The Reagan Administration is using religion to seek to justify intervention actions abroad and to make Americans feel they are “God’s chosen people,” the Communist Party paper Pravda said today. “The White House justifies the expansion of American imperialism on the international scene with the idea of God,” it declared in an article headlined “Hypocrites From Washington.” “The present Administration,” Pravda went on, “insistently drives home to the Americans that they are a God-chosen people, implanting on this basis the idea of their exclusiveness and, consequently, of a ‘right’ to dictate their will to other peoples.”
Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi visited the bullet-scarred Golden Temple complex in Amritsar in an attempt to soothe the influential Sikh minority angered by the army’s assault on their holiest shrine June 6, resulting in at least 600 deaths. Giani Sahib Singh, the highest priest of India’s 12 million Sikhs, presented her with written demands calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from the battered temple, its reopening to the public and the release of what he said were innocent people among the 4.000 suspects being held without charge.
Philippine President Ferdinand E Marcos defended a special squad of “secret marshals” who killed at least 24 alleged robbers in Manila during a four-day period last week. “So far, I don’t think there is any abuse.” Marcos said, adding that he had conducted a special survey to determine whether Manilans want the marshals off the streets. “They (Manilans) said, ‘No. No. Please don’t. We like to have them around.’” Marcos added. Marcos created the squad in August, 1982. to combat a wave of robberies, but the group was disbanded months later amid charges they had become “licensed killers.” Marcos reactivated the force last week.
About 3,000 Vietnamese soldiers arrived in Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — in a partial troop withdrawal from Cambodia that officials said is proof of improved security in that nation. Vietnam said the withdrawal, when completed by the end of the month, will bring out about 10,000 troops. It said a similar number were withdrawn last year. Western intelligence agencies estimate that Hanoi has 150,000–170,000 troops still in Cambodia.
Fourteen bodies were recovered from a coal mine near Taipei, Taiwan, increasing the confirmed death toll to 28 in what is already regarded as Taiwan’s worst mine. disaster. Rescuers continued digging through debris to reach 43 other miners trapped after an explosion in a tunnel 1.7 miles from the entrance of the Haishan Mine. Officials said 120 miners were working in the tunnel of Taiwan’s second-largest coal mine when a derailed coal trolley struck sparks that touched off the blast.
Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping told a three-person delegation from Hong Kong that the future of the British Crown Colony after 1997 has been decided and “cannot be changed.” The group said it journeyed to Peking to present the Views of the populace, but Deng rebuked them, saying that “we do not admit this represents the views of the Hong Kong people.” He said that China will sign a draft agreement with Britain in September providing for China to regain full sovereignty in 1997 and a final agreement at the end of this year.
President Francois Mitterrand traveled today to Volgograd, where he saluted the memory not only of the victorious Soviet Army but also of the Germans and their Rumanian, Hungarian and Italian allies who fell there in the 1942-43 Battle of Stalingrad. That battle marked the end of the road for German invaders on the Russian front and the start of their long retreat to Berlin. After laying a wreath at an eternal flame, Mr. Mitterrand said, “Today’s reconciliation supersedes the rifts of yesterday.” He said it was a “useless quarrel” to try to determine whether the Eastern front of the Russians or the Western front of the British, French, Americans and others had decided the final victory over Hitler’s forces. Mr. Mitterrand ended a three-day visit to the Soviet Union by his trip to the Stalingrad battlefield. The name of the city was changed to Volgograd in 1961 during the de-Stalinization campaign.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was struck on the shoulder by an egg thrown from a crowd of angry farmers as she left a rally of her Conservative Party in Porthcawl, Wales, witnesses reported. More eggs, a package of butter, a tomato and ice cream were also hurled at Thatcher as she stepped into her limousine, but she was not hit again. A security officer shielded her from the barrage by unfurling an umbrella. The farmers were protesting a cut in milk quotas imposed by the European Common Market in an effort to cut expenses. The Press Agency said Mrs. Thatcher, egg dripping from her clothes, appeared calm as she spoke briefly with officials before she left in a limousine. “One of the eggs hit the top of her car and sprayed her with yolk,” a witness, Olwen Rapps, was quoted as saying. “There was egg down the front of her dress, but she was lucky it was not worse because she ducked.”
The Polish authorities on Friday released Marek Nowakowski, a dissident author charged with slandering the state by publishing his works in the underground press and abroad. Mr. Nowakowski’s wife, Jolanta, said her husband “was treated normally” by the authorities. She said no date for the trial had been set. Mr. Nowakowski, 49 years old, was arrested March 7. The official Polish press agency reported Wednesday that authorities had ordered Mr. Nowakowski’s release. However, it said he would be indicted by a Warsaw military court on charges of slandering the state and violating laws that restrict Poles from possessing Western currency. Mr. Nowakowski faces up to five years in jail on the charges.
Reorganization of Lebanon’s Army and other measures to be taken in an effort to end the country’s nine-year- old civil war were approved by the Cabinet. Under the army reorganization, a new army commander and a six-man military council, representing different religious groups, were appointed. The changes were announced by Prime Minister Rashid Karami, who said a security plan would be applied to reunify Beirut. Mr. Karami said that under the plan the Green Line that divides the city into predominantly Christian East and Muslim West would be eliminated, the crossing points between the two halves would be reopened and Beirut’s international airport and harbor would also be reopened. The Prime Minister did not say when the plan would be put into effect.
The Austrian Consul was found slain in a car outside his West Beirut apartment today and a Libyan diplomat was kidnapped from a West Beirut hotel, security sources said. A spokesman at the Austrian Consulate declined to give the victim’s name but confirmed his body was taken to the American University Hospital in West Beirut. The Libyan diplomat, Mohammed Moughraby, and his two bodyguards were kidnapped by 10 gunmen at the nearby Bristol Hotel, security sources said.
Administration officials with access to intelligence data from El Salvador said today that top right-wing leaders were not directly involved in a plot to kill the United States Ambassador there. The officials said, however, that the plotters were known to be associates of Roberto d’Aubuisson, leader of the National Republican Alliance, known as Arena. They said the intelligence reports did not establish a direct presence by Mr. d’Aubuisson in the plot to kill Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering. According to sources who saw the intelligence reports, however, senior Administration officials acted on the assumption that whether or not Mr. D’Aubuisson was directly involved, he would have influence with the plotters and be in a position to stop them.
Representatives of the United States and Nicaragua are expected to meet again next week, sources close to both Governments said Friday. The meeting would be the second between the two countries in less than a month. The sources said the Reagan Administration’s Central American envoy, Harry W. Shlaudeman, and Nicaragua’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Victor Tinoco, would meet in Mexico. The previous meeting took place June 1 in Managua between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the Nicaraguan leader, Daniel Ortega Saavedra. United States officials here refused officially to confirm the meeting would take place. A Mexican Foreign Ministry spokesman, Agustin Gutierrez Canet, declined to confirm that a meeting was planned and said Mexico was maintaining a “prudent silence” on the subject. The Nicaraguan Embassy here said it “had no information” on a visit to Mexico by Mr. Tinoco.
Cuba has agreed to a U.S. proposal to begin negotiations for normalizing the flow of Cubans between the two countries, but only after the November election, the State Department said. The United States wanted talks earlier. American officials said Cuba’s insistence on waiting was consistent with an apparent policy decision not to do anything that might seem to contribute to President Reagan’s re-election.
Journalists must have licenses issued by the Government in a growing number of Latin American nations. Fearful that press freedom is in danger, some publishers and editors in the hemisphere are trying to stop the trend.
Twenty Czech technicians taken hostage last year by Angolan rebels were released and led to safety in. South Africa. The Czechs were held hostage by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) following a raid on an industrial project in Alto Catumbela in March, 1983. The anti-Marxist rebels took 66 Czechs captive, but one died on a long march to their headquarters, and the guerrillas freed the 45 others three months later.
Forty-four opponents of South Africa’s race separation laws were arrested in Durban Friday night and today while demonstrating against the official apartheid policy, the police said. A police spokesman said 14 people were arrested Friday night for putting up posters in violation of municipal law in this Indian Ocean city. The spokesman said 30 more people were arrested today under the Internal Security Act. All 44 were released on bail equivalent to $76. The detained were members of the United Democratic Front, a multiracial organization opposed to South Africa’s racial policies.
Approval of a $50 billion tax increase and an $11.2 billion cut in benefit programs was reached by House and Senate tax conferees in a session that went into early morning. The agreement was the most significant step so far toward approving a deficit-reduction package this year.
President Reagan participates in a radio address on the Nation’s economy.
President Reagan watches the movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” with Deputy Chief of Staff and Mrs. Michael K. Deaver.
Far fewer Democratic commitments to sweeping social programs will be part of the platform being completed by the Democratic Platform Committee. The platform is considerably more conservative than previous ones.
Release of Cuban political prisoners to coincide with the visit of the Rev. Jesse Jackson to Cuba this week was expected by members of the Jackson Democratic Presidential campaign. In Panama City, the first stop in his Caribbean tour, Mr. Jackson said that on his Cuban visit he would have a list of American and Cuban prisoners and would “appeal” for their release.
Edward M. Kennedy’s endorsement of Walter F. Mondale’s candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination was expected by Mondale campaign officials to be announced today after a visit by the senator to Mr. Mondale’s Minnesota home.
President Reagan is expected to vindicate a New Mexico Indian tribe’s claim by signing a bill returning 25,000 acres of government land to the Pueblo de Cochiti, a tribe that was swindled out of the land in 1805. The measure, approved by Congress this week, would recognize a long-lost 1819 Spanish colonial court decree that the pueblo was the victim of a fraudulent deed when a Spaniard took the land 179 years ago. The Spanish decree will add the land, now part of the Santa Fe National Forest. to the Cochiti reservation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after months of delay, approved government guidelines for selecting a site to house the nation’s first high-level radioactive waste dump. Nine areas in six states are being considered: Nevada, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Utah, and Washington. The underground repository is needed to store 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel from the nation’s commercial atomic power plants. The waste will remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years.
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that the Drug Enforcement Agency has engaged in pervasive discrimination against its black agents. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 3 to 0 that the DEA, responsible for cracking down on sale and use of illegal drugs, discriminated in the recruiting, hiring, salaries, assignments, evaluations, and promotions of black agents. The court also upheld awards of back pay for the black agents who were discriminated against. When the class-action suit was filed in 1977, the DEA had 2,000 agents, 7% of them black.
Former Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton and his 1974 campaign manager have been ordered to report to prison within 10 days for fixing the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission so that Blanton’s political supporters were issued liquor licenses in 1976. Three judges on the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals denied an effort by Blanton and James Allen to delay the sentences while appealing their 1981 convictions. Blanton, who left office in 1979, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $11,000. Allen got two years and a $14,000 fine.
A 2-year-old girl became the youngest survivor of a heart transplant operation and is doing fine, according to a hospital spokesman in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The unidentified Detroit girl was listed in critical but stable condition in the intensive care unit of C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital on the University of Michigan campus. The girl, whose name was withheld at her family’s request, received the heart during six hours of surgery Wednesday. She suffered from cardiomyopathy, which destroys the heart muscle.
Two persons were killed and 22 injured when a car plowed into a crowd outside New Psalmist Baptist Church on Philadelphia’s North Side as they were lined up to receive food from a federal program. The dead were identified as Wilbert Bordley, 63, and Keythia Bonaparte, 5. The driver, Sammie Bates, 33, of Philadelphia, was charged with homicide by vehicle and involuntary manslaughter.
The bodies of four of seven people presumed shot and killed by Michael Silka, a drifter, near the tiny community of Manley Hot Springs, Alaska on May 17 have been recovered from a river. One of the bodies, that of Fred Burk, 27 years old, was found Wednesday by his wife in the Tanana River, about 75 miles downstream from the scene of the killings. The three other bodies had been found separately in the preceding week: those of Lyman Klein, 31, Dale Madajski, 24, and Larry Joe McVey, 37.
Space shuttle flights will be cut this year to seven from the 10 initially set at the beginning of 1984 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The reduced number of flights became known as the countdown began for the third such flight this year, the maiden flight of Discovery, the nation’s third space shuttle. NASA officials said that because of rocket failures and other scheduling problems the best they can hope for now is five more missions, seven in all for the year.
Two men face sentencing after they admitted defrauding the government by selling the Pentagon inferior metals, including armor plate for the renovated battleship New Jersey. Jerald Russell Hedden and Russell David Roper also admitted selling inferior materials to NASA for use in space shuttle testing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Cochran said in Atlanta. Hedden and Roper pleaded guilty and will be sentenced July 19 to 10 years each under a plea-bargain agreement, Cochran said. The men are former employees of Metal Service Center of Georgia in Marietta. A government spokesman said it was uncertain where all of the inferior metals were used.
Three Christian Scientists are accused of involuntary manslaughter after trying to heal a critically ill baby with prayer instead of medical care. Elliot Glaser and his wife, Lisa, both 26 years old, and Virgina Scott, 68, were charged Friday with felony child endangering and involuntary manslaughter in the March 28 death of the Glasers’ 17-month-old son, Seth. The child died of acute bacterial meningitis. “We’re not charging them with praying,” said a deputy district attorney, David Wells. “We’re charging them with failure to seek conventional medical practices when it became apparent they should.” Prosecutors say Seth developed a high fever and became delirious March 27. The couple took the boy to Mrs. Scott’s home the next day and prayed over him for about an hour and a half until he died.
College courses on the Vietnam War are being offered by a growing number of schools as a new generation of students seeks to learn about a divisive chapter in the nation’s history. The courses often portray America’s role in the war as a phase in Vietnam’s history rather than as an isolated event. Actions in Washington are frequently studied in terms of how the reality of the situation in Southeast Asia jibed with the view of American decision-makers.
The rain-swollen Missouri River smashed through a levee and forced the evacuation of a small town yesterday, after heavy rain and scattered tornadoes buffeted the northern Plains, with winds gusting at more than 100 miles an hour. A tornado touched down in Hollis, Oklahoma, part of a line of heavy thunderstorms that raked the state with up to five inches of rain as a cold front moved through after temperatures of more than 100 degrees. Hundreds of Midwesterners remained out of their homes after fleeing floods.
Mary Decker, the world’s most successful female distance runner, made the United States Olympic team tonight. So did August Wolf, a 1983 Princeton graduate who until three months ago was a journeyman shot-putter. Their heroics excited the crowd of 20,247 watching the United States Olympic track and field trials at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the site of the Olympic competition six weeks from now. But nothing caused more stir than the blanket finish in the women’s 100-meter hurdles.
Only a hundredth of a second — no more than 4 inches — separated the first four finishers. When the officials read the picture from the automatic timing system, they ruled that Stephanie Hightower, the American record-holder, had finished fourth and thus had failed to make the Olympic team. Except for relay spares, only the first three in each event become Olympians.
The Roger Maris Museum opens in the West Acres Shopping Center located in Fargo, North Dakota. Nearly 2,000 visitors are attracted to the 72-foot showcase which features memorabilia from the slugger’s 12-year big league career, including a ticket stub from the 162nd game of the 1961 season.
Howard Johnson hit a three-run homer and Kirk Gibson connected with the bases empty today to support the four-hit pitching of Milt Wilcox over eight innings as the Detroit Tigers defeated the Milwaukee Brewers, 5–1. Wilcox, who had dropped five of his last six decisions, did not allow a runner past second base until the eighth as he improved his record to 8–5. Doug Bair pitched a hitless ninth for the Tigers. Gibson, who also had a pair of singles, belted his ninth home run of the season with two out in the first inning. Detroit got three runs in the second, also with two out, when Larry Herndon singled, Dave Bergman doubled and Johnson followed with his sixth home run.
Buck Martinez, a 13-year veteran, belted two home runs in a game for the first time in his career and Rance Mulliniks had a single, double and triple to lead Toronto to a 9–3 win over the Boston Red Sox. Martinez, who also had a single, and Mulliniks drove in three runs apiece as the Blue Jays collected 17 hits and sent Boston to its ninth defeat in its last 10 games.
At the Kingdome, Alvin Davis for Seattle and Mike Hargrove for the Indians match grand slams as the Tribe wins, 11–4. Hargrove finishes with 5 RBI.
At Wrigley Field, in game that will be known as the Sandberg game, the Cubs Ryne Sandberg goes 5-for-6 with game-tying home runs off Cardinals relief ace Bruce Sutter in both the 9th and 10th innings. He drives in 7 runs to lead Chicago to a 12–11 win. It is the first time Sutter has given up two home runs to the same batter in the same game. Dave Owen singled home Leon Durham from third base with the winning run in the 11th inning. Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee hits for the cycle and drives in 6 runs in a losing cause.
At the Astrodome, the San Francisco Giants beat Houston 7–5, pinning the loss on starter Vern Ruhle. Al Oliver had three hits in four times at bat, including one in the three-run fifth inning when the Giants took a 6–2 lead. Giants third sacker Joe Youngblood has his third two-error game in the last three weeks, sending his FA down to .890, where it will be at the end of the year. Youngblood will go back to the outfield next season.
Born:
Duffy, Welsh Singer (“Mercy”), in Gwynedd, Wales, United Kingdom.
Adam Hayward, NFL linebacker (Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Washington Redskins), in Long Beach, California.
Marcus Mason, NFL running back (Washington Redskins), in Potomac, Maryland.
History Diaries 