Moscow blamed Washington for an incident Tuesday in which a Soviet tanker struck a mine off a Nicaraguan port. In a protest note, the Soviet Government deplored the incident as a “grave crime” that was committed with the complicity of the United States. Washington denied responsibility. Reflecting the importance given to the incident, the note was handed by Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko personally to the American charge d’affaires, Warren Zimmermann.
In Washington, the State Department denied responsibility. An Administration official said privately that mines had been “handmade” in Honduras for use by the Nicaraguan insurgents against ships. The Soviet protest note said the tanker, the Lugansk, had struck a mine because of the mining policy adopted by “mercenaries and terrorists” armed by the United States. It said this incident and others involving a Dutch ship and a Panamanian ship “leave no doubt that they are perpetrated with the direct participation of agencies and persons controlled by the United States Government.”
A Soviet submarine collided in the dark with the United States aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) in the Sea of Japan, Pentagon officials reported. They said that the 80,000-ton carrier had suffered no damage, but that the 5,200-ton nuclear-powered submarine was dead in the water and being assisted by a Soviet cruiser. The Soviet ships ignored American offers of assistance, the officials said. Naval officers said the Navy would conduct an inquiry. If the evidence showed that the submarine was at fault, a protest will probably be lodged with the Soviet Navy, the officers said. Under a 1972 accord governing incidents at sea, the two navies pledged not to interfere with operations of the other or to operate in ways that could be taken as threatening.
An Iranian leader has criticized the military strategy being used against Iraq and said victory requires the preparation of “correct plans.” This message, a departure from the optimistic reports from Iran on the course of the war, was broadcast over the Teheran radio by Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, who is considered a possible successor to the 83-year-old revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The statement was one of several by Iranian leaders to mark the Iranian New Year, which began today. “War requires manpower, ammunition and wisdom,” Ayatollah Montazeri said. “There should be a corps made up of wise specialists, knowledgeable in the techniques of war, to sit down and draw up plans for the conduct of the war.”
French President Francois Mitterrand arrived in Washington to begin his first state visit to the United States, an eight-day cross-country tour aimed at strengthening diplomatic, economic and technological ties. Mitterrand and his wife. Danielle, landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, on the supersonic Concorde and were met by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. The Socialist leader is to meet with President Reagan this morning. In the afternoon, he will address a joint session of Congress.
Fire swept through the Paris headquarters of the U.N. Educational. Scientific and Cultural Organization, destroying classified records. Police said it was definitely arson. Police and senior fire officials reported evidence that other fires were started in various parts of the building. although they did not spread. The U.S. General Accounting Office has been scheduled to start examining UNESCO documents as part of a congressional investigation, triggered by Washington’s decision to quit the organization at the end of this year.
Scotland Yard said that Paul Kavanagh, 29. was arrested in Northern Ireland and charged in the Irish Republican Army’s Christmas bombing of Harrods in London, in which six people were killed and 94 were hurt. The Daily Mail reported that Kavanagh was arrested by Ulster police in a commando-style raid Friday and flown to London by the Royal Air Force on Saturday.
Pope John Paul II expressed his “profound solidarity” with Polish Roman Catholic Church leaders waging a “war of the crucifixes” against Communist rulers who have banned the religious symbols in the classroom. John Paul’s statement came one day after hundreds of Polish students circulated an open letter seeking his help on the crucifixes. The Polish-born pontiff told about 30,000 pilgrims and tourists at the Vatican that “Catholic society wants crosses in the places where young people are educated.”
Canada and nine West European countries formally committed themselves to a 30% reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions by 1993 to combat acid rain, and they urged Britain and the United States to join them. Ending a two-day conference in Ottawa. The participants sought to mobilize international pressure for action to reduce chemical pollution. French Environment Minister Huguette Bouchardeau stressed that countries with strict emission standards do not intend to allow their industries to suffer competitively as a result of permissive standards elsewhere.
A Salvadoran police chief has been a paid informant for the CIA since the late 1970’s, according to American officials. They said that Colonel Nicolas Carranza, the head of the Treasury police, had received more than $90,000 a year from the CIA. The Treasury police have long been considered the most brutal of the Salvadoran security forces.
A Sandinista guerrilla heroine, Nora Astorga, is to be nominated as Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the United States, according to diplomats in Managua. Some Administration officials said her activities in the Sandinista-led revolution make her unsuitable for a diplomatic post.
A former United States Ambassador who said last month that six “self-exiled millionaires” in Miami were behind right-wing death squads in El Salvador has trimmed his list to five after a confrontation in a Senate hearing room with one of the men he accused. The former Ambassador, Robert E. White, who served in El Salvador in the Carter Administration, was about to testify Tuesday night before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when, without notice, he was joined by an attorney for Arturo Muyshondt, 35 years old, of San Salvador. Mr. Muyshondt, who Mr. White said on February 2 was among a group of millionaires in exile in Florida backing Roberto d’Aubuisson, the rightist leader in El Salvador, sat just feet away as his counsel, former Assistant Attorney General Jerris Leonard, assailed the former Ambassador. Mr. White said that while his allegations came “from a proven source” in El Salvador, there “may have been some confusion about one person named.” He said, “It appears my source may have been in error.”
At least six bombs exploded in Lima shortly after Peru declared a state of emergency in an attempt to prevent a general strike today. Police blamed the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) for the explosions — at a bank five blocks from the presidential palace, near the U.S. Embassy and a Sheraton Hotel, and in two residential areas. No injuries were reported.
Cuba released 19 Americans and two racing yachts seized when the crews sailed too close to the island. the office of Senator Claiborne Pell (D-Rhode Island), which negotiated for the Americans’ freedom, said. The Brigadoon and the Cashasha were seized Tuesday while a four-yacht race was in progress from Miami to Jamaica.
More than 100 people were injured in the earthquake that struck the Soviet Central Asian natural gas town of Gazli on Tuesday, the press agency Tass said today. The agency made no mention of fatalities. But in its report from Gazli, a town of 8,000 in the Kyzyl Kum desert, it described a disaster that sent people out into the streets in the middle of the night, forced evacuation of the hospital, cut gas, electricity and water supplies and damaged many buildings. Tass said the injured had been taken to Bukhara, 60 miles away. It said there had been a break in power supplies to gas wells feeding into the gas transmission system to Central Russia, but that quick action by the night crew had prevented a greater disaster.
The agency disclosed that a previous earthquake, in 1976, had touched off an explosion at the compressor station that threatened damage to the pipeline. “This time no fire broke out,” Tass said, “and the buildings, rebuilt with the seismic conditions in mind, withstood the powerful underground jolt, receiving only light cracks.” The quake registered 9 on the 12- point Soviet scale, a reading designated as “devastating.”
Taiwan’s President Chiang Ching-kuo was reelected to a second six-year term by the National Assembly with a nearly unanimous vote. Chiang, 74, ran unopposed, and his ruling Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) controls more than 80% of the 1,064 seats. He received 1,012 votes of the 1,022 votes cast. His father, Chiang Kai-shek, served five terms as president until his death in 1975.
In Japan, Katsuhisa Ezaki, a candy company executive, worked loose the ropes on his hands and feet and fled today, 65 hours after kidnappers had seized him from his bathtub and demanded a ransom of cash and gold. After having escaped, Mr. Ezaki telephoned the police and was picked up at a railroad cargo terminal. He was barefoot and his mouth was slightly injured, apparently from a gag. The kidnappers had demanded $4.4 million in cash and 100 kilograms of gold. Mr. Ezaki’s concern, Ezaki Glico Company, based in Osaka, is a major maker of chocolates, caramels, ice cream and biscuits.
An amended plan for the merger of the LTV Corporation and the Republic Steel Corporation was approved by the Justice Department. The decision ended a dispute that generated a public split within the Cabinet. The revised $770 million deal requires the sale of Republic plants in Gadsden, Ala., and Massillon, Ohio.
The bankruptcy court system would be revised and rescued from potential chaos by a bill approved by voice vote in the House. A court has imposed a deadline on the action at the end of this month. Before the final vote, the legislators approved a provision that would make bankruptcy judges part of existing federal courts. A measure similar to the House version has been passed by the Senate.
The President and First Lady entertain house guests, including Jimmy Stewart and Betsy Bloomingdale.
Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart focused on primaries in New York and Pennsylvania after the former Vice President’s victory in Tuesday’s Democratic Presidential primary in Illinois. In that state, Mr. Mondale gained a lead in popular support that promised to lessen doubts about his vote-getting ability.
Edwin Meese 3rd’s tax returns for 1980 and 1981 report more than $10,000 in income that is not reported on the Presidential counselor’s financial disclosure statements for those years, according to public documents and several people familiar with the tax returns. Government officials must disclose all non-government income covered by each disclosure statement even if they earned the income before taking office.
The Senate, with Republicans deserting the Administration in droves. easily overrode President Reagan’s veto of a new $180-million. five-year program of water resources research. The vote to pass the bill despite Reagan’s objections was 87 to 12, 21 more than the two-thirds required. The bill then went to the House. which is expected to take similar action, possibly before week’s end. Members of both parties took turns denouncing the veto, charging Reagan was “ill advised to reject that which was described as a catalyst to attract state and private funds for water resources research.
Rep. Daniel B. Crane (R-Illinois) says voters who renominated him proved that his conservative record is a lot more important in his Bible Belt eastern Illinois district than his sexual affair with a congressional page. “We’ve got broad-based support. I’m just thankful and pleased,” said Crane after winning the 19th District’s Republican nomination Tuesday night in his bid for a fourth term in the U.S. House. There had been questions about Crane’s political future since last summer, when the Danville dentist admitted having sexual relations with a 17-year-old female page and was censured by the House.
The House Appropriations Committee approved a plan for spending $1.5 billion in housing assistance that includes money to give the poor an average of $268 a month in vouchers to help them pay rent. Under the program, 15,000 families would be given vouchers to help. pay for any housing they wish to rent. It is the first time a congressional panel has ever approved a voucher program of this kind, said Housing and Urban Development spokesman Robert Nipp. The voucher program, being pushed by HUD Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr., is designed to get poor people to shop for housing that meets their requirements rather than forcing them to live in designated housing projects. The legislation now goes to the House floor.
Four Massachusetts men committed “an explosion of violence and brutality against that small woman,” a prosecutor said today in urging a jury to convict the men of raping a woman on a barroom pool table. But defense attorneys argued that she was “committed to the path of a lie” when she testified against the men. Jurors in the Big Dan’s gang rape trial were expected to begin deliberations Thursday after receiving instructions from Judge William Young of Superior Court. Two other men charged in the same incident were convicted of aggravated rape Saturday after a separate trial. They face possible life terms when sentenced Friday.
Eight more people, including a Cook County judge, have been charged in the undercover investigation of corruption in the Cook County court system, the nation’s largest, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced today. The indictments and a criminal information involved violations of Federal laws that govern the handling of cases. Indicted today were a judge, a lawyer who is an assistant corporation counsel, four private lawyers and two Chicago police officers. Nine others were indicted last December on charges that included extortion, mail fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. Two of them were charged with additional counts today.
An innocent man was sentenced to life in prison for a 1982 armed robbery, the authorities in Dallas announced. They said they were dropping all charges against the convicted man, Lenell Geter, a young black engineer. Officials acted after the Houston police arrested a suspect who, they say, has admitted to a string of armed robberies in which Mr. Geter was implicated.
A convicted killer, Joseph Paul Franklin, was charged today with two counts of first-degree murder in the August 7, 1977, slayings of a black man and a white woman in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Madison, Wisconsin. Mr. Franklin is serving four life sentences in a Federal prison in Marion, Illinois, for shooting two black men in Salt Lake City as they jogged with white women. District Attorney Hal Harlowe of Dane County said the slayings of Alphonce Manning Jr. and Toni Schwenn, both 23 years old, were racially motivated.
Two Tennessee mountain men were acquitted today of hanging an elderly church deacon from an apple tree after he was said to have caught them trying to burglarize his home. The eight-man, four-woman jury returned the not guilty verdicts for Kelly Banner and Donald Grant after 15 hours of deliberations. It was the second trial for Mr. Banner and Mr. Grant, both 36 years old, on charges of leading a gang of teenagers to the home of Ben Tester, 72, and hanging him. Their first trial ended last December in a mistrial with the panel deadlocked.
Federal immigration officials say they doubt they will take legal action against a group transporting a family of illegal immigrants to Vermont. The Guatemalan family of seven, accompanied by a group that calls itself an “underground railroad” is to arrive in Vermont Saturday. The monks at Weston Priory in Weston, Vermont, have offered the family sanctuary. The priory is one of 110 churches and other religious institutions in the country that have declared themselves sanctuaries for refugees. Immigration officials said the group transporting the family was committing a felony. But Arthur Poulin Jr., director of the Vermont and Maine district office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, indicated that charges were unlikely. “I’m not rushing right out for them,” he said. “We have bigger fish to fry.”
Several distinguished scientists said it is scientifically impossible to implement President Reagan’s year-old dream of a high-technology umbrella against Soviet nuclear attack. Because of that, the Administration should drop the idea and instead pursue new arms control agreements that might limit the nuclear threat, according to the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We should abandon this illusion that a workable ballistic missile defense can be developed. said Kurt Gottfried, a Cornell physicist and one of the report’s authors.
A winter storm that strayed into spring spread snow in many areas from Minnesota to Georgia, and hundreds of persons remained holed up in emergency shelters in the Midwest where more than 100.000 homes have been without power most of the week. Down in Dixie, thunderstorms generated high winds and tornadoes that wrecked homes and cars and injured half a dozen persons in the Carolinas. The slow-moving snowstorm that swept out of the Rockies last weekend and deposited up to 18 inches of snow across the Midwest has been blamed for at least 17 deaths. including those of two cross-country skiers.
Part of Central Park in New York City is named “Strawberry Fields” honoring John Lennon. Using golden shovels, the musician’s widow and Mayor Koch helped break ground on the two-and-a-half- acre section of the park called Strawberry Fields, dedicated to John Lennon. The mayor said Miss Ono had given the city $1 million to restore and maintain the area. The plot, just east of 72d Street and Central Park West, is a few hundred yards from the spot where the former Beatle was shot dead on December 8, 1980, in front of his home in the Dakota.
The Ladies Figure Skating Championship in Ottawa is won by Katarina Witt (GDR).
NFL owners passed the infamous anti-celebrating rule.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1170.85 (-4.92).
Born:
Tarence Kinsey, NBA shooting guard (Memphis Grizzlies, Cleveland Cavaliers), in Tampa, Florida.
Warner Madrigal, Dominican MLB pitcher (Texas Rangers), in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.
Franck Perera, French racing car driver, in Montpellier, France.
[Ed: Not a huge Clinton fan, but he was right here. Maybe you lot should study and pass the damned test instead of whining.]
History Diaries 