Moscow rejected an appeal by Western leaders for new talks on nuclear arms and other issues, saying the proposal “failed to be backed up by anything tangible.” Replying to questions in Pravda, Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, called the overture a “screen” to cover the deployment of new American missiles in Western Europe. Chernenko said that the seven Western leaders at last week’s London summit were guilty of “political duplicity” in urging arms talks while new U.S. missiles are being aimed at the Soviets from Europe. In an interview with the newspaper Pravda, he said Moscow is ready for “dialogue which is honest and talks that are serious.” Chernenko reiterated Moscow’s interest in a treaty banning militarization of outer space, but he said that Washington “does not even want to discuss it.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz, saying that “terrorism is now a method of warfare,” called on Congress to pass legislation that would make it a crime for U.S. citizens or companies to provide support to terrorists sponsored by another country. The bill would allow the secretary of state to designate countries as supporters of terrorism. Individuals or officials of firms found guilty of providing training or other services to the intelligence agencies or armed forces of those countries then could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
A delay in stationing missiles on Dutch soil for two years after the scheduled 1986 deadline was approved by the Dutch Parliament. At the end of a 17-hour debate, 79 legislators voted in favor of the Government’s plan to delay the basing of United States cruise missiles and 71 voted against. There were no abstentions. The vote came a day after the Foreign Ministers of seven Western European member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, including the Netherlands, met in Paris to discuss ways to strengthen the alliance. The Government said the number of missiles, planned at 48, would depend on whether an accord on limitation was reached between the United States and the Soviet Union. The talks have been suspended since late last year. It was the first time that the Dutch had formally agreed to accept the missiles under the alliance’s 1979 plan. But it was also the first time a member nation backed away from the deployment schedule.
In a final appeal for support before the vote, Prime Minister Lubbers said the plan was intended to gain more time for a possible Soviet-American agreement limiting medium-range missiles in Europe. Shortly before the vote, the police dispersed a crowd of several thousand demonstrators, who hammered and drummed rhythmically around a bonfire in the courtyard of the Binnenhof, the Parliament building.
Hundreds of people may have died in the tornadoes that battered the Soviet Union over the weekend, Western diplomats said in Moscow. The government newspaper Izvestia said the tornadoes struck the region between Yaroslav and Gorky, north and east of Moscow, on Saturday. Officials have said only that lives were lost, but the diplomats said the Soviet government has handled news of the affair in a way that suggests a major disaster.
Waving red banners and shouting “Enrico! Enrico!” a crowd estimated by Rome police at more than a million gave a hero’s funeral to Italian Communist Party leader Enrico Berlinguer. Nearly every political leader in Italy and dignitaries from many other countries attended the rites for the man who led the West’s largest Communist Party for 12 years. The funeral was held in St. John Lateran Square, a traditional rallying point for Italian leftists. Berlinguer died Monday at 62 after having suffered a brain hemorrhage five days earlier.
An Israeli defendant accused of membership in an anti-Arab terrorist group admitted publicly for the first time the existence of such an organization. In plea-bargaining as part of a pretrial hearing, the suspect, identified by officials only as Defendant No. 9, admitted membership in the group but not participation in vigilante activity. A total of 27 Israeli Jews, most of them West Bank settlers, have been arrested as suspected terrorists. Twenty-four will go on trial Sunday, two will be tried separately and one has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Defense Minister Moshe Arens told Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar here today that United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon would have to stop snubbing General Antoine Lahad’s militia forces in southern Lebanon if they were to be useful in the region. A participant in the one-hour meeting in the Defense Ministry said officials in Mr. Perez de Cuellar’s party protested that the United Nations force could work only with governments and their official representatives. Mr. Arens reportedly replied that in Lebanon the realities were that one had to deal with such nongovernmental groups as Christian, Muslim and Druse militias. General Lahad’s South Lebanese Army is an outgrowth of the Israeli-backed militia created by Major Saad Haddad after the Israeli invasion of 1978. Early today the force reportedly killed a guerrilla with an antitank rocket as he was preparing to ambush Israeli soldiers near Sidon.
Amnesty International today appealed to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, to stop what it called liquidation of his opponents. The London-based human rights organization expressed alarm at the execution of seven Libyans between June 3 and 7, saying they “had all been arbitrarily arrested and hanged publicly without trial. The group also said that hundreds of Libyans had been arrested and that some might have been tortured after an attack May 8 on Mr. Qaddafi’s headquarters in Tripoli.
The official press agency reported today that 255 rebels and 8 soldiers died when Sudanese Army troops repelled two attacks by rebels in Upper Nile Province in the southern part of the country last week. The agency quoted a military communique as saying the army was in control in the areas attacked. It said one attack occurred in the village of Nasir, about 20 miles from the Ethiopian border, last Wednesday and Thursday, and the rebels came from Ethiopia. A rebellion against the pro-Western Government of President Gaafar al-Nimeiry began in the south more than a year ago over economic, administrative and other grievances. Southern Sudan is inhabited mostly by Christians and animists. The population of the north is predominantly Muslim.
No new Sikh desertions from the Indian Army were reported, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the rebellion by Sikh soldiers “fully under control.” In addition to the statement by Mrs. Gandhi, who spoke to opposition leaders, the Government formally asserted that after the Indian Army operation against Sikh militants last week in the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest Sikh shrine, the rebellion had been moving “toward full-scale insurgency.” The army has said Sikhs seeking more autonomy for the northern state of Punjab, which has a large Sikh population, had been using the temple to store arms and harbor terrorists.
A Sikh opposition leader in exile in London today named a Cabinet, set up a bank account and opened a new headquarters for the Republic of Khalistan, of which, he said, he is both the ideal and the president. The Sikh, Dr. Jagjit Singh Chohan, a medical doctor and politician who left India four years ago, held a news conference in a small parlor hung with a photograph proclaiming the martyrdom of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale at the Golden Temple of Amritsar in Punjab last Wednesday.
North Korean army units have periodically made cross-border attacks on South Korean positions and are building new fortifications inside the demilitarized zone, the South Koreans charged. The most recent incident occurred last Monday, when North Korean soldiers fired at a South Korean army post, the Seoul government said. North Korea was also accused of building electrified barbed-wire fences within the DMZ in violation of the 1953 armistice agreement.
One of 81 crew members presumed dead in the sinking of an American oil-drilling ship in the South China Sea is alive in a Vietnamese prison with five other Americans, a former inmate of the prison said. The Houston Chronicle reported that Nguyen Hun Chanh, a Vietnamese who escaped from the Da Nang prison and is now in a Filipino refugee camp, said John Pierce of Stephenville, Texas, was imprisoned with him. The Glomar Java Sea sank during a typhoon October 25. The bodies of 34 crewmen have been recovered, with the rest believed dead. There are no clues to the identities of the other five Americans, the paper said.
Eden Pastora Gomez, the Nicaraguan rebel leader who was wounded in an assassination attempt two weeks ago, says he will continue his fight against the Sandinista Government even if the United States withholds support for his efforts. In an interview Tuesday night in a private clinic here, Mr. Pastora said his forces had received no help from the United States for the last 10 weeks in what he viewed as pressure to force him into an alliance with Honduras-based rebel groups backed by the Central Intelligence Agency. But he reiterated his refusal to deal with the Nicaraguan Democratic Front, until it is “purged” of all figures linked to the ousted dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Instead, Mr. Pastora said he planned to seek new support in Latin America for what he described as his “democratic revolutionary alternative.”
A key suspect in the bombing attack two weeks ago on Eden Pastora Gomez, an anti-Sandinista rebel leader, is a man who, using a stolen Danish passport, traveled around Central America in recent months posing as a photographer, according to the Costa Rican authorities. The suspect’s identity is a mystery, and his current whereabouts is unknown.
A new Grenadian party named for Maurice Bishop, the leftist Prime Minister who was slain last year, says its campaign platform in elections this year will oppose both the presence of United States troops and the provisional government’s emphasis on private enterprise. George Louison, a former Agriculture Minister who is on the steering committee of the party, the Maurice Bishop Patriotic Movement, described the left-wing party’s plans Tuesday in an interview. Mr. Bishop was killed after his government collapsed in infighting eight months ago. Within days, United States and Caribbean military forces invaded the island. Over 200 United States soldiers and a 400-member unit from Caribbean nations remain as a security force while Grenada is administered by an unelected council.
Former Senator George S. McGovern, who dropped out of the 1984 Democratic presidential race last March, announced his support of former Vice President Walter F. Mondale for his party’s nomination and urged the 23 delegates he won during his brief campaign to do likewise. At a news conference in Washington, McGovern predicted that Mondale, who says he has won enough delegates for a majority at next month’s Democratic National Convention, “will be a successful President.”
A coalition of 30 groups announced plans to go to court in 12 states to challenge what civil rights activist Jesse Jackson described as “systematic schemes of voter lockout and barriers to participation” in the political process. “We are suing to place the burden of registration in the hands of the government instead of on the shoulders of the voter,” said Lani Guinier of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, who spoke on behalf of the groups. Jackson, who made a surprise appearance at the organizations’ daylong conference in Washington, praised the action as a “revival of the commitment to voting rights” made in 1965, when blacks in Alabama marched from Selma to Montgomery.
Penalties for employers who hire illegal aliens, the most important element of a comprehensive immigration bill, were endorsed by the House. The measure would outlaw the employment of illegal aliens and would subject employers to a fine of up to $2,000 for each one hired.
President Reagan participates in a ceremony marking the opening of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
President Reagan congratulates the Boston Celtics on their recent championship win.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) urged blacks and Jews to unite against what he called the politics of polarization by the Reagan Administration and in the current presidential campaign. Speaking to 1,300 persons at a fundraiser in New York for Basil Paterson, a possible mayoral candidate, Kennedy said, “We must not permit polarization politics to set Jewish-Americans against black Americans.” He sharply condemned the rhetoric of Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan and Jewish militant Meir Kahane.
A Senate committee killed a bill that would have repealed the fairness doctrine and equal time law for the nation’s radio stations. The measure was offered by Senator Bob Packwood (R-Oregon). The Senate Commerce Committee vote apparently doomed any chance of further congressional consideration this year. The fairness doctrine requires a broadcaster to present contrasting viewpoints whenever “a controversial issue of public importance” is aired. The equal time law specifies that a broadcaster who provides air time to one political candidate must do the same for the candidate’s opponents.
Charles Z. Wick, director of the United States Information Agency, has repaid the government $4,436 for two telephones that were installed in his home at Government expense and later challenged by government auditors, a spokesman said today. The repayment covered use of the phones from the time they were installed in 1981 until they were challenged by auditors this year, James Bryant, spokesman for the agency, said. Barry Bedrick, an attorney for the General Accounting Office, said Federal law “specifically prohibits installation of telephones in a residence at government expense.” He said there was no penalty for violating the statute.
A new pill appears to be an effective treatment for herpes, suppressing the recurrent rashes that characterize the venereal disease suffered by millions of Americans, two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine reported. They showed that pills containing the drug acyclovir, given several times a day for a number of months, dramatically reduced recurrences of the painful rash. The pill or capsule form of the drug has been approved for experimental use only.
Health insurance rates will be cut 5 percent for 330,000 Iowans at the end of June. Experts attribute this first general reduction in the rates since double-digit inflation took hold six years ago to an innovative statewide plan that stresses outpatient care or treatment that can be administered in doctors’ offices.
Seeking to cut medical care costs, Blue Cross and Blue Shield announced guidelines intended to reduce the incidence of unnecessary X-ray and similar diagnostic procedures for the insurers’ 80 million subscribers. The insurers said a similar program instituted two years ago in respiratory treatment reduced costs $22 million a year.
A woman who was having trouble breathing got a friend to call twice for help, but she died at home after a city fire dispatcher in Racine, Wisconsin, allegedly told her to breathe into a paper bag instead of sending her an ambulance. A lawyer said he will file a claim against the city on behalf of the family of Rena DeLacy, 43, and may file a lawsuit. “The dispatcher took it upon himself to give medical advice,” lawyer Adrian Schoone said. “The fire dispatcher’s job is to send assistance — not to diagnose ailments and practice medical care.”
Republic Airlines and the union representing its 2,200 flight attendants reached agreement on a new contract, the airline announced in Minneapolis. The agreement is subject to ratification, which is expected by July 13, a Republic spokesman said. In addition, pilots, machinists and maintenance supervisors have agreed to take part in a program designed to save the airline $100 million annually.
A 51-year-old woman who said drug addiction led her to poison her male friend and her mother with arsenic was sentenced today to die Aug. 31 in North Carolina’s death chamber. The execution date for the woman, Velma Margie Barfield, was set by Judge Robert L. Farmer. Mrs. Barfield would be the first woman executed in the United States in 22 years. Mrs. Barfield, a former Sunday School teacher, private-duty nurse and nurse’s aide, was convicted in 1978 in the poisoning death of her friend, Stuart Taylor of St. Pauls, and her mother. A stay of execution for Mrs. Barfield was lifted last week after her latest appeal to the United States Supreme Court. In her trial, she said she poisoned Mr. Taylor because she did not want him to find out about a $300 check she had forged on his account. She had already forged two other checks when she wrote the third.
[Barfield was an American serial killer who was convicted of one murder but eventually confessed to six murders in total. Barfield was the first woman in the United States to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment and the first since 1962. She was also the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.]
A new drug athletes are using has prompted warnings by many physicians that the drug, growth hormone, like amphetamines and steroids, can have enormously dangerous effects. They say that growth hormone, when artificially concentrated and taken in massive doses to build muscle, can lead to a wide variety of ailments, including diabetes, liver enlargement and the bizarre warping and outsize growth of bones and joints.
Lifetime censorship has been agreed to by more than 120,000 people now working for the Federal Government. They have promised in writing that for the rest of their lives they will submit for approval any speech, article or book they produce that involves intelligence gathering.
Activists for veterans’ rights succeeded in challenging a Civil War law that prevented millions of disabled veterans from hiring lawyers to fight for their disability benefits. The Federal court order handed down Tuesday was immediately hailed as a “landmark” decision for the veterans who want the Veterans Administration to grant benefits as a result of service-related disability claims from radiation poisoning in World War II and atomic testing in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The ruling also affects Vietnam veterans denied benefits for exposure to Agent Orange.
A coal-mining plan in New Mexico has generated sharp resistance by Navajo Indians who face displacement and environmentalists concerned that the strip mines will destroy precious natural and archeological sites. The controversy centers on impending Federal leases that would allow the mining of more than two billion tons of coal in the San Juan River Basin.
Nathaniel A. Owings died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the age of 81. Mr. Owings, a founder of the pace setting architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, considered skyscrapers, which are his firm’s specialty, a natural celebration of American grandeur.
In a deal that will pay off in the short run with a National League East Championship, the Chicago Cubs trade outfielders Mel Hall and Joe Carter and minor leaguer Darryl Banks to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher George Frazier, catcher Ron Hassey, and pitcher Rick Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe will go 16–1 for the Cubs the rest of the season and win the National League Cy Young Award. Because Cubs GM Dallas Green neglected to renew waivers on Hall and Carter, the status of the trade is in doubt for a while, and the two will not play for a week. Keith Moreland, who was hitting .246 while platooning with Hall, will increase his production and will be named the National League player of the month in August.
Mike Marshall hits a 3rd inning grand slam to put the Dodgers up, 4–1, but the Giants respond with 7 in the 5th and win, 10–5. Reliever Jeff Cornell wins his lone Major League victory.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1110.53 (+0.00).
Born:
Lisa Willis, WNBA guard (Los Sparks, New York Liberty, Sacramento Monarchs), in Long Beach, California.
Tamara James, WNBA guard and forward (Washington Mystics), in Dania, Florida.
Erin Grant, WNBA guard (Houston Comets), in Arlington, Texas.
Died:
Nathaniel Owings, 81, American architect (Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Sears Tower).
António Variações [António Joaquim Rodrigues Ribeiro], 39, Portuguese singer-songwriter (Dar & Receber), of AIDS-related pneumonia complications.
History Diaries 