Efforts to provide Saudi Arabia with 1,200 portable Stinger antiaircraft missiles will be revived, according to State Department officials. They said the Reagan Administration had informed key members of Congress of its plan because of the possibility of Iranian air attacks. The move, they said, was taken in response to an urgent request Tuesday by King Fahd.
Iraq will continue its blockade of Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg Island, President Saddam Hussein said in an address in Baghdad.
An estimated 500,000 Afghans are starving or malnourished, and there is a threat of widespread famine as a Soviet offensive cuts into already slumping food production, a British researcher said. Frances D’Souza, a London University anthropologist, said Afghan university graduates and refugees slipped across the Pakistan border into Afghanistan to gather information for the study, financed by the British government.
Jane’s Defense Weekly reported today that Soviet planes are dropping “liquid fire” bombs on Moslem guerrillas in Afghanistan and fuel-air explosives that set off shock waves that kill anyone within a quarter-mile. The magazine, issued by the authoritative Jane’s Publications, said the Soviet forces had been using the weapons since last summer in eastern Afghanistan in a major program to test them on the battlefield. The report was written by Yossef Bodansky, identified by Jane’s as a consultant to the United States Defense and State Departments. The fuel-air explosive bombs detonate in the air, releasing a volatile chemical cloud about 15 yards in diameter. That, in turn, is detonated by a second charge, causing lethal shock waves. Similar weapons have been in United States stockpiles for years. Fuel-air explosive bombs were used to a limited extent by the United States Navy in Vietnam, mostly for defoliation and mine clearance.
Twenty-five Jews were charged formally by the Israeli authorities with belonging to “a terrorist organization” that conducted or planned at least six violent attacks on Arabs. Most of those charged are militant settlers from the West Bank and the Golan Heights.
The Reagan Administration has quietly withdrawn its proposal for a U.S.-Jordanian strike force to defend the Persian Gulf, State Department officials said. Congress has been asked to defer action on a classified item that would have provided $220-million for an 8,300-man Jordanian force trained, supported and transported by an American defense team.
West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher returned to Bonn from Moscow after two days of talks that, he said, gave no sign that the Soviet Union is ready to resume nuclear arms negotiations. Genscher said he urged President Konstantin U. Chernenko and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to reopen U.S.-Soviet talks on strategic and medium-range nuclear missiles. He said there was no indication that the Soviets might resume the talks before the U.S. election.
Tens of thousands of West German workers walked off their jobs in a nationwide wave of sympathy strikes on the eve of new talks to resolve the country’s worst labor dispute in six years. The IG Metall union, which has spearheaded the strikes for a 35-hour workweek, claimed that more than 50,000 workers heeded its call to lay down tools and rally to protest lockouts against 65,000 of its members. The employers’ federation, Gesamtme tall, threatened new lockouts as regional strikes and layoffs that have idled about 250,000 workers entered a 10th day with no compromise in sight.
Former West Berlin Mayor Richard von Weizsaecker, the son of Adolf Hitler’s deputy foreign minister, was elected West Germany’s sixth president. The West German head of state, a largely ceremonial post, is chosen by an electoral college, the Federal Assembly. Von Weizsaecker, 64, a member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union, received 833 votes to 68 for Luise Rinser, a writer nominated by the Greens party. Von Weizsaecker’s father, Ernst, was deputy Nazi foreign minister to Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The Official Unionist Party, the largest political party in Northern Ireland, announced today that it was ending a six-month boycott of a provincial assembly that was set up to promote power-sharing between Roman Catholics and Protestants. James Molyneaux, the leader of the party, said he had a duty to fill the power vacuum created this week when the Northern Ireland Secretary, James Prior, who set up the assembly, hinted that he was ready to quit. The party, which represents Protestants loyal to the British crown, walked out of the 18-month-old assembly last November to protest the shooting of three church elders by Irish Republican Army guerrillas. The assembly has been boycotted from the start by representatives of the Catholic minority in the province.
Canada’s military is so undermanned, underfinanced and underequipped that it could not support an allied effort in wartime and would be “overly vulnerable to enemy attack,” a Canadian government document obtained by United Press International said. The document, signed by Canadian Defense Minister Jean-Jacques Blais, concluded that 315 equipment modernization projects-each costing $6 million or more-are needed by the end of the century. The cumulative impact of equipment shortages “could have devastating effects under combat conditions,” the document warned.
Political foes of Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos charged that he is trying to enlarge the National Assembly to dilute opposition gains in the May 14 election. Marcos called a new session of the outgoing assembly to start Monday. and the presidential office at first said it would consider expanding the assembly by 18 members to be appointed by Marcos. Later, the president’s office withdrew the announcement and said the agenda has not been set. Of the 183 seats at stake in the recent voting, official results show 89 won so far by Marcos’ party and 54 for opposition and independent candidates.
New Hindu-Muslim rioting in the Bombay (Mumbai) area led to at least 35 deaths. Policemen fired on a crowd of 2,000 rioters on the outskirts of India’s key industrial and commercial center as raging bands burned factories, houses and a temple. The police said the bodies of 21 people were found today in the town of Bhiwandi, 35 miles southeast of Bombay, but it was not clear when they died. Most of the victims had been knifed, officials of Maharashtra state said. The army sent about another 1,000 troops to the Bombay area to quell Hindu-Muslim battles that have led to 169 deaths in seven days. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appealed for peace. She told a public meeting in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, “Such disturbances weaken the country.”
A Salvadoran aid plan was stalled in Congress by disagreement over an accompanying proposal for $21 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels. House Democratic leaders put new pressure on the Reagan Administration to abandon efforts to link a $62 million emergency military aid package for El Salvador to continued aid to Nicaraguan rebels.
Five former Salvadoran guardsmen charged in the killings of four United States churchwomen in 1980 went on trial. The presiding judge said he believed the evidence was strong enough for convictions.
Nine bombs meant for United States and Honduran targets exploded in Bogota and in Cali, killing 2 people and wounding 11, the police said today. A leftist guerilla group reportedly claimed responsibility. Two of the bombs exploded near the United States Embassy, and a car bomb heard miles away exploded 200 feet from the ambassador’s residence. Neither building was damaged. All the casualties occurred in one incident, when a bomb exploded late Tuesday afternoon in the downtown offices of the Honduran airline Sahsa, the police said.
South Africa and Angola exchanged 32 prisoners today and on Tuesday under Red Cross auspices at an Angolan border town, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said. South Africa gave up 30 Angolans and one Cuban in return for a black Namibian of the Southwest African Territorial Forces. The last such exchange was in November 1982.
William J. Casey gave briefing data prepared for President Carter to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign organization, according to James A. Baker 3rd, and his account was corroborated by a “credible witness,” a House subcommittee said in a two-volume report. The report cited several potential crimes that may have been committed by the Reagan campaign, which was headed by Mr. Casey, who is now Director of Central Intelligence. The panel called for the appointment of an independent counsel to continue the investigation.
President Reagan meets with his doctor to go over his physical. There is no need to remove the remainder of a small benign growth discovered in President Reagan’s colon last week, and the surgery probably will not be done, the White House physician said today. Dr. Daniel Ruge, who serves as Mr. Reagan’s physician, also said that other tests made during the 73-year- old President’s physical examination last Friday went “very well.” The polyp was discovered in the checkup at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. Some tissue was removed for tests and found to be noncancerous. In reporting on Mr. Reagan’s checkup, the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said Mr. Reagan could have the rest of the polyp removed “at his leisure” in an out-patient procedure. But Dr. Ruge said Mr. Reagan “doesn’t need to have it out,” adding, “It isn’t even contemplated.”
President Reagan helps with the raising of money in order to keep Eureka College in business.
Nonsmokers suffered lung disease from exposure to the smoke of cigarette smokers, according to “very solid” evidence, the Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, asserted. Dr. Koop discussed the latest findings on the relation of cigarette smoking to illness and death and a new finding that cigarette smoking increased obstructive lung disease, in addition to cancer and heart disease.
Inadequate field sanitation is prevalent on American farms, according to medical authorities who testified at a hearing on proposed Federal rules requiring such sanitation. The experts said that thousands of farm workers, lacking access to toilets or clean water at their work sites, suffered parasitic illnesses common in the third world but rarely found in developed countries.
Democratic infighting in Chicago intensified. The white majority leader of the City Council asserted that Mayor Harold Washington, who is Chicago’s first black Mayor, had forfeited his office by failing to file required financial statements by the legal deadline. The dispute was promptly taken to court.
Walter F. Mondale capitalized on his strength among Democratic Party leaders and public officials by picking up at least 14 New York delegates as the state Democratic Committee chose so-called unpledged delegates to the national convention. The 14 have publicly announced support for Mr. Mondale for the Democratic Presidential nomination.
A black steel worker who found dead animals in his locker and nooses hung in the Detroit plant where he worked was awarded $1.5 million in damages by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission. “This is one of the most blatant and disgusting examples of discrimination I have ever seen,” commission member Alan Van Dam said as the panel ordered Firestone Steel Products Co. to make compensation. The commission said the firm took no action on complaints filed in 1971 and 1972 by Ben Citchen, 55, who was the plant’s first black employee and was the target of repeated abuse during nine years at Firestone’s now-closed Wyandotte plant.
A Chicago judge declared missing candy heiress Helen Vorhees Brach legally dead as of February 17, 1977, freeing her estate valued at $30 million — most of which will be used for animal welfare. “A natural and legitimate inference of death can be drawn” from the facts presented in the case, Judge Henry A. Budzinski said. Brach, 65 in 1977, vanished after a routine checkup at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. No criminal charges have ever been filed.
The EPA rejected plans to allow limited burning of toxic wastes in the Gulf of Mexico and decided to await research that pushes action on the politically explosive issue past the November election. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency signaled it will look closely at proposals that eventually could spread the commercial incineration of hazardous chemicals on ships at sea to a number of areas off the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus accused Democratic presidential candidates of exploiting public fears over toxic wastes and pronounced their tactics “kind of shameful.” Ruckelshaus made the remarks to reporters after a four-day meeting in Palm Springs of the Western Governors’ Association. Referring to recent campaign appearances at toxic waste dumps by Democratic candidates Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart, Ruckelshaus said: “All of this dump stumping isn’t going to get the things cleaned up any faster.”
Attorney General William French Smith disputed the analysis of some criminologists that the leveling off of the baby boom accounts for the drop in serious crimes reported in the United States. Smith, in a Washington speech to the Advertising Council, cited the greater likelihood of arrest and prison for lawbreakers and preventive steps by citizens as principal factors in the improved crime picture. The FBI announced last month that crime reported to police dropped 7% in 1983 on top of a 3% decline in 1982.
Democratic Senator Gary Hart has claimed a lopsided victory in Idaho’s non-binding presidential primary, but he still must overcome Democrat Walter F. Mondale’s organizational edge to snare the state’s convention delegates. With 99% of the state’s 873 precincts reporting, Hart had 31,537 votes, or 58%, to 15,834, or 29%, for Mondale. Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson received 3,127 votes, or 6%.
Rep. George Hansen (R-Idaho), convicted of filing false financial disclosure statements, eked out a primary victory over county prosecutor Dan Adamson to win nomination to a seventh term on Capitol Hill.
After serving a 90-day minimum sentence, a professor convicted of using false credentials to obtain simultaneous college teaching jobs under assumed names was to be released from prison Thursday. The man, Paul A. Crafton, who holds a doctorate in engineering, had been teaching under his real name at George Washington University for 27 years when it was discovered last year that he was also teaching at two Pennsylvania colleges under other names. Investigators said he had also taught at other schools in recent years and had used as many as 34 identities. Mr. Crafton plans to return to his suburban Washington home, a Cumberland County Prison official said.
Rep. Tony Coelho (D-California), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said it is unlikely that a break-in of the organization’s Washington offices early Wednesday was politically motivated. Two offices were ransacked and a variety of papers and other items were stolen, police and a committee spokesman said. But Coelho said, “We think it’s basically a disgruntled employee and the police are following through on it.”
“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, second in the film series, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Harrison Ford, and produced by George Lucas’ Lucasfilms, premieres.
Crime epic film “Once Upon a Time in America” directed by Sergio Leone starring Robert De Niro and James Woods premieres at Cannes.
37th Cannes Film Festival: “Paris, Texas” directed by Wim Wenders wins the Palme d’Or, starring Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski.
In a rematch against Steve Carlton, who hit a grand slam off him on May 16th, Fernando Valenzuela strikes out 15 Phillies while pitching the Dodgers to a 3-hit 1–0 victory.
At Anaheim, 41,205 watch as Dan Petry and the Tigers clip the Angels, 4–2, to run Detroit’s record to 34–5. Detroit has now won 16 straight on the road to tie the American League record of the 1912 Senators. The win goes to Dan Petry (7–1). Losing pitcher is reliever Frank LaCorte, who takes his last Major League loss when he gives up a two-run homer in the 7th to Lance Parrish. LaCorte will beat the Yankees Phil Niekro on the 29th for his last win.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1113.80 (-2.82).
Born:
Adam Wylie, actor (“Picket Fences”), in San Dimas, California.
Devin Aromashodu, NFL wide receiver (Indianapolis Colts, Chicago Bears, Minnesota Vikings), in Miami Springs, Florida.
History Diaries 