A Greek tanker attacked by Iraqi jets in the Persian Gulf Sunday while loading Iranian oil was hit by a French-built Exocet missile that failed to explode, according to a shipping executive. Other shipping sources said a tugboat at sea near Kharg Island reported seeing smoke billowing from the terminal after the attack, suggesting that the Iraqis might also have hit oil-loading installations at the terminal. The tugboat was towing the Turkish tanker Buyuk Hun, which was damaged in an attack by Iraqi planes on June 3. The shipping executive said the captain of the Greek tanker Alexander the Great had reported that an Exocet missile smashed into the ship’s No. 5 oil tank but did not explode. At the time of the attack, the vessel was berthed at Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal, the only terminal where Iran is currently able to load its oil onto tankers for shipment out of the gulf.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia sent a written message to President Hussein today, repeating Saudi support for Iraq in the war with Iran. Saudi Arabia and other gulf nations say they fear an Iranian victory in the war would lead to an increase in revolutionary Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region. As a result, they are contributing billions of dollars a year toward the cost of the Iraqi campaign.
The new commander of the Lebanese Army, Major General Michel Aoun, was sworn in today, and he presided over a meeting of the new six-man military council during which a plan to end fighting in Beirut was discussed. While the discussions were in progress, fighting broke out across the Green Line the divides Beirut and in the hills to the east into predominantly Moslem and Christian halves. Removal of the Green Line was one of the steps contained in a security plan approved by the Cabinet on Saturday. Other guidelines in the plan were the removal of all weapons from Beirut and its environs and the deployment of units of an integrated Lebanese Army in positions now held by the private militias. General Aoun, 49 years old, a career officer, has been charged with reuniting the army, which broke up along religious lines earlier this year after factional clashes. The Christian Voice of Lebanon radio reported today that the Phalange Party supported the changes in the military leadership and the security plan.
In another development, a Libyan diplomat who was kidnapped from his hotel two days ago was rescued today by forces of the Muslim Shiite Amal militia who stormed a house in Beirut’s southern suburbs. An Amal spokesman said the diplomat, Mohammed Moughrabi, was unharmed. The spokesman said two of his kidnappers were wounded in the rescue and three others captured.
More than 12,000 Sikh worshipers crowded into the bullet-pocked Golden Temple complex in India’s Amritsar province, opened to the public for the first time since the army stormed it nearly three weeks ago in an attack on Sikh extremists barricaded there. Sikh hymns sounded through the temple as the throngs drank from the shrine’s sacred pool under the gaze of rifle-toting soldiers.
Vietnam announced that it has stopped issuing exit permits for resettlement in the United States due to a backlog of cases caused by U.S. immigration quotas on Amerasian refugees. Nguyễn Phi Tuyên, head of the Vietnamese consular office in Hồ Chí Minh City, urged that the monthly U.S. quota be raised from the current 1,000 to about 4,000 and for the U.S. to take more people who want to join American relatives, including all children fathered by Americans during the Vietnam War. “For the U.S. alone,” he said, “we still have in Vietnam 28,000 to 29,000 people who have been granted exit visas but are still awaiting entry visas to the United States. Since we have 29,000 awaiting entry visas, we hesitate to grant more exit visas if they can’t get entry visas.”
Arbitrators in the seven-week strike-lockout that has idled about 475,000 West German workers have formulated a compromise on union demands for a 35-hour workweek that may end the walkout, the longest labor conflict in the nation’s history. Chief arbitrator Georg Leber said the plan has not yet been presented to either side but will probably be approved by both. The strike-lockout, affecting mainly metalworkers, has brought car production to a virtual halt.
West Germany has barred East Germans from entering its East Berlin mission, where about 50 people have taken refuge in an attempt to emigrate to the West. Hans Otto Braeutigam, head of the mission, said the facility is not “an asylum route.” He said the restriction is not part of an agreement with East Germany to allow the 50 would-be emigrants to go to the West. More than 60 East Germans who sought refuge in the U.S. and West German missions in East Berlin earlier this year have been allowed to emigrate.
A train loaded with iron ore stopped at a coal miners’ picket line at a steel plant in southern Wales today as the British coal strike entered its 16th week. The engineer and the guard stopped the train in front of a six-man picket line at the Llanwern steelworks and said they would not cross it. Also today, 45 pickets were arrested when some 200 strikers confronted workers at the Bilson Glen coal mine near Edinburgh. Miners at Bilson Glen returned to work last week.
Italy’s Christian Democratic Party edged the Communist Party in regional and local elections, reversing a major setback inflicted by the Communists in last week’s national elections for the European Parliament. In Sardinia, the Christian Democrats won 32.3% of the vote. compared to 28.7% for the Communists. Results from the largest 55 of the 88 cities and towns in which elections were held in other parts of Italy showed the Christian Democrats polling 38% of the vote, the Communists 22% and the Socialists 15.5%. Other parties shared the remainder of the votes.
President Reagan places a call to President Mitterrand of France to discuss his recent trip to meet with General Secretary Cherenkov of the Soviet Union.
Dwindling support for aid to Nicaraguan rebels was evident in the Senate. The Republican-controlled body voted, 88 to 1, to strike out $21 million in aid to the rebels from an emergency spending bill to clear the way for providing $100 million for summer youth jobs. In the face of the Senate action, President Reagan is expected to sign the bill.
Nicaragua’s draft is widely opposed. Groups of mothers have protested that their sons have been indiscriminately conscripted since the draft took effect in January and have been cut off from contact with their families and sent to battle without proper training. Interviews conducted in six Nicaraguan provinces over the last two weeks suggest that draft evasion is widespread.
A former president of Argentina, General Roberto Viola, was arrested after testifying about the disappearance of a state technician in 1978. Viola, also a former commander of the army, was taken into custody when he appeared before Federal Judge Luis Cordoba, who is handling the case of Alfredo Giorgi, a researcher at the National Institute of Industrial Technology who was arrested by security forces in November, 1978. Giorgi has not been heard from since then. He is presumed to be among the thousands of Argentines kidnaped and executed during the military junta’s “dirty war” against suspected subversives in the late 1970s, a campaign in which Viola played a major part.
Angola’s governing party charged that South Africa backed out of a troop-withdrawal agreement after secret meetings involving a U.S. official and the leader of anti-Marxist rebels in Angola. Reports from Lisbon said the Angolan rebel, Jonas Savimbi, met last month with top South African and U.S. officials-including Assistant Secretary of State Chester A. Crocker. The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola issued a statement accusing South Africa of failing to live up to a February agreement to withdraw troops from southern Angola, where the South Africans had launched incursions in pursuit of Namibian rebels.
A former Governor of Nigeria’s Plateau State has been sentenced to 22 years in prison for misappropriating $24 million, the Lagos radio said today. The former official, Solomon Lar, drew the maximum penalty Sunday, according to the broadcast monitored here. He is one of more than 500 officials of the Government of former President Shehu Shagari who are being tried by the Government of Major General Mohammed Buhari. General Buhari took power in a coup December 31.
The NASA Space Shuttle STS 41-D launch attempt is scrubbed because of a computer problem. A computer malfunction, possibly a memory lapse, forced the postponement of the space shuttle Discovery’s first flight. But engineers raced to rectify the problem and try to launch the $1.2 billion spaceship tomorrow morning. Launching crews at the Kennedy Space Center here were working toward a new time for the liftoff attempt, set for 8:43 A.M, Eastern daylight time. Another computer was installed in the shuttle to replace the one that failed in the last half-hour of the countdown this morning. But computer specialists here and at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, after troubleshooting the failure and testing the replacement computer, said they “understood” the problem and had given the go-ahead to continue the countdown for the launching.
[Ed: STS 41-D will be plagued by a series of problems; Discovery will not make her maiden flight until the end of August. Tomorrow’s engine anomaly shutdown and hydrogen fire will be a more serious matter.]
Walter F. Mondale and Gary Hart made conciliatory gestures and are to confer this morning in New York City. Senator Hart withdrew a threat to challenge several hundred Mondale convention delegates on the ground of financing irregularities, and Monale representatives on the Democratic rules committee informally endorsed a package of delegate-selection reforms for 1988 that the Hart staff had drafted.
Mr. Mondale was endorsed warmly by Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who urged the Democratic Party to “stop belaboring our differences” and defeat President Reagan.
President Reagan addresses the first Agricultural Communicators Congress.
President Reagan places a call to Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Paul A. Volcker.
No court may order the appointment of an independent counsel over the objection of the Attorney General, under a unanimous ruling by the Federal appeals court in Washington. Acting with unusual speed, the eight Justices reversed a May 14 decision by Federal District Judge Harold H. Greene ordering Attorney General William French Smith to get an independent counsel to investigate how the 1980 Reagan campaign obtained documents from the Carter White House and campaign.
The prime lending rate was raised half a percentage point, to 13 percent, by the nation’s major banks. It was the third increase in the key lending rate since March, bringing the prime to its highest level since October 1982. The increase could aggravate the international debt crisis.
An air pollution policy was reinstated by the Supreme Court. By a vote of 6 to 0, the Court overturned a lower court decision and ruled that the Clean Air Act permitted the extension of the “bubble” policy to new areas of the country in 1981. Under the bubble concept, a company may expand without undergoing a long environmental review as long as increased emissions of a pollutant from one part of the facility are offset by a decrease elsewhere in the plant.
A federal appeals court ordered Scarsdale, New York, to permit a creche in a public park at Christmas. It overturned a ruling that banned the Nativity scene last year. Using public property for the creche would not violate the separation of church and state, the court said in an opinion based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed a Nativity scene in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The appeals court said, however, there should be a larger sign stating the Scarsdale creche was privately maintained.
Information sought by a Pentagon official for a report on spare parts procurement was delayed for two months as it was shuttled from an Air Force office in Connecticut to other Air Force offices in New Mexico and Maryland and finally to the Pentagon-where an official decided it should not appear in the report. The ordeal was cited at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing by A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a Pentagon official who has exposed cost overruns, as an example of the difficulties faced by “whistle-blowers” seeking information about weapons costs and inefficiencies in Pentagon procurement. The material Fitzgerald’s office sought eventually was obtained after senior officials intervened.
Legislation introduced in the House would restrict “revolving door” hiring of federal employees by private industry whose contracts they supervised. Reps. Barbara Boxer (D-California) and Mel Levine (D-California) sponsored the bill, which prohibits defense and other contractors from hiring anyone directly involved in buying goods and services from them for five years after their government employment. “We’ve seen enough abuse in the military to clearly justify the legislation, and we’ve heard of abuse outside the military.” Levine said.
Allegations of wiretapping at the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department headquarters in Arizona were a hoax, possibly to drum up business for an ex-deputy’s friend, investigators said in Kingman. Warrants have been issued for Jerry Scott Miller, the former deputy, and Miller’s friend, Kim Dean Richards, both currently living in the Los Angeles area, said Kingman Police Chief Carroll Brown. Miller last fall complained that some of his cases had gone awry because of apparent bugging of department telephones, said Sheriff Bill Richardson, and they hired Richards on Miller’s recommendation to check whether the phones were tapped.
The board that controls nearly 1 million apartments in New York voted at a raucous meeting attended by hundreds of landlords and tenants to allow rent increases of 6% for one-year leases and 9% for two-year leases. The increase covers about 40% of the city’s 900,000 rent-stabilized apartments-those on which leases will be signed or renewed in the 12 months after October 1.
Nine persons were indicted in New York for avoiding taxes on $10 million received for ordaining people-including 150 New York City police officers-as ministers of the Life Science Church. For a “donation” of $3,000 to $4,500, the defendants ordained an individual as a minister and instructed him on the Internal Revenue Code, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani said. The new ministers were instructed to take “vows of poverty” and give their income to the church-making them 100% tax exempt, Giuliani said.
Vermont officials, defending an unsuccessful raid on a secretive religious group, said they would do it again to protect children of the communal sect from alleged abuse and neglect. “It was an extreme action, and in my judgment the evidence and the facts warranted it… no regrets,” Governor Richard A. Snelling said of Friday’s roundup at the Northeast Kingdom Community Church commune in remote Island Pond.
State lawyers who organized the raid on a northeastern Vermont religious sect Friday filed a motion in Vermont District Court in Newport today asking that Judge Frank Mahady be disqualified in the case, according to sources who asked not to be identified. Judge Mahady refused to allow the state to take the children into custody after the raid. Officials said they wanted to determine if the children had been abused.
The lawyers say Judge Joseph Wolchik of Vermont District Court should have heard the emergency custody cases of 112 children taken from their homes at Island Pond. Judge Wolchik had issued the search warrant and court order necessary for the raids on the homes of members of the Northeast Kingdom Community Church. The church is in the part of the state known as the Northeast Kingdom. The state’s plans to examine the children had to be abandoned when Judge Mahady refused to issue 72-hour emergency detention orders after the raid by 90 troopers and about 50 social workers. Judge Mahady sent the children home, dismissing some cases and continuing others for further details.
The pilot of a small plane that crashed in northwest Georgia early Sunday, killing all five people aboard, had only a student’s license that did not permit him to take up other people, a federal official said yesterday. Furthermore, the Government was ready to impose civil penalties against the pilot, Kenneth Powell, 38, for earlier flights made without any license, according to Jack Barker, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. The F.A.A. has not decided what penalties to impose, Mr. Barker said. The single-engine Piper Cherokee plane left McMinnville, Tennessee, early Sunday before crashing in a residential area near the Cherokee County Airport, according to the authorities.
A Florida woman found a Mediterranean fruit fly larva in an orange tree where the pests were first seen last week, in a “lucky break” that helped pinpoint the infestation, officials said. “As long as we only have fly finds, then we are never sure where the fly came from,” Charlie Poucher, head of the state program for eradication of the fruit fly, said Sunday “When we have larval finds, we know the exact tree they are breeding in.” He said pest experts believe they have found the center of the infestation “right in the middle” of a nine-square-mile area that is being sprayed with pesticide from the air and the ground. So far, five nonlarval fruit flies have been trapped, four males and one female, but experts suspect as many as 1,000 of the pests might be in the area. If they spread, the flies could damage the state’s $1 billion citrus crop and cause millions of dollars in damage to other fruits.
Vaccine production has been halted by an increasing number of the nation’s major drug companies, some of them stung by large liability costs. The dropouts have raised fears that future supplies of vaccines may be jeopardized, important research will be neglected and the costs of vaccines may skyrocket.
Lydia Garrett, 24, is crowned the 17th Miss Black America.
Prince releases his “Purple Rain” album.
At Yankee Stadium, Dave Winfield hits 5 singles and drives in 4 runs to lead New York to a 7–3 win over Detroit. Ron Guidry (6–5) is the beneficiary of Winfield’s hitting. Dave is now hitting .750 against Detroit this year. Winfield has three five-hit games this month, tying a record set by Ty Cobb.
Mark Gubicza pitched a three-hitter, and George Brett and Steve Balboni each hit three-run homers as the Kansas City Royals crushed the A’s, 16–0, tonight. It was the worst defeat for the A’s since they moved to Oakland from Kansas City in 1968. Gubicza (4–7), whose teammates had scored a total of six runs in his seven losses, was handed an 8–0 lead in the first inning. He retired the first 10 batters and did not surrender a hit until Bruce Bochte bounced a single up the middle with one out in the fifth. The right-hander struck out five and walked four. Oakland’s Bill Krueger (5–3) did not retire a batter and was charged with eight runs and six of the Royals’ 17 hits. Gordon Heimueller gave up the next eight runs.
Eddie Milner hits his second straight leadoff homer for the Cincinnati Reds to lead the Reds to a 2–1 win over the host San Francisco Giants. Milner’s leadoff dinger yesterday was not enough as the Reds lost, 8–3, in 13 innings.
Bill Madlock slugged a pair of home runs, and Jose DeLeon hurled a four-hitter today to lead the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 3–0 victory over Chicago, snapping a three-game Cub winning streak. Madlock, a four-time National League batting champion who won two of his titles with the Cubs, came into the game with a .251 average and only one home run for the season.
Los Angeles Dodger infielder Bill Russell plays his 1,953rd game to become the team’s leader in games played. The shortstop, who will extend the mark to 2181 during his 18-year tenure with the club, is hitless in three trips to the plate but will walk twice in LA’s 9–4 loss to San Diego at Chavez Ravine.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1130.52 (-0.55).
Born:
Lauren Bush, American model and CEO and co-founder of FEED Projects; daughter of Neil Bush and Sharon Bush (née Smith), granddaughter of former U.S. president George H. W. Bush, and niece of former U.S. president George W. Bush and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, in Denver, Colorado.
Indigo [as Alyssa Ashley Nichols], American actress (“Weeds”), in Los Angeles, California.
Died:
Michel Foucault, 57, French philosopher and historian (“History of Sexuality”), of AIDS.
History Diaries 