Beirut’s Green Line is being razed by the Lebanese Army. Troops using earth-moving machines began demolishing the five-mile-long barricades that have separated the Muslim and Christian sectors of the capital and seemed symbols of the nine-year civil war. The clearing of the Green Line, which ran from the sea at the northern end of Beirut to the southern suburbs, was aimed at reunifying the city and bringing it under the authority of the Government of Prime Minister Rashid Karami. The clearing was without incident. The clearing of the barricades is the second phase in a peace plan for Beirut. The first phase was the advance Wednesday by 9,000 soldiers of the rebuilt Lebanese Army into Muslim West Beirut and Christian East Beirut to take over militia strongholds. The troops also moved into the Beirut port area and the international airport south of the city, both of which have been closed since February. The airport is to resume operations on Friday and the harbor on Monday.
Iranian planes attacked and damaged a Japanese-owned supertanker today in evident retaliation for Iraqi attacks, shipping sources reported. Diplomats in Bahrain presumed that the attack on the Liberian-registry Primrose was in reprisal for Iraqi raids against vessels bound to or from Iran and, in particular, a June 24 raid against the Kharg Island oil terminal. Iranians confirmed today that Kharg Island facilities were damaged in the June 24 raid. The Primrose was said to have been hit twice but remained sufficiently seaworthy to proceed at full speed toward the Strait of Hormuz. The owner, the Bayard Tanker Corporation, said that no one had been injured. Two unexploded bombs remained on board, company added. The Primrose, which had left the Saudi loading facility at Ras Tanura Wednesday, was hit shortly after noon about 75 miles southwest of Iran’s Lavan Island.
In Tehran, Mohammed Gharazi, the Minister of Oil, said at a news conference today that the Kharg Island damage was so slight that oil loading would not be curtailed. He vowed that Iran would punish Iraq on the battlefield rather than bring up the issue next week at a meeting in Vienna of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Both Iran and Iraq are members. “Iran is committed to stabilizing security in the Persian Gulf and we have the power to do it,” Mr. Gharazi declared.
A former Nigerian Cabinet minister who is a leading opponent of his country’s six-month-old military government was kidnapped in London today. Two British television stations said later that the former official, Umaru Dikko, was found drugged but alive in a crate labeled “diplomatic baggage” in an airport cargo terminal. Two other men were found in similar crates at Stansted Airport, 30 miles northeast of London, the British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television reported. The Nigerian Government has called Mr. Dikko its “most wanted man.” He was reputed to have amassed over a billion dollars as Transport Minister during the ousted civilian Government of President Shehu Shagari. He was bundled into a van about noon and driven away from his apartment block near Marble Arch in the central London, witnesses told the police.
A spokesman for the Nigerian Government said today that it had no hand in the kidnapping of Mr. Dikko.
Striking Greek employees of U.S. military bases in their country clashed with police and threatened to try to seize the installations if their demands for a shortened workweek and higher pay are not met, a union spokesman said. The confrontation took place outside the U.S. Navy Communications Base in Nea Makri, 26 miles north of Athens. No arrests or injuries were reported. The 1,600 employees at the four main U.S. bases and several smaller installations are seeking a 37½-hour workweek and the indexing of their pay based on the inflation rate.
The last members of a group of 55 East Germans left the West German mission in East Berlin, where they had sought refuge for at least three weeks in a bid to emigrate to the West. A West German official said the last East Germans, four adults and two children, left the building and returned to their homes in East Germany. The official said he hoped that the refugees’ departure would persuade East Germany to lift a ban on emigration. East German authorities said they would not lift the emigration ban until the last refugee left the West German mission.
He is one of the last of the Old Bolsheviks, a trusted lieutenant of Stalin, living in obscurity since he fell from power 27 years ago. Today a Soviet official confirmed that Vyacheslav M. Molotov, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister under Stalin, had been reinstated on the Communist Party rolls at the age of 94. Mr. Molotov, a close associate of Stalin, was dismissed from his posts in 1957 after taking part in an attempt to remove Nikita S. Khrushchev and was ousted from the party in 1962.
Sikh extremists hijacked an Indian Airlines jetliner with 264 aboard and forced it to land in Lahore, Pakistan. There they threatened to blow up the aircraft unless New Delhi releases Sikhs arrested during the recent strife in Punjab state and pays $25 million for alleged looting by Indian troops during last month’s attack on the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Officials said four men armed with pistols and explosives took control of the A-300 Airbus on a flight from Srinagar in the state of Jammu and Kashmir to New Delhi. The plane was under heavy guard at the airport at Lahore, in eastern Pakistan near the border with India, as the hijackers’ deadline passed without incident. The hijackers were reportedly heard shouting Sikh extremist and pro-Pakistani slogans over the plane’s radio on landing in Lahore. The airliner carried 255 passengers and a crew of 9.
The Aga Khan, spiritual leader of 20 million Ismailian Muslims in the Middle East, has started a news service to report on events and trends in developing countries for clients in those countries and in the United States, Europe and Japan. The start of the service, Compass News Features, was announced yesterday in Luxembourg, where it has its headquarters. The Aga Khan, who publishes newspapers in East Africa, has complained that the major news agencies cover the affairs of underdeveloped nations with a Western bias. In a telephone interview, Gerald Loughran, a former foreign editor of United Press International who is managing editor of Compass, said the service, a weekly package of articles and illustrations, would start next week. “We will be sympathetic toward the third world without being sycophantic,” he said.
The Philippine panel investigating the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. will seek permission to exhume his body to check testimony that he may have been shot twice rather than once as officially reported, a member of the panel said. Luciano Salazar said a letter asking permission was sent to Aquino’s widow, Corazon. But she told newsmen that she will refuse the request. Two medical experts have testified that the nature of the head wounds and bullet fragments indicate that the opposition leader may have been hit by two bullets.
Corazon Aquino, said tonight, “Of course, I will reject the request.” Earlier she had expressed to the commission her continuing distrust of any inquiry into her husband’s death conducted while the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos is in power.
The U.S. Ambassador in Bolivia played a key role in preventing a military coup against the country’s elected President while he was abducted for 10 hours last weekend, according to American and Bolivian officials. They said the ambassador, Edwin Corr, telephoned military commanders and political leaders around Bolivia, telling them the United States would oppose any attempt to overthrow the civilian Government.
Raul Alfonsin has dismissed the Argentine Army’s Chief of Staff and three other generals in what was said to be an effort to quell dissent in the army over the prosecutions of military men for past human rights abuses. Officials in Buenos Aires said that President Alfonsin had ordered the dismissals to assert clearly the civilian Government’s control over the armed forces. General Ricardo Gustavo Pianta was sworn in the day after the resignation of General Jorge Arguindegui and the dismissal of General Pedro Pablo Mansilla, commander of the army’s 3rd Corps in the industrial city of Cordoba. Pianta had been Arguindegui’s deputy. Two military engineers, Generals Mario Cammisa and Julian Capanegra, were also reportedly forced into retirement by Alfonsin.
Leaders of English-speaking Caribbean states have agreed to grant observer status to three nations with different language and cultural traditions — Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, French-speaking Haiti and the former Dutch colony of Suriname. The decision was taken at a summit meeting in the Bahamas of 12 former British colonies and one still under British rule that make up the Caribbean Community, a version of the European Community. The three observer states will be represented on the community’s health, education, labor and agriculture committees.
Evidence obtained by the police with a search warrant that later proves to be defective may be used by the prosecution in a criminal trial, under a 6-to-3 decision by the Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the 70-year-old exclusionary rule, which bars the use of illegally obtained evidence, should not apply when the police have acted in “objectively reasonable reliance” on an apparently valid search warrant. The decision was a victory for the Reagan Administration’s position on a major controversy in criminal justice.
A college man who fails to register for the draft is ineligible for Federal scholarship aid. A Federal law imposing that policy was deemed unconstitutional a year ago by a federal district judge but was upheld by the Supreme Court, 6 to 2.
Democratic delegates prefer Senator Gary Hart slightly over Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro as a running mate for Walter F. Mondale, according to a New York Times survey. However, when backers of Mrs. Ferraro and of other specific women were added to the convention delegates who said Mr. Mondale should select “a woman,” the total exceeded Senator Hart’s.
Jesse Jackson defended his missions in personal diplomacy and accused President Reagan of using his attack on Mr. Jackson’s trip to Nicaragua and Cuba as a “political ploy” to divert attention from his foreign policy failures.
President Reagan visits General Motors manufacturing plants in Michigan and sees their new line of “Saturn” cars. President Reagan is invoking God, the flag, the family and freedom in his first extended campaign trip of the summer. He stressed those values before a happy crowd of family picnickers in Alabama and blue-collar workers at an auto assembly plant in Michigan. Some of Mr. Reagan’s aides say his use of optimism and wholesomeness works well.
President Reagan meets with Mr. and Mrs. John Taylor, whose young son was saved by open heart surgery thanks to Medicaid funds made available after a letter from the President was sent to Medicaid.
An attempt to blow up the National Abortion Federation offices in Washington caused a small fire but the bomb apparently malfunctioned before it could inflict major damage, police officials said. The explosive device, found just before midnight after police received an anonymous telephone tip, “probably would have wiped out the whole building if it had been fully functional,” said police spokesman Jim Battle. Instead, it caused “only minimal damage,” he said. The federation, a professional membership organization of abortion providers, has a membership of 290 clinics and hospitals, according to executive director Barbara Radford. She said the incident “was the 10th bombing of an abortion-related facility in the U.S. in 1984.”
A young insurance agent already charged with killing one woman was taken before two Connecticut courts and charged in the deaths of five more young women since 1982. Michael B. Ross, 24, an Ivy League graduate, could face the death penalty if convicted on any of the six counts against him. The Norwich court ordered him held without bond in the slayings of three women and July 16 was set for arraignment. The court in Windham scheduled him to appear August 2 on two more counts of capital felony.
A former talent agency clerk was convicted today of the first-degree murder of Vicki Morgan, the reputed mistress who once filed a multi-million-dollar suit against the estate of Alfred Bloomingdale, a Presidential adviser. The jury in the murder trial returned a guilty verdict against the defendant, Marvin Pancoast, 34 years old, after less than six hours of deliberations. Mr. Pancoast, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, is scheduled to appear Monday in a separate hearing before the same jury to determine if he was sane at the time of the murder. If found sane, he could be sentenced for 26 years to life by Superior Court Judge David Horowitz. If found insane, he could be sentenced to an indefinite period at a state mental hospital. In a statement played for the jury, Mr. Pancoast said he killed Miss Morgan because she had treated him like a “slave boy.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service has inadequate data to monitor existing oil and natural gas operations in its wildlife refuges, the General Accounting Office said. The service is losing money because it has no policy on seismic exploration. Some managers do not permit it, some permit it for a fee and still others permit such exploration without fee, the GAO said.
The number of interracial marriages in the United States has doubled in the years following the Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws against such unions. Marriages between persons of different races totaled 18,853 in 1980, or about 1.9% of all marriages in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. That is more than twice the 0.7% recorded in 1968, the year after the Supreme Court threw out state laws against miscegenation. At the time about 20 states had such laws.
A Boston fire that killed at least 14 people in a rooming house for alcoholics, transients and discharged mental patients was arson, officials said today. The preliminary cause of the state’s deadliest fire since 1942 was announced within an hour after the state fire marshal declared that all the bodies in the blaze Wednesday at the Elliot Chambers rooming house had been accounted for. One person died leaping from a third-story window; 13 others were trapped in the blaze, which started 4:20 AM. Two people remained in Boston hospitals, while other survivors were listed in good or stable condition in Danvers and Salem hospitals. Only four victims, including a 9-year- old Maine boy, his 21-year-old brother and their 73-year-old grandmother, have been identified.
Lawyers for the Unification Church filed two lawsuits Thursday challenging the right of Norfolk, Virginia, to confiscate 78 fishing boats for unpaid taxes. The city sent the church a bill for $414 for 1984 property taxes due June 29. The bill was not paid, and 78 boats were confiscated. One of the suits seeks to delay the July 17 auction of the vessels, said a lawyer for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of the church. The second suit contests Norfolk’s right to tax the boats, which the church says are used for religious education.
Estrogen hormones taken to ease menopause symptoms or to prevent brittle bones in older women apparently do not increase the risk of breast cancer, Boston University researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Estrogen is commonly prescribed to women going through menopause to relieve hot flashes and mood swings, and to prevent breakdown of vaginal tissues. Higher doses of the drug halt loss of calcium from bones. The condition affects 25% of older women.
A 12-year-old boy suffering from acute leukemia received a transplant of bone marrow taken from his dead father in what Minneapolis doctors said was the first such operation. Dr. Norma Ramsay said Randy Veenker of Windom, Minnesota, received bone marrow taken from his father after he died June 15 of a heart attack. Randy’s mother, Rose Veenker, said her son had debated briefly whether he wanted to go through the transplant. “But being as this was the last gift he got from his father, he decided to go ahead with it,” she said.
Kennedy White House tapes just made public show an earnest President Kennedy cajoling mayors, governors and members of Congress to accept integration in the South and to support his civil rights programs. The nearly 10 hours of tapes were secretly recorded in the Oval Office 21 years ago.
New studies of the Milky Way have detected enormous structures in the galaxy suggesting the presence of unsuspected magnetic fields of great strength. The studies were made by astronomers who recorded radio waves emitted from the core of the galaxy.
Instead of getting mad, Chris Evert Lloyd got even. She had spent the better part of a fortnight listening to her fellow competitors dismiss her as a has-been, no threat to beat Martina Navratilova in the Wimbledon final, and not even a sure bet to get there. The worst offender was Hana Mandlikova, who barely acknowledged Mrs. Lloyd in predicting her own final-round success. But today Mrs. Lloyd taught a lesson to her cheeky Czechoslovak opponent, crushing her by 6–1, 6–2 in a semifinal match that lasted only 45 minutes.
Almost as dominating, but expected to be so, was Martina Navratilova, who defeated the semifinal outsider, sixth-seeded Kathy Jordan, by the score of 6–3, 6–4.
Down 4–1 with 2 outs in the 9th, the visiting Detroit Tigers score six runs to beat the Texas Rangers, 7–4. Lou Whitaker’s bases loaded single scores two, Trammell’s single scores another, and Gibson seals it with a three-run shot down the right field line. Charlie Hough is the loser, while Detroit reliever Aurelio Lopez goes 7–0.
The hot-hitting Jim Rice belts a 3-run homer in the bottom of the 1st and Dwight Evans has a grand slam and 6 RBIs as the Boston Red Sox outslug the visiting California Angels, 12–7. Bill Buckner has 4 hits.
Charles Hudson pitched his first major league shutout, a four-hitter through seven innings, as the Philadelphia Phillies edged the Atlanta Braves tonight, 1–0. The game was called after the seventh, following a rain delay of 2 hours 7 minutes. Hudson (8–6) struck out four and walked three. Rick Mahler (6–4) pitched a three-hitter with a career-high eight strikeouts in a loss.
Tony Gwynn, who doubled home a run in the first, drew a bases-loaded walk with two out in the ninth to force in the winning run as the San Diego Padres edged the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2–1. Rod Scurry (1–5), working his second inning in relief of Jose DeLeon, struck out Kevin McReynolds to open the ninth but then walked Carmelo Martinez. Martinez went to second on a wild pitch and, after Garry Templeton struck out, Scurry walked Kurt Bevacqua and Alan Wiggins to load the bases. Gwynn got his seventh game-winning run batted in when he walked on a 3–2 pitch. Rich Gossage (4–2) worked the final two innings and got the victory.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1124.56 (-9.72).
Born:
Quentin Groves, NFL linebacker and defensive end (Jacksonville Jaguars, Oakland Raiders, Arizona Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Tennessee Titans), in Greenville, Mississippi (d. 2016, of a heart attack).
Joe Piskula, NHL defenseman (Los Angeles Kings, Calgary Flames, Nashville Predators), in Antigo, Wisconsin.
Willnett Crockett, WNBA forward (Phoenix Mercury), in Los Angeles, California.
Yu Yamada, Ryukyuan model, actress and singer, in Okinawa, Japan.
Died:
Don Elliott [Helfman], 57, American jazz trumpeter, vibraphonist, mellophone player, and vocalist, of cancer.
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