China reported today that its frontier guards killed or wounded 23 Vietnamese soldiers who fired into Chinese territory and crossed the border to plant mines. The New China News Agency said the firefight took place Friday afternoon in Yunnan Province, which borders on Vietnam. It was the latest report from Peking on the border violence that erupted between the two former allies early last week. China made no mention of Vietnam’s charges Saturday that several battalions of Chinese infantrymen had crossed into Vietnam from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, east of Yunnan, and assaulted two strategic hills inside Vietnam. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the report was fabricated by Vietnam. The Voice of Vietnam radio, in a report monitored from Bangkok, Thailand, said today that the Chinese troops were pushed off the high ground with heavy losses Saturday by local armed forces, implying that the fighting there was over. It provided no other details.
The Vietnamese radio quoted Hanoi’s Communist Party newspaper, Nhan Dan, as saying the Chinese were guilty of “very serious acts of war.” Detailing the reported Friday incident, the New China News Agency said a Chinese frontier patrol equipped with a “small artillery piece” saw six Vietnamese soldiers cross the frontier to lay mines at 1:15 PM local time. The patrol opened fire, killing three Vietnamese. “The other three took to their heels and fled,” the agency said. When the Vietnamese returned fire from their side of the border, the agency said, the frontier guards, reinforced by another platoon, shot back and destroyed four Vietnamese dugouts. By 5 PM, it said, “20 dead and wounded Vietnamese were seen to be carried away from the positions.”
The allegations traded by Peking and Hanoi are impossible to verify without a visit to the border region, which is normally closed to foreign journalists. Reports a year ago of border clashes in the same area turned out to have been exaggerated. The latest reports follow a new Vietnamese offensive against Chinese-supported Cambodian guerrillas near the Thai-Cambodian border. Vietnam has charged that China deliberately increases border tensions to help the Cambodian resistance fighters by tying down Vietnamese units. China has denied this and blamed Vietnam for stirring up new border clashes to divert attention from Hanoi’s military activity in Cambodia.
Despite “peace-loving rhetoric” from Washington, Konstantin U. Chernenko said he had not seen concrete signs of readiness to improve relations with Moscow. “Alas, the situation in the world is not improving. It remains very dangerous,” the Soviet leader said, prefacing a gloomy survey of Soviet-American relations to published in the Monday issue of the newspaper Pravda. He blamed the United States for the continued freeze in disarmament negotiations, particularly those on medium-range and strategic missiles. “Our contacts with the American side also show that no positive changes have taken place in the position of the United States on these cardinal questions,” he said, evidently referring to letters reportedly exchanged by Moscow and Washington and to recent meetings between the two countries’ Ambassadors and Foreign Ministers.
Northern Ireland gunmen ambushed a Belfast Roman Catholic magistrate who presided at court hearings for accused terrorists as he and his family were walking home from church, killing his daughter and leaving him critically wounded. The outlawed Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for killing Mary Travers, 22, and wounding her father, Tom, 56, who was hit by six bullets. Travers’ wife, Joan, escaped injury. Police said the Traverses were attacked by at least two gunmen who emerged from an alley after the family attended a Mass at nearby St. Bridget’s Church. The I.R.A. gave no reason for the shooting.
Lebanese officials reported that warring factions reached agreement Saturday night on disengaging their forces in and around Beirut. Fighting continued in the capital, however, and officials said a truce would not go into effect until the disengagement plan is carried out.
Saudi Arabia denied reports that it has leased shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from the United States. Late last week, a State Department spokesman said a small number of the missiles will be leased “for special protective services” for less than six months. He refused to elaborate, but other officials indicated privately that the weapons will be used for defense of a yacht being built for Saudi King Fahd. The Reagan Administration recently canceled the proposed sale of 1.400 Stingers to Saudi Arabia — as well as 1.613 to Jordan — because of heavy opposition in Congress.
Reacting to a threat by a militant Sikh nationalist, the main university in the Indian city of Amritsar indefinitely postponed examinations. The exams at Guru Nanak Dev University, in the Sikh shrine city in India’s troubled Punjab state, were suspended after Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale said his followers would disrupt college exams across Punjab unless the government lifts a ban on a Sikh student group.
A bomb planted by Sikh terrorists exploded in a Hindu temple early today in Punjab state, wounding at least three people, the police said. The explosion occurred in Bhatinda, 110 miles south of this Sikh sacred city on the border of the state of Haryana. In another development in Bhatinda, a Sikh who was scheduled to testify in a case against an arrested Sikh terrorist was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen inside a court, the police said.
Bangladesh’s military government today freed 224 of more than 300 political detainees who opposition parties said should be released to end a deadlock between the two sides on the country’s political future. A statement said the detainees had been released to create a congenial climate for talks with the opposition. The statement said the Government would not release those implicated in crimes like murder, kidnapping or arson. The government said on Friday that it had released 439, including eight former ministers, since February 1.
Two dozen Salvadoran government troops, including two officers, died in an ambush laid by leftist guerrillas in central El Salvador, a military spokesman said. The ambush, about 13 miles northeast of San Salvador, dealt the army one of its heaviest losses since the beginning of the year. In a separate development. Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said violence is increasing in the country, with 80 people killed in the past week, 26 of them by government security forces or right-wing death squads.
World Court jurisdiction in disputes involving Central America will not be accepted by the Reagan Administration for the next two years, the Administration announced. A senior State Department official said the move, which was unexpected, had been taken because of information that Nicaragua was about to bring charges against the United States in the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the official name of the Worl Court.
Caspar W. Weinberger said the United States had no plans of any kind for the use of combat troops in Central America should the Administration’s current strategy to defeat leftists there fail. The Secretary of Defense was responding to a question about a report that top Administration officials had drawn up such plans.
The size of Argentina’s foreign debt is unknown to its new Government. After four months in office and all the international attention given unpaid interest, it has been unable to decide how much it is willing to recognize. The former military regime apparently kept no central records and left behind an “administrative nightmare,” according to present officials in Buenos Aires.
The entire Bolivian Cabinet resigned amid rumors of an impending military takeover. Information Minister Mario Rueda said the move will enable President Hernan Siles Zuazo to again include members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left in the Cabinet. Meanwhile, the former interior minister, Colonel Luis Arce Gomez — who fled to Argentina with General Luis Garcia Meza, the former dictator, after Siles’ election — reportedly has returned secretly to Bolivia, raising the specter of a military coup. Both men are suspected of involvement in Bolivia’s illegal cocaine traffic.
The Government of President Paul Biya of Cameroon said today that remnants of a palace guard revolt were being “mopped up” and urged citizens to remain vigilant against mutineers. The guards tried to seize power before dawn Friday in the West African nation’s capital, Yaounde. President Biya said Saturday that regular army units had achieved “complete victory,” but diplomats said sporadic gunfire persisted today. The state-run Yaounde radio, in broadcasts monitored in Abidjan, said the gunshots in the capital “are simply meant to mop up the last pockets of resistance.” The radio said small groups of rebels were reported near the capital and added, “It is believed the rebel leader has been captured.”
About 90% of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, remained blacked out for a third day as a result of guerrilla sabotage of a key power station. according to a dispatch by the state news agency, monitored in Lisbon. A spokesman for the anti-Communist rebel group, the Mozambique National Resistance, said the attack was aimed at isolating the city and causing the “total collapse” of the Marxist-ruled African nation’s capital. The Mozambican agency gave no details of the blackout’s impact on the city.
Challenger’s crew failed to capture and repair the disabled the Solar Max satellite, a solar observatory, but the five astronauts were going to try again to salvage it and the space shuttle’s mission. Dr. George D. Nelson, hovering in space 200 feet from the shuttle, tried again and again to lock on to the crippled satellite and slow its spin. But as darkness approached and his fuel reserves dwindled, he was forced to abandon the bold mission and return to the ship.
The President and First Lady host a reception in honor of the Ford’s Theatre Benefit Gala.
The President and First Lady attend the play “Shiloh Hill” at Ford’s Theatre.
A secret Swiss bank account was opened in 1978 by John Z. DeLorean while he said he was struggling to build up his fledgling DeLorean Motor Company. This was found out by of his creditors, who have filed claims totaling $100 million in Mr. DeLorean’s bankruptcy proceedings in Detroit. His creditors say the Swiss account was primarily designed to channel company money to him. Court documents also show that Mr. DeLorean later secretly tried to sell the company while publicly trying to raise money to save it.
Most of Philadelphia’s black votes in tomorrow’s Pennsylvania primary will go to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the city’s black elected officials and ward leaders say. They predict that he will win at least 80 percent of those votes. Political analysts say that such a commanding margin over Walter F. Mondale could strengthen Mr. Jackson’s hand at a time when he has intensified his efforts to exact concessions from Mr. Mondale on a number of voting rights issues.
A decision on requiring air bags in cars, scheduled by the Transportation Department for Thursday, might be put off, but aides to Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole say a decision on whether the passive restraints ought to be required for cars is expected soon. There are powerful interests for and against the automobile safety proposal.
Thorne G. Auchter’s critics in Congress and in organized labor take a sharply different view of his accomplishments as head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration than Mr. Auchter does. Mr. Auchter, who says he reduced excessive regulation while improving the welfare of workers in his three years at the agency, returned to private life March 30. His critics say his agency excluded millions of workers from Federal protections on the job and weakened its ability to limit the serious job hazards it was established to eliminate.
The nation’s prison population growth dropped dramatically in 1983, but a record 438.830 inmates were incarcerated at year’s end, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said in its annual report on federal and state prison populations. The inmate population grew by 24,468 during the year, a 5.9% increase. That compared with a record 12.2% jump in 1981 and a 12% boost in 1982. California’s system surpassed Texas’ to become the nation’s largest for the first time since 1976. California saw a 14% increase in 1983 to 39,360, compared with 35,259 in Texas. New York was third with 30,489.
Senate investigators reviewing the nomination of Edwin Meese III as attorney general are looking into the refusal of a 1980 Reagan transition fund, of which Meese was a trustee, along with CIA Director William J. Casey and Air Force Secretary Vernon Orr, to disclose how it used nearly $500,000 raised from private donors, it was reported. Some of the money donated to the Reagan Transition Foundation Inc. apparently was paid as consulting fees to Meese, a top Reagan campaign official. On his 1981 financial statement, Meese listed the foundation among three sources from which he received “compensation in excess of $5.000 paid by one source.”
A Sacramento man carrying a buck knife was arrested outside a White House gate after he made a verbal threat against President Reagan, a Secret Service spokeswoman said. The man, identified as James Storm, 25, was charged with threatening the President’s life and concealing a dangerous weapon. Storm reportedly walked up to the gate and made a verbal threat against the President shortly after 10 am EST Sunday.
The bodies of two elderly women — Amelia Burlando and Margaret Saulnier, both in their 70s — were found in Wayne, New Jersey, the first known casualties of floods that caused damage estimated at more than $35 million and made North Jersey a disaster area. And, a tornado spawned by heavy thunderstorms ripped through an area of Nashville, Arkansas, north of Texarkana, causing damage estimated at $750,000. Heavy rains drenched the Mississippi Valley and the Plains, soaking Seiling, Oklahoma, with nearly 4 inches. New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean has asked the White House to designate Morris, Passaic, Bergen. Essex, Somerset and Sussex counties a national disaster area.
A quadriplegic cerebral palsy victim who was thwarted in her attempt to starve to death under hospital care has quietly checked out of Riverside General Hospital, leaving no clues as to where she was going. The woman, 26-year-old Elizabeth Bouvia, left the hospital at 6 AM Saturday. Mrs. Bouvia entered the hospital 217 days earlier, asking that its staff give her painkillers and hygienic care but no food. She lost repeated state court battles in an effort to get an order that the hospital comply with her wishes. Her father, Ron Castner, said in an interview from his home in Bandon, Oregon, that he feared his daughter now “would go through with her plan.”
Four men who escaped from a Pennsylvania prison eluded a police manhunt for a second day today. Two of their companions were back behind bars within 24 hours of the escape, the authorities said. The escapees were believed to be in the east-central Pennsylvania area, and the warden of the Dauphin County Prison, John Lawson, warned, “They’re extremely dangerous and very desperate.” The escapees still at large were identified as David Jackson of Harrisburg, 18 years old, convicted of manslaughter; Jorge Lopez, 23, a fugitive in a New York case; Maurice Jones of Baltimore, 25, convicted of robbery, and George Lackey, 31, no address available, who was awaiting trial in a fatal shooting.
Three separate spills along the coast from Los Angeles Harbor to Huntington Beach dumped more than 5,000 gallons of oil into the water and onto beaches. No major ecological damage was expected from the spills, a Coast Guard spokesman said, adding that the number of spills was unusual and the amount of oil dumped was significant. The first spill, from an underwater pipeline, came in the main channel of the harbor Saturday morning. It swelled to three thousand gallons by afternoon, the Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard said it would take the Mobil Oil Company about five days to clean it up. The Royal Viking Sky, a cruise ship, spilled 1,240 gallons of fuel oil into the harbor during refueling operations at noon Saturday, and about 1,000 gallons leaked from an offshore oil platform near Huntington Beach.
A nearly extinct, flightless bird has been given a reprieve from an Air Force brush-clearing program that was supposed to help protect an air base from terrorists who might use the brush as concealment but threatened one of the bird’s last nesting areas. Workers today were to begin the clearing operation next to B-52 bomber runways at Andersen Air Force Base, in Agana, Guam. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Guam Rail an endangered species, thus ending for now the Air Force’s plans to clear the breeding grounds. The birds numbered almost 80,000 in Guam, its only known habitat, in 1968, but today there are only about. 50.
Lava seen in a rift zone vent on Kilauea Volcano may mean it is ready to join larger Mauna Loa in simultaneous eruption for the second time in just over a week. authorities said. “I think people here are expecting it at any time.” said Dwight Hamilton, a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaii Volcano Observatory. Mauna Loa has been erupting since March 25. On March 30, smaller Kilauea erupted for less than a day. the first time the two volcanoes have erupted at the same time in 116 years. Kilauea has had a series of intermittent eruptions for the past year.
In two weeks, Apple Computer Inc. plans to introduce a briefcase-size, battery-operated version of its popular Apple IIe that analysts say could pose a significant challenge to the International Business Machine Corporation’s PCjr home computer. The new Apple IIc, the company’s first portable computer, will be shown to the public on April 24 in San Francisco. Its introduction, at a base price of $1,295, marks the second major product announcement by Apple in three months aimed directly at I.B.M.’s growing share of the personal computer market; the Macintosh, Apple’s powerful and so far highly successful entry against the I.B.M. Personal Computer, was brought out in late January. “It’s going to get exciting,” said Lissa Morganthaler, an analyst for Woodman, Kirkpatrick and Gilbreath. “I.B.M. is really going to have to sit up and pay attention.” The Apple announcement comes at a time when I.B.M.’s PCjr is reported to be off to a rocky start, with many dealers saying that consumers are finding the machine too expensive and, with its small keyboard and limited ability to run other I.B.M. programs, awkward to use.
U.S. Census Bureau estimates rank Los Angeles as second most populated city, displacing Chicago which held the position since 1890; New York City remains the top.
4th Golden Raspberry Awards: “Lonely Lady” wins.
Nabisco Dinah Shore Women’s Golf, Mission Hills CC: Juli Inkster wins the first of her 7 major titles in a sudden-death playoff with Pat Bradley, with a par on the 1st extra hole.
Tom Seaver makes an inauspicious American League debut, allowing 5 runs in 4⅓ innings in Chicago’s 7–3 loss to Detroit.
In a 3–1 loss to the Mets, Astros shortstop Dickie Thon is hit in the face by a Mike Torrez pitch that breaks the orbital bone around his eye. Thon will be operated on April 11, but will miss the rest of the season. When he returns, the All-Star shortstop will be plagued with blurred vision and be relegated to a backup role.
In San Diego, Ryne Sandberg cracks a 10th inning run-scoring triple to make the score 7–5 over the Pads, and then steals home to seal it for the Cubs.
Admitting he has a cocaine problem, Pittsburgh’s Rod Scurry checks into a 30-day drug rehabilitation program. He will return to action on May 13th.
Born:
Taran Noah Smith, American actor (Mark Taylor-“Home Improvement”), in San Francisco, California.
Kirsten Storms, American actress (“Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century”), in Orlando, Florida.
Diory Hernández, Dominican MLB pinch hitter, shortstop, and third baseman (Atlanta Braves), in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.
Roy Schuening, NFL guard (St. Louis Rams), in Pendleton, Oregon.
Died:
Pyotr Kapitsa, 89, Russian physicist (Nobel Prize, 1978).
History Diaries 