Two United States Air Force KC-135 aerial tankers will be sent to Saudi Arabia to provide the Saudi F-15 fighters with refueling capability for longer-range patrolling of the Persian Gulf to defend against further Iranian attacks on oil tankers near Saudi waters, a senior official in the Reagan Administration said. Administration officials are insisting, however, that there are no plans at the moment for American involvement in the conflict. U.S. President Ronald Reagan rules out American military intervention in the Iran-Iraq war, at least for now.
Saudi Arabia and Jordan reportedly are making final plans for separate major pipeline projects with Iraq that, if completed, could reduce world dependence on Persian Gulf shipping for the transport of crude oil. The authoritative Middle East Economic Survey reported that the Saudi Cabinet has endorsed construction of a nearly 400-mile pipeline linking southern Iraqi oil fields with Saudi Arabia’s existing east-west pipeline and its Red Sea terminal at Yanbu. In addition, the journal said, negotiations are well under way for a 560-mile pipeline from northern Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.
Intelligence analysts studying the often-conflicting reports from Afghanistan have concluded that Soviet forces won a considerable but not decisive success in their recent offensive there, but at a higher cost in casualties than they expected. One British source put Soviet losses in the Panjshir Valley at 500 men, plus 2,000 more throughout the country since the offensive started in mid-April. The analysts — in Washington, in other NATO capitals and Pakistan — said the losses were considered serious for a force that reportedly had lost only 5,000 men since the Soviet intervention began in late 1979. Some experts on the Soviet order of battle said they believed that, as a consequence, Soviet forces were being strengthened by the addition of fresh units. One estimate is that the reinforcements will push total strength to about 120,000 men. Militarily, the most significant development of the operations has been the extensive and successful use of the air force. According to neutral observers citing insurgent information, Soviet pilots performed with efficiency against insurgent strongpoints and troops caught in the open.
According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, the Russians also used liquid firebombs. These burst into flame on contact with the ground. There have been reports, never verified, that munitions of this type had been used earlier. The bombing, both at high altitude and at low level, appears to have been effective. Camouflaged and well protected rebel positions have been taken out by fighter-bombers guided to their targets by forward air controllers flying in helicopters and marking the targets by smoke. Casualties among civilians are believed to have been high. The Su-25, code-named Frogfoot by NATO, appears to have been the most effective fixed-wing aircraft. Operating in pairs, the Su-25’s have used their guns, rockets and antipersonnel bombs against key targets. The tactics are to come in at a low level after the target has been marked and the results were described by one analyst as devastating. At the height of the operations, the source said, the air force was flying at least 100 sorties a day. A sortie is one mission by one aircraft.
The Kremlin’s chief spokesman said Soviet-American relations are at the lowest level of the entire post-World War II period. Speaking on Soviet television, Leonid M. Zamyatin, head of the international information department of the Communist Party Central Committee, reiterated Moscow’s positions on issues ranging from missiles in Europe to the Los Angeles Olympics and disputes with China and Japan.
The British public has grown more opposed in recent months to the stationing of U.S. cruise missiles in Britain, and now fewer than one in three Britons wants the weapons, according to a poll published in the Guardian newspaper of London. In November, Britain became the first European country to receive cruise missiles. In the Netherlands, where the American weapons have yet to be deployed and where the government is divided on the question, political sources said a decision in favor of acceptance is tentatively expected next month.
Talks between West German employers and metalworkers who are on strike to demand a 35-hour week ended Friday night with no sign of compromise. New negotiations were scheduled Tuesday. Hans Peter Stihl, chief negotiator for the employers, said the union, IG Metall, would not alter its demand for a five-hour cut in the current 40-hour week with no loss of pay. Ernst Eisenmann, the regional negotiator for IG Metall, said the union had shown a readiness to compromise but the employers had not. The talks began in Stuttgart on Wednesday. They were the first between the two sides since the union called strikes in automobile component companies two weeks ago, paralyzing the automobile industry.
President Nicolae Ceausescu today inaugurated a canal linking the Danube to the Black Sea, a huge project intended to speed traffic along one of Europe’s busiest inland water routes. The waterway will eliminate 250 miles of travel along the Danube River between the heart of Eastern Europe and Central Europe. As thousands of people watched from land, Mr. Ceausescu stood aboard a boat and cut a ribbon across the western entrance to the 40-mile canal at Cernavoda, a new port built where the canal meets the Danube. The canal runs south to Constanta, a port on the Black Sea that has been expanded to allow vessels of 150,000 tons to exchange their cargo with canal barges. Rumanian officials hope the first traffic will start to flow in time for the 40th anniversary of Communist rule on Aug 23.
China said it had no choice but to mount a series of “defensive counterattacks” in response to Vietnamese provocations along the tense Sino-Vietnamese border. The official New China News Agency quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesman who accused Hanoi of repeatedly attacking the southern Chinese provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi. The statement followed reports from Hanoi charging that Chinese troops shelled a provincial capital deep in Vietnamese territory.
Japan will use foreign tankers to bring crude oil from the Persian Gulf. Japanese petroleum officials said that because of self-imposed restrictions on Japanese tanker movements in the region, they would begin chartering foreign-manned tankers to bring oil to Japan. Earlier, Japan announced that its ships would stay out of the northern third of the Gulf, an area where commercial ships have been attacked by Iranian and Iraqi forces.
President Ferdinand E. Marcos said today that he would resist efforts by the country’s revived opposition to curb his law-making powers. Without the emergency powers, Mr. Marcos said, “you will have Communists going back and forth, causing the dastardly ruin of our country, the killing of people and the rape of women.” He added, “I consider the decree-making power a legitimate tool against terrorism and subversion.” By issuing decrees, Mr. Marcos can bypass the legislature. Leaders of the opposition, which scored surprisingly big gains in the National Assembly elections on May 14, have said that limiting the President’s law-making powers will be at the top of the list of changes they will seek when the new assembly convenes in July. Opposition politicians contend that Mr. Marcos’s emergency law-making authority should terminate when the old assembly retires on June 30. If he continues to issue decrees afterward, the opposition leaders say they will challenge the constitutionality of these powers before the Supreme Court. ‘Impressive Gains’
At a news conference with foreign reporters at the presidential palace, Mr. Marcos also said publicly for the first time that he was disappointed with the outcome of the assembly election and conceded the opposition had emerged with “impressive gains.” Mr. Marcos predicted that when official vote-counting is completed in several days, the opposition will win 55 of the 183 contested seats. About five seats will be held by independent candidates, while his ruling party will hold the rest, he said. In the previous 1978 assembly election, Mr. Marcos’s opponents won only 13 seats. So far 143 candidates have been officially declared winners, with the ruling party getting 89 seats and Mr. Marcos’s opponents taking 54 seats, a significant minority. Mr. Marcos admitted that the unexplained assassination last August of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. helped his rivals in the election. But he said his party’s main weakness was on “the gut issues” of occasional shortages of vital consumer goods and rising prices.
Leftist guerrillas cut high-tension lines leading to four provinces in eastern El Salvador, leaving more than 1 million people without power, sources said. The outage came a day after President Alvaro Magana inaugurated a $10-million diesel turbine plant in San Miguel that was designed to provide an alternate source of power in the event of such acts of sabotage. The new plant, however, failed to function because of technical problems.
Costa Rica and neighboring Nicaragua set up a joint border vigilance commission designed to prevent flare-ups along the frontier. The commission’s formation was agreed on during talks in Panama among the members of the Contadora Group-Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Venezuela-and its members include diplomats from those countries. The talks followed an increase in tension between the two countries over the activities of anti-government Nicaraguan guerrillas operating in the sparsely populated jungle border area.
Chilean President Augusto Pinochet has won a key court ruling upholding his immunity from prosecution on fraud charges and told a pro-government rally that he would never submit to demands that he resign. A court ruled that Pinochet cannot be tried while in office on charges bought by opposition leaders that he had defrauded the state by purchasing five acres of expropriated state-owned land for $25,000 less than the government paid for it. Judge Alberto Echavarria, however, ordered a separate court investigation into the involvement of Colonel Ramon Castro, Pinochet’s former personal aide and now secretary general of the army, in the transaction.
President Reagan conducts a radio address to the nation about the economy and National defense. President Reagan, in one of his most overtly political radio speeches in recent weeks, said today he will not “panic or be buffaloed” by rising interest rates. Instead, he said in an address from Camp David, Maryland, he will pursue policies to cut inflation and eventually reduce the prime interest rate, which has risen in recent months from 10.5 percent to 12.5 percent, making it harder for people to buy homes. The speech dealt with the two themes he is expected to emphasize once he goes out campaigning, a stronger economy and a stronger military. His pledge to stay on the economic course set in the campaign four years ago comes at a time of rising interest rates, which have upset the allies of the United States.
The President and First Lady enjoy a swim at Camp David.
Commercial made-in-space products are to go on sale later this year. They are perfect plastic spheres, each exactly one one-hundred-thousandth of an inch in diameter, produced in weightlessness on a recent space shuttle flight. They will be sold for use in calibrating microscopes and other instruments.
Five thousand honorary degrees are being awarded this commencement season at American colleges and universities. The degrees are viewed not only as a means of honoring high achievement but also of providing role models for students, publicity for the awarding institution and encouragement of fields in which the institution specializes.
An elevated railway in Miami was formally opened last week after a long delay, caused in part by an apparently resolved dispute over the system’s structural safety. People were given free test rides on the 11-mile line, which will eventually be extended to 21 miles.
Floods begin late this evening which kill 14 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 1984 Memorial Day Flood killed 14, injured 288, damaged or destroyed nearly 7,000 buildings, and left $180 million in damages.
National Guardsmen fought to save a dozen homes from flooding in the central Utah town of Mayfield, which has been besieged by creeks swollen with melting mountain snow. Mayfield, along with the towns of Ephraim and Manti, all clustered about 100 miles south of Salt Lake City, have been plagued by melting snow cascading from the 12,000-foot Manti-La Sal Mountains. Temperatures in the 80s were expected to aggravate scattered flooding below Utah’s mountains today. Meanwhile, in western Colorado, sandbags were being airlifted to the town of Silt’s water-treatment plant on an island in the Colorado River. High water had knocked out all but 20% of the fresh water supply for the town of 1,400.
A sixth trip-wire shrapnel bomb intended to “inflict harm to people” was found today in the western Wisconsin city of La Crosse. The police warned parents to watch their children closely over the holiday weekend. No injuries were reported, although one of the five homemade pipe bombs found earlier had exploded outside a church Friday and showered a utility company worker with debris. Another of the explosives was found in a children’s playground. The device found today was in a grassy area between a motel and a state driver’s license examination station. The explosive already had been detonated. The bombs were lengths of pipe about 6 inches long filled with gunpowder, screws, nails, nuts and bolts and triggered by a tripwire, Police Sgt. Ronald Kuehl said. Police Chief William Reynolds said, “They propel shrapnel and metal objects out of one end.” “Don’t take any chances; someone is sick,” Mayor Patrick Zielke warned parents. Notes found with three of the bombs said they were the work of the “North Central Gay Strike Force Against Public Oppression.”
An investigation into a 13-year spree of small-town bank robberies in Texas has led to the arrests of suspects in what authorities are calling a modern-day “Bonnie and Clyde” team. Lawrence Edward Byrom, 55, and his wife, Alice Hart Byrom, 36, were arrested on sealed indictments charging them on a federal count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery and on state counts of auto theft. The two are suspected of having gained $500,000 from robbing at least 14 banks, mostly in towns of under 1,000 population with no full-time police force, officials said.
A military investigator said the Army will modify 5,000 of its Bell helicopters, plagued by “mast bumping” accidents that have killed 231 servicemen, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. The newspaper said that the investigator, Richard J. Trainor, believes the Army will order hub springs installed on the Fort Worth-built helicopters on the basis of the panel’s 40-page report. Mast bumping, the collision of the lower side of the rotor and the mast that connects the rotor to the engine, has been cited as a cause in the crashes of 67 Bell helicopters since 1967. The situation tends to occur during strenuous maneuvers.
Monsanto Co. knew in the 1950s that one of its herbicides posed health hazards, according to West Virginia Department of Health documents. The papers show that years before dioxin was identified as the unwanted toxic byproduct, Monsanto was warned that some element formed in the herbicide — known as 2,4,5-T — production caused illnesses. Production of the herbicide continued at the Nitro, West Virginia, plant until 1969, but the files indicate that the company discontinued its contact with health officials in 1953. Monsanto has declined comment. Those who worked at the plant during the 1940s and 1950s are among 170 workers who sued Monsanto for $700 million in damages.
Angered by testimony that John Z. DeLorean once confided he was “involved in cocaine trafficking with Johnny Carson,” the entertainer turned serious on “The Tonight Show” Friday to denounce the allegation as “totally false.” The mention of Mr. Carson by James Timothy Hoffman, the star government witness in the drug trafficking trial, prompted many expressions of incredulity. Howard Weitzman, the chief defense lawyer, accused Mr. Hoffman of having fabricated the statement, asserted to have been made two years before Mr. DeLorean’s arrest, in hopes of convincing the government to proceed with its undercover operation. Mr. Carson was one of several celebrity investors in the DeLorean Motor Company. when it was opened in 1979. He lost $500,000 in the venture and, since the automaker’s arrest last on October 19, 1982, has joked about the case. “I feel compelled to respond to certain allegations made today in the John DeLorean trial,” the entertainer said Friday night, looking seriously into the camera. “The statements that were made about me are totally false, and beyond that there is nothing further to say.”
Piece by shimmering piece, one of the world’s most famous restaurants is finding a new home for its classic French cuisine in New Orleans, the home of Creole cookery. Le Restaurant de la Tour Eiffel, which was perched 562 feet high on the first level of the Eiffel Tower from 1937 to 1981, is being re-assembled from 11,000 pieces that crossed the Atlantic in a 40-foot cargo container. “The pieces are absolutely beautiful,” said John Onorio, who will own and operate the restaurant with Daniel Bonnot, a French chef.
A new method for detection of Down’s syndrome and other abnormalities before birth may be about 10 times as likely to result in miscarriage as is amniocentesis, the current most common method of prenatal diagnosis. A preliminary study of 500 pregnant women who have undergone the new procedure, called chorion biopsy, shows that 3% to 10% of them had miscarriages, said Dr. Maurice Mahoney of Yale University. Amniocentesis is followed by miscarriage once in every 300 to 400 cases, Mahoney said. An advantage of chorion biopsy is that it allows detection of defects about 10 weeks earlier than does amniocentesis.
Mt. St. Helens staged a surprise eruption, shooting a plume of steam and ash more than 20,000 feet high and sending a mud flow to Spirit Lake, four miles from the crater. Thom Corcoran, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, said it was believed the eruption “was caused by snow runoff hitting a hot area beneath the lava dome and being able to flash up.” A Corps of Engineers pumping crew at Spirit Lake, on the volcano’s north flank, reported the mud flow that reached the lake was about six inches deep and eight feet wide. The crew was not evacuated.
Actress Annette Bening (25) weds J. Steven White.
Born:
Steven Goertzen, Canadian NHL right wing (Columbus Blue Jackets, Phoenix Coyotes, Carolina Hurricanes), in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada.
Steve Justice, NFL center (Indianapolis Colts), in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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