iranian troop concentrations in positions in the east Basra sector.
President Reagan attends an N.S.C. briefing on the possibility of Iran closing the Persian Gulf.
A Western diplomat said here today that Afghan soldiers had mutinied in and around Kabul, fought their officers and defected in large numbers to Muslim guerrillas in a revolt against a government decision to increase their period of military service. The report followed diplomatic assessments last week that spoke of spreading anger among Afghan soldiers in the capital over the order which extends military service for troops based in Kabul from the current three years to four years. The move was apparently aimed at bolstering the dwindling strength of the Afghan Army, which is estimated at 30,000 and which has been hurt by casualties and defections over the years. Soviet military officials and Afghan Government leaders were said to be deeply concerned by the revolts.
Two Protestants were charged in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with last week’s attempted murder of Gerry Adams, the 35-year-old head of Sinn Fein, political wing of the predominantly Catholic Irish Republican Army. Gerald Welsh, 33, and Colin Gray, 27, both from a staunch Protestant district in north Belfast, denied shooting Adams, who was struck in the neck, shoulder and arms.
The niece of East German Premier Willi Stoph, who last month sought asylum in the West German Embassy in Prague, Czechoslovakia, emigrated to the West with her family. Border police said that Ingrid Berg, 35, crossed the border from East to West Germany near Eshwege in a car with her husband, Hans-Dieter, 35, and the couple’s two children. They drove to a refugee camp at Giessen, north of Frankfurt, police said.
A private security guard who said he was at the airport when Benigno S. Aquino was slain last summer testified today that he saw the opposition leader fall to the tarmac from an airline staircase with blood on his back. This statement, which appears to contradict the Government’s report that Mr. Aquino was shot in the head while on the tarmac, was part of an amended version of testimony that the 22-year-old security guard, Efren Ranas, gave on March 8 to a five-member panel investigating the killing. “I am here this afternoon to finish my testimony,” Mr. Ranas said, “because my conscience is still bothered as to what I had witnessed.” The witness, who has been under protective custody, said he did not tell the full story on March 8 because he had felt intimidated by the cross-examination to which he was subjected by the military lawyer, Rodolfo Jimenez.
The Indian Government accused the country’s top Sikh leader, Harchand Singh Longowal, of sedition today and banned the main Sikh student union. The Press Trust of India, the national news agency, said arrests continued in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar and security officials flew to New Delhi for talks with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Punjab, where most of India’s 12 million Sikhs live, has been swept by growing Hindu-Sikh violence for five weeks. More than 90 people have been killed there since the start of the year. The Longowal case is based on an open letter distributed among delegates attending the conference of Commonwealth heads of government in the Indian capital in November. In it, Longowal urged Commonwealth leaders to come to the aid of the Sikhs.
A Soviet ship hit a mine planted by U.S.-backed rebels as it entered the harbor at Puerto Sandino, 40 miles west of Managua, the Nicaraguan Defense Ministry reported. It said that the ship, which a military source identified as a tanker carrying Soviet oil to Nicaragua, sustained considerable damage and that “several Soviet sailors were gravely injured.” Rebels fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government have said they have mined Nicaragua’s ports as a warning to foreign ships to stay clear. Two Nicaraguan fishing boats, a Dutch dredging ship and a Panamanian freighter have previously struck such mines.
The biggest drug raid in history was reported by the United States Ambassador to Colombia. He said that Colombian policemen attacked a jungle cocaine processing plant guarded by Communist guerrillas and seized 13.8 tons of cocaine with a street value of $1.2 billion.
Cuba seized two U.S. yachts carrying 28 people on a race from Miami to Jamaica because they passed too close to the eastern tip of the Communist island, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The Brigadoon, with 19 aboard, and the Cashasha, with nine, were part of a four-yacht race from the Coral Reef Yacht Club in Miami to the Jamaican port of Montego Bay. The State Department said the U.S. Interests Section in the Swiss Embassy in Cuba is investigating.
The University of St. Lucia School of Medicine, a financially troubled medical school on that Caribbean island, has closed after less than six months in operation. Its dean, C. Dennis Peterson, said by telephone over the weekend from St. Lucia that the school, which opened September 19, was ordered closed March 7. He said the order came from officials acting for the school’s private financiers and for Educators International, a New York City recruiting agency for schools established abroad to attract students who are unable to gain admission to traditional medical colleges. There are about a dozen such schools in the Caribbean area. Isaac Kairey, the school’s dean of admissions, said yesterday from Educators International’s offices from Educators International’s offices at 60 East 42d Street that the closing had been dictated by “economic realities.”
South African Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha dismissed a heavily conditioned offer by Cuba to withdraw its troops from Angola, calling it “largely a repetition” of previous positions. The offer, after talks in Havana between President Fidel Castro and Angolan President. Jose Eduardo dos Santos, said Cuban troops would be withdrawn if South African forces were withdrawn from Angola and Namibia, “true” independence was granted Namibia, and all aid to anti-government rebels in Angola was ended.
Nigerian Major-General Babatunde Idiagbon launches a campaign on ‘National Consciousness and Enlightenment.’
A plan to sanction vocal prayer in the public schools was rejected by the Republican-controlled Senate. The vote of 56 to 44 fell 11 votes short of the two- thirds needed to approve the bill. Moderate Republicans joined most Democrats in opposing the proposed constitutional amendment, while Southern Democrats joined most Republicans in backing it.
Reagan writes in his diary:
“We lost the school prayer amendment in the Senate. We had a majority but needed a 2⁄3 majority. The sad thing is about 15 Sens. were convinced the amendment was a mandate that schools would have to have prayer. Lowell Weicker was the head ringmaster against us as he is on everything we want. He’s a pompous, no good, fathead.”
[Ed: So: A senator.]
Walter F. Mondale won the Democratic Presidential primary in Illinois, achieving a hard-fought victory over Gary Hart. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was running a strong third in a contest marking the opening of the nomination battle in the big industrial states. Mr. Mondale ran much more strongly than Mr. Hart among white voters in Chicago and was getting up to 40 percent of the vote in suburban and rural areas.
Senator Charles H. Percy won the Illinois Republican primary in his drive for re-election to a fourth term. He defeated Representative Tom Corcoran, who accused Mr. Percy of disloyalty to President Reagan.
The President and First Lady host a breakfast for the “Outstanding Young Farmers of America” and their families.
A new deficit reduction plan has been agreed upon by House Democratic leaders. They said the proposals would cut budget deficits by about $185 billion in the next three years. The reductions would be achieved primarily by imposing strict limits on most government spending, excluding Social Security.
Beaches and fragile marshes along 90 miles of the Columbia River were covered with a sticky coating of oil that poured from the mangled hull of a grounded tanker in the Pacific Ocean off St. Helens, Oregon. Mobil Oil Co. crews, meanwhile, tried to unload the remaining 8 million gallons of oil from the company’s 618-foot vessel and free it from the rocks it ran aground on.
Six states in the Northeast sued the Environmental Protection Agency to force a decision on whether seven other states, mostly in the Midwest, must reduce sulfur dioxide emissions. Sulfur dioxide, which changes to sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere, is a principal cause of acid rain. The plaintiffs said the agency had ignored a 60-day deadline to answer a 1981 petition against the Midwestern states. That petition contended that federal law gave the EPA administrator the power to order states to act when their pollution crossed state boundaries and made it impossible for receiving states to meet air pollution goals. The six plaintiff states are Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and New York.
The House approved a sevenfold increase in federal spending for the dam safety program after narrowly rejecting efforts to require local governments in Western states to pay for repairs to unsafe federal dams. The legislation, which now goes to the Senate, increases to $750 million from $100 million the government’s program to inspect and repair unsafe dams operated in 17 Western states by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation.
The Interior Department said it is dropping from consideration about half the area of a proposed offshore oil lease in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. The “deferred” tracts cover about 8.7 million acres west of Point Barrow. It marked the second time this month that the department has halved proposed Alaska lease offerings. Interior officials said the cut in the Beaufort sale was made “to focus the sale on those areas of greatest potential for oil and gas and to reduce potential resource conflicts” and was also a response to environmental concerns raised by the state of Alaska.
An effort by three states — California, Florida and New York — to form a textbook-buying alliance to press for better textbooks stalled as other states refused to join the effort. Education leaders, including Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell, have recently said easy school textbooks are a major reason for declining achievement by American schoolchildren. Education officials had attended a two-day, 22-state conference in Tallahassee, Florida, hoping to form an interstate coalition to press publishers to print tougher and better textbooks. However, participants pledged to continue to press for tougher texts within existing national education groups rather than through a new structure.
State taxes increased just 5.4% last year, the lowest rise in 25 years, and the average amount of state taxes paid per person was $740, the Census Bureau said. Total state tax revenues were $171 billion in fiscal 1983, compared to $162 billion a year earlier. The bureau said the 5.4% increase was the lowest since 1958, when revenues rose 2.7%. Sales taxes, up 6.5% between 1982 and 1983, continued to provide the most revenues to states, almost $54 billion.
The Energy Department signed a contract taking title to the radioactive reactor core damaged five years ago in the nation’s worst commercial nuclear accident, at Three Mile Island, near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The contract calls for GPU Nuclear Corp., the plant operator, to pay the Energy Department $7.3 million to remove the highly radioactive fuel in 1986. The department plans to use the core for research at its Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
A Massachusetts woman asserting that she was raped in a tavern by two police officers testified today that she could not recall details of the incident. The 21-year-old woman told an Essex Superior Court jury she passed out after the officers bought her seven and a half drinks in the Ye Olde Ox Pub in Lynn in an hour on November 23, 1983. She said the next thing she remembered was “waking up on the floor, lying on my side in the back of the bar.” Two Lynn patrolmen, Edward H. Jackson, 31, and Unree Poellnitz Jr., 34, were charged with aggravated rape and drugging a woman for sexual intercourse. The woman testified that when she awoke she found herself naked except for shoes and socks. She said Patrolman Poellnitz was naked and standing over her while Patrolman Jackson was sprawled behind her, his legs straddling hers.
A West German automobile mechanic was ordered held without bond today after he reportedly attempted to buy military secrets from an undercover agent for delivery to East German intelligence. The suspect, Ernst Ludwig Wolfgang Forbrich, 43 years old, who was born in East Germany, appeared before United States Magistrate Thomas Wilson, who ordered Mr. Forbrich held without bail on a charge of espionage. He was arrested Monday in Clearwater Beach after a meeting with a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent posing as an Army intelligence officer.
At the meeting in a motel, Mr. Forbrich made a down payment for a paper marked “secret” and promised the rest of an unspecified sum later when the document was delivered to foreign intelligence operatives, according to the government. The document contained “information the unauthorized disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the national defense,” according to a bureau agent, James Patrick Laflin, who signed the complaint. The bureau received information in July 1982 asserting Mr. Forbrich had sold classified United States military secrets to the East German Intelligence Service, agents said.
American Jewry was faulted for not doing all it could have done to save victims of the Holocaust. After a two- and-a-half-year study, an unofficial group of 34 prominent Jewish Americans has concluded the nation’s major Jewish organizations could have done more to save victims of Nazi Germany.
A publication may be sued for libel in any state in which it regularly circulates, under a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court.
New Mexico’s Governor is thwarted by a conservative coalition in the State Senate. Toney Anaya, the state’s first Hispanic Governor, has been unable to push through a bold new social program.
The Palm Beach County Commission today passed an ordinance requiring that all new homes, hotels and motels be made accessible to handicapped people. The measure requires doors in those buildings be at least 29 inches wide to accommodate walking devices and wheelchairs, which are generally 27 inches wide. Many buildings are now constructed with doors that are 25 inches wide or less. The ordinance does not regulate the size of doors leading to closets or storage areas. The law, which is to take effect on January 1, is designed to give handicapped people access they often do not have to bathrooms and other facilities when visiting private homes, hotels and motels, said County Commissioner Kenneth Spillias.
Andy Kaufman and Fred Blassie’s film “My Breakfast With Blassie” premieres.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1175.77 (+4.39).
Born:
Valtteri Filppula, Finnish National Team and NHL centre (Olympics, Bronze medal, 2010, Gold medal, 2022; NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Detroit, 2008; Detroit Red Wings, Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, New York Islanders), in Vantaa, Finland.
Uche Nwaneri, NFL guard (Jacksonville Jaguars), in Dallas, Texas (d. 2022, of a possible heart attack).
Charly Martin, NFL wide receiver (Carolina Panthers, Seattle Seahawks), in Walla Walla, Washington.
Kelvin Smith, NFL linebacker (Miami Dolphins, Carolina Panthers), in Spring Valley, New York.
Marcus Vick, NFL wide receiver and quarterback (Miami Dolphins), in Newport News, Virginia.
Christy Carlson Romano, American actress (“Even Stevens”; “Kim Possible”), in Milford, Connecticut.
Justine Ezarik [iJustine], American YouTuber and actress (one billion views on her YouTube channel; “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”), in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Died:
Stan Coveleski, 94, American Baseball HOF pitcher (World Series 1920; AL ERA leader 1923, 1925; AL strikeout leader 1920; Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators).
History Diaries 