Efforts to bolster U.S.-Soviet contacts are being made, President Reagan said. In a White House speech, he said Washington was working to strengthen economic, scientific, cultural, consular and other contacts with Moscow while reserving the right to denounce Soviet actions that threaten peace. In a speech to specialists on Soviet-United States exchanges, Mr. Reagan reviewed a long list of subjects that he said were under discussion with Moscow, despite the suspension of nuclear weapons talks in Geneva. “I don’t think there is anything we’re encouraging the Soviet leaders to do that is not as much in their interest as it is in ours,” he said. “If they’re as committed to peace as they say, they should join us and work with us.
“If they sincerely want to reduce arms, there’s no excuse for refusing to talk,” he added. “And if they sincerely want to deal with us as equals, they shouldn’t try to avoid a frank discussion of real problems.” Political Implications Seen At the same time, Mr. Reagan said: “When Soviet actions threaten the peace or violate a solemn agreement or trample on standards fundamental to the civilized world, we cannot and will not be silent. To do so would our deepest values,” he said, and “violate our conscience.”
A Swiss-owned supertanker was hit, apparently by an Exocet missile, in the Persian Gulf and its engine room set on fire after it loaded Iranian oil at Kharg Island. according to shipping sources. The tanker said its engine room was on fire and several crewmen were injured. Iraq said its warplanes had successfully attacked “two very large naval targets” — the phrase it usually uses to designate a tanker. The sources could confirm only that one ship was hit. Iraq also warned that it planned to step up strikes against ships calling at Kharg Island, the only point in the Persian Gulf where Iran can still deliver oil to its customers.
Early this morning the 260,000-ton Swiss-owned and Liberian-registered tanker Tiburon put out a distress call, saying its engine room was on fire and several crewmen were injured. Shipping sources in Bahrain and in Zurich said they believed the ship had been hit by an Exocet missile fired from an Iraqi warplane. A salvage tug was on its way from Bahrain to give assistance.
Iran’s Islamic leadership immediately vowed revenge for the attack. After a Cabinet meeting in Teheran, Iran’s Prime Minister, Mir Hussein Moussavi, said, “We will deliver a blow for every blow we receive.” He also warned that Iran would strike back at other gulf nations that support Iraq, saying, “Security in the gulf must apply to all or to none.”
Two Iranians who hijacked an Iran Air jetliner were flown to Baghdad, Iraq, from Egypt aboard an Iraqi airliner and were granted political asylum. Three Iran Air crewmen, meanwhile, flew the pirated Boeing 727 back to Iran. Mohammed Reza Aheri, a former Iranian military pilot, told reporters in Baghdad that he and his colleague hijacked the jetliner Tuesday to flee oppression in Iran. The plane was flown to Qatar, on the Persian Gulf, where the passengers and crew members were released, then to Egypt.
The Reagan Administration told Congress that it has offered Kuwait an $82-million package of up-to-date electronic improvements for its Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to show U.S. support for the Persian Gulf sheikdom. But the proposed sale is notable for what it does not include: any new weapons-particularly short-range, portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which Saudi Arabia has already received from the United States. Congress has 30 days in which to reject the sale, planned in response to Kuwait’s requests for U.S. help in improving its air defense system in the war between Iran and Iraq.
A Syrian-Israeli accord on prisoners was reported by Syria’s official press agency. It said the exchange would include about 290 Syrian prisoners seized in the Lebanon war in 1982. Syria holds at least six Israeli prisoners, but the number to be exchanged was not disclosed. An Israeli Army spokesman in Tel Aviv said only that preparations for an exchange were being made. The spokesman said no details would be made public until Thursday. The Syrian press agency said the exchange would take place Thursday near the southern Syrian town of Quneitra, in a buffer zone between Israel and Syria that is controlled by the United Nations.
President Reagan meets with Prince Bandar, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States.
More than 5,000 Sikh pilgrims poured into the reopened Golden Temple complex today, one day after it was closed abruptly. Many wept as they viewed damage caused by the Indian Army’s raid on the shrine. The 17th-century temple, holiest shrine in the Sikh religion, was opened to Sikh pilgrims for two hours today, the police in Amritsar said. The United News of India quoted police officials as having said that more than 3,500 pilgrims rushed into the complex. The army took control of the temple complex in an assault June 4–7. Officials said Sikh militants seeking political autonomy and greater religious rights had been using it as a refuge while running a terror campaign that had claimed hundreds of lives.
Thousands of union members, many chanting slogans against British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, marched through London as rail workers disrupted commuter trains in a one-day show of support for striking coal miners. Buses and the subways ran normally, however. Arthur Scargill, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, led the march and addressed a rally on the south bank of the Thames. The miners’ strike is in its 16th week.
A major East-West environmental conference agreed to joint strategy to fight air pollution but without committing participants to any specific targets on cutting industrial emissions. The 31-nation conference, at the close of its three-day meeting in Munich, West Germany, agreed that air pollution, including acid rain, cannot be fought effectively by nations acting alone. The conference ran overtime as the delegates, including representatives of the United States and Soviet Union, worked on a compromise that linked environmental protection to peace and security without referring to the arms race.
Canadian External Affairs Minister Allan J. MacEachen announced that he will be quitting the Cabinet and will not run in the next election. MacEachen, deputy prime minister and right-hand man to outgoing Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, told reporters in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia, that he had been offered a job in the new Cabinet of Prime Minister-designate John Turner but turned it down because he had no desire to remain in politics after Trudeau leaves. Turner is to be sworn in as Canada’s 17th prime minister Saturday.
Twenty-six Cuban political prisoners will be released by Fidel Castro today if Washington gives them visas and if arrangements can be made to transport them, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said in Managua, Nicaragua. The prisoners, he said, would be in addition to the 22 United States citizens whom Mr. Castro agreed to free early yesterday.
U.S. special envoy Harry W. Shlaudeman left the Mexican Pacific resort of Manzanillo by private plane after two days of confidential talks with a Nicaraguan representative on the strained relations between their two countries. No details were released. Victor Hugo Tinoco, deputy foreign minister of Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government, left on a Mexican government plane for Mexico City, where he was to take a commercial flight to Managua, the Nicaraguan capital.
Western Hemisphere press and broadcast organizations have urged the governments of Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay to lift restrictions on the freedom of expression and information. They made their appeal in a joint statement from the Inter-American Press Association and the Inter-American Association of Broadcasters, whose executive committees concluded a five-day meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The Uruguayan capital of Montevideo was virtually paralyzed today by a general strike on the 11th anniversary of the coup that brought the military regime to power. Most factories, stores and private offices were shut. Policemen patrolled deserted streets in the capital, but no violence was reported. The only activity in Montevideo was in Government offices, which stayed open, and at a few downtown bars and markets. Reports from the interior of this nation of 2.8 million people indicated other cities and towns were obeying the strike call by opposition political groups, bringing business to a standstill. On Monday the Government declared the strike illegal and ordered public transport to keep operating. Empty buses rumbled through the streets bearing signs that said, “Obligatory Emergency Service.”
The Defense Department acknowledged that the Navy has begun arming its warships with nuclear cruise missiles, an action assailed by two Republican senators as “bad judgment if not a serious breach of faith” with Congress. The Pentagon, in response to inquiries, said the 1,500-mile-range nuclear land-attack version of the Tomahawk cruise missile “became operational a few days ago aboard U.S. Navy combatants.” Several weeks ago, the House passed an amendment to the fiscal 1985 defense spending bill that prohibits the assignment at sea of nuclear-tipped Tomahawks, so long as the Soviet Union refrains from deploying a counterpart missile, the SSNX-21.
The N.C.A.A. was rebuffed by the Supreme Court. By a vote of 7 to 2, the Justices ended the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 33-year reign over televised college football. The Court agreed with two lower Federal courts that the collegiate governing body’s exclusive power to regulate the number of television appearances by a football team and to negotiate the price of those appearances violated antitrust laws.
President Reagan addresses about 180 members of the National Association of Minority Contractors.
The House passed and sent to the White House a measure to restrict highway construction funds for states that don’t approve a drinking age of 21 within two years. The measure passed on a voice vote with little debate. President Reagan has indicated he will sign the bill. If the 27 states that do not now have a drinking age of at least 21 fail to conform with the higher drinking age, they stand to lose 5% of their highway construction funds in fiscal 1987 and 10% in 1988.
Student religious groups could meet in public high schools before or after regular school hours under a measure approved in the Senate by a vote of 88 to 11.
Disappointment in the space shuttle has prompted a change in Air Force policy. The service, which had been phasing out its own space booster rockets and relying on the shuttle to carry military satellites aloft, has begun to backtrack and has been campaigning in Congress for funds to begin developing a small fleet of 10 new expendable rockets.
Walter F. Mondale seems to be facing a deepening problem in his efforts to strengthen his support among Jews without offending the black constituency of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Some Jewish leaders have called publicly for Mr. Mondale to repudiate Mr. Jackson for his association with Louis Farrakhan, a black Muslim leader who has described Judaism as a “gutter religion.”
Geraldine A. Ferraro would be willing to have her name offered for the Democratic Vice-Presidential nomination from the convention floor “as a statement” if Walter F. Mondale chose a man as his running mate, she said. Representative Ferraro, Democrat of Queens, has been invited by Mr. Mondale to meet with him next week to discuss the possibility of being his running mate.
Major deregulation of TV stations was approved by the Federal Communications Commission. The commission, in a unanimous decision, lifted its longstanding requirements that the stations broadcast minimum amounts of news and local programming and limit the time devoted to commercials.
The growing sanctuary movement among American church people opposed to United States policy in Central America is increasingly in conflict with the federal government. A Federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, sentenced Stacey Lynn Merkt, a Roman Catholic lay worker, to two years’ probation for aiding three Salvadoran refugees who had entered this country illegally.
A case against a federal judge is being downgraded by the Justice Department. The department moved to drop four of the seven charges filed against District Judge Harry F. Claiborne, including the principal charge that he took bribes from the owner of a brothel. The judge’s bribery trial ended April 13 in Reno with the jury deadlocked.
Hosts who allow adult guests to get drunk and drive away are liable for the injuries to others if a guest is involved in a car accident, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled. The 6–1 decision by the state’s highest court imposes on people entertaining adults in their homes the same liability previously imposed on liquor license holders and social hosts who serve liquor to minors. In California and Oregon, courts have held social hosts responsible for the negligence of their adult guests. But the legislatures in both states changed the laws after the rulings, attorneys said.
The Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed itself, saying it was wrong when it upheld the incorporation of Rajneeshpuram, the town founded by followers of an Indian guru. The new opinion means that followers of Guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh must go back to Wasco County in their quest for a city named Rajneeshpuram on land zoned for farm use. An attorney representing the Rajneeshees called the court’s reversal “a tragedy.” and said he would “definitely” appeal.
U.S. District Judge Henry Woods postponed Friday’s scheduled execution of four Arkansas Death Row prisoners convicted of beating and killing a man in front of his wife and children. Assistant Attorney General Victra Fewell said the four men had finally exhausted their appeals on the state level and now were beginning on the federal level. Convicted of the January, 1981, killing of Donald Lehman, a Rogers building contractor, were Michael Orndorff, James W. Holmes, Darrell Richley, and Hoyt F. Clines.
In Waco, Texas, James R. Kearns, accused as a contract killer, pleaded guilty today to a botched attempt to murder a federal prosecutor and accepted a plea bargain agreement that spares his wife from prosecution in the case. Mr. Kearns entered the plea in the third day of his trial on charges he conspired with a drug dealer, Jamiel Chagra, and acted as trigger man in the November 21, 1978, attack on James Kerr, an assistant United States attorney. Only an hour after the trial resumed, Federal District Judge William Sessions said, “I understand some circumstances concerning the defendant have developed this morning.” A prosecutor said that Mr. Kearns wished to change his not guilty plea to guilty. Ray Jahn, another assistant United States attorney, and Mr. Kearns’ attorney, Barry Haight, said the accused man pleaded guilty in an agreement that spares his wife, Catherine, from prosecution on obstruction of justice and perjury charges.
The Louisiana Legislature gave final approval to a $17.5-million loan guarantee for the critically acclaimed but financially ailing world’s fair in New Orleans. The measure now goes to Governor Edwin W. Edwards, allowing him to sign a guarantee for the loans so the fair can pay $15 million in overdue bills and set up a $2.5-million emergency fund.
The House refused to broaden the ability of federal workers to use their health insurance to pay for abortions as the chamber dealt with an appropriations bill. The measure — with nearly $12.8 billion for the Treasury, Postal Service, the executive office of the President, and a number of independent agencies — passed 313 to 98 and was sent to the Senate. Rep. Barbara Boxer, (D-California) unsuccessfully sought to lift a restriction against the use of federal employee health insurance plan money for abortions, except if the life of the mother were threatened. The amendment became law last year.
Employees at the Monsanto Company’s Nitro plant were assured that the chemicals they worked with would not hurt them and ignored advice to take safety precautions, a retired foreman testified today. Ronald Smith, 64 years old, of St. Albans, West Virginia, said the workers knew the herbicide 2,4,5-T caused chloracne, a yellowish, blotchy rash, but were told “nothing at the plant would do anything permanent to us.” The testimony ended the first week of trial in a suit by seven Monsanto employees, who contend they suffered permanent health problems after handling 2,4,5-T, which was produced at the Nitro plant from 1948 to 1969 and contains the toxic chemical dioxin.
The flooding Missouri River crested in Omaha today at the highest level ever recorded here in summertime after covering thousands of acres of nearby farmland. The 29.3-foot crest brought the Omaha area its most severe flooding since 1952, city officials said. Flood walls and levees put in place after the river peaked at 40.2 feet in the spring of 1952 prevented major damage in the city. Heavy late spring and early summer rains across the Plains states filled the Missouri, the Platte and other rivers which flow from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi, setting off flooding in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.
Poorer overall health of Americans is likely for years to come as a result of the deep economic recession in 1981 and 1982, according to Prof. M. Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins University who conducted a new study for Congress.
Fire destroys a set during the filming of the James Bond movie, “A View to a Kill.”
Emmy 11th Daytime Award presentation. Susan Lucci loses for the fifth time.
UEFA European Championship Final, Parc des Princes, Paris, France: Michel Platini & Bruno Bellone score as France beats Spain, 2–0.
The Yankees resuscitated themselves in time last night for a victory and perhaps they learned something about how to go forward in the rest of this long season. They defeated the Detroit Tigers, 5–4, with three runs in the eighth inning. It was their second late-inning victory in three nights over the best team in the land this year.
The California Angels edged the Texas Rangers, 2–1. Mike Brown tripled and scored on Brian Downing’s sacrifice fly in the top of the ninth inning to give California its winning run. The Texas starter Mike Mason retired the first 19 California batters, but he lost his perfect game when Dick Schofield doubled off the base of the center-field wall in the seventh.
In the 3rd inning against the Cincinnati Reds, San Francisco Giants outfielder Dusty Baker swipes second, third, and home, garnering three of his 4 season steals. Baker swipes second base, and the next batter walks, then gets caught in a rundown. Dusty steals third during the rundown and just keeps running home. San Francisco wins 14–9, with Chili Davis adding a pinch grand slam in the 5-run 5th. Randy Lerch wins with a ⅓ inning of relief.
Dwight Gooden, the 19-year-old prize pupil of the Mets, got his first look at the Philadelphia Phillies tonight, and regretted it. The Phillies routed him with six hits and five runs in the fifth inning, defeated the Mets by 5–1 and dumped them out of first place in the National League’s East Division. They also took the series, two games to one, sending the Mets home with four losses in their last six games. “I didn’t think I threw all that badly,” Gooden said later. “They got some timely hits. But I’ve bounced back before, and I’ll do it again.” Gooden faced the Phillies with stunning statistics for a rookie: 107 strikeouts in 91 innings, more than Nolan Ryan of the Houston Astros and second only to Fernando Valenzuela of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Pascual Perez gained his eighth victory and Gerald Perry hit a home run for the Braves as Atlanta beat the Houston Astros, 6–4. The Braves took advantage of a two- run error by the right fielder Terry Puhl to build a 4-1 lead in the first inning. Perez (8-2) allowed eight hits, walked four and struck out three. He retired 11 consecutive batters during one stretch. He gave way to Donnie Moore, who retired the last two batters to record his sixth save.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1116.72 (-6.07).
Born:
Khloé Kardashian, American reality television star (“Keeping Up with the Kardashians”), in Los Angeles, California.
Emma Lahana, New Zealand actress (“Haven”), in Auckland, New Zealand
D.J. King, Canadian NHL centre (St. Louis Blues, Washington Capitals), in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Julie Ordon, Swiss model, in Geneva, Switzerland.
History Diaries 