Moscow has been misrepresenting Washington’s position on proposed talks on space weapons, according to Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser. It appears, he added in a statement, ”that the Soviets were not serious about their proposal.” McFarlane, reading a statement to reporters in California, said the Russians were being ”disingenuous” in portraying the American position. He said the American proposal that the talks consider offensive nuclear weapons as well as space arms was not a ”precondition,” but a ”unilateral declaration” of intent. A senior Administration official in California, when asked whether the conference, tentatively scheduled to open September 18 in Vienna, was now dead, answered, ”We don’t rule it out, but it is hard to be encouraged.” He added that he was ”very much in doubt” whether Moscow had ever been sincere about the talks.
The Kremlin has found no change in Washington’s approach to proposed talks on space weapons, according to a high Soviet diplomat, Aleksandr A. Bessmertnykh. As a result, he said, the American position offers no chance for negotiations to start next month.
Mr. McFarlane’s statement, when paired with one by a Soviet official in Moscow today, seemed to indicate that the preparations were degenerating into a long-distance shouting match. The tone of the McFarlane rebuttal also fits with a flush of pessimism about the talks being expressed by Americans and a continuing desire to insure that if the proposed Vienna conference falls through, the blame will rest squarely on the Russians.
American officials said Moscow would not take Washington’s yes for an answer unless it was a total acceptance of the Soviet position. The Russians want to discuss space-based antiballistic missile systems as well as antisatellite weapons, and do not want to talk about the negotiations on offensive nuclear weapons that have been suspended since last fall. The Americans speculated that the Russians’ tough bargaining was at least in part a result of public opinion polls showing that Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic Presidential nominee, had more or less closed the gap with President Reagan.
A leader of the outlawed Polish labor union Solidarity, recently released from jail, has taunted authorities by publicizing a meeting with Poland’s most wanted fugitive. Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, freed five days ago under a wide-ranging amnesty, vanished for four days after his release, then surfaced to say he met with Zbigniew Bujak to discuss the future of the Polish opposition. An informed opposition source said the point of the meeting was to see whether activists like Frasyniuk will be allowed as much freedom of action as Solidarity founder Lech Walesa, who twice last year met with fugitives.
A Polish boycott of vodka, initiated by the Roman Catholic Church, has been backed by underground Solidarity groups active in at least 20 of the largest factories in the country. The boycott is designed to deprive the Government of its largest single source of revenue and to improve the health of Poles.
A new subatomic particle with properties that apparently do not fit into any current theory has been discovered by an international team of 78 physicists at DESY, a research center near Hamburg, West Germany. The group’s co-leader said that theorists were puzzled over the nature of the particle, which they have named zeta.
A widow may use the sperm deposited at a sperm bank by her husband to try to have his child posthumously, a Paris court ruled. The decision upheld Corinne Parpalaix, the 23-year-old widow of a man who deposited the sperm after he was told that treatment for testicular cancer might make him sterile.
Surgeons in London performed an emergency operation to save the life of 12-day-old Hollie Roffey, who developed a critical complication two days after becoming the world’s youngest heart transplant recipient. “We do not know if she will survive the night, but she is putting up a gallant fight,” said a nurse keeping an all-night vigil at the baby girl’s bedside. A hospital spokesman said three doctors performed a two-hour operation to repair a small hole in the infant’s stomach.
Two more crossing points were reopened on the Green Line dividing Beirut’s Christian and Muslim sectors after a six-month shutdown, the Lebanese army announced. A communique said the Sodeco mid-city crossing and a downtown highway known as “the Ring” had been cleared of land mines and barricades. The action, completing the reactivation of all six major crossings between Beirut’s two sectors, is part of an operation to reunite the Lebanese capital after nine years of civil conflict.
Lloyd’s of London said that three ships have reported damage from mysterious explosions in the Gulf of Suez and that one is being towed to Dubai for repairs. Salvage surveyors at Dubai reported that the engine room and crew’s quarters of the crippled 846-ton Panamanian motor vessel Big Orange XII were damaged, Lloyd’s said. Egypt has been investigating the gulf explosions, which have led to oil market speculation that floating mines may have been strewn in the gulf waters by hostile elements.
At least 6 people were killed and 58 wounded today when protesters throwing rocks and shouting slogans battled policemen in the streets of Srinagar, capital of Kashmir, news reports said. The wounded included 43 policemen, and several were listed in critical condition with severe head wounds, Indian news agencies said. The state authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in the troubled area only one day after an earlier curfew had been lifted. The violence today involved supporters of Dr. Farooq Abdullah, the former Chief Minister who was ousted by the state’s Governor last month.
A House Appropriations subcommittee voted to withhold foreign aid funds in fiscal 1985 from any country that practices “involuntary” abortion. Rep. Jack F. Kemp (R-New York), a supporter of the limitation, said China is the only country that forces women to have abortions. He said the amendment, affecting $290 million in aid funding for population control, would bring Congress into line with the recent White House position paper seeking to bar U.S. funds for private groups that support abortions abroad.
A draft accord on Hong Kong outlining the terms under which Britain will surrender the colony to China in 1997 is to be signed next month. The agreement was announced in Hong Kong by the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, and confirmed by Peking.
A member of the Colombian Parliament was shot to death, and gunmen opened fire on the bodyguards of Colombia’s attorney general in a separate incident. Ivan Dario Morales, a lawmaker and member of the Liberal Party, was slain by two men on a motorcycle in the northwestern city of Medellin, police reported. In Bogota, the capital, bodyguards of Attorney General Carlos Jimenez were attacked by three gunmen hours before he was to take part in a Senate debate on drug trafficking, police said. The attackers were captured, and Jimenez was not injured.
Maoist guerrillas struck in three Andean villages, killing 25 Indian farm workers they accused of spying for the authorities, the police said today. The disclosure of the killings followed the discovery, in the same region, of the bodies of 28 Indian peasants who relatives say were killed by government troops near the town of Azangaro, 43 miles northeast of Ayacucho. The regional military command refused comment on that report. The killings came amid a guerrilla war between the Maoist Shining Path rebels and government troops in the department of Ayacucho, 230 miles southeast of Lima.
The World Lutheran Federation suspended two white South African churches today for failure to reject the nation’s apartheid system. The federation, holding a world assembly for the first time in a Communist country, voted 220 to 23 against the Evangelical Lutheran Church in southern Cape Province and the German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia. The meeting today also elected Bishop Zoltan Kalday of Hungary as the new president of the Lutheran World Federation. He replaces Bishop Josiah Kibira of Tanzania.
South African policemen used rubber bullets, tear gas and whips to disperse about 300 black youths who rioted in a black township in the Orange Free State today, a police spokesman said. Several police and private vehicles were damaged by stones in the violence in the township of Thabong near Welkom, about 125 miles southwest of Johannesburg.
Anne McGill Burford, citing the furor over her appointment to an environmental advisory agency, asked President Reagan to withdraw the appointment. The White House said Mr. Reagan would ”abide by her wishes.” Mrs. Burford was forced to resign last year as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency amid charges of mismanagement and political favoritism.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon at the ranch in California with Archbishop Pio Laghi, Apostolic Delegate to the U.S.
The President and First Lady enjoy a horseback ride around the ranch towards the end of the day.
Simplified statements on readiness are open to challenge, according to a memorandum sent to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger last February by Lawrence J. Korb, the senior Pentagon official charged wtih measuring military readiness. Mr. Weinberger had informed Congress that readiness had improved in three years by 39 percent. Mr. Korb said that Navy readiness had improved sharply, but that Army and Air Force readiness had declined.
Jesse Jackson will not seek election to the Senate from South Carolina. In making the announcement, the civil rights leader said he would campaign for the Democratic national ticket while reserving his right to continue criticizing the party and its standard bearers.
The question of Presidential debates became an open dispute between the two top candidates. President Reagan cautioned that the voters might be ”bored” with too many debates. Walter F. Mondale, who has proposed six, accused Mr. Reagan of preferring an ”ad agency” approach to campaigning.
The House approved a $96-billion appropriation to run the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services in 1985, including a large expansion of the student-aid program. The bill, passed by a 329-91 vote, was $3.7 billion more than the Reagan Administration had requested. It contains $5 billion for student financial aid, which is $1.4 billion more than Reagan requested. A big chunk of that money, $3.8 billion, goes to the Pell Grant program for students demonstrating financial need. Under the bill, maximum Pell grants would rise from the current $1,900 to $2,100.
In a last-ditch attempt to salvage “Baby Doe” regulations, the Reagan Administration asked a federal appeals court in Washington to restore federal rules requiring hospital doctors to report suspected mistreatment of handicapped infants. In an unusual request, the Administration’s motion asked that the full court hear the appeal rather than simply a three-judge panel. The Administration conceded it was asking the full court to reverse a separate decision made earlier this year by three of its judges in the case of a specific handicapped infant on Long Island known only as Baby Jane Doe.
Postal union leaders held out the distinct possibility of a nationwide mail strike being called when the two major postal unions hold simultaneous conventions later this month in Las Vegas. The Letter Carriers and American Postal Workers unions, which represent 500,000 of the 600,000 union-covered postal workers, walked out of contract talks with the Postal Service July 20. The Postal Service has demanded a three-year wage freeze for current employees and a 23% wage cut for newly hired workers.
The first wrongful death lawsuit has been filed in the mass killings at a McDonald’s restaurant near here, seeking $2.5 million on behalf of two children of a Mexican woman killed in the slaughter of 21 people. James Huberty, 21 years old, an unemployed security guard, unaccountably shot up the crowded fast- food restaurant near the border July 18, killing 21 and wounding 19 others before a police sniper shot him to death. The suit was filed on behalf of Christian Toscano and German Toscano, both minors, who lost their mother, Gloria Lopez, in the shooting. Among those sued are the Huberty estate; the McDonald’s Corporation; its franchisee, Robert Colvin, and the Pacific Bell Telephone Company. The suit says an information operator gabe the police the wrong address for the shooting site.
A top official of the nation’s disaster relief agency was accused of converting a planned government dormitory into a personal residence and sexually harassing a woman hired as a security guard. A House subcommittee heard the accusations against Fred J. Villella, executive deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who runs a training center for emergency service personnel at a former college campus at Emmitsburg, Maryland. According to the General Accounting Office, an apartment residence was built at the center with such luxurious features as an $11,000, six-burner gas stove, a fireplace, custom vanities, copper-lined planters and a social room with a wet bar. Connie Peresada, hired by FEMA in July, 1981, as a security guard, accused Villella of sexual harassment, telling the subcommittee that he made “constant personal, suggestive remarks.”
The military needs to develop a new single-use rocket to launch some of its satellites because “we simply cannot afford” to rely solely on the space shuttle for the job, a U.S. Air Force official told Congress. Air Force Undersecretary Edward C. Aldridge said the service is not abandoning the shuttle as a satellite carrier, but building expendable launch vehicles is “a modest hedge against unanticipated shuttle problems.”
The U.S. Navy announced today that the Grumman Corporation had won contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion to improve the A-6 and F-14 warplanes. The award insures the continuation of 6,800 jobs at Grumman into the 1990’s, 90 percent of them at the company’s Bethpage, New York, plant, the company said. The new contracts shore up what had appeared to be an uncertain future for Grumman’s aircraft manufacturing. The A-6 assembly line has been operating at a minimum annual rate and was headed for a shutdown after 1985. The F-14 program, while more robust financially, also faced declining production in the next several years as Grumman neared completion of the total planes ordered by the Navy.
Weather in the Gulf of Mexico changed abruptly today, pushing a huge oil slick toward land and threatening major damage to beaches along the Texas coast, Coast Guard officials said. The 14-mile-long oil slick was expected to reach land between Port Arthur and Galveston on Thursday or Friday, and a Coast Guard spokesman, Keith Spangler, said, ”You could have very thick oil, a lot of it, all along the beach.” The slick, 1.3 million gallons of oil spilled from a damaged British tanker, had been headed away from land, but wind and sea changes have forced it toward the coast, Mr. Spangler said. Crude oil continued leaking from the tanker Alvenus, he said. The ship apparently hit an uncharted shoal Monday and the impact split its hull. Top priority was given to getting the crippled ship, still carrying more than 13 million gallons of crude oil, into Port Arthur, Mr. Spangler said, and efforts to contain the spill were dropped.
David Brower, a longtime conservation leader who was dismissed as chairman of Friends of the Earth a month ago, has been reinstated to that position in the environmental group. Mr. Brower also agreed to defer calling for a meeting of the group’s members to rewrite bylaws and vote for a new board, said Jeffrey W. Knight, deputy director of the organization. Mr. Brower will meet with the directors next week, Mr. Knight said. ”Everybody in the Friends of the Earth family can talk with mutual understanding about reconciling our differences and moving forward and putting all of our energies into saving the environment,” he said.
Acting Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. became mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, when he overcame a razor-thin margin in a count of mail ballots to emerge the winner, unofficial results show. The canvassers determined that Paolino, a former city council president, took a lead of 15,403 to 15,386 over Frederick Lippitt. That was due to an unofficial count of 420-335 in Paolino’s favor among the mail ballots that were counted by hand, a day after the election.
Humorous hospital birth certificates, issued for dolls during the Cabbage Patch craze could be used. to apply for fraudulent Social Security numbers and welfare benefits, the government is warning state agencies. Thousands of hospital certificates have been handed out over the last year to parents whose children, prompted by the Cabbage Patch fad, clamored for records for their dolls.
The Playboy mansion in Chicago, where Hugh Hefner once lived and held parties at which scantily clad women were guests, will soon have new tenants whose interest in nudes is more academic: students attending the Art Institute of Chicago. Magazine officials announced today that they will turn over the 72-room mansion, which has an estimated value of $3 million, to the School of the Art Institute for use as a dormitory. The building on Chicago’s Gold Coast will be named ”Hefner Hall.” The Victorian mansion, with bronze chandeliers and a large Italian marble fireplace, will serve as the first student residence for the Art Institute.
The Cleveland Indians’s Steve Farr wins his 2nd game against 7 losses, allowing 2 Detroit Tiger hits in 6⅓ innings, as the Indians win, 4–2. George Vukovich clubs two homers for Cleveland.
The U.S. team declined to play it safe in the finals of the team gymnastics competition at the Olympics. With the heavily favored Chinese closing in on them, the Americans went ahead and performed their riskiest routines. Their daring paid off as they captured the first United States gymnastics gold medal in history.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1134.61 (+19.33).
Born:
Brandon Kintzler, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2017; Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, Washington Nationals, Chicago Cubs, Miami Marlins, Philadelphia Phillies), in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Danny Richmond, NHL defenseman (Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Blackhawks), in Chicago, Illinois.
De Dorsey, NFL running back (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 41-Colts, 2006; Indianapolis Colts, Cincinnati Bengals), in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
Valery Ortiz, Puerto Rican actress (“Hit the Floor”), in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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