American-Soviet talks are being held and “could lead to some kind of progress on the more serious issues,” according to Arthur A. Hartman, the American Ambassador in Moscow. Mr. Hartman said he hoped for an early resumption of negotiations on a new United States-Soviet cultural and scientific exchange agreement.
The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) was shadowed by a Soviet submarine for two days before the vessels collided Wednesday night in the Sea of Japan, the carrier’s commander said. Captain David N. Rogers told a news conference aboard the Kitty Hawk that his vessel had been under “almost constant surveillance since leaving Pusan (South Korea) on the 19th (Monday).” The skipper said he was watching a radar screen on the bridge and there was no sign that the submarine was near just before the collision.
Druze and Muslim militiamen clashed before dawn today in gun battles that marked the first major confrontation among opposition fighters since they seized control of West Beirut from the Lebanese Army last month. In street fighting that took at least 4 lives and left 15 wounded, the Druze militia crushed a Libyan-backed Sunni Muslim group that had once been one of Beirut’s most important fighting forces. The fighting occurred as President Amin Gemayel returned here after the breakdown of the national unity conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday and talks in Paris with President Francois Mitterrand on Wednesday. In a communique, the mainly Druze Progressive Socialist Party’s militia accused the rival group, known as Al Murabitoun, of “creating disorder,” kidnapping Christians, collecting “protection money” and “creating sectarian dissension.”
Israeli elections in May or June are sought by a narrow majority in Parliament. The governing coalition of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is expected to delay action on the proposals to gain time to submit its own measure next week setting an election date this fall.
The Soviet Union has agreed to build Iraq’s first nuclear power plant, officials in Baghdad reported. The project is seen in diplomatic circles there as perhaps signaling a new honeymoon between Iraq and the Soviet Union, after years of distrust caused by political differences and Moscow’s efforts to curry favor with Iran. Iraq’s gulf war foe. The Soviet-built reactor will be Iraq’s first for power generation but not its first reactor. A French-supplied nuclear research facility was destroyed in an Israeli air attack June 7, 1981.
Iran has mobilized up to 1 million regular troops. Revolutionary Guards and volunteers for what could be its biggest offensive so far in the Persian Gulf war, Iranian officials and foreign diplomats said. Iranian officials said privately that a million troops are on standby at key points along the 740-mile front with Iraq for what they called an “imminent offensive.” Foreign diplomats, who expect the offensive to start in a matter of days, said there are at least 750,000 Iranians massed near the front.
A fire in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris was deliberately set and was apparently intended to burn down the building, according to police investigators. There was speculation that someone was trying to destroy documents relevant to a scheduled United States Congressional inquiry or to an independent financial audit already under way. Documents vital to a U.S. inquiry into the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization escaped damage in an arson fire at the agency’s Paris headquarters, Henri Lopes. UNESCO assistant director general, said. However, the fire caused at least $625,000 damage to the complex, officials said. No one was injured, and no one has been arrested in connection with the fire.
Militant British miners picketed in record numbers, closing down about 80% of the country’s mines despite a massive police presence. By mid-afternoon, an estimated 5,000 roving pickets had brought about 137 of Britain’s 175 mines to a halt. Police arrested at least five picketers, bringing to 95 the number arrested since the strike began 11 days ago. The strike was called in response to a cost-cutting National Coal Board decision to close 20 mines and cut 20,000 jobs in the next 12 months.
A Northern Ireland man was arraigned under heavy guard today in the bombing of Harrods department store last December 17. The blast killed 6 people and wounded 94. About 20 policemen, some with trained dogs, stood guard outside magistrate’s court in London’s Lambeth district as 29-year-old Paul Kavanagh was escorted inside. Mr. Kavanagh of Belfast, the first person to be charged in the Harrods bombing, entered no plea and did not apply for bail. Magistrate Ralph Lownie ordered him jailed for a week pending a further hearing.
Scotland Yard said Mr. Kavanagh was charged Wednesday night with six terrorist-related crimes from October 6, 1983, to January 25, including conspiring with others in the car bombing outside Harrods. The Irish Republican Army took responsibility for that explosion.
French truck drivers lifted a three-day blockade at three border posts between Spain and France, where about 2,000 waiting trucks were lined up. The blockade began after angry Spanish fishermen burned 21 French trucks in retaliation for a March 7 incident in which a French gunboat fired on two Spanish trawlers illegally fishing in the Bay of Biscay, wounding seven crewmen. The truckers called off the blockade when Spanish authorities agreed to provide them with a police escort through Spain.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered the Philippine armed forces and national police units today to help civil officials insure “a free, orderly and peaceful” parliamentary election on May 14 but to refrain from “partisan political activity.” Delivering an Armed Forces Day speech to top officers and officials, foreign diplomats and other notables in front of the National Defense Headquarters, he said, “In the presence of the Chief of Staff and the commanding generals of the major commands, I now order the members of the armed forces as well as the Integrated National Police to inhibit themselves from engaging in any partisan political activity.” Opposition parties and civic and religious groups had demanded that the Government avoid a repetition of what they termed an intimidating uniformed presence around polling places.
A man who said he was a native of China hijacked a British Airways Boeing 747 jumbo jet to Taiwan. The hijacker, identified as Liang Weijang, 28, surrendered peacefully after the jet landed in Taipei. No one was injured, and most of the 337 passengers and 17 crew members were unaware of the hijacking, which began on a flight from Hong Kong to Peking when Weijiang passed a note to a stewardess saying he was armed with explosives. No explosives were found. A passenger said he overheard the hijacker, who was carrying a Hong Kong identification card, say that he did not mind being killed because “10 million people were killed” during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution in China.
Changes in Central America policy were urged by President Francois Mitterrand. In an address to Congress, the visiting French leader called on the United States to allow each country in the region to “find its own path” to increased democracy and justice “without interference or manipulation.”
A Salvadoran police chief denied he had ever received money as an informant for the CIA. The denial was made by the Treasury police chief, Colonel Nicolas Carranza. Carranza was responding to an article in The New York Times today that quoted American officials as saying he had received $90,000 a year for the last five or six years. “I’ve never accepted money from the CIA,” Colonel Carranza said in a brief news conference at the Treasury police headquarters here. “I’ve had no relations with anyone from the CIA.”
The 81-year-old legislator who heads the Peruvian Communist Party was said to be in a coma tonight after he was hit by a tear-gas grenade in disturbances marking a 24-hour strike. Senator Jorge del Prado was in critical condition after being hit in the chest by the grenade fired by security forces, Senator Enrique Bernales said. Senator Bernales said policemen battling demonstrators killed two students at San Marcos University. The police reported 100 arrests, but said they had no reports of deaths or injuries in the protests, which security forces quelled with tear gas, water cannon and clubs. Civil guards deployed 10,000 troops in the streets in armored cars and armored personnel carriers.
Senate Democrats entered the deficit-reduction sweepstakes with a package designed to trim $50 billion more red ink over the next three years than President Reagan’s plan and $15 billion more than that of House Democrats. The Senate Democrats’ package would hold defense spending growth next year to 4% after adjustment for inflation, between the 7.8% supported by Reagan and the 3.5% supported by House Democrats. It would increase taxes by $75 billion, contrasted with about $48 billion in the other plans.
The White House agreed today to a bipartisan Senate compromise that would reduce an emergency aid package to El Salvador by one-third and delay a vote until after the Salvadoran presidential election Sunday. The agreement, after a day of negotiations, was announced on the Senate floor by Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, the majority leader. The compromise, proposed by Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, and approved by the Senate Republican leadership, provided for a reduction from the $93 million requested by the Administration to $61.75 million. Of this amount, $47 million was earmarked for military aid, and the rest for medical supplies.
Senator Gary Hart told a leading American Jewish group yesterday that he opposed the sale of sophisticated weapons to Arab opponents of Israel, that he considered Israeli settlements on the West Bank legal and that he would, if elected, move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In appealing for the support of Jewish voters in the New York and Connecticut Democratic Presidential primaries, the Colorado Senator told the group, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, that he had been more consistent in his support of Israel than had been his principal rival, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale. But Mr. Mondale, arriving in New York last night, accused Mr. Hart of inconsistency on both the embassy question and arms control. He has said he would immediately move the embassy to Jerusalem if he became President.
A special prosecutor is sought by Edwin Meese 3rd to conduct a “comprehensive inquiry” of any allegations against him. He asked Attorney General William French Smith to seek appointment of such a prosecutor. President Reagan, in a statement, said he supported Mr. Meese’s request and expressed confidence that the findings of an inquiry would enable the Senate to confirm speedily his counselor’s nomination to be Attorney General.
The third deficit-reduction plan in a week was proposed in Washington. Senate Democrats called for a package they said would cut budget deficits by $200 billion over three years. The plan includes $75 billion in tax increases.
Far fewer advertising claims would have to be substantiated by companies under a policy that is to be announced today by James C. Miller 3rd, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. A consumer advocate criticized the proposal as a retreat from enforcement of the law.
A debate over Jewish belief and practice is raging in Denver in the wake of a rabbis’ suspended experiment to counteract the rising rate of marriages between Jews and non-Jews. For six years, nine Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis conducted a program that gave non-Jewish spouses an opportunity to convert to Judaism.
Two men were convicted of the rape of a 22-year-old woman in a bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The jury of six men and six women found two other defendants not guilty. On Saturday, a separate jury convicted two other defendants in the case. Today’s verdict ends the trials in a case that has polarized the local community and attracted national attention because of reports that six men raped the woman on March 6, 1983, in Big Dan’s Tavern while bystanders cheered. After six hours of deliberation, the jury of six men and six women found the defendants John Cordeiro and Victor Raposo guilty. Virgilio Medeiros and Jose Medeiros, who were initially indicted as accessories but later as principals, were found not guilty.
The cancer death rate among American children has fallen at least 44% in the last three decades. largely as a result of improved therapy, a new study says. The study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute near Washington says the number of leukemia deaths each year among children under age 15 fell by more than half between 1950 and 1980. Death rates among children for some other, less common forms of cancer — such as Hodgkin’s disease and kidney tumors — fell even more sharply over the same period, according to the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The Air Force told skeptical congressional supporters of the MX missile that, despite a tight schedule, it can meet the deadline for installing the first 10 weapons in silos in Wyoming by the end of 1986. “It is true that the construction and deployment schedule is tight, but it is certainly within our capability.” Brigadier General Gordon E. Fornell told a House panel on military construction.
The U.S. government is fully liable for damages arising from the 1978 collision of a freighter and a Coast Guard cutter in which 11 persons were killed aboard the cutter, a federal appeals court said in Richmond, Virginia. The collision of the freighter and the cutter, the Cuyahoga, in Chesapeake Bay stemmed from an error made by the cutter’s officers. the court said. Chief Warrant Officer Donald K. Robinson was in command of the Cuyahoga as it steamed northward in Chesapeake Bay on a clear October night for a training cruise. When a ship appeared on radar Robinson erroneously guessed its distance and direction and the freighter rammed the cutter.
A police records supervisor has been arrested and placed on leave after being indicted on charges that she wired $200 to a convicted killer whose escape from prison started an intensive manhunt, the authorities say. Gerreldean McCord, 44 years old, was arrested today on a Federal grand jury indictment charging her with mailing a money order February 28 to Asheville, North Carolina, allegedly for Ronald Freeman, who was free for 19 days before he was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police. The police said had she met Mr. Freeman while visiting her son in the prison.
Firefighters in Nogales, Arizona, will be barred from crossing the border to help their Mexican counterparts because of fears that the city could be held liable for an accident, officials said. Mayor F. D. (Tino) Fontes said he has ordered city attorneys to draw up a new policy barring firefighters and their equipment from crossing the border without authorization from the mayor and the City Council. Alderman Tony Serino said that accepting help from Mexican firefighters in Nogales, Sonora, also is barred, because the U.S. city’s insurance wouldn’t cover them.
A three-judge federal appeals panel stayed the execution of condemned killer Kenneth Griffin, who was scheduled to die today in Florida’s electric chair. The one-sentence order will give Griffin’s attorneys time to file appeals.
Five teachers at a suburban nursery school were arrested today after their indictment on 109 counts of felony child molestation involving an estimated 100 students over a 10-year period, the District Attorney said. Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with hundreds of acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983; nevertheless arrests and the pretrial investigation took place from 1984 to 1987, and trials ran from 1987 to 1990. The case lasted seven years but resulted in no convictions, and all charges were dropped in 1990. By the case’s end, it had become the longest and most expensive series of criminal trials in American history. The case was part of day-care sex-abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Judy Johnson, who made the initial allegations, made bizarre and impossible statements about defendant Raymond Buckey, including that he could fly. Though the prosecution asserted Johnson’s mental illness was caused by the events of the trial, Johnson had admitted to them that she was mentally ill beforehand. Evidence of Johnson’s mental illness was withheld from the defense for three years and, when provided, was in the form of sanitized reports that excluded Johnson’s statements, at the order of the prosecution. One of the original prosecutors, Glenn Stevens, left the case in protest and stated that other prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense, including the information that Johnson’s son did not actually identify Ray Buckey in a series of photographs. Stevens also accused Robert Philibosian, the deputy district attorney on the case, of lying and withholding evidence from the court and defense lawyers in order to keep the Buckeys in jail and prevent access to exonerating evidence. Ray Buckey was jailed for five years without ever being convicted of committing any crime.
The media coverage was generally skewed towards an uncritical acceptance of the prosecution’s viewpoint. David Shaw of the Los Angeles Times wrote a series of articles, which later won the Pulitzer Prize, discussing the flawed and skewed coverage presented by his own paper on the trial. It was only after the case that coverage of the flaws in the evidence and events presented by witnesses and the prosecution were discussed. Wayne Satz, at the time a reporter for the Los Angeles ABC affiliate television station KABC, reported on the case and the children’s allegations. He presented an unchallenged view of the children’s and parents’ claims. Satz later entered into a romantic relationship with Kee MacFarlane, the social worker at the Children’s Institute International, who was interviewing the children. Another instance of media conflict of interest occurred when David Rosenzweig, the editor at the Los Angeles Times overseeing the coverage, became engaged to marry Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.
Mary A. Fischer in an article in Los Angeles magazine said the case was “simply invented”, and transmogrified into a national cause célèbre by the misplaced zeal of six people: Judy Johnson, a seriously mentally ill mother who died of alcoholism; Jane Hoag, the detective who investigated the complaints; Kee MacFarlane, the social worker who interviewed the children; Robert Philibosian, the district attorney who was in a losing battle for re-election; Wayne Satz, the television reporter who first reported the case; and Lael Rubin, the prosecutor.
Of course, none of those involved was ever investigated or charged with prosecutorial misconduct. Philibosian retired to private practice and died in 2013; Ms. Rubin remains working in the legal profession, with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office.
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber (36) weds singer and dancer Sarah Brightman (23) in Hampshire, England.
New York Islander Bryan Trottier ties an NHL record, scoring 5 seconds into a game.
The Ice Pairs Championship at Ottawa is won in a stunning upset by Barbara Underhill and Paul Martini of Canada. Reigning champions Valova and Vasiliev of the Soviet Union finish second.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1155.88 (-14.97).
Born:
Joe Smith, MLB pitcher (New York Mets, Cleveland Indians, Los Angeles Angels, Chicago Cubs, Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros, Seattle Mariners, Minnesota Twins), in Cincinnati, Ohio.
La’Tangela Atkinson, WNBA guard and forward (Indiana Fever, Sacramento Monarchs, Seattle Storm), in Bishopville, South Carolina.
History Diaries 