Britain demanded that police be allowed to question Nigerian diplomats about the attempt to smuggle former Nigerian Cabinet minister Umaru Dikko out of the country in a cargo crate. Britain has asked Nigeria to waive diplomatic immunity for a number of officials, Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe told the House of Commons. “There is no question of government pussy-footing about this matter,” Howe said. Criminal charges will soon be lodged against four suspects in police custody, Howe said.
Moses Epko, the Nigerian Embassy’s information director, said that Sir Geoffrey’s request would be relayed to Lagos but that no immediate reaction was expected. The police have said four men are being held in connection with the kidnapping. Scotland Yard has refused to disclose the names or nationalities of the suspects. Published reports, all unconfirmed, have said that one of the suspects was a Nigerian found in the crate with Mr. Dikko, that two others were Israeli mercenaries hidden in a second crate and that the fourth was a major in the Nigerian security agency.
French President Francois Mitterrand began a two-day visit to Jordan aimed at reviving a 1982 Mideast peace plan that proposed mutual recognition among Israel, Arab nations and the Palestinians. At a banquet, King Hussein appealed for intervention by the U.N. Security Council to defuse what he called an explosive situation in the Mideast. Then, in one of several critical references to the United States, Hussein blasted continuing American financial and political aid to Israel.
The president of Sinn Fein, political arm of the Irish Republican Army, has been refused a visa to visit the United States for speaking engagements in California, Pennsylvania and New York, the U.S. Consulate in Belfast reported. The consulate said that Gerry Adams, 35, was denied a visa because of Sinn Fein’s support for the IRA’s terrorist campaign, including his advocacy of violence in the effort to drive the British from Northern Ireland. Mr. Adams, who is also an absentee Member of the British Parliament, had planned to address a New York convention of an American-Irish group, the Ancient Order of Hibernians. It was the first time that the 35-year-old Mr. Adams, who was also planning to speak to groups of lawyers in California and Pennsylvania, had applied to enter the United States.
West Germany is willing to attend a proposed meeting in Costa Rica to search for peaceful solutions to the Central American crisis, diplomatic sources said after discussions opened in Mexico City between West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid. Such talks would bring together the 10 foreign ministers of the European Economic Community and their Central American counterparts.
The cause of the fire at the cathedral of York Minster in York, England, has not been determined by authorities. There were indications that lightning set the fire that severely damaged the cathedral, Britain’s largest Gothic building.
A ban on travel to Bulgaria by Government officials for nonessential reasons has been issued by the State Department. The ban was described as an expression of displeasure over what the United States views as indications that Bulgaria has been involved in terrorism and drug smuggling. A State Department official made the following comment: “It is no secret that we are unhappy about criminal activities in support of international terrorism and drug trafficking.” A Rome prosecutor, according to a recently disclosed report, has implicated Bulgaria in a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The Drug Enforcement Agency testified last month before a House subcommittee that 25 percent of the heroin that arrives in the United States passes through Bulgaria.
A Yugoslavian district court today convicted a suspended university lecturer of counterrevolutionary activities and sentenced him to eight years in prison. Judge Milorad Potparic told the Sarajevo district court that the writings of the 29-year-old lecturer, Vojislav Seselj, constituted a political attack on Yugoslavia. The defense lawyer for Dr. Seselj said he would appeal the sentence. Dr. Seselj was arrested May 22 after the police searched his apartment and impounded unpublished manuscripts. He has been on a hunger strike since then and is being force-fed. In his unpublished manuscript, Dr. Seselj, among other things, denied the leading role of the Communist Party and said self-management, a fundamental aspect of Yugoslavia’s system of government, was a failure.
In the three years since Andreas Papandreou became the Prime Minister of Greece, the Western alliances have developed a wariness about Greece’s often antagonistic role on security matters and antiterrorist policy. This wariness, diplomats and officials say, has ranged from moderate concern to deep suspicion. The informants, who work with Greek delegates within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Economic Community, said that Greece had been advancing positions widely regarded as anti-Western. The resulting distrust, in turn, is said to have led to an attempt to limit Greece’s role in sensitive discussions without actually isolating it. According to intelligence sources, long before the United States accused Greece two weeks ago of being lax on terrorism, France had charged that Greece was allowing an Armenian terrorist organization to run its political operations from Athens. This was denied by Greece.
The previously undisclosed exchange came last year at an internal security conference in Cologne, West Germany, and was one of the developments that raised concern about Greek policies. A Western official said that one of the factors behind a French-led effort to reinvigorate the Western European Union, the European pillar of the Atlantic alliance, was that Greece was not a member of the organization and could not play a disruptive role. Common Market officials said that Greece’s refusal to criticize some Soviet actions, such as the downing of a South Korean airliner last September, had compromised hopes for political unity within the European Community.
A general strike in Beirut and protests by families of kidnapped Lebanese paralyzed the capital and forced the closing of the city’s international airport a few hours after it had been reopened. The protests were largely limited to West Beirut, but both Christians and Muslims demonstrated near the crossing points. Tonight a group that said it represented the protesting families announced that it would end the blockades, which began Sunday, to give the new Government an opportunity to act on Wednesday, when a Cabinet meeting is scheduled. Today’s protests forced the closing of the Beirut International Airport only hours after it had been reopened for the first time in five months. The reopening of the crossing points, the airport and the port area — last closed during fierce fighting between the army and warring militias during the winter — are key steps in a plan by President Amin Gemayel’s Government to restore normality after nine years of civil war.
A national unity government in Israel would be formed by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir if his Likud bloc won the July 23 elections. Mr. Shamir said he would try to form a coalition with the opposition Labor Party in order to deal with Israel’s mounting economic problems. His remarks appeared to be the most explicit public indication of plans for such a coalition, aimed at reducing Israel’s 400 percent inflation rate through wage, price and tax measures. Speaking in an interview in his modest, wood-paneled office, Mr. Shamir also said that his government no longer accepted the old negotiating formula of trading land for peace with the Arabs, and that as long as he was in power, Israel would not halt the building of settlements on the West Bank.
Riot policemen firing automatic rifles and pistols today battled striking factory workers armed with darts, rocks and clubs. The clashes left two workers dead and at least 37 people wounded. The rioting broke out when the police arrived at the Artex Manufacturing Corporation in suburban Malabon to enforce a Labor Ministry order to lift picket lines at the plant. The police were pelted with rocks and darts by about 200 striking workers. After the workers beat up one of the 100 nightstick-wielding policemen, a backup platoon armed with M-16 rifles and pistols opened fire. The police chief of Malabon said 2 strikers were killed and 27 others were wounded and hospitalized.
Chinese Defense Minister Zhang Aiping met for 50 minutes in Tokyo with Yuko Kurihara, director general of Japan’s Defense Agency, in the first talks between the arms chiefs of the wartime enemies in 35 years. A Japanese official emphasized that the meeting, arranged at China’s request, was a “courtesy call” and that the two officials did not deal with “matters of substance.” Zhang stopped in Tokyo on his way home from a U.S. and Canadian visit.
Canada’s national elections will be held September 4, Prime Minister John Turner announced. He said Canada needed “a renewal of confidence and certainty.” Mr. Turner also announced that Queen Elizabeth II had postponed a Canadian visit that was to have started Saturday. The delay was in keeping with the Queen’s policy of not making public appearances during campaigns in the countries where she is sovereign.
Nicaragua accused the CIA of planning to unleash 4,500 insurgents in a new offensive timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution July 19. The Foreign Ministry said the push would be aimed at seizing a slice of territory, proclaiming it the seat of a provisional government and then calling for “foreign intervention.” The United States has been arming and financing thousands of Nicaraguan insurgents operating from bases in Honduras and Costa Rica.
Leaders of El Salvador’s leftist guerrillas denied that they have received Soviet-made SAM-7 ground-to-air missiles, as charged last week by President Jose Napoleon Duarte, but they said they have the right to obtain and use any weapon in the fight against government forces. The denial was made in a communique by leaders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. It said the charge that the guerrillas have received SAM missiles from Arab revolutionaries is “totally false.”
Right-wing Mozambican rebels said they killed 143 Government soldiers, wounded 119 and captured 37 in operations between June 22 and 30. A communique issued here Sunday night by the Mozambican National Resistance also said a bridge over the Pungue River near the port of Beira was blown up, electricity lines between the capital, Maputo, and South Africa were sabotaged and a train was destroyed. The group, which asserted that it had total control over central Mozambique, also said its forces had attacked re-education camps in Niassa and Maputo provinces and freed more than 6,000 Mozambicans who had been detained for more than four years. The group has been fighting the Marxist Government of President Samora M. Machel since independence from Portugal in 1975.
A preference for Walter F. Mondale over the Rev. Jesse Jackson as the Democratic Presidential nominee has been indicated by black Democrats by a margin of 5 to 3, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
Health care inflation has been cut sharply, according to Margaret M. Heckler, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In giving the Reagan Administration credit for the decline, she said in a speech in Seattle, “The rate of inflation in medical care costs has been cut almost in half, from 10.8 percent in 1981, when President Reagan took office, to 6.3 percent at present.”
President Reagan addresses the newly established American Coalition for Traditional Values.
President Reagan participates in a ceremony to present the Presidential Citizen’s Medal posthumously to Dennis W. Keogh.
President Reagan participates in a Cabinet Council meeting on Natural Resources and the Environment.
A coalition of environmental groups charged that the Reagan Administration is stalling on cleaning up toxic waste dumps because Republicans don’t want to jeopardize campaign contributions from polluters. Officials of the National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards made the accusation at a news conference in Washington after what they described as a “very disappointing” meeting with William D. Ruckelshaus, head of the Environmental Protection Agency. “Mr. Ruckelshaus is well-intentioned and a good administrator, but his hands appear to be tied by the White House,” said John O’Connor, coalition coordinator.
Medical inflation has been nearly cut in half since President Reagan took office, proof his Administration’s cost-containment efforts are paying off, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret H. Heckler said. In a speech to the National Association of Counties in Seattle, Heckler said medical inflation was 6.3% for the first five months of 1984, down from 10.8% when Reagan took office in 1981.
Trans-Atlantic two-engine airliners would be put into scheduled nonstop service by next summer if new criteria being favorably considered by the Federal Aviation Administration are accepted. Boeing, which makes the twin-jet 767, and airline operators have been urging the agency to modify the current ban on two-engine trans-Atlantic service.
Stephen Bingham surrendered to the sheriff of Marin County, California, ending 13 years as a fugitive. Mr. Bingham, a native of Connecticut, refused to answer questions about what happened on August 21, 1971, the day he is accused of delivering a pistol to George Jackson, a black militant, at San Quentin Prison. Mr. Jackson, two inmates and three prison guards died in an escape attempt soon after Mr. Bingham left the prison grounds on that day.
Federal safety officials questioned whether the Central Vermont Railway had taken enough precautions in the early-morning hours before a passenger train derailed Saturday, killing five people and injuring more than 140. A flash flood watch was issued in the area more than eight hours before heavy rains washed out the track, according to a federal investigator, but a spokesman for the railroad said it was unaware of the flood warning.
A Federal judge ruled today that the Norfolk School Board’s plan to end nearly 13 years of crosstown busing in the elementary schools is constitutional. After 16 months of public debate, the board voted 5 to 2 in February 1982 to end the crosstown busing it began in 1971. It proposed a system of 35 neighborhood elementary schools, 10 of which would be more than 95 percent black. The majority on the board said that returning to neighborhood schools would slow white flight to the suburbs, involve more parents in the schools and improve instruction.
District Judge John A. MacKenzie said in a 29-page opinion that nothing in the plan “might indicate that the board was acting with discriminatory purpose.” He denied a request by black plaintiffs for an injunction to prevent the board from carrying out the plan. The decision is almost certain to be taken to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth District in Richmond. Under the plan, students in schools where their race constitutes 70 percent or more of the student body could transfer to a school where they would be in the minority.
Registered nurses overwhelmingly ratified a contract with 16 hospitals in the Minneapolis area, ending a five-week walkout over job security that was the largest nurses’ strike in the nation’s history. The nurses voted 3,014 to 37 to approve the pact, according to the Minnesota Nurses Association, which represents the 6,300 nurses. The nurses were to be called to work according to seniority, hospital officials said.
One of four murderers facing death this week in the South won U.S. Supreme Court approval of a stay of execution, but a scheduled double execution in Florida remained a possibility. In Mississippi, Edward Earl Johnson had been scheduled to die in the gas chamber a minute after midnight Wednesday. However, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White refused the state’s plea to lift a stay of execution. Florida scheduled two executions for Thursday morning — those of David Leroy Washington and Jimmy Lee Smith — and after a state Supreme Court ruling there was a chance they could take place unless federal courts intervened. In Georgia, the state Supreme Court refused to stay the execution of Ivon Ray Stanley, who faces death in the electric chair Thursday.
Former Augusta, Georgia Mayor Edward M. McIntyre was sentenced today to five years in prison for his extortion conviction in a scheme to receive kickbacks from developers interested in city property. Mr. McIntyre also was sentenced to five years’ probation and fined $10,000 by Federal District Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. The co-defendants, Joseph Jones, a former City Councilman, and Mary Holmes, a real estate broker, were sentenced to three years and four years in prison. Mr. Jones was fined $7,500 and Mrs. Holmes $5,000, and both were given five more years’ probation. Mr. McIntyre, the first black Mayor of Augusta, resigned after his Federal conviction April 28.
Abortions in the United States decreased by 3,400 cases in 1982, the first annual decline since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, a research group said yesterday. The slight decline, from 1,577,300 to 1,573,900, came in a year when 3 percent of all women of childbearing age had abortions, ending 26 percent of the pregnancies in the year, according to the eighth national survey by the Alan Guttmacher Institute. The survey was paid for by the Planned Parenthood Federation. The shift came after consecutive annual increases that have ranged from 4 to 15 percent since 1973. The first increase was in 1974: 898,600 as against 744,600 in 1973. The price of abortions outside a hospital was put at $197 in 1983, according to the report, which did not include abortion figures for 1983.
A fire raged out of control for the third day today in the Sequoia National Forest, where it has consumed nearly 7,000 acres and caused $250,000 damage. Three other blazes charred 1,000 acres to the south. About 1,400 firefighters from California, Arizona and New Mexico were battling the blaze, which officials did not expect to bring under control until Thursday at the earliest. “It’s a really steep, real rocky area,” said a spokesman for the United States Forest Service, who added that 100-degree heat complicated the firefighting. “The brush is heavy and hard to get to,” he said
The fire was burning in the Piute Mountains 120 miles north of Los Angeles. Most of the national forest and Sequoia National Park with its redwood trees lie at least 80 miles north of the fire, which is in Kern County. The fire is estimated to have caused $250,000 damage since it began, destroying two mobile homes, a car and two unidentified structures, the spokesman said.
Investigators have tentatively found that a 16-minute delay by Air Canada crew members to decide to make an emergency landing contributed to the high death toll in a fire aboard the plane last year, NBC News reported. NBC said investigators believe the delay between signs of an electrical problem and the time a decision was made to land the plane helped lead to the 23 passenger deaths. The fire broke out on the DC-9 on June 3, 1983. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesman had no comment, saying the board will consider the report today.
Marvin Pancoast was legally sane when he murdered Vicki Morgan, the mistress of Alfred Bloomingdale, a department store heir, according to a prosecutor’s argument today to the jurors who convicted the former talent agency clerk last week. “Evidence will show Mr. Pancoast was sane, legally, at the time the crime took place,” Stanley Weisberg, a prosecutor said at the start of the sanity phase of the trial. Both Mr. Weisberg and a defense attorney, Charles Mathews, plan to rely on expert testimony from psychiatrists in the sanity phase, when the same 10- woman, two-man jury that convicted Mr. Pancoast will decide his mental state at the time of the slaying.
Autopsy results show that a woman flung from a stand-up roller coaster at Eureka, Missouri, died of multiple injuries and had no medical problems that could have caused her to faint and slip through her safety restraints. Stella Holcomb, 46, of Indianapolis, died about an hour after the accident Saturday night at Six Flags Over Mid-America.
Randall Thompson died at a Boston hospital. The composer was best known for his choral works, many of them based on patriotic themes from American history. He was 85 years old.
Yvonne Ryding of Sweden is crowned the 33rd Miss Universe.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1134.05 (+11.48).
Born:
Chris Campoli, Canadian NHL defenseman (New York Islanders, Ottawa Senators, Chicago Blackhawks, Montreal Canadiens), in North York, Ontario, Canada.
Jacob Hoggard, Canadian singer (Hedley), in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada.
Died:
Peter Hurd, 80, American painter (Portrait of Jose Herrera).
Randall Thompson, 85, American composer (Trip to Nahant).
History Diaries 