President Reagan makes a radio address to the nation about U.S. Foreign Policy. President Reagan said further strengthening of American defenses would increase Soviet respect for the United States and might lead to resumption of U.S.-Soviet arms control talks. The President said in his weekly radio broadcast that the Soviet leaders “respect strength and in time we should expect that they would return to the negotiating table.” U.S.-Soviet arms talks were broken off late last year following the deployment of new U.S. missiles in Europe.
Soviet fighter pilots, complaining of what they called frequent Western spy flights in the Arctic, have warned that they will shoot down any intruders into Soviet airspace. the newspaper Trud said. The paper quoted pilots at an unidentified northern air base as saying that Western aircraft repeatedly patrolled to the edge of the Soviet air frontier along the Arctic coast. An air defense general warned that the Soviet reaction would be similar to the one that resulted in the shooting down of a South Korean airliner last September that had strayed into Soviet airspace in the Far East, killing all 269 on board. The Soviets insisted the jetliner was on a spy mission, a charge vehemently rejected by the West.
The Norwegian Government has dismissed Arne Treholt as head of the Foreign Ministry’s press and information office without waiting for his espionage trial. Mr. Treholt, 41 years old, was arrested January 20 and charged with spying for the Soviet Union. The charges were later extended to include paid intelligence work for Iraq. The decision to dismiss him was made in a State Council meeting on Friday and was permitted under the civil servant employment law, which allows dismissal for unworthy conduct. Newspaper reports today said this was the first time in 158 years that a government official had been dismissed without a court decision. The Foreign Ministry said the dismissal should not be seen as an “advance sentence.”
Israeli jets bombed what were said to be Palestinian guerrilla bases in the mountains east of Beirut. The raids were apparently in retaliation for a grenade attack last Monday by Palestinian gunmen in Jerusalem. In Beirut itself, Muslim and Christian militiamen traded volleys of machine-gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and artillery all along the Green Line dividing Christian East Beirut from the predominantly Muslim western half of the capital. Druze militiamen also fought artillery duels with Lebanese Army units still loyal to President Amin Gemayel along the Souq al Gharb ridgeline overlooking the capital.
“All the confrontation lines are ablaze,” the Christian Phalangist radio announced tonight. The state-owned Beirut radio said at least six people were killed and more than 30 wounded in the latest clashes between Christian and Muslim militiamen. At least seven cease-fires called within the last two days by the rival militias failed to take effect. The Israeli air strike came amidst repeated, but unconfirmed, reports in the Beirut press of military buildups in eastern and southeastern Lebanon by Syrian and Israeli troops.
Beirut’s pro-Syrian newspaper As Safir said today that Syria had sent a battalion of tanks, including Soviet-built T-72’s and T-62’s, to strengthen their positions in the southern Bekaa. The Beirut radio said Israeli fighter planes flew a reconnaissance mission over the Druze-controlled village of Bhamdun, 12 miles east of the capital, around 5:30 AM and then returned at 7:30 AM to attack suspected Palestinian guerrilla concentrations. Bhamdun has become the command center for most of the Palestinian guerrilla groups operating in the mountains east of Beirut and has been the target of frequent Israeli raids.
Syria marked the 37th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Baath Party with anti-U.S. slogans and warnings against an Israeli offensive, but President Hafez Assad was absent from the celebrations, with no explanation given for his absence. Assad, who was hospitalized last November with what was described as a heart ailment. was represented by his brother. Rifaat, one of the nation’s three vice presidents and commander of the internal security force.
Nine French paratroopers were killed in an explosion near the outpost of Oum Chalouba in central Chad as a munitions team tried to defuse an artillery shell found inside a vehicle abandoned by Libyan-backed rebels. Six other Frenchmen were wounded. The casualties were the worst France has suffered since last August, when it sent 3,000 men to its former colony to help President Hissen Habre halt a southward advance by Libyan-backed rebels. French Defense Minister Charles Hernu called the incident “a dramatic accident, but not an attack, not an aggression,” adding that it will not alter France’s mission in Chad.
Saboteurs opposed to the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi blew up a big ammunition dump near the Mediterranean coast last month, killing or wounding hundreds of soldiers, a British newspaper reported. Quoting Western intelligence sources and Libyan sources, the Sunday Express of London said the blast ripped through the ammo site at Madinat al Abyar on March 25, destroying the barracks of Libya’s 7th Division and rattling windows in Benghazi, 36 miles away.
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi left on a Mideast peace mission, and the country’s top Sikh political leader warned that the confrontation between Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab state is slipping out of control. “There is mounting resentment among Sikhs. I am finding it difficult to hold them in check,” Harchand Singh Longowal, president of Akali Dal, a militant Sikh party, said in a letter to Home Affairs Minister P. C. Sethi. He called for removal of government paramilitary forces from the sacred Sikh city of Amritsar.
The Philippine armed forces chief, General Fabian C. Ver, has testified that security forces were informed of a plot to assassinate opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. six months before he was fatally shot as he stepped from an airliner at Manila airport last August 21. Ver, testifying before a commission investigating Aquino’s death, said the information came from individuals who overheard two men in a restaurant plotting the assassination.
Agreement on Japanese quotas that would allow American farmers to sell significantly more beef and citrus products to Japan was reached between United States and Japanese negotiators. It ended two and a half years of talks.
The mining of Nicaragua’s harbors in recent months has been supervised by Americans working for the Central Intelligence Agency based on an intelligence ship off Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, according to Reagan Administration officials and members of Congress. These sources say the mining operation marks the first time since the United States began supporting Nicaraguan rebels three years ago that Americans have been directly involved in military operations against Nicaragua.
Plans for use of combat troops in Central America are being made by the Reagan Administration, senior officials said, if the current strategy for defeating leftist forces there fails. They said that if troops were used, they would be employed under the terms of the Rio Pact of 1947.
The military Chilean Government bowed to Vatican pressure today and let four guerrillas accused of murder leave Chile for political asylum abroad. The four guerrillas, who flew today to Quito, Ecuador, are accused of killing Santiago’s Governor last August 30. After they entered the Vatican embassy in Santiago January 16 and asked for asylum, the Vatican asked Chile to let them leave the country. It said the Pope personally supported the appeal.
Chile also expelled two Communists leaders for “promoting totalitarian doctrine.” Jaime Insunza, secretary general of the Communist-led Democratic Popular Movement, and Leopoldo Ortega, a human rights activist and former congressman, were put on a flight to Brazil today. A third flight left today for Paris with Yvonne Legrand, a French consular official who was declared persona non grata Monday because of charges she had helped fugitive guerrillas.
President Hernan Siles Zuazo of Bolivia has announced a package of emergency economic measures including devaluations, increases in prices and public utility rates and a reduction in the fiscal deficit. In a speech to the nation Friday night, the President described the program as “an effort for national salvation.” He said the measures would include devaluing the peso “as many times as needed.” He did not say when the first devaluation would take place or how large it would be. Prices and public utility rates will be increased “permanently” until realistic levels are reached, he said. Mr. Siles Zuazo also said that although Bolivia had pledged to honor its foreign debt, repayments “will have a limit set by the need not to impose greater sacrifices on our people.”
The founder of a Nairobi-based Movement for Human Rights in Africa has been jailed in Kenya for two and a half years for managing an unlawful society, court officials said. They said Edward Zade, a Uganda refugee living in Kenya, was sentenced here Thursday for running the human rights organization after the authorities rejected registration applications. Mr. Zade was arrested in February after the authorities warned him that they would not tolerate hostile activities against neighboring states from Kenyan soil.
Space shuttle Challenger’s crew put into orbit the largest satellite ever deployed by the spacecraft, then began preparing for a historic mission, requiring unusual skill and daring, to repair a solar observatory. The five astronauts, orbiting the earth at a height of 293 miles, 100 miles higher than any previous shuttle flight, deployed the giant satellite at a little past noon Eastern standard time. Terry J. Hart, at the controls of the shuttle’s robot arm, gently lifted the 11-ton, 30-foot-long scientific satellite from the cargo bay and released it into the void of space. Then, with a blast from its rockets the shuttle slowly backed away and continued its pursuit of the crippled observatory, the Solar Max.
Walter F. Mondale won the Wisconsin caucuses amid confusion among voters throughout the state. The results differed from those from a non-binding preferential primary held earlier in the week and won by Senator Gary Hart.
Democratic and Republican leaders are putting a renewed effort into analyzing the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s potential impact on the Democratic National Convention and the general election. Mr. Jackson and his advisers said they would begin meetings this week to plan how the civil rights leader could play a key bargaining role at the convention in San Francisco in July.
President Reagan meets with the Georgetown University’s men’s basketball team, recent winners of the NCAA championship.
The eruption at Mauna Loa could become the largest ever recorded from the volcano, scientists on Hawaii Island said Mauna Loa has pumped out more than 300 million cubic yards of molten rock since the eruption began, said Ed Wolfe, a scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. That has happened twice before — in 1859 and 1950 — but the current eruption has shown no signs of stopping soon. scientists said. A new lava flow covered Power Line Road after it broke from the south side of a main flow at the 6,500-foot level of Mauna Loa. The branching cut off lava to two earlier flows that had threatened Hilo, Wolfe said. One flow had come within four miles of Hilo homes.
Three members of a ranching family near Kerrville, Texas, were arrested after six persons said they had been abducted and held on the ranch as slave laborers. Authorities were investigating a claim by one of the six that he had been forced to burn the body of a man who died at the ranch. Kerr County Sheriff Cliff Greeson said Walter Wesley Ellebracht, 53; his son, Walter Wesley Ellebracht Jr., 31; and daughter-in-law, Joyce Ellebracht, 29, were arrested.
Two federal meat inspectors were indicted in Denver on charges of ordering the destruction of records that could have been used to prosecute a company accused of selling tainted meat to public schools. Dale G. Krows and Charles T. Murphy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture were charged, along with seven officers of the Cattle King Packing Co. of Denver and man accused of trying to influence a witness in the investigation, which was set off last fall by an NBC-TV report. The indictment said that the company sold 50,000 pounds of tainted meat. If convicted, each of the company executives could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison and fined up to $150,000.
Two Cherokee nations meeting at Red Clay State Historical Area in Tennessee agreed to leave control of the park with the state government. “The state park known as Red Clay (operated since 1979 as a historical area by the state) has lived up to the expectations that our ancestors who lived here 146 years ago would have had.” Robert S. Youngdeer, principal chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, told the first council meeting since 1837. The Cherokees are based in Oklahoma and in North Carolina.
Testimony ended in the trial of nine Ku Klux Klansmen and Nazis charged with violating the civil rights of five Communist Workers Party demonstrators who were shot to death at an anti-Klan protest in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979. The all-white federal jury is expected to begin deliberations in Winston-Salem this week.
The federal government’s energy consumption has been rising since the Reagan Administration took office, while nationwide energy consumption has gone down. According to Energy Department surveys, between fiscal 1980 and fiscal 1983, consumption by federal civilian agencies rose 1.9% after dropping 5.3% from fiscal 1975 to 1980. Between fiscal 1980 and 1982, the Defense Department’s consumption rose 6.42% after dropping 7.3% in the previous five years.
Four children died in an early-morning house fire today, less than 24 hours after another blaze in Baltimore killed five people, officials said. The fire today, which damaged eight other rowhouses on the block, broke out at 2:15 AM, Deputy Fire Chief Leonard Haywood said. Three of the children were found in a third-floor bedroom and the other was in a second-floor bedroom, he said. On Friday, three men and two women were killed when an arson fire swept through second-story apartments over the 308 Club, a striptease bar and grill in Baltimore’s adult entertainment district. Gordon Wiggs, 52 years old, was charged with five counts of homicide in that fire, a police spokesman said.
A helicopter on a surveillance flight for a Trident missile launching plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean early today and sank. Three crewmen were rescued by a Navy ship, but five more were missing. Rescue workers searched a 900-square-mile area, but found nothing but a few helmets and life vests. The search was suspended at nightfall and was scheduled to resume Sunday. The helicopter crashed about 50 miles northeast of Patrick Air Force Base about 2:20 AM, just before an unarmed Trident missile was launched from the USS Georgia, a ballistic missile submarine, the authorities said.
Protection efforts for a scarce species of birds on Guam have led the Strategic Air Command to postpone plans to clear a wooded area at one of its bases to protect nuclear weapons from terrorists. The area is the chief remaining habitat of the flightless bird known as the Guam rail.
Houston’s economy is lagging behind the national recovery despite a modest upturn in its dominant oil and gas industry and recent gains in employment. Few people expect a speedy return to its recent boom years.
Marvin Gaye’s father admits he fatally shot the singer a week ago Sunday but insists, “I didn’t mean to do it,” according to an interview published in the Sunday issue of The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. “I’m sorry and I regret what happened to this moment,” Marvin Gaye Sr. said in the interview, conducted in the Los Angeles County Jail. “I do know I did fire the gun. I was just trying to keep him back off me.” The 70-year-old retired pastor is being held there in $100,000 bail.
Mr. Gaye’s wife, Alberta, told the police that after an argument and shoving match, he fired point-blank at her son. Mr. Gaye said he was 20 feet away when he fired. He said that before the shooting his son “started beating me, kicking me.” He said his son used cocaine heavily and that under the drug, he turned into “something like a beastlike person.”
Senator Frank Church of Idaho died at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. He had been undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. The Democrat had been a member of the Senate for 24 years and was a former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He was 59 years old.
Detroit Tigers pitcher Jack Morris no-hits the Chicago White Sox 4–0 at Comiskey Park. On NBC’s nationally televised Game of the Week, Detroit right-hander Morris throws a no-hitter, blanking the White Sox at Comiskey Park, 4–0. Morris pitches the gem on just 3 days’ rest. He strikes out eight and walks six. The 29-year-old becomes the first Tiger hurler to accomplish the feat since Jim Bunning held Boston hitless at Fenway Park in 1958.
Dwight Gooden allows one run in 5 innings in his Major League debut, earning the win in the Mets’ 3–2 victory over Houston. At 19, he is the youngest National League player.
Born:
Courtney Taylor, NFL wide receiver (Seattle Seahawks), in Carrollton, Alabama.
Died:
Frank Church, 59, American lawyer and Democratic politician (United States Senator from Idaho, 1957-1980).
History Diaries 