The Danish Parliament has voted to stop financial support for the deployment of new U.S. nuclear missiles in other parts of Western Europe. The decision made Denmark the first member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to withdraw completely from the deployment, begun late last year, of 572 medium-range missiles in five NATO countries. None of the missiles were due to be sited in Denmark. Prime Minister Poul Schlueter’s center-right coalition government abstained on the measure. Parliament voted to transfer a remaining $4.8 million that had been earmarked for the deployment to Denmark’s domestic defense needs.
The 152 member nations of the International Civil Aviation Organization today unanimously approved a ban on the use of military force against civilian aircraft. The organization acted at a special meeting called in response to the shooting down of a South Korean jetliner by Soviet fighters last September in which 269 people died. The ban takes the form of an amendment to the basic international treaty covering aviation. It must be ratified by 102 members of the organization before it takes effect. The amendment says that nations may require aircraft illegally flying in their airspace to land, and that they may set “severe penalties” for such violations. It provides no specific penalties.
King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia of Spain began a six-day visit to the Soviet Union that officials of both sides regard as cementing relations between Moscow and Madrid, re-established in 1977 after a break of nearly 40 years. The two nations broke ties in 1939 when General Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces defeated the Soviet-backed republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou accused Washington of attempting to dominate the world and praised the Soviet Union as a major force in resisting the spread of U.S. influence. “The Soviet Union is a force against the spread of imperialism and capitalism,” Papandreou said in a speech in Athens to his Panhellenic Socialist Movement. He said the United States seeks dominance to satisfy its economic needs, whereas the Soviet Union uses economic relations to “protect its strategic needs and goals.”
East Germany joined Moscow in announcing it would not take part in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles this summer. East Germany has only 17 million people, but it has become a world power in sports.
Ariel Sharon’s prospects for regaining the office of Israeli defense minister were reduced when he finished three places behind Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on the Herut Party’s election list. Based on the ranking, Shamir would be under no pressure to award the portfolio to Sharon, who was forced to resign after being accused of responsibility in the Lebanese Christian massacre of Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps in 1982. Deputy Prime Minister David Levy and Defense Minister Moshe Arens placed second and third on the Herut list, which ranks candidates for the parliamentary elections scheduled for July 23.
Tens of thousands of Libyans demonstrated in support of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, two days after the failure of an attack aimed at the radical Libyan leader, a government spokesman said. Tightened security was evident in Tripoli. The United States, Sudan, and Tunisia denied Qaddafi’s allegations that they were involved in the attack.
Lebanon decided to break relations with El Salvador and Costa Rica to protest their plans to move their embassies in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, political sources said. The decision would make Lebanon the second Arab country after Egypt to break relations with the two Central American countries.
The Lebanese Cabinet, with nine of its 10 members present, met in a Christian-controlled suburb today, with the restructuring of the army and the situation in Israeli-occupied South Lebanon high on the agenda. President Amin Gemayel presided at the session, held at Bikfaya, the home town of the Gemayel family, 10 miles northeast of here. It was chosen after two of the five Muslim ministers — Nabih Berri, the Shiite leader, and Walid Jumblat, the Druze leader, said the presidential palace at Baabda, a southeast suburb, was unsafe. The only absentee was one of the five Christians, Interior Minister Abdullah al-Rassi. Another Christian, Information Minister Joseph Skaf, was appointed acting Interior Minister. Mr. Rassi has stayed away from Cabinet meetings as a gesture of solidarity with his father-in-law, former President Suleiman Franjieh, who did not approve of the composition of the Cabinet, formed by Prime Minister Rashid Karami 10 days ago.
Pope John Paul II arrived in Bangkok, Thailand today in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country and celebrated mass at a stadium before 45,000 people. Speaking in his homily of the small number of Roman Catholics in Thailand – 200,000 of almost 50 million people — the Pope said he understood their problems. But Buddhist tradition, he added, “provides a fertile terrain for the seed of God’s word, proclaimed by Jesus Christ, to take root and grow.” Vatican sources who are expert on Southeast Asia said, however, that the Pope’s visit to Thailand, due to end tonight, had a purpose not confined to the country’s borders. They said the Pope wanted to register the Church’s concern over the fate of the Catholic faith in Vietnam, where about 3 million of the country’s more than 50 million people are said to be Catholics. The informants said the Vatican feared the Vietnamese authorities were trying to create a national church separated from Rome and dominated by the Communist Government.
Far-rightist Salvadoran delegates refused to take part in the official count of votes in Sunday’s presidential election, saying the results were being tabulated illegally. Nonetheless, officials continued with the count. With ballots from 4 of El Salvador’s 14 provinces counted, Jose Napoleon Duarte, the candidate of the moderate Christian Democrats, was said to have 59 percent of the vote.
The House gave President Reagan a major victory by narrowly approving his request for military aid to El Salvador that would give him broad discretion in spending the money. The measure was approved in the Democratic-controlled House by a vote of 212 to 208. Proponents argued against imposing human rights conditions that could not be met by a struggling new democracy.
The World Court upheld Nicaragua in ruling unanimously that the United States should halt immediately any attempts to blockade or mine Nicaraguan ports. The Court, granting Managua’s request for a preliminary restraining order, also asserted by a vote of 14 to 1 that Nicaragua’s political independence “should be fully respected and should not be jeopardized by any military or paramilitary activities.”
Washington reacted to the World Court’s interim ruling on Nicaragua by affirming it found nothing in the decision it could not accept, including the call for an end to mining Nicaraguan ports.
An invasion scare in Nicaragua prompted the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Managua to burn secret cables and other documents and alert U.S. dependents to possible danger. State Department officials said. The source of the false report was a Managua radio station, which said that an invasion by Honduras was imminent and possibly already under way. Sources said the embassy cabled the State Department that “we have reduced our classified holdings,” apparently as a precaution in line with ground rules in effect since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Iran.
The Soviet Union called President Reagan’s charges that Communists threaten Central America “a shameless lie.” The official Tass news agency described the charges, made in a televised address, as “yet another exercise in demagogy, slander… chauvinism and hatred for other people.”
An unemployed Canadian factory worker who was suspected of shooting and slightly wounding two people on a city street surrendered this morning after holding the police at bay outside his home for more than a day, the authorities said. He left the house unarmed and was taken to police headquarters for questioning, the police said. The police identified the man as Jean-Claude Nadeau, 39 years old. They said he opened fire on a Quebec City street early Wednesday morning, then fled to his home a few blocks away and barricaded himself. According to the police, a relative reported that Mr. Nadeau had been unable to sleep Tuesday night because he was troubled by news of an attack that day in the Quebec legislature in which a man firing a submachine gun killed three people and wounded 13. No other connection was established between the two incidents. Friends of Mr. Nadeau said he recently lost his job when a shoe factory closed.
Rising interest rates in the United States were criticized by President Raul Alfonsin of Argentina. In an interview, he said the two half-point rises in the prime lending rate in the last month had almost overnight added $600 million to the amount that Buenos Aires must pay over the next year on its $45 billion foreign debt and could “jeopardize Argentina’s social peace.”
The Haitian Government decreed an immediate halt to all political activity and pamphleteering today, a day after a second opposition newspaper began publishing. The measures came less than a week after President Jean-Claude Duvalier reiterated guarantees of freedom of the press and respect for human rights in a Press Day speech May 5. On Monday the United States Congress plans to review a $54 million annual aid package for Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest nation. The aid is tied to the Duvalier Government’s human rights performance. Two decrees were issued today by Interior Minister Roger Lafontant, second-in-command to President Duvalier. One orders the immediate halt of all political activities except “those of the President’s party.” The second decrees a halt to all political pamphleteering.
The nation’s postwar baby boom generation overwhelmingly prefers President Reagan over his Democratic rivals, a nationwide poll showed today. The Los Angeles Times Poll, published today, showed those under 39 years old backed Mr. Reagan’s re-election bid by an even wider edge than Americans over 39. The nationwide telephone poll of 2,700 people, conducted April 28 to May 3, showed Mr. Reagan the favorite by 58 percent to 37 percent over Walter F. Mondale and by 55 percent to 39 percent over Gary Hart.
New advances in Soviet technology cast doubt on the ability of the MX missile to destroy the Soviet land-based missile force, according to a new report by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress. The Pentagon said the conclusion was in error and that the MX was fully able to hold “the hard Soviet targets at risk.”
President Reagan participates in a ceremony to present the Enrico Fermi Award to two scientists from the Department of Energy.
President Reagan addresses the National Realtors Association convention.
President Reagan attends a fundraiser for large donors to Senate and Congressional campaign funds. President Reagan, presiding over what Republicans described as the richest fund-raising dinner in political history, tonight contended that his tax cut had been proportionately harder on the rich than on the poor. “Today, our tax code is fairer than it was under the Carter-Mondale Administration,” he declared, addressing a $1,500-a-plate Republican dinner at which at least $4.7 million was contributed, according to party officials.
Mr. Reagan, rallying supporters at the party’s Senate-House campaign dinner, attacked Democrats for asserting that his Administration’s policies were unfair. He cited what he said were results of the 25 percent cut in personal income taxes that his Administration pushed through Congress in 1981. In 1982, he said, taxpayers earning less than $20,000 paid 8 percent less in taxes than in 1981, while those earning more than $50,000 paid 8 percent more. Those in the middle bracket paid 1 percent less, he said, while those earning more than $500,000 paid a “whopping 41 percent” more than in 1981.
The Federal Elections Commission on Wednesday authorized the payment of more than $3.5 million in Federal matching funds to President Reagan and three contenders in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The grants brought the total of Federal matching funds for the 1984 campaign to more than $28 million, a commission spokesman said.
Lower A.T.&T. long-distance rates were ordered by the Federal Communications Commission. The agency ordered the American Telephone and Telegraph Company to reduce the rates 6.1 percent, beginning later this month, in a move that is expected to save consumers about $1.7 billion a year.
Radioactive fallout from above- ground nuclear tests in Nevada in the 1950’s and early ’60’s caused nine people to die of cancer, according to a ruling by a federal district judge in Salt Lake City. The judge also held that the federal government was guilty of negligence in the way it conducted the tests. The verdict holds major implications for the outcome of half a dozen related suits pending in the courts.
Democratic state chairmen declined to act on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s criticisms of runoff primary elections and of a convention selection process that he contends deprives him of a fair share of delegates. By unanimous voice vote, the state chairmen, meeting in San Francisco, reaffirmed a “commitment to the principle of affirmative action” and pledged “to continue the faithful implementation of this program.”
The Clean Water Act would be renewed and amended under legislation approved by the House Public Works Committee. The statute has been operating without formal authority since 1982.
Explosions ripped through a leather tannery in Peabody, Massachusetts, and triggered an inferno that destroyed 10 buildings and sent at least 117 persons to hospitals for their injuries or exposure to toxic fumes. One of six workers on the roof of the tannery was reported missing after highly flammable chemicals exploded at mid-morning. The fire at Henry Leather Co. spewed flames onto adjacent buildings and forced the evacuation of up to 500 persons in the downtown area of the Boston working-class suburb. The cause of the blaze, which destroyed 19 businesses, was unknown.
Urging other Death Row inmates to “keep on fighting.” James Adams died in the electric chair at a Florida prison for murdering a rancher. He was the first black executed in Florida in 20 years. Adams, 47, who had maintained his innocence and charged that race played a part in his trials, was convicted of the murder of Edgar Brown during a 1973 robbery.
The government said it is considering a proposal that would require auto makers to equip 5% of new cars with airbags or self-buckling seat belts. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who has promised a decision on the controversial issue by July 11, listed that alternative among a number of new options the government will consider. Dole proposed several other alternatives last October, ranging from doing nothing to making air bags or self-buckling seat belts mandatory for new cars by a certain model year. One option for the Administration would be mandatory airbags on the driver’s side on small cars only.
The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a series of changes in the Gun Control Act of 1968 which their chief sponsor, Senator James A. McClure (R-Idaho), said were intended to prevent prosecution of legitimate gun owners. One of the changes would require clear intent of criminal wrongdoing to prosecute a federal firearms offense. McClure said the bill would amend many of the vague or ambiguous provisions of the law, which he said had “allowed enforcement agencies to run roughshod over honest firearm owners.”
Fifteen Philadelphia city police officers, including the former second-highest ranking official in the department, pleaded not guilty today to Federal charges of conspiring to protect illegal gambling and extorting $350,000. James Martin, 53 years old, the former Deputy Police Commissioner, stood erect before Federal Magistrate Edwin Naythons as he and 14 other officers were arraigned on charges of conspiracy, racketeering and extortion. The Magistrate released them on $5,000 bail each. Mr. Martin resigned last month after he became the prime target in a federal investigation of police corruption. The investigation, begun more than 18 months ago, has so far brought the conviction and of seven former officers. The defendants are accused of taking part in a scheme that generated payoffs from vendors of video poker machines and operators of illegal lotteries from 1980 to early this year.
A fugitive held three people hostage for 12 hours in a Breckenridge, Texas bank building today before armed law-enforcement officers rushed in late tonight and overpowered him, a sheriff’s deputy said. Negotiators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation had taken food inside the building before 6 to 12 officers rushed him in an office, said Monte Hise, deputy sheriff of Haskell County. The incident began when the gunman, armed with two pistols, shot and critically wounded a motorist earlier in the day and took seven people hostage. He released four of them hours before his capture. He had warned his hostages that he would not hesitate to shoot to avoid capture, witnesses said.
Workers exposed to dioxin in a 1949 manufacturing accident developed no more life-threatening health problems in the next 35 years than workers who were not exposed, a new study says. But the exposed workers did have higher rates of acne-like skin eruptions and digestive ulcers than the others. doctors reported in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. In the study, researchers examined 204 workers who were exposed to dioxin in a cleanup after a runaway chemical reaction on March 8, 1949, at a manufacturing plant in Nitro, West Virginia, and compared them to similar data on 163 workers who had not been exposed.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a program to upgrade structural components and the frequency of inspection of the mobile Enterprise amusement rides similar to one on which a person died and three others were injured at a Texas State Fair accident last year. The decision came following an extensive investigation of the October 17, 1983, Texas accident in which one car separated from the sweep arm of the ride and fell onto the midway of the state fair.
New York state law protects a news reporter from having to reveal the name of a source, even if the source may have broken the law, the state’s highest court ruled. The Court of Appeals ruled 5 to 2 that the 1970 law gives reporters blanket protection against having to name a source. The case involved a television reporter who refused to disclose who leaked a secret grand jury report. It was the first time the high court ruled on the scope of the shield law.
The depletion of oil and gas in Texas and other states is changing the face and economic character of the energy-producing region. By the year 2000, according to new projections, Texas will begin to experience a net outflow of people, and the economy will have diversified toward increased manufacturing, construction and services.
A Federal appeals court today upheld contract rules that require union labor to handle cargo shipped in containers at ports. The rules are not an unlawful “secondary activity,” which prohibits an employer from dealing with another company, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said. The ruling came in the consolidation of nine cases before the National Labor Relations Board, which upheld all the rules except two. The court said all were legal. The cases involved the change from “break-bulk” to “containerized” cargo at seaports. Before the change, truckers delivered loose cargo to the pier; longshoremen then transferred the cargo piece by piece from the truck to the hold of the ship.
A group representing more than 900 antipoverty agencies said today that it would coordinate a project providing 11,000 families headed by women with access to education, job training, day care or other government and private services so they could become financially independent. The three-year pilot project was announced by the National Community Action Agencies Directors Association at its annual convention. Leonard Dawson of Brunswick, Georgia, the association’s president, said the group wanted to take advantage of the widespread interest in the growing number of poor families headed by women.
Floodwaters yesterday threatened to spill over river banks in western and central Kentucky as thousands of residents returned to soaked and mud- caked homes in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Officials warned that the danger of flooding remained even though skies had cleared in the mountain region. Rivers were brimming after three days of storms in Kentucky and in the Tennessee Valley of southern Tennessee and northern Alabama. The floodwaters were receding in southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, where most of the more than 6,000 people forced to flee lived. But the Tennessee River, swollen by the reluctant release of water from bulging flood-control dams upstream, remained outside its banks. The river crested five feet above flood stage Wednesday at Chattanooga in what officials said was the worst flooding to hit the city since 1973, when high water caused nearly $67 million in damage. The Cumberland River crested Wednesday in Clarksville at almost 11 feet above flood stage.
In the Giants 4–2 loss at Pittsburgh, the Giants centerfielder Chili Davis throws out 2 runners in one inning. Dale Berra drives in 3 runs for the winners. Don Robinson, relieving for the Pirates in the 8th with the bases loaded and no outs, stops San Francisco on no runs.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1167.19 (+1.67).
Born:
Edward Mujica, Venezuelan MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2013; Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, Florida-Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Oakland A’s, Detroit Tigers), in Valencia, Venezuela.
Kam Mickolio, MLB pitcher (Baltimore Orioles, Arizona Diamondbacks), in Wolf Point, Montana.
History Diaries 