China said frontier guards repulsed a major attack by Vietnam Thursday after 10 hours of heavy fighting in Yunnan Province. The new border fighting was first reported by the Vietnam News Agency, which accused China of shelling Hà Tuyên Province, which abuts Yunnan Province, with artillery and rockets since early July. A dispatch by the official New China News Agency from what it said was the front line in Yunnan Province, where another battle was reported a month ago, said that after the fighting, “the invaders fled in utter confusion.” It said Chinese troops, working in the rain, had fortified their positions in preparation for a new attack.
Vietnam has accused China of creating border incidents to tie down Vietnamese troops and take pressure off guerrillas in Cambodia who are fighting Vietnamese occupation forces there. China supports the Cambodian guerrillas, while the Vietnamese, who invaded Cambodia at the end of 1978 and installed the regime of Heng Samrin, are allies of the Soviet Union. Chinese newspapers and radio carried the first domestic reports of the fighting Friday morning. The armed forces newspaper, Liberation Army accused Vietnam of taking “a new ferocious step on its wrong road against China.” The initial dispatch of the New China News Agency Thursday night said a Vietnamese division with artillery support mounted an incursion into Malipo County in Yunnan at 5 AM Thursday local time. But it said the Vietnamese ran into stiff resistance from Chinese frontier guards, who stood their ground and inflicted heavy casualties.
A broadcast by the Voice of Vietnam, monitored in Bangkok today, repeated the Vietnam News Agency report that Chinese gunners had fired 5,000 artillery shells into two districts of Hà Tuyên Province this month. But it made no mention of the battle that China said took place Thursday. The Vietnamese radio also said more than 200,000 artillery shells had been fired into Vietnam’s six northernmost provinces from China in the last two months, wounding hundreds of civilians and destroying homes and property. There was no way to confirm the accuracy of either version, since independent observers have not been allowed into the remote area. Similar recriminations have been traded off and on over the last three months. Foreign diplomats in Hanoi and Peking believe that reports on both sides tend to be exaggerated for greater propaganda effect.
Advisers to Solidarity went on trial in Warsaw, and Lech Walesa, leader of the banned union, was not permitted to enter the courthouse. Four defendants are accused of preparing to topple the Government by force. The trial was closed to Western journalists. But according to defense lawyers and a representative of the Polish press, the day involved a reading of the 30-page indictment and discussion of procedural matters. The session ended after six hours, with an adjournment until Wednesday when Jacek Kuron, who at 60 is the oldest of the defendants, will testify.
An undercover British Army squad today shot and killed a man suspected of trying to plant a bomb at a village factory, the police said. Three other suspects were captured. A police spokesman said soldiers opened fire on four men who were trying to plant incendiary bombs in a kitchen furniture factory in a village south of Londonderry. The army spokesman said all four men were believed to be Irish Republican Army guerrillas. The authorities said the bombing attempt was apparently part of a wave of bombings Friday by the outlawed I.R.A. A furniture store, lumber yard and other buildings were destroyed in the attacks and army experts defused several other bombs, the police said.
A storm pounded the Munich area with hailstones the size of tennis balls, high winds and heavy rains, injuring 300 people and causing extensive damage, officials said today. The Red Cross said that the storm Thursday night injured about 200 people in Munich and 100 in surrounding southeast Bavaria, most of them hit by hail, cut by glass shattering from windows or hurt in car crashes. There was one known death attributed to the storm. A 54-year-old man in Munich died of a heart attack when a hailstone smashed through a window in his home, the fire department said. First estimates put damage in the tens of millions of dollars. Hail and high winds broke windows in buildings, cars, buses and streetcars and damaged roofs and crops.
The State Department, reacting to an agreement by Kuwait to buy Soviet weapons, expressed concern today that the Persian Gulf nation might be moving toward increased reliance on Moscow to defend its oilfields and shipping from attack by Iran. A spokesman, Alan D. Romberg, said the Reagan Administration had known in advance of the Moscow visit by the Kuwaiti Defense Minister, Sheik Salem al-Sabah al-Salem. He noted that the Kuwaitis earlier bought arms from a number of countries, including the Soviet Union and the United States. “We would be concerned,” Mr. Romberg went on, “were Kuwait’s purchase of Soviet arms and equipment to be on such a scale as to upset possibly the existing balance which the country has traditionally maintained among its sources of military supply.” Mr. Romberg said Washington had no details on the Soviet arms deal.
No major progress in Cuban relations is expected from the talks between the United States and Cuba that began in New York Thursday, Reagan Administration officials said. The talks, limited to immigration issues, are the first substantive negotiations on specific issues between Washington and Havana since President Reagan took office.
The Reagan Administration said today that there had been a significant decline in political slayings by right-wing death squads in El Salvador but that “much remains to be done” to stem the killings. A State Department report to Congress said the murders occurred at an average rate of 93 per month for the first five months of the year, compared with 140 per month for all of 1983. It called that a “positive downward trend,” but said “strong efforts” were needed for more improvement. The Department cited with approval steps taken by the Salvadoran Government before and after the inauguration of President Jose Napoleon Duarte on June 1, including Mr. Duarte’s decision to disband the 110-member intelligence unit of the country’s Treasury Police, and decisions to transfer to posts abroad some key officers who were believed to be linked to the death squads.
The South African Parliament adjourned today after 74 years as an all-white body to make way for a new legislature that will include Asians and people of mixed race, but not the nation’s black majority. The final session of Parliament was officially closed today at 12:50 AM local time, with three women, two policemen and a parliamentary official watching from the public gallery. Only four Cabinet ministers were present. Prime Minister P. W. Botha was out of town. A new Constitution will take effect September 3 giving Asians and people of mixed race a limited role. But the new Constitution will not alter white rule in South Africa and the new Parliament will not include representatives of the country’s 22 million blacks.
The loss of $11 million in U.S. aid confronts the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which was said to be the likely first target of a new Reagan Administration policy that would deny money to groups supporting abortion overseas.
Geraldine A. Ferraro challenged Vice President Bush to two debates and defended her positions on a range of issues, including abortion. In her first day of campaigning as the Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate, the Congresswoman accompanied Walter F. Mondale to his hometown of Elmore, Minn., where she emphasized the values of hard work and family life that she said her constituents in Queens shared with the crowd squeezed in the backyard of Mr. Mondale’s boyhood home.
Soviet television today said that Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro could win Walter F. Mondale many votes because of widespread discontent among American women victimized by inequality. In the first Soviet report on Mr. Mondale’s choice of Mrs. Ferraro as his running-mate, an evening news bulletin said leaders of the Democratic Party wanted a woman on the ticket because they thought this would attract votes. “It could in fact win them millions because the inequality of the woman’s position in the United States causes serious discontent among female voters,” a commentator said.
President Reagan meets with his speechwriter about the President’s acceptance speech at the upcoming Republican National Convention.
The President and First Lady host a luncheon for the Republican Women candidates elected officials. When Republican women advance in politics, President Reagan said they were “doing it by merit.” He said there was no “tokenism or cynical symbolism” involved. “I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again,” Mr. Reagan told the women at a lunch in the State Dining Room. “There is going to be a woman President of the United States one of these days soon, and she’s going to be a Republican.” At a lunch with Republican women politicians at the White House, Mr. Reagan said that the selection of Representative Ferraro as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee would be “historic,” but he said the idea that this meant women were better served by the Democrats was “foolishness.”
Reaction to Representative Ferraro as a Vice-Presidential candidate is mixed, with a wide range of minuses accompanying the pluses, according to a New York Times/CBS Poll. There were clearly negative reactions among the elderly, older and married men, and Southerners, but younger Americans, especially women, and undecided potential voters were positively affected by Walter F. Mondale’s choice of a running mate.
A major index of prices held steady in June for the third consecutive month. The Labor Department reported that its Producer Price Index for finished goods – the prices industry charges retailers – showed no change and has increased only 2.2 percent over the last year. In other reports on two major indicators of the economy’s overall strength, the Government said industrial production rose five- tenths of 1 percent, and retail sales increased eight-tenths of 1 percent, exceeding their gains in May.
A man convicted of three murders was executed in the electric chair in the state prison at Starke, Florida. The execution of David L. Washington, 34 years old, had been stayed twice. Florida has the largest number of death-row inmates, and the authorities said that because the appeals process for those inmates was near exhaustion, the pace of executions was expected to rise substantially.
Two leaders of a reputed Chicago crime group accused of moving into loan-sharking and bookmaking in Southern California and Las Vegas were arraigned today in Federal court. Vito Dominic Spillone, 47 years old, and John James Barro, 45, surrendered to the Federal authorities this morning after learning of a 22-count grand jury indictment charging them with racketeering and conspiracy. United States Magistrate James Penne set bail at $25,000 for Mr. Spillone and Mr. Barro, reportedly the leaders of a group of seven men charged in a secret indictment unsealed Thursday. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were expected to make additional arrests in the case.
Seated at a desk from the school where his mother once taught, Governor Mark White today signed what he called Texas’s “most sweeping educational reform bill” and the $4.6 billion tax bill that accompanies it. Governor White read a four-page speech praising the education bill. He mentioned the tax bill only once. The cost of the education package is $2.8 billion. The rest of the money raised by the tax bill goes to highways. Under the new law, minimum starting teacher salaries will go from $1,110 a month to $1,520. Beginning in spring 1985 students with failing grades will not be allowed to take part in extracurricular activities, including sports. Teachers must pass a competency test by 1986, and high school seniors face a graduation test. Starting immediately, a student must earn a grade of 70 in very course to advance to the next grade.
Three rural black churches in South Carolina were burned early today but officials said two white men arrested as they were about to set fire to a fourth were not part of any racist group and were using the fires to cover burglaries. Lancaster County deputies said James Starnes, 18 years old, and Michael Wright, 25, were arrested about 2 a.m. near St. Paul Zion A.M.E. church. They were charged with larceny, arson and breaking and entering. A state police spokesman, Hugh Munn, discounted Ku Klux Klan involvement and said he believed the suspects chose black churches as targets to throw police off the trail of a burglary and arson spree. William Gibson of Greenville, state president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said people in the Lancaster area were upset by the burning of black churches.
Distress signals intercepted in space by an international rescue team’s satellites recently saved a woman on solitary dog-team trek in Alaska, who became severely ill, a man alone in a 19-foot yacht that was becalmed off the Azores, and a sailing ship battered by the winds off the California coast. There are three satellites in the rescue system, two operated by the Soviet Union, and one by the United States. The American satellite has recently been tumbling out of control, and will be replaced October 24, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
British guitarist Jeff Beck quits singer Rod Stewart’s tour after 7 shows.
Eddie Van Halen makes a guest appearance, performing “Beat It”, in a Jacksons concert, in Dallas, Texas.
Sergei Bubka of USSR pole vaults a record 5.89 meters.
The Yankees retire the uniform numbers of Roger Maris (# 9) and Elston Howard (# 32). The team also erects plaques in their honor to pay tribute to their achievements as Bronx Bombers.
At Minnesota, Detroit tops the Twins, 5–3, when Lou Whitaker bloops an inside-the-park homer to win it. Detroit sends it to extra innings when right fielder Kirk Gibson throws out Tim Teufel at home with two out in the 9th. Willie Hernandez (5–0) is the winner.
If the New York Mets aren’t looking over their shoulders before each game, they’ve played their last two games like a team that feels the heat from their pursuers. A day after scoring five runs in the ninth inning to beat the Atlanta Braves, New York hung on tonight to earn a 5–4 victory in front of 24,949 fans at County Stadium. The victory, the Mets’s seventh straight, kept them one-half game in front of Chicago in the National League East. The Cubs, like the Mets, have won two straight after the All-Star break.
Keith Moreland drove in four runs with a home run and a single to lead the Chicago Cubs to a 7–5 victory today over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Rick Sutcliffe (5–1), a former Dodger, went five innings to gain the victory. Lee Smith went two innings and picked up his 19th save.
Derrel Thomas hit three doubles, driving in two runs, and Andre Dawson added a two-run home run for the Montreal Expos as they downed the Cincinnati Reds, 7–2.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1109.87 (+5.30).
Born:
Manny Lawson, NFL linebacker (San Francisco 49ers, Cincinnati Bengals, Buffalo Bills), in Goldsboro, North Carolina.
Megan Duffy, WNBA guard (Minnesota Lynx, New York Liberty), in Dayton, Ohio.
Died:
John Davis, 63, American weightlifter (Olympic gold bantamweight 1948, heavyweight 1952), from cancer.
History Diaries 