A rocket-propelled grenade hit a Soviet cultural center in West Beirut. Beirut radio said, but there were no casualties. A telephone call to a news agency said “the Forces of the Islamic Dawn” attacked the center as a first warning and that Soviet diplomats in Lebanon and in Islamic countries will be targets if the Soviet Union “continues its barbaric acts against the Muslims in Afghanistan.” The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December. 1979, and last month, backed by saturation bombing, launched a new offensive against Muslim guerrillas.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said he hopes that his country will not have to use force against Syria to secure release of three captured Israelis. He emphasized, however, that he was not threatening Syria, and he expressed hope that the three, who Israel says. are diplomats and Syria says are infiltrators, would be released soon. Senior Israeli officials also said Israel had asked the United States to intervene in persuading Syria to free the three, captured Tuesday north of Beirut.
The International Press Institute protested Israeli military censors’ closing of the newspaper Chadeshot and urged Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to ensure that such actions do not occur again. Israel on April 28 shut down the afternoon newspaper for four days after it did not submit to the censor a report on the hijacking of a bus by Arab terrorists. The newspaper was the first to disclose that a commission of inquiry had been set up to investigate the suspicious deaths of the four hijackers.
Christian and Muslim factions shelled each other’s sectors of Beirut today in the heaviest bombardment of residential areas in more than three weeks. At least 7 people were reported killed and 37 wounded. The national television put the casualty toll at 10 dead and 75 wounded. The shelling came as attempts to form a national unity government dragged through its sixth day. Rival radio stations reported that shells fell in several residential districts in both the predominantly Christian East Beirut and Muslim-held West Beirut. The television report said some shells landed close to the presidential palace in the suburb of Baabda. One witness in West Beirut said he saw a car with one or two people inside burning on a main street after being struck by a shell. Another witness reported that several people were wounded when artillery fire landed in a seafront area of West Beirut. Some sunbathers fled the beach as the shells began falling, the witness said.
President Reagan renewed a call for Soviet cooperation in talks aimed at reducing the chances of accidental nuclear war and said the United States is still waiting for the Soviets to return to general arms negotiations. In a statement issued for the reopening of disarmament talks in Stockholm this week, Reagan said: “The Western nations are ready for a serious dialogue on confidence-building measures.”
Soviet guards were posted at the Moscow apartment of Yelena Bonner, wife of Nobel laureate Andrei D. Sakharov, and friends said they had no word of her whereabouts. The Communist Party newspaper Pravda and the government news agency Tass said Soviet authorities had taken “timely measures” to stop a plan by the couple to launch “an anti-Soviet campaign in the West.” They accused the couple, who helped found the Soviet human rights movement, of conspiring with American diplomats to have Bonner seek refuge in the U.S. Embassy while Sakharov announced a hunger strike in Gorky. where he lives in internal exile.
Youths in Northern Ireland hurled stones, bottles and gasoline bombs and set fire to buses in four cities across the province on the third anniversary of the death of Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands. Four policemen and three of the youths were injured during several hours of disturbances in Portadown, Newry in County Down, Londonderry and Belfast. Sands, a member of the British Parliament despite his incarceration in Belfast’s Maze prison. died in the 66th day of a hunger strike-one of 10 guerrillas to die in an unsuccessful bid for British recognition as political prisoners.
Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski has returned to Warsaw after a two-day visit to Moscow, where he received a warm personal endorsement from Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko. Chernenko presented Jaruzelski with the Order of Lenin, the Soviet Union’s highest honor, and told the visitor, “We value highly your activities to defend and consolidate the gains of socialism.”
Spain’s “Basque problem” — the Basques’ fight for greater autonomy — will not go away. It seems to be apparent in Madrid and elsewhere that no other issue is as important to resolve if the country’s democracy is to thrive.
An opera attributed to Donizetti has turned up in fragments found in London and Paris. Although there are some gaps in the score, it should be possible to give the work its world premiere some 140 years after it was written, according to a music critic who found the bulk of it in London’s Royal Opera House. The three-act opera is called “Elizabeth.”
A Cambodian rebel leader says a Vietnamese offensive against his troops has been blunted and is unlikely to be resumed because of the imminent rainy season in Indochina. The 72-year-old politician, Son Sann, who heads the rebel coalition opposed to the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin Government in Phnom Penh, asserted here Thursday that his forces had turned back a major assault on his headquarters camp at Ampil, near the Thai border. The anti-Vietnamese guerrillas have seven such camps in Cambodia from which they make hit- and-run attacks on Mr. Heng Samrin’s superior forces. Speaking in an interview in the basement cafeteria of a shabby hotel off Cromwell Road, Mr. Son Sann denied reports that Ampil had been captured. He said the Vietnamese push began April 15, with 105-, 122- and 130-millimeter artillery fire and human-wave attacks that overran a forward position at Ampil Lake, three miles away. But a secondary defense line about two miles from Ampil has been held, he asserted, despite continuing intense artillery and mortar barrages. On one day, more than 1,000 rounds were reported fired.
Japan’s Foreign Minister, meeting his Indian counterpart, said today that his nation hinged its foreign policy on its relationship with the United States. And the Japanese Prime Minister, Yasuhiro Nakasone, on a four-day tour of India with Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, placed a wreath on the grave of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the leader of India’s independence movement. “The U.S.-Japan defense relationship is the backbone and most important pillar of Japan’s foreign policy,” Mr. Abe told India’s Minister for External Affairs, P. V. Narasimha Rao.
El Salvador’s election officials tried, for the runoff election tomorrow, to reduce the confusion that plagued the last vote. They finished delivering ballots and ballot boxes for the presidential election that will decide who determines the Government’s policies on resolving the guerrilla war and restructuring the country’s battered economic and social system. The election will also provide a key test of the Reagan Administration’s policy in Central America.
Many supporters of the presidential candidate of the far right say privately that they will lose the runoff election Sunday because of what they term the negative tone of their campaign and their candidate’s reputation as a man associated with death squads. Some of the supporters of Roberto d’Aubuisson, the candidate of the far- right Nationalist Republican Alliance, said in interviews this week that they were skeptical the ability of Mr. d’Aubuisson’s opponent, Jose Napoleon Duarte of the moderate Christian Democratic Party, to unify the country, and they predicted he would be vindictive as President. But they indicated a willingness to accept the election results and to see what Mr. Duarte does in office. The supporters of Mr. d’Aubuisson said that the reaction of extremist fringe groups associated with death squads could not be controlled but that they did not expect a destabilizing level of violence after the elections.
President Augusto Pinochet is facing a legal challenge over his acquisition of five acres of land bordering his private weekend retreat. A complaint signed by 24 opposition leaders asked the Supreme Court on Friday to order an investigation of possible criminal fraud and conflict of interest in a series of deals that permitted the 68-year-old army commander to buy the land for well below its value. The military Government said in a statement that President Pinochet had donated the land to the state. It said slander charges would be brought “against those responsible for a new attempt to discredit the President.” Some officials say the controversy may cost General Pinochet support in the army, which values its reputation for professionalism and honesty. Army support is considered crucial to Mr. Pinochet’s plan to rule five more years. The controversy centers on two lots in the Maipo Canyon 25 miles southeast of Santiago where General Pinochet assembled 29 acres of private property from 1979 to 1981 and built a three-story home. The lots were expropriated from neighbors in 1981 and 1982 by the Public Works Ministry and later sold to General Pinochet.
Sudanese have fled to Ethiopia by the thousands to escape fighting between the Sudanese Army and rebels in the southern Sudan, according to United Nations and Ethiopian officials. The United Nations estimates that there could be as many as 70,000 refugees in western Ethiopia. Many are in a refugee camp.
The African National Congress said at its Lusaka headquarters today that Swaziland had handed over four members of the group to South Africa. The congress, the main guerrilla movement against white rule in South Africa, said the four, who had been held by the Swazi police at Bhunya, were taken from their cells April 14 and were now in custody in Pretoria. South Africa’s Law and Order Minister, Louis LeGrange, said in Parliament this week that Swaziland had expelled a number of African National Congress members, but he made no reference to any being turned over to Pretoria. The Swazi Government says the guerrillas entered the country illegally after expulsion from Mozambique. Both Mozambique and Swaziland have signed security accords with South Africa, in which each pledged not to harbor insurgents fighting the other.
President Reagan makes a Radio Address to the nation on his plans to reduce waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government.
President Reagan places a call to former President Richard M. Nixon.
As the caucuses in Texas began, an effort by Democratic leaders to bring about a peace agreement among the party’s Presidential candidates was disrupted by renewed threats from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Senator Gary Hart to provoke floor fights at the Democratic National Convention. Hart campaign officials also strongly denounced the plan by the party chairman, Charles T. Manatt, to bring the candidates into a “party unity task force.”
Prospects of another big wheat crop this fall and the lower prices that will result from it also raises the prospects of political problems for the Reagan Administration in this election year. The crop’s size also points to the failure of the government’s efforts to induce farmers to harvest less wheat and bring supply into better balance with demand.
The National Conference of Black Mayors has endorsed a Reagan Administration proposal for a subminimum wage for teen-agers that the Administration is expected to revive in Congress this month. It calls for a wage equivalent to 75 percent of the Federal minimum wage, which is $3.35 an hour. President Reagan submitted similar legislation in 1983, but Congress took no action on it. James M. Stephens, counsel to the Senate Labor Committee, said the mayors’ endorsement had stirred enthusiasm at the White House. Secretary of Labor Raymond J. Donovan praised the mayors, saying a subminimum wage “will cut minority unemployment faster and further than most other Government jobs programs and at no cost to the Government.”
Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole urged Delaware Republicans today to “turn up the volume” on the Reagan Administration’s record on women. “If Ronald Reagan’s record on women were understood, the gender gap would begin to close,” Mrs. Dole said at a meeting of the state party convention, held here to select delegates to the Republican National Convention. She described Republicans as “trend setters” for bringing women into the political system.
An army of workers in New Orleans rushed to keep the scheduled opening of the Louisiana World Exposition on time next Saturday. Four years in preparation at a cost of nearly $360 million, it will be the country’s second World’s Fair in two years.
Harry S. Truman’s 100th birthday Tuesday is being observed in Independence, Missouri, with a series of down-home celebrations, starting today with a big parade in the square. The former President’s home in Independence will be opened to the public as a house museum.
Two 18-year-old rapists have been sentenced in Florida to serve a total of 1,500 years in prison. State Circuit Judge Donald Moran in Jacksonville sentenced Arthur O’Derrell Franklin to 1,000 years and Frankie Lee Owens to 500 years. Under state law, the two men cannot be paroled without the judge’s permission. In three trials in March and April, Franklin was convicted of 20 felonies, including 17 offenses that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison. Owens was convicted of eight felonies, including six that carry life sentences.
Engineers said they have overcome problems with two types of rocket motors that caused the loss of two satellites and the near-loss of a third during space shuttle flights. A McDonnell Douglas team has found a way to determine which nozzles in PAM rockets will fail in space and which will work. Such a procedure might have saved two communications satellites that were lost after being ejected from the shuttle last February. Problems with a much larger satellite rocket carrier called IUS caused the near-loss of the $100-million Tracking and Data Relay Satellite.
The town of Kanosh, Utah, was flooded after the spillway of a small earthen dam burst, releasing water from a reservoir overloaded by mountain snowmelt. Although a shallow depth of water covered two-thirds of the town of 319 residents, no one was evacuated. Officials said damage to farm fields, irrigation systems and homes was probably several hundred thousand dollars. Elsewhere in Utah, mudslides broke water lines in the central part of the state, forcing closure of Snow College in Ephraim.
A Colorado woman whose body was found near a southern Utah desert highway was a victim of roving mass-murderer Christopher Bernard Wilder, FBI agent Terry Knowles said in Salt Lake City. The nude body of Sheryl Lynn Bonaventura, 18, of Grand Junction, was found Thursday slumped beneath a tree on a dirt road 12 miles north of Kanab, Utah. Knowles said shreds of duct tape similar to the tape Wilder is suspected of using on other victims were found near the body. Wilder died April 13 when his gun went off during a struggle with a state trooper in New Hampshire.
Nursing home employee Anthony Joyner, convicted of raping and killing six elderly women in Philadelphia, escaped death in the electric chair when a jury could not agree on imposing the death penalty. The jury deliberated for nearly four hours before announcing they were deadlocked on whether Joyner, 22, should be sentenced to death on his conviction in the slayings of the women, aged 80 to 92, at the Kearsley Home.
A federal jury awarded $660.653 to a Southeast Asian orphan who survived the 1975 crash of a U.S. Air Force transport plane in Saigon. Magali Marie Jose Patricia Maupoint was one of 145 orphans who survived the crash that killed 135 persons, including 98 orphans, during Operation Baby Lift. Lockheed Aircraft Corp., maker of the plane. and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
In Reno, Nevada, Ruben G. Babayan, the owner of a Montessori School, and two other people have been charged with sexually assaulting boys and girls 4 to 5 years old at the school over a 14-month period. Arrest warrants were issued by the District Attorney Friday for Mr. Babayan; a former employee, Greg Sarkissian, and a current employee, Manouchehr Rashidi. Bail was set at $200,000 each. The charges resulted from a six-week investigation in which more than 60 students and former students of the school and their parents were interviewed, according to District Attorney Mills Lane.
[Ed: After some years, the indictments were thrown out. Children told implausible stories, there was no physical evidence, exculpatory statements were suppressed, etc. More of the Satanic / Molestation Panic of the 1980s.]
Astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson have sighted the small Giacobini-Zimmer comet, scheduled to be intercepted by an unmanned U.S. spacecraft in September, 1985. Giacobini-Zimmer, first discovered in 1900, is known to be shedding material — probably dust and frozen gases — from its surface at a brisk rate. The U.S. space agency has already begun to redirect its International Sun-Earth Explorer 3 satellite so that it will fly through the comet’s tail 16 months from now. The early sighting by the Kitt Peak 158-inch telescope will allow NASA time to calculate the trajectories of both and make a more precise mid-course correction.
American rock singer-songwriter Chrissie Hynde (32) weds Scottish ‘Simple Minds’ singer Jim Kerr (25), in a horse-drawn carriage in New York City; they divorce in 1990.
29th Eurovision Song Contest: Herreys for Sweden wins singing “Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley” in Luxembourg.
NHL Prince of Wales Conference Final: New York Islanders beat Montreal Canadians, 4 games to 2.
At St. Louis, Giants reliever Frank Williams makes his lone Major League start, shutting out the Cards, 5–0, in 5 innings. It’s an official game, making Williams just the 4th and last pitcher this century to throw a shutout in his only Major League start.
Baltimore downs the Rangers, 7–5 behind Eddie Murray and two pinch homers. Murray is 4-for-5 with a homer and John Shelby and Benny Ayala hit pinch blasts to tie the mark for pinch home runs by teammates.
110th Kentucky Derby: Laffit Pincay Jr. aboard Swale wins in 2:02.4.
Born:
Eve Torres, American actress and professional wrestler (3 times WWE Divas Champion), in Boston, Massachusetts.
Wade MacNeil, Canadian guitarist (Alexisonfire), in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
History Diaries 