Sikh troops deserted the unit of a top Indian Army commander who was slain by an unidentified gunman in the northeastern state of Bihar, the Indian Government said. A separate report said the commander had been killed by Sikh mutineers who fought with other troops. The report said 600 Sikh troops had deserted the unit. The mutineers, the report said, were fully armed and “on the way to Delhi with arms.” In a separate incident, at least a dozen Sikh soldiers were reported to have deserted from an army garrison in the northwestern state of Rajasthan. The source of the report, an army officer familiar with developments in Punjab, said he could not confirm reports from a second source that at least 47 Sikh soldiers had been arrested while trying to desert from the same garrison.
Nearly 800 Sikh militants and 200 soldiers were killed last week in the army’s assault on the Sikhs’ sacred Golden Temple complex and hundreds of people were wounded, army and police sources said today. The army has said that 400 Sikhs and about 80 soldiers were killed in the siege of the temple last Tuesday and Wednesday. The army and police sources said bodies were still being removed from the holy lake surrounding the 17th-century shrine and up to 50 bodies at a time were being cremated because there was not enough wood for individual funeral pyres. The sources said that so far, 780 bodies had been cremated after being taken from the temple compound in garbage trucks. They said more than 500 Government soldiers were wounded in the attack on the temple, the holiest shrine in the Sikh faith but also a place where many Sikh terrorists sought haven and where they stored their weapons.
As many as 5,000 Sikh terrorists are believed to be still at large in Punjab, a senior Indian Army officer familiar with the situation said today. That is many more terrorists than originally thought and as a result, he said, hunting them down could take the rest of the year. The public is dependent on the army for information about the antiterrorist operations. Foreigners including journalists remained barred from Punjab, and the reporting and publishing of news about the situation is banned within the state. As a result, it is unclear whether the increased estimate of the number of terrorists at large includes people other than genuine terrorists.
President Reagan repeated in London that the Western allies were eager to renew nuclear arms negotiations and other talks with the Soviet Union, but he said there did not appear to be a consensus in Moscow on how to respond. A senior Reagan Administration said that during the summit conference Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada pressed particularly hard for the other six countries to do more to promote detente with Eastern Europe. Speaking to reporters before leaving for Washington, Mr. Reagan went somewhat further than he has recently in discounting the possibility of improving relations with Moscow soon.
President Reagan thanks the staff at the U.S. embassy in London for their help during the trip.
West German police broke up attempts by demonstrators opposed to deployment of new U.S-made nuclear missiles to blockade a U.S. Army Pershing missile base. A policeman was slightly injured in the clashes and 60 protesters were arrested, bringing to 67 the number of demonstrators detained in weekend protests at the Mutlangen base, east of Stuttgart. The installation has been the scene of frequent such protests since the new Pershing 2 mid-range missiles began arriving late last year.
More than 5,000 people paraded silently through the southwestern French village of Oradour-sur-Glane to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the slaughter of 642 civilians by Nazi troops, apparently in reprisal for the kidnapping of an SS officer. Three French Cabinet ministers attended ceremonies marking the June 10, 1944, massacre. It was carried out by the S.S. Das Reich Division, which had been ordered by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel from its base in southern France to Normandy to confront Allied invasion forces.
A Soviet lawyer who walked into a police station near Shannon Airport in Ireland and kept repeating the word “America” was sent back to Moscow on a Soviet civilian airliner after Irish officials decided that he was not seeking political asylum. Officials said that Valery Agapov, 33, disappeared after he left an Aeroflot plane that landed at Shannon for a 90-minute refueling stop while on a flight from Havana to Moscow. He turned up at a police station more than two miles from the airport. After being held there overnight, he was placed aboard another flight for the Soviet capital.
The arrest of a Solidarity official who had been in hiding since martial law was imposed in Poland in December 1981 was announced by the Polish television. The announcement said that Bogdan Lis, the second-ranking official of the underground Solidarity trade union had been arrested by the Gdansk security service.
The U.N. Secretary General rejected an Israeli proposal that United Nations peacekeeping troops serve as a buffer between Israel and Syrian forces in eastern Lebanon. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who is on a five-nation Middle East tour, said: “The United Nations is against anything which would signify directly or indirectly the division of Lebanon. We want to have Lebanon in the hands of the Lebanese.” Defense Minister Moshe Arens said the United States accepts Israel’s presence in southern Lebanon pending arrangements to secure the two nations’ border.
Rival Lebanese militias broke a cease-fire after only five minutes and fought fierce battles in Beirut, wounding at least 14 people and casting doubt on the new government’s ability to unite the country and end a decade of civil war. A commentator on Beirut radio questioned whether the latest fighting will prevent Parliament from convening for its scheduled debate today on Premier Rashid Karami’s peace proposals and an expected vote of confidence.
A rocket hit a Kuwaiti supertanker in the first air attack on shipping in the lower Persian Gulf. Diplomats believed Iran was responsible. The ship was slightly damaged and its crew unharmed. The attack on the Kuwaiti tanker, the Kazimah, coincided with the opening of an emergency round of talks at the Saudi resort of Taif by oil ministers from the six Gulf Cooperation Council nations — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman — on ways to keep their oil flowing through the gulf. Meanwhile, Iran and Iraq announced a provisional agreement to halt attacks on each other’s border cities.
Two top Israeli Treasury officials resigned amid reports that the government is trying to woo voters for next month’s general election with economic concessions. The resignations of Finance Director General Emanuel Sharon and economic adviser Mordechai Frankl came after the government, ignoring a Treasury austerity drive, granted pay raises to soldiers and policemen and held down inflation-linked price increases on gasoline and other subsidized products.
Thousands of Filipinos marched through Cebu today chanting “Marcos resign!” in protest at parliamentary election results that showed the defeat of opposition candidates on the central Philippine island. On Saturday the provincial elections board declared five candidates of President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s New Society Movement and one from the opposition as the winners of six seats allotted to the province in the 200-member National Assembly. Opposition candidates made strong gains at the polls, capturing at least 63 Assembly seats — 50 more than they held in the outgoing Assembly. But opposition leaders have accused the Marcos Government of rigging final returns to limit the opposition’s showing.
Striking civil servants and teachers in Peru said today that they would continue a week-old strike in defiance of a state of emergency declared by the Government of President Fernando Belaunde Terry. Union leaders announced they would stage sit-ins and hold mass hunger strikes to press for higher pay and to protest the state of emergency. However, about 60,000 Health Ministry employees said they would end their strike, having been promised a raise.
On Saturday, in an effort to crush the strike, the Government suspended civil rights and imposed a 30-day state of emergency. Less than 24 hours later five leftists occupied the studios of Radio Independencia on the outskirts of Lima and forced the broadcast of a tape recording calling for the overthrow of the government, the police said. The official press agency reported that about 100 Indian peasants killed nine militants who were planning to attack a police station in southeast Peru. The information could not be independently confirmed with sources in Ayacucho, the scene of the reported slayings.
A bus carrying students from the Jauregui Military Academy in La Grita, Venezuela rolled over and caught fire after crashing into a bridge railing Saturday and 33 cadets died, according to the official Venezuelan press agency. It quoted the police in southwestern Tachira state as saying eight cadets were injured.
Police in Namibia rounded up top political figures of the South-West Africa People’s Organization, a black nationalist group fighting South African rule. The officers raided a barbecue on the grounds of a Roman Catholic church near Windhoek, the territorial capital, and arrested 37 people — including Nathaniel Maxuilili, acting president of SWAPO’s legal political wing, and Daniel Tjongarero, the organization’s national vice chairman. The arrests suggested a tightening of South African policy toward the guerrilla group after recent, unfruitful peace overtures.
South Africa and the United States will discuss South-West Africa during the next two days, while Prime Minister P. W. Botha of South Africa is here for a three-day visit, a spokesman for the United States Embassy said. Chester A. Crocker, Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, will meet the visiting South African “in conformity with our policy of keeping in touch with all the parties involved,” the spokesman said. Mr. Crocker and Mr. Botha met in Cape Town in February. South Africa rules South-West Africa, which is also known as Namibia, in defiance of United Nations resolutions. A five-nation Western group that includes the United States has been trying unsuccessfully to help bring Namibia to independence.
The President and First Lady are welcomed at Andrews Air Force Base on their return from Europe by Vice President and Mrs. Bush.
Expansion of CIA covert actions followed President Reagan’s decision to abolish a longstanding process of interdepartmental consultations for covert operations, according to former and present senior Administration officials. They said the President had abandoned the consultation procedure at the outset of his Administration in favor of discussions and decision making by a small group of senior political and national security advisers. Officials said that the goal of the reorganization was to reduce the risk of unauthorized news disclosures but that the result had been a sharp and steady rise in CIA covert actions.
In a “Star Wars” test, a U.S. missile shoots down an incoming missile in space for first time. After several failed attempts, the Army successfully tests its Homing Overlay Experiment (HOE), in which a “kill vehicle” launched atop a booster rocket from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands homes in on its target — an ICBM launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California — and destroys it. (Nearly a decade later, however, the General Accounting Office issues a report claiming that the test had been partly rigged.)
The Justice Department is accused by private lawyers of betraying prisoners rights in its efforts to settle a suit charging Michigan’s prison system with cruel and unusual punishment. A Federal judge has also questioned the department’s handling of the case, in which William Bradford Reynolds, head of the department’s Civil Rights Division, seeks a consent decree less detailed than his aides had negotiated.
Computer crime costs American businesses at least $1 billion a year and the problem threatens to become one of the “most significant” types of crime in the next century, the American Bar Association reported. It surveyed 1,000 private and government executives, half of whom said they believe annual computer crime losses exceed $1 billion. Of those, 14% believe the yearly losses are more than $10 billion. The survey focused on the use of computers to embezzle money, destroy or alter computerized data and defraud consumers, investors or other computer users. Richard Kuh, chairman of the special ABA computer task force, said computer crime “may become one of the most significant areas of crime in the 21st Century.” Recent incidents of computer crime were reported by almost half of the business and government agencies responding to an American Bar Association survey. Seventy-two institutions, almost a quarter of the 283 respondents said the incidents had resulted in “known and verifiable losses” ranging from $2 million to $10 million a year.
Many Republicans, Democrats and independents are critical of President Reagan’s Central America policies and are fearful that the situation could lead to “another Vietnam,” the Gallup Poll reported. In the latest survey, 72% of the respondents who were aware of the situation think it is likely that U.S. involvement in Central America will turn into a situation like Vietnam and that the nation would become more deeply involved as time goes on. The poll also found 49% of the public — including 31% of Republicans, 62% of Democrats and 45% of independents — saying they disapprove of the way President Reagan is handling the situation in Central America.
Thousands of Puerto Rican flags fluttered on 5th Avenue as the annual Puerto Rican Day parade swayed to a salsa beat during a 42-block march through Manhattan. Mayor Edward I. Koch blew kisses to the crowd and stopped to greet Archbishop John J. O’Connor at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Spectators consumed large amounts of cold beer and Italian ice trying to keep cool in the 93-degree heat.
Three judges sipped, slurped and sniffed the contents of their wine glasses for 40 minutes, then picked New Orleans’ tap water as the tastiest in the First Annual Great Invitational International Water-Tasting Challenge, held in Dallas. Miami was second and Dallas third. New Orleans was the “clear winner” for its water drawn from the Mississippi River, said Bob Spangler, public relations director of the American Water Works Assn. Rankings of other cities — Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and Toronto — were not released.
A 24-year-old former mental patient who “hated life” was in fair condition with burns after an explosion in his rented car led authorities in Minneapolis to arrest him in connection with 24 pipe bombs planted in three states since early May. But he insisted in a newspaper interview that he is innocent. Earl Steven Karr was described by a relative as a “very sick boy” who has been under psychiatric care most of his life. Karr was charged Saturday after authorities discovered pipe bomb parts in his boarding house room, U.S. Attorney James Rosenbaum said.
Mr. Karr came to the attention of the police Friday when he was injured in an explosion in his rented car in Mason City, Iowa. Mr. Rosenbaum said items seized from the car appeared to match items used to make the bombs. He said search warrants were obtained to seize other devices from Mr. Karr’s room.
Investigations into why a $30 million communications satellite wound up tumbling in a useless orbit focused on a new attitude control system intended to keep the upper stage of the Atlas-Centaur rocket on course. Launch conductor Skip Mackey said a fuel filter in one of the thruster jets may have become clogged, causing the upper stage and the attached Intelsat 5 satellite to spin out of control 23 minutes after it was launched Saturday night. They are expected to burn up from atmospheric friction within a few weeks.
An elderly woman died and another was hospitalized after drinking red cleaning fluid that was mistakenly served as cranberry juice at a nursing home in Savoy, Texas, authorities said. At least three other residents of the Savoy Nursing Home were given emergency treatment after the incident, said administrator Joan Pierce.
Thousands of palm trees that line the Texas coast are brown this season because of a killing frost last December. Officials say it will cost millions to replace them. Efforts have been started by city officials, civic groups, businesses and private citizens in Galveston, Corpus Christi and other places to replace the lost palms, some of which were more than 70 feet tall. The palms were planted in the 1920’s by promoters of a land boom and by owners of citrus orchards. They became a local trademark.
Zhu Jian Hua of China high jumps a record 7’10” (2.39m).
French Open Men’s Tennis: Czech star Ivan Lendl wins his first career Grand Slam title; he beats John McEnroe 3–6, 2–6, 6–4, 7–5, 7–5.
The Cubs add a 9th inning insurance run on a triple steal to beat the Cardinals’ Joaquin Andujar 2–0. Leon Durham steals home, while Jody Davis takes third base and Larry Bowa goes to second.
At Baltimore the Tigers sweep two from the O’s, winning 10–4 and 8–0, before 51,764 fans. Kirk Gibson has six hits and six RBIs in the two games, while Alan Trammell and Howard Johnson each have 5 hits. Lou Whitaker scores 5 runs in game 1. Reliever Doug Bair wins the opener and Dan Petry allows just 3 hits in the nightcap win. Detroit now leads by 7 games.
The Tigers purchase pitcher Sid Monge from the Padres. Sid was 1–0 for the eventual National League champs and will go 3–1 for the eventual American League champs, making him the only player to appear in the same year for two World Series teams.
In Game 6 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers evened the series with a 119–108 victory. In the game the Lakers answered the Celtics’ rough tactics when Laker forward James Worthy shoved Cedric Maxwell into a basket support. After the game a Laker fan threw a beer at Celtics guard M.L. Carr as he left the floor, causing him to label the series “all-out-war.”
Born:
Mike DeVito, NFL defensive end (New York Jets, Kansas City Chiefs), in New York, New York.
Travis Chick, MLB pitcher (Seattle Mariners), in Irving, Texas.
History Diaries 