Underground leaders of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity trade union, in a statement they said was signed by 5,068 people, demanded that the government grant political prisoner status to all those arrested in the future for anti-state activity. “Legal approval of such status will be the first step toward respecting human rights in Poland,” the statement said. The demand came as authorities announced that the state has freed a total of 12,404 prisoners under an amnesty that was announced on July 21. All 652 prisoners held for political crimes but not now recognized by the government as political prisoners are to be freed under the program.
The Soviet Union has denounced West Germany as the driving force behind the Atlantic Alliance’s decision to deploy new nuclear missiles in Europe, leading to the collapse last fall of U. S.-Soviet talks on nuclear arms control. However, West German and other Western officials interpreted the attack by Vadim V. Zagladin, deputy chief of the Soviet Communist Party’s international department, in a magazine article as part of a propaganda campaign against warming relations between Bonn and East Germany.
Highway thieves in southern France are picking almost exclusively on foreign tourists. The bandits seem to have a preference for driving stolen BMW’s, and they stop cars by swerving in front of them. Sometimes they wake up sleeping travelers who have pulled over to the side of the road. The robbers carry guns and have been known to use them, and they pick almost exclusively on foreign tourists. This week one brave victim threw his car into reverse to make his escape, speeding away under a hail of bullets. Another man was chased for a half-hour before the highwaymen finally gave up.
Neutralization of Beirut’s Green Line was begun by the Lebanese Government in the second stage of its peace plan for the capital. Bulldozers were leveling the remaining barricades of the Green Line that separates the Muslim and Christian sectors of the capital. The line is a 10-mile stretch of shattered buildings, wreckage and snipers nests. Lebanese Army units with both Muslim and Christian soldiers are to be stationed along the line, while the Muslim Sixth Brigade remains in West Beirut and the mostly Christian Fifth Brigade stays in the East.
Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal Hassan Ali said today that a decision to exchange ambassadors with Moscow would not affect ties with the United States and would not lead to greater Soviet influence here. His remarks, in an interview, were echoed by a commentary in the state-controlled weekly News of the Day. Mr. Ali noted that the United States remained the major provider of arms to President Hosni Mubarak’s Government. Last year the United States supplied Egypt with $1.3 billion worth of military equipment. ”I stress that the United States is our main supplier for weapons,” Mr. Ali said. ”The exchange of ambassadors between Cairo and Moscow will not change this reality in our policy.” Egypt and the Soviet Union announced this month that they would again exchange ambassadors. Anwar el-Sadat, the late President, withdrew his Ambassador to Moscow in 1978 after Soviet attacks on his policy toward Israel and expelled the Soviet Ambassador in 1981.
The Government of Libya announced today that it was carrying out large-scale military maneuvers using live ammunition in and around Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The announcement by the official press agency came after accusations by Libya on Friday that the United States had been carrying out provocative military maneuvers off the Libyan coast in the Gulf of Sidra. The maneuvers would involve ”militarized units that have been trained in using all types of weapons as well as units from the Libyan Arab Air Force and air defenses,” the agency said. It gave no other details of the plan. The agency asserted that 164 United States F-14 jet fighters flew over the Gulf of Sidra for several hours on Thursday. It said Libyan jets chased away some of the American planes.
[Ed: LMAO. 164? That would be 7 or more carriers’ worth — there were about 24 Tomcats to an air wing. I WISH our navy could put 160 in the air.]
A week of fighting between Hindus and Muslims in southern India has caused six deaths and injuries to 150 people in knife and stone attacks. Extra police patrols were sent to the city of Hyderabad to contain the sectarian violence. Earlier, police had opened fire on a 7,000-strong mob of Muslims after the use of clubs and tear gas failed to stop them from attacking Hindus, the Statesman newspaper reported. Two people were stabbed to death and about 75 suffered knife and stone injuries, the report said.
Further talks were held in Peking on Hong Kong’s transition from British to Chinese sovereignty. Talks between the British Foreign Secretary and his Chinese counterpart were reportedly at a crucial stage. The top diplomats of Britain and China have agreed that both sides have made progress in negotiations on Hong Kong’s future, but Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian stressed what he called the need for a pact at “an early date.” Wu said after a five-hour meeting with British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe in Peking that both sides must take a “broader view” to solve outstanding problems in the talks on Hong Kong, which China will recover from British control in 1997. Howe, according to sources, told Wu that Britain is seeking to secure the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong after it is returned to China.
A Japanese fishing boat captain was shot and his ship and crew were apparently captured off the coast of North Korea, a fishing cooperative spokesman said today. The Japan Red Cross asked its North Korean counterpart to investigate the incident, a Foreign Ministry official said. The ship was fishing in the Japan Sea and was apparently in North Korea’s fishing zone, the official said. Captain Mitsugu Yukidomari, 50 years old, skipper of the No. 36 Yachiyo-Maru, was wounded and the ship and its five-man crew were apparently taken to North Korea, Toshio Okunari, a spokesman for the Ogi Fishing Cooperative, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Okunari said Captain Yukidomari was ”hit by bullets, collapsed and lost consciousness.” He had no information about the captain’s condition.
A North Korean Army sergeant defected to South Korea today near the armistice line that separates the North and South, the South Korean Defense Ministry announced. He was the 96th North Korean soldier to defect since the Korean War.
Canada’s Liberals continue to lead opposition parties in the campaign for the Sept. 4 general election, according to a Gallup Poll, but developments since the poll was taken three weeks ago suggest that the opposition Progressive Conservative Party may be catching up.
Surgeons in Toronto separated Siamese twin boys who shared a third leg and single set of genitals, but did not say whether one or both of the children would end up as a female. A spokeswoman at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children said 22-year-old Lin and Win Htut of Burma were separated 12 hours after the complex surgery began and are “doing just fine at the moment.” The doctors plan to try to preserve the male genitals on one twin, but the other will have to undergo a sex-change operation, and there is a possibility that both will have to become girls.
A Salvadoran army official said troops killed or wounded 30 rebels in a two-day battle to clear a guerrilla camp situated amid a U.S.-designed pacification program area. The Salvadoran soldiers fought with leftist rebels in eastern San Vicente province, where the government began the Vietnam-style program in June, 1983, designed to drive the guerrillas out and draw peasants back to abandoned villages and farms. “We have… located one of the largest camps of terrorists in the area of San Bartolo,” said Colonel Roberto Rodriguez Murcia, chief of operations in San Vicente. “We have had casualties but very few.”
President Jean-Baptiste Bagaza of Burundi has been re-elected for a second term as leader of the ruling United Party for National Progress, allowing him to remain leader of this central African country for five more years, officials said today. Mr. Bagaza was re-elected unopposed on Friday to a second five-year term a head of the party. Mr. Bagaza seized power in a military coup in 1976 and was elected President three years later by the newly formed party.
Olympic fever gripped Los Angeles as lavish ceremonies marked the opening of the Summer Games of the XXXIII Olympiad. The 140 participating countries is the largest number in Olympic history despite the withdrawal of the Soviet Union and most of its allies.
President Reagan participates in the opening ceremonies for the Los Angeles Olympics. The Games of the XXIII Olympiad began tonight with spectacular and colorful opening ceremonies and two final torchbearers instead of one. Most of the 7,000-plus athletes from 140 nations marched in an 80-minute parade, many resplendent in native costumes. There was entertainment by 12,000 dancers and musicians. There was live and recorded music, pennant waving and a magnificent card stunt. And there was more excitement for the capacity crowd of 93,000 that sat through 80-degree heat in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Tickets cost $50 to $200, and the show seemed well worth it. Perhaps the most distinguished participant was President Reagan. He visited with the United States team in the morning and formally opened the Games at night in a 12-second speech, though he reversed the parts of that traditional opening sentence.
President Reagan leaves the Olympic celebration for Rancho del Cielo.
A tax increase would be a “last resort” for President Reagan, Senators Robert J. Dole (R-Kansas) and Pete V. Domenici (R-New Mexico) said in New Hampshire while campaigning for the reelection of Senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New Hampshire). Dale said. Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale has “told us tax increases will be his first priority and his first resort; for Gordon Humphrey and Ronald Reagan and Republicans in general, tax increases will be the last resort.”
Republican leaders in Congress will try to force votes on the legislative agenda outlined by President Reagan in his news conference last Tuesday. To embarrass Democrats, they will try to force votes before the election on such politically sensitive issues as a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget and tax credits to parents of parochial school students.
Synthetic “natural” gas from the nation’s first large-scale coal gasification plant began flowing into the interstate pipeline system at Beulah, North Dakota, the first time the fuel has been sold commercially in the United States, the Energy Department announced. Six of the 14 gasifiers at the $2.1-billion Great Plains coal gasification plant were in operation as gas began flowing into the pipeline, mixing with naturally produced gas, a spokesman said. The plant, which took 12 years to build, is the first commercial-scale facility in the United States for producing synthetic gas from coal, which will be carried by four pipeline companies in the Midwest and Southeast. The synthetic fuel, produced from lignite coal mined nearby, will be carried to markets in the Middle West and Southeast, said Michael Mujadin, director of plant operations. It is being sold at a price equivalent to No. 2 fuel oil, about $6.15 per thousand cubic feet of synthetic gas.
A Minneapolis City Council attempt to override Mayor Don Fraser’s veto of a controversial antipornography ordinance failed by two votes. The council voted 7 to 5 to override the veto, but nine votes were needed. The ordinance, which defined pornography as a form of discrimination, would have enabled women to seek damages from pornography distributors if a committee of the city’s Civil Rights Commission found that they had been discriminated against. Fraser said he vetoed the ordinance because of doubts about its constitutionality.
A 7-year-old boy underwent a second liver transplant operation yesterday, while doctors said a 2-year-old girl released from a hospital after receiving a new heart could soon live a normal life. Richard Mignone, of Armonk, New York, was in surgery for 10 hours at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. He was listed in critical condition, which is normal after a transplant operation. A liver transplanted into the boy earlier this month had failed. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Jonita Greer of Detroit was discharged Friday from the University of Michigan Hospital after recuperating for five weeks from a heart transplant operation June 20. ”Hopefully, in a few months she will be able to live normally,” Dr. Douglas M. Behrendt said.
Republic Airlines’ largest employee union has ratified proposed wage concessions, clearing the way for the financially troubled airline’s long-term plan to cut costs and restore regular profits. The Air Line Employees Association was the last of six unions to accept the three-year contract, which continues 15% pay cuts and calls for additional cost savings of 8% through productivity increases to be negotiated later. In return for concessions, expected to save $100 million annually, employees will receive stock, profit-sharing opportunities and a seat for one representative on the company’s board of directors.
After unsuccessful searches over nearly two centuries, treasure hunters may have located the wreck of a British privateer rumored to have as much as $300 million in gold and silver aboard when it sank in 1798. Officials said that artifacts from a hulk that could be the British ship De Braak were raised two weeks ago in waters about a mile off the tip of Cape Henlopen, on the Delaware coast. The state will issue a license allowing salvage operations.
The medical license of a Norfolk, Virginia, doctor accused of performing fake abortions on women who were not pregnant was suspended pending a hearing by the state Board of Medicine. After the hearing, the board could clear Dr. Chris Simopoulos, continue the suspension or revoke his license. Simopoulos, 46, was arrested Wednesday at his American Women’s Clinic while preparing to perform an abortion on an undercover policewoman who was not pregnant, police said. He was charged with attempting to obtain money by false pretenses.
Eighty anti-nuclear demonstrators were arrested at two Washington state protests as they attempted to block the passage of a train, which they believed to be carrying nuclear weapons. Thirty-one protesters were arrested as they were pulled from railroad tracks near the Navy’s Trident submarine base in Bangor. They managed to stop the train momentarily as it crawled toward the base west of Seattle.
A demolition crew today razed the McDonald’s restaurant in the border community of San Ysidro, where a gunman killed 21 people 10 days ago, leaving it an empty shell in preparation for the wrecker’s ball. As local furor over a $1,000 charity grant to his widow died down, a Granite Construction Company crew moved out kitchen equipment then began dismantling the interior in apparent preparation for demolition. McDonald’s officials have closed the outlet for good, but have not announced what will become of the restaurant, where James Oliver Huberty shot and killed 21 patrons and employees and then was felled by a police officer. A scheduled citizens’ march through San Ysidro to protest the granting of $1,000 from the San Ysidro Family Survivors Fund to the gunman’s widow, Etna Huberty, was called off after Norman Cousins, former editor of The Saturday Review, told a news conference Friday that he was personally responsible for the grant.
Profound changes in banking are needed worldwide to prevent such near-collapses as the one at the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in Chicago, bankers, business people and economists say. The Chicago bank was rescued last week by a $4.5 billion Federal investment plan. The bank’s troubles are said to reflect major changes that in the last decade have raced through what has come to be called the financial services industry.
A Congressman grew a beard and lived as a street person on $5 a day, sleeping in church foyers and taking his meals at a mission house to write about problems of the homeless. The account of Representative Bill Boner’s experiences will be carried in the issue of Nashville! magazine, which goes on sale Monday. Mr. Boner, a 39-year-old Democrat, said the magazine asked him three months ago to do the article. Mr. Boner said he grew a beard for about a week and donned dirty clothes. He took to the streets June 22 to 24, posing as a transient laborer from Atlanta. He said he had to spend one night in a parking lot after a police officer shooed him away. Mr. Boner said he would use the results of his weekend foray to alleviate the problems of the homeless.
The medical profession is upset about a new Federal program to eliminate what the Government calls ”avoidable deaths” and ”substandard care” in hospitals. The program is part of the Government’s efforts to reduce Medicare expenses.
Animal rights activists have destroyed valuable research by raiding University of Pennsylvania laboratories, abducting animals and stealing records, university officials say. In the latest raids, members of the Animal Liberation Front carried off three cats, two dogs and eight pigeons, a spokesman for the organization who identified herself only as Lauren said Friday. A university spokesman confirmed the animals had been taken. Earlier this year, animal rights activists stole 33 videotapes and damaged lab equipment in the university’s head- injury research clinic to protest the use of baboons in experiments. Robert Marshak, dean of Penn’s veterinary school, said the raids would set back research efforts, including a study to determine the cause of sudden infant death syndrome.
Upgrading the quality of textbooks has become a growing concern of political and educational leaders. Secretary of Education T. H. Bell led the way with a speech earlier this year in which he accused textbook publishers of ”dumbing down” to accommodate students at the bottom of the class.” But textbook publishers rebut the criticisms.
A throwing error by the third baseman Howard Johnson allowed two runs to score in the eighth inning and the Boston Red Sox went on to defeat the Detroit Tigers, 3–2, tonight. With the Tigers ahead by 2–1, Dwight Evans led off the inning with a walk and went to second on a single by Jim Rice. Evans and Rice both scored when Johnson picked up Tony Armas’s slow-rolling infield single and threw the ball into the Red Sox bullpen for an error. Bob Stanley (7–6), who took over from John Henry Johnson in the sixth inning, gained the victory with help in the eighth by Mark Clear. Johnson, making his first start of the season for the Red Sox, allowed six hits, struck out eight and walked four in five innings. Evans hit his 20th home run in the fifth, a two-out, solo shot on the first pitch from Jack Morris (13–7). Morris, who gave way to Willie Hernandez after Johnson’s throwing error, gave up eight hits, walked three and struck out seven.
Frank Viola allows 3 hits, all singles, as the Minnesota Twins beat the California Angels, 6–1. Randy Bush has 3 hits himself, including a grand slam in the fifth inning off Jim Slaton (3-5), scoring Kirby Puckett, Mickey Hatcher and Kent Hrbek. The Twins are a half-game ahead of the Angels and three-and-a-half games in front of the Chicago White Sox.
Dale Murphy’s 23rd home run of the season, which drove in two runs in the first inning, helped the Atlanta Braves to a 4–3 victory over the San Francisco Giants. Murphy’s homer came off Mark Davis (3–12) with two outs. Claudell Washington doubled to left and Murphy hit a 3–0 pitch over the right-field fence.
The New York Mets’ seven-game winning streak came tumbling down yesterday when the Chicago Cubs scored eight runs in the eighth inning and buried them, 11–4. More than that, Ron Darling also failed for the fourth straight time to win his eighth straight game. Doug Sisk, one of the stoppers of the bullpen, failed to stop anybody for the second game in a row. And the Mets, after rallying for a tie in the seventh inning, promptly lost the glow in the eighth and suffered their worst inning in two and a half months.
The Montreal Expos downed the Philadelphia Philles, 4–1. Bryn Smith pitched a four-hitter and Gary Carter batted in the winning run with a third-inning double. Smith (9–8) gave up a run-scoring single to Von Hayes in the first inning, then put down the next 11 batters in order before twice allowing two-out singles in the fourth. Glenn Wilson popped out to end the threat. Smith, who struck out three and walked two, permitted only one more hit, a single by Ozzie Virgil in the seventh.
Born:
DeMeco Ryans, NFL linebacker (Pro Bowl, 2007, 2009; Houston Texans, Philadelphia Eagles) and head coach (Texans), in Bessemer, Alabama.
Nick Cole, NFL center (Philadelphia Eagles), in Lawton, Oklahoma.
Zach Parise, NHL left wing (NHL All-Star, 2009; New Jersey Devils, Minnesota Wild, New York Islanders, Colorado Avalanche), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Brad Staubitz, Canadian NHL right wing (San Jose Sharks, Minnesota Wild, Montreal Canadiens, Anaheim Ducks), in Bright’s Grove, Ontario, Canada.
Died:
Bess Flowers, 85, ‘The Queen of Hollywood Extras’, American actress (“View from Pompey’s Head”).
History Diaries 