Britain expressed disapproval to the Reagan Administration of the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors. It said the mining was an interference with international shipping and asked American help in halting the mining, a British Embassy spokesman in Washington said. “We have made clear that we disapprove of any threat to the principle of freedom of navigation,” said Andrew Burns, the press counselor of the British Embassy. “What we have done is register our concern and said we don’t like all this and tried to enlist American cooperation in stopping any recurrence,” Mr. Burns added. But he said Britain had no plans to join France, which has not only voiced concern but said it might help the Nicaraguan Government remove the mines from its harbors.
At the same time, American and Central American sources reported that involvement of American operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency in the mining operation was deeper than previously disclosed. An Administration official said Americans had made and deployed the mines, but left it unclear whether this meant Americans were overseeing an operation carried out by Central Americans or were actually involved in planting mines.
Some softening of the crucifix ban in Poland’s public buildings was agreed to by the Government. Officials close to the Roman Catholic Church said the Government agreed to relax its ban after more than 450 clergymen agreed to join Bishop Jan Mazur, who had been fasting on bread and water in a show of support for students who protested the ban. Bishop Mazur ended his fast and congratulated the students for forcing the Government to compromise.
Pope John Paul II has rejected a proposed meeting with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, the conservative cleric who opposes changes within the church, during the Pope’s trip to Switzerland June 12-17, a Vatican source said today. The source said the request for a meeting had come from the Rev. Franz Schmidberger, the German priest who succeeded Archbishop Lefebvre as head of the traditionalist St. Pius X Sacerdotal Fraternity. The source said the timing and place of the proposed meeting, while the Pope is on a highly publicized foreign tour and near the heart of Archbishop Lefebvre’s movement, suggested the archbishop was not seeking a serious discussion. Since becoming Pope in October 1978, John Paul has met at least twice with the 77-year-old French prelate.
Iraq said its warplanes bombed Iranian troops today east of the Iraqi city of Basra, inflicting heavy losses. Iran said its navy shelled Iraqi shore positions to the south. Both sides in the 3½-year-old war reported intense fighting along the southern front from the Huweizah marshes northeast of Basra to the Persian Gulf. A Iraqi military communique broadcast by the Baghdad radio, monitored in Nicosia, said waves of Iraqi jets scored “direct and effective hits” on the troop concentrations. In the Huweizah marshes east of the Tigris River, Iraqi shells set ablaze several Iranian positions and destroyed an ammunition dump, it said. Iranian gunners shelled Basra and the central border towns of Mandali and Shehabi, wounding five civilians and destroying two homes, the Iraqi military said.
Israel is diverting U.S. aid intended for Palestinians away from programs that would strengthen the Arabs’ economic base on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to an independent study by an Israeli expert on Arab affairs. However, a State Department official in Washington called the report “misleading,” and Israeli officials denied the allegations. The study says the money is going instead into projects that free Israeli funds to be used for Jewish settlements.
Vietnam’s Foreign Minister says his nation is ready to discuss ways to ease tensions with China, which today called Vietnam “the main threat to Southeast Asia.” In an interview published by Vietnam’s official press agency, Foreign Minister Nguyễn Cơ Thạch also denied Chinese accusations that Vietnamese troops had gone into Thailand to attack Cambodian resistance camps.
The country’s top military officer told a civilian board of inquiry today that he ordered Benigno S. Aquino Jr. arrested on his return to the Philippines last summer because the opposition leader was under a death sentence imposed by a military court. Mr. Aquino was slain as he was being escorted from an airliner by military officers. At the same time, the officer, General Fabian Ver, denied that elements of the military or civilian Government had been involved in the August 21 assassination. General Ver, who is head of Philippine intelligence, also told the five-member panel that Philippine intelligence agents had learned of a Communist plot against Mr. Aquino’s life seven months before the shooting. He added that agents had also “extrapolated threats to Senator Aquino’s life” from personal enemies and from his rivals in the opposition coalition.
The General made his comments in five hours of testimony at a packed auditorium here. Some of his remarks were met with boos and jeers from members of the overflow audience. Mr. Aquino, the leading political opponent of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was shot dead as he stepped from the airliner after three and a half years of self-exile in the United States. The Government said he had been killed by Roland Galman, a gunman hired by Communists, but evidence gathered by the civilian panel has raised questions about whether the military was directly involved in the slaying.
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, under criticism for a proposed six-day official trip to northern Africa, said today that she would shorten it because of the turmoil in the northern state of Punjab. Mrs. Gandhi told Parliament she would now leave on Saturday on a three-day visit to Libya and Tunisia. Her visits to Algeria and Egypt have been postponed. The shortened trip was announced after opposition leaders and newspapers urged Mrs. Gandhi to cancel her tour because of the situation in Punjab, where Sikhs have killed at least 28 people, including two Hindu politicians, in the last two weeks.
Sikh gunmen wounded a Hindu in Amritsar today and another in Patiala, to the southeast.
Members of Cameroon’s Republican Guard unsuccessfully attempt to overthrow the government headed by Paul Biya. An attempted coup in Cameroon failed, the West African nation’s Government radio reported. The radio said troops loyal to President Paul Biya were clearing up the last pockets of resistance. The announcement, which could not be immediately confirmed, followed reports of gunfire and unexplained military movements in the capital, Yaounde. Early today, however, radio broadcasts from Cameroon stopped suddenly, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC, which had been monitoring the official Yaounde radio, said broadcasting had stopped shortly after 7 P.M. Friday New York time and had not resumed two hours later. The station had been playing popular music when it went of the air without signing off, the BBC said.
Residents of the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean voted to become part of Australia. All 161 eligible voters among the islands’ 300 citizens turned out for the election supervised by the United Nations. The future of John Clunies-Ross, head of the family that has ruled the islands for 150 years, is in doubt.
President Reagan places a call to Miguel De la Madrid Hurtado, President of Mexico.
The 11th NASA Space Shuttle Mission (STS-41C) with the orbiter Challenger launches from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Like handymen responding to a service call, five astronauts rode off in the space shuttle Challenger today, climbing at full throttle into high orbit, with bold plans to find, pick up and then repair a disabled scientific satellite. The planned six-day mission, the first attempt to use the shuttle for servicing satellites, was launched on schedule at 8:58 AM. After checking out the spaceship and finding that all aboard was well, the astronauts were set to handle their first task, the deployment of a 30-foot-long, 11-ton satellite carrying 57 experiments into the effects of the space environment on metals, electronics, other materials and tomato seeds. The satellite, the Long Duration Exposure Facility, is to be released into orbit Saturday morning.
Then Captain Robert L. Crippen of the Navy and Francis R. Scobee are to maneuver the Challenger higher and closer to their primary target, the Solar Max satellite that has been crippled for more than three years. They are to rendezvous with the satellite Sunday. In a daring operation, two other crewmen, Dr. George D. Nelson and Dr. James D. Van Hoften, are to retrieve the satellite and, securing it inside the cargo bay, attempt to replace its malfunctioning components. Their work will involve two long space walks, on Sunday and Tuesday. Then on Wednesday, the next to last day of the flight, Terry J. Hart, the fifth astronaut, is to redeploy the rehabilitated Solar Max from the end of the shuttle’s robotic arm.
In combination with the Soviet Salyut and Soyuz missions, this is the first time that 11 people are in space simultaneously.
President Reagan presents a major foreign policy speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies at Georgetown University. President Reagan criticized Congress for what he said was its reluctance to support the use of military force to advance foreign policy goals. His criticism in a speech at Georgetown University was the latest in a series of Administration complaints that Congress bore considerable responsibility for recent foreign policy problems. Mr. Reagan called for a “bipartisan consensus in support of U.S. foreign policy.”
President Reagan meets with the USC’s women’s basketball team, recent winners of the NCAA championship.
The Federal Reserve Board raised the interest rate that it charges on loans to financial institutions by half a percentage point, to 9 percent. It was the board’s first overt move to tighten credit during the current economic recovery. The White House said President Reagan was disappointed by the action and expressed the hope that “this will not result in a further increase in the prime interest rate” charged by banks. Within the White House and the Treasury Department, officials have expressed the fear that higher interest rates will choke off economic expansion and harm Mr. Reagan’s chances for re- election. The Federal Reserve issued a brief statement saying it was raising its key rate, called the discount rate, simply to follow other interest rates upward. It said it was not aggressively seeking to drive up interest rates to head off a possible resurgence of inflation.
A day after President Reagan defended his record before a women’s group, Governor Cuomo went before the same group yesterday and attacked Mr. Reagan’s economic policies. He said the policies had widened the gap between rich and poor and had thus endangered all Americans. On Thursday, Mr. Reagan spoke to the Women Business Owners of New York and, in defending his Administration against allegations that it was not interested in the welfare of women, stressed that the economic recovery was improving the lives of women. But Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who supports Water F. Mondale for President, said that Mr. Reagan had left out of his speech the homeless, the unemployed and many others who he said had not benefited from economic improvement in the past year.
Antipollution laws are not protecting underground water supplies, according to a study prepared for Congress by the staff of its Office of Technology Assessment. The study said the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules for controlling hazardous wastes are failing to protect ground water. An E.P.A. official who participated in the report’s preparation, said, “Ground water is being contaminated because the regulations to protect it are largely cosmetic.”
The jobless rate stayed at 7.7 percent in March, unchanged from February, the Labor Department reported. Total employment increased by 250,000, far below the unusually large increase of 700,000 in February, but other figures for March were said to have indicated continued strength in the economy.
Amid the caviar and cocktail sauce, the whole dressed turtles and the frog’s legs, the candidate donned an apron labeled Fritz and expertly scaled a walleyed pike at a local fish market today. Then Walter F. Mondale cut into Gary Hart, resuming his strategy of attack after an evening of decorous debate with Mr. Hart and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. On a puddle-jumping tour through a rainy Pennsylvania and a sunny Wisconsin, the former Vice President painted Mr. Hart as insensitive to the plight of workers and slippery on the issues. “You need a President who reaches out and lightens the burden on the average American family,” he told a knot of pedestrians gathered in a neighborhood of wholesale food markets. Later, stopping in Madison and Milwaukee to woo support in the Wisconsin Democratic caucuses Saturday, Mr. Mondale promoted himself as the leading proponent of a freeze on nuclear weapons, saying Mr. Hart had come late to that view. Wisconsin was the first state to pass a referendum supporting a mutual, verifiable freeze, and the issue is an emotional one there.
Speaking in a state and a city noted for political independence, Gary Hart today called on Democrats to break with “the failed leadership and failed policies” of the party’s past. “As much as we want to remove Ronald Reagan, that will not be as easy as it seems,” said the Colorado Senator, who is seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination. He addressed one of the biggest crowds of his campaign, at least 2,000 people, on the steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison atop a hill in the center of the city on a sunny, warm day. On Tuesday, while he was being resoundingly defeated in New York State by Walter Mondale, Mr. Hart nosed out Mr. Mondale in this state’s nonbinding primary, in which, unlike the closed New York primary, independents and Democrats can cross over and vote in the Democratic contest. On Saturday, Wisconsin will begin the process of choosing convention delegates in caucuses.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson told a joint session of the Wisconsin Legislature today that he was the only Democratic Presidential candidate talking about “social change” rather than “social service” and the only candidate who has committed himself to a real end to the arms race.
Delegates to the world conference of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have voted to accept women into the priesthood under the terms of an “inspired document.” A large majority of the 2,800 delegates Thursday decided to accept as church law the written revelation presented by Wallace B. Smith, president and prophet of the 230,000-member church. The document will become part of “The Doctrine and Covenants,” a book of statements church members accept as the “mind and will of God.” The vote brings the church in line with the main Protestant bodies, the majority of which ordain women. However, the move further heightens the differences between the reorganized church and the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which does not ordain women.
Teamster truck drivers refused to cross picket lines today to collect garbage at Las Vegas casinos but a big influx of weekend tourists ignored pickets and crowded into the hotel-casinos. Many were drawn by reductions of 30 percent to 50 percent in the price of hotel rooms. One major hotel planned to advertise in out-of-state newspapers to replace the 15,000 striking workers. The hotels have already hired 1,500 non-union workers. Members of four striking unions bowed to a court order today to reduce the number of pickets outside casinos.
There have been 142 arrests since the strike began Monday, but the police reported no arrests since early today. Von Eisinger, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 631, said truck drivers stopped picking up garbage at struck hotels. Vince Helm, executive director of the Nevada Resort Association, said garbage was being hauled away by privately hired contractors. The waiters, cooks, musicians, stagehands and bellhops who are on strike seek an 8 percent wage increase and fringe benefits but employers want a wage freeze.
A Federal grand jury today indicted a father and son who operated the Cattle King Meat Packing Company, six of their associates and two Agriculture Department employees on charges that they violated sanitary laws. The company at one time supplied one-fourth of the beef used in the Government’s school lunch program. The indictments charge that the operators of the Colorado plant sold adulterated or misbranded beef and misrepresented their beef products as having passed inspection when they had not.
A Massachusetts laundry was arraigned today on charges of stealing $1 million in gas and electricity. Officials said it was the largest energy theft in the country. The Stoneham Laundry in Lawrence, Massachusetts, was charged with stealing energy over 5½ years from the Bay State Gas Company and the Massachusetts Electric Company, according to District Attorney Kevin Burke. The alleged theft was said to be accomplished by tampering with meters. The investigation by Mr. Burke’s office was prompted by an anonymous telephone call to Bay State Gas. Jordan L. Ring, the company’s lawyer, said the company denies the charges and maintains the utilities failed to replace the meters every seven years as they are supposed to.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1132.22 (+1.67).
Born:
Max Bemis, American rock singer-songwriter (Say Anything), and comic-book writer, in New York, New York.
Died:
Jimmy Kennedy, 81, Irish singer-songwriter (“Teddy Bears’ Picnic”; “My Prayer”).
History Diaries 