Mine-sweeping helicopters will be sent to the Red Sea to help Egypt clear the waterway of explosives that have recently damaged commercial ships, Reagan Administration officials said. Six RH-53D helicopters will be sent in response to a request from the Egyptian Government and recommendations of Navy mine-warfare experts, State Department officials said. According to a Defense Department spokesman, Maj. James Pisciottano, the first transport planes carrying the helicopters took off before midnight for the Middle East. He added that the helicopters would be joined later by a Navy support ship.
Earlier, a Pentagon spokesman said the loading of the helicopters onto C-5 transport planes at the Norfolk, Virginia Naval Air Station was completed over the weekend. He said the helicopters would probably be flown to a Mediterranean base, perhaps in Egypt, where they could be transferred to any of several ships in two Marine amphibious groups now in the Mediterranean. At a briefing for reporters in Santa Barbara, Calif., the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, dealt gingerly with the matter of recent explosions in the Red Sea, saying that ”we cannot confirm that they are mines.” He said that President Reagan, who was vacationing on his California ranch, was concerned but that the Administration was not making any allegations about who might have been responsible for the explosions.
A unity government for Israel led by Shimon Peres does not seem likely, according to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir. Mr. Shamir, the Likud bloc leader, said he doubted Mr. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, would be able to form a unity coalition because a left-wing faction in the Labor Alignment represented an ”obstacle.” Mr. Peres has been given a mandate to form a government by President Chaim Herzog.
Premier Rashid Karami asked a visiting Soviet official to approve an expansion of responsibility for the 5,700-member U.N. force in southern Lebanon in an effort to speed Israel’s withdrawal, an official source said in Beirut. The request was made during an hourlong meeting with Vladimir Polyakov, head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry’s Mideast section, the first senior Soviet official to visit Lebanon since the Israeli invasion of June, 1982. Karami reiterated Lebanese support for the recent Soviet proposal for an all-party Mideast conference, which has been rejected by the United States and Israel.
An exiled Iranian navy commander says he has been contacted by leaders of the moderate faction of the Islamic regime in Tehran with a view toward ending the Persian Gulf war and Iran’s international isolation. Adm. Ahmed Madani said in a London interview that he has been in indirect touch with key leaders including Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, other members of Parliament and government officials. In Ankara, meanwhile, Iraqi First Deputy Prime Minister Taha Yassin Ramadan vowed to tighten the blockade of Iran’s crucial Kharg Island oil terminal. He also signed an agreement for construction of a new pipeline from Iraq to Turkey.
A vacationing Kuwaiti newspaper owner escaped injury when gunmen in a moving car sprayed his automobile with bullets in the Spanish resort of Marbella, killing his chauffeur and wounding another passenger, police reported. Police speculated that the attack against Khaled Marzouk, owner of the newspaper, Al Anba, may have been prompted by the paper’s support of Iraq in its war with Iran. A fundamentalist pro-Iranian Muslim group, Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the attack. The group has previously claimed attacks against U. S. and other targets in Lebanon and Kuwait.
Kim Jong Il, 42, will succeed his father, Kim Il Sung, as president of North Korea, the nation’s official radio reported in a broadcast monitored in Japan. No date was announced for what would be the first transfer of power from a father to a son in a Communist country. North Korea’s Radio Pyongyang said that the long-expected transfer “has been internationally acknowledged,” and described Kim Jong Il as “the only lofty successor” to his 72-year-old father. Kim Jong Il has held a number of important government and Communist Party positions.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar, conferred with a Greek Cypriot representative today in an effort to get talks started between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. ”The Secretary General put forward some working points, not proposals, points for studying,” said Andreas Mavromatis, the Greek Cypriot representative. He spoke to reporters at the United Nations offices in Vienna after the 90-minute meeting. The Secretary General is scheduled to meet Tuesday with Necati Munir Ertekun, the Turkish Cypriot representative. Talks between the two Cypriot populations, which have been held intermittently under United Nations auspices for 20 years, collapsed 15 months ago.
Three leaders of the Confederation of Independent Poland, a nationalist anti- Soviet group, have been freed from jail under a government amnesty for political offenders, their families and friends said today. Two of the nationalists, Leszek Moczulski and Tadeusz Stanski, who had been serving jail sentences of seven and five years, respectively, were released from Barczewo prison last weekend. The third, Romuald Szeremietiew, serving a five-year term, was also freed but is hospitalized because of ill health. A military court found the three guilty in October 1982 of plotting to overthrow the government.
A Belgrade court indicted six people today on charges of antistate activities aimed at undermining and overthrowing the Yugoslavian Government, Tanyug, the official press agency, reported. The charges carry a minimum sentence of five years’ imprisonment and a maximum of 15 years, the agency said. A date for the trial has not been set. The six were detained briefly in May in a crackdown by the authorities on nonconformist intellectuals. They were arrested at a meeting in a private apartment in Belgrade where Milovan Djilas, Yugoslavia’s best-known dissident, was delivering a lecture.
According to Tanyug, the six held illegal meetings at which they attacked the system of government. It said they will be tried for ”associating for hostile activity.” They were indentified as Vladimir Mijanovic, 38 years old, a sociologist; Miodrag Milic, 55; Dragomir Olujic, 35, a journalist with the Belgrade radio; Gordan Jovanovic, 25, a student, Pavlusko Imsirovic, 36, a translator, and Milan Nikolic, 37, a sociologist.
A British appeals court ruled today that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had acted within the law when she banned trade unions at Britain’s electronic spying center at Cheltenham. Reversing a lower court ruling last month, which held that Mrs. Thatcher had unlawfully failed to consult with the unions before issuing her order, the appelate tribunal said there had been no violation of ”natural justice.” The earlier ruling had been considered a political setback for Mrs. Thatcher. The civil service unions that represented most of the 8,000 employees at Cheltenham announced they would carry the case to the House of Lords, which could issue a ruling by next week. The decision in the Lords will be the final legal ruling on the issue.
An investigation into a multimillion-dollar theft and corruption racket at Britain’s state-owned Rolls-Royce engine-manufacturing firm has led to the arrest of 13 people, including one who later committed suicide, police said. They said they have located more than $1.5 million in spare parts from the company’s factory in Coventry, in central England, since 1976 and expect to recover more. Investigators are also looking into allegations that money and gifts: had been given to Rolls-Royce employees to induce them to favor particular companies with orders.
Contact with Andrei Sakharov’s wife in Gorky was reported by friends of the couple after almost three months of silence. They said Yelena G. Bonner, wife of the physicist, reported that her husband was being held at a Gorky hospital, and that she had been formally charged with anti-Soviet activities. It was the first known message from Miss Bonner since mid-May, when Dr. Sakharov’s relatives here received a telegram from her saying that he had been taken away five days after declaring a hunger strike in Gorky. Banished to Gorky in 1980 Dr. Sakharov was banished to Gorky in 1980 in an apparent effort to sever his contacts with Western residents in Moscow after he had issued a statement criticizing the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.
Argentine federal forces moved into San Miguel de Tucuman, 900 miles northwest of Buenos Aires, surrounding a police headquarters occupied by about 500 mutinous officers. Fifteen mutiny leaders surrendered after a judge ordered their arrest. The week-old mutiny is over pay and transfers, including disciplinary action against men accused of illegal acts of repression while Argentina was under military government. But reporters at the scene said the strikers remained barricaded in the building and shouted that they would resist any effort by the federal units to expel them. They said the federal police made no move to enter the building. The mutineers earlier vowed to fight if federal forces tried to dislodge them. An unspecified number of striking policeman also took over the headquarters building in Chaco Province, 500 miles north of Buenos Aires, but officials there have not asked for federal assistance.
A Vatican spokesman said today that Chile and Argentina were near agreement on a treaty to end their frontier dispute over the Beagle Channel. Vatican diplomats have been mediating since 1979 in the century-old dispute over land and sea rights over the Beagle Islands off the southern tip of South America. The two countries nearly went to war over the islands in 1978. ”Convergences have been reached to the extent that the parties have come substantially nearer to the desired final treaty, and they are actively continuing their work in the hope of reaching a signature as soon as possible,” the spokesman said in a written response to questions.
Candidates of Zimbabwe’s governing party, the Zimbabwe African National Union, won all 10 contested seats in local government elections in Harare, the capital, over the weekend. They beat members of the main opposition party, the Zimbabwe African People’s Party, by a wide margin. Political analysts said the results of the poll, a forerunner to general elections expected by February, indicated increased support for the Zimbabwe African National Union, which is expected to approve plans to make Zimbabwe a one-party state later this week.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon meeting with Vice President Bush to discuss foreign and domestic issues. President Reagan and Vice President Bush participate in a brief question and answer session with members of the press on tax increases. President Reagan today disowned any attempt at ”hedging” his stated opposition to increases in personal income taxes. while Vice President Bush said later that ”any President would keep options open” on the question. The two views on the issue by the Republican running mates were expressed here during a visit by Mr. Bush to the President’s ranch for a luncheon meeting on political strategy.
At the luncheon, the President used his most unequivocal language yet in denying Walter F. Mondale’s charge that the Reagan Administration had a ”secret plan” to raise taxes. ”Walter Mondale is not telling the truth,” Mr. Reagan responded to a reporter who said Mr. Mondale, the Democratic Presidential nominee, had questioned the truth of the President’s opposition to taxes. ”I’ve said it before and I will say it again, and no matter how many of you try to put in a hedging line: We have no plans for nor will I allow any plans for a tax increase. Period.”
The Federal Railroad Administration, responding to the deaths of 11 persons last month in three fatal accidents on the nation’s passenger rail system, announced plans for an inspection of “every inch” of the 22,000 miles of track used by Amtrak trains. The four- to six-week inspection will employ special rail vehicles, called track geometry cars, that are equipped with electronic sensors to determine whether tracks are properly aligned. In addition, FRA Administrator John Riley said the agency has established a special team to review Amtrak’s dispatching and signal operations between Boston and Washington, which bears more than half of Amtrak’s passenger business.
The Postal Service will use the National Guard and private carriers to deliver the mail if postal workers go on strike, Postmaster General William F. Bolger told the National Association of Postal Supervisors convention. Negotiations on a contract between the Postal Service and its two major unions broke off July 20. The government is seeking a three-year wage freeze for current employees and a 23% pay cut for new workers.
Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-New York) won approval of a bill upon her return to the House after campaigning as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. The bill, known as the Truck Safety Act of 1984, would allow the Transportation Department to keep double trailer trucks from parts of the interstate highway system unable to handle safely the longer, wider vehicles. Ferraro is spending several days on Capitol Hill.
Women would find it easier to earn retirement benefits of private pension plans under legislation approved by the Senate. The bill, sponsored in the House by Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro of Queens, now the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, passed the House in May. The pension changes would also apply to men, but benefits for women have been emphasized by Democrats and some Republicans as symbol of concern for women’s rights.
Despite cancer dangers, the government has decided not to regulate air pollution from burning wood, oil and coal until experts have more information. The polycyclic organic matter emissions are caused by incomplete combustion in equipment such as motor vehicles, steel plant coke ovens, woodburning stoves and fireplaces. Joseph Cannon, Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator for air pollution, said that since 47% of the emissions come from residential wood-burning, it is hard to control. The government estimates that the pollution causes 800 U.S. cancer deaths a year.
Workers resumed dumping the volatile chemical aluminum phosphide into the Gulf of Mexico. A Houston dock worker was killed July 27 when the chemical exploded as containers were being unloaded from an Argentine freighter. After some of the remaining 7,000 three-pound flasks continued to leak, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the Coast Guard permission to dump the chemical at a hazardous dump site in the gulf 110 miles southeast of Galveston.
Connecticut authorities continued to hunt a felon who escaped from an Orly, Tennessee, medium security facility with two other men on July 1. Troopers used bloodhounds and helicopters to search for Lohman Mays, 41. “He is armed and extremely dangerous,” Trooper George Perry said of Mays, who had been serving a life sentence for shooting a police officer. Fellow escapees William Prentice and Michael Hartsock were in a gun battle with troopers in Somers, Conn., Sunday in which Prentice was killed and Hartsock was wounded.
President Reagan, rejecting warnings of security risks, will not block a shipment of plutonium from France to Japan, according to White House spokesman Larry Speakes. Speakes said the White House received a letter from 15 members of Congress warning that the shipment of 250 kilograms of plutonium oxide for a breeder reactor in Japan would be a ‘tempting target” for terrorists and provide material for up to 30 nuclear bombs. But he said there is no proof of any real threat. The plutonium, sold by the United States to Japan, was reprocessed in France.
Guards at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska detained 146 protesters who illegally entered the base, the home of the Strategic Air Command, to mark the anniversary of the first United States atomic bombing of Japan. Eighteen other protesters were arrested in Pennsylvania and Connecticut today, the 39th anniversary of the bombing, in on separate demonstrations at plants that manufacture military components, the authorities said. At the Pentagon, some 50 demonstrators acted out the mock aftermath of a nuclear attack, lying on the floor of a shopping concourse as though they were victims.
A Coast Guard plane equipped with infrared radar headed out over the Gulf of Mexico today, hunting for the remnants of a 1.8 million-gallon oil spill that blackened a 55-mile stretch of Texas beaches. ”They can’t find it by eye anymore and this will give us a clean sweep,” Coast Guard Senior Chief Jim Kosch said of the flight. Inspections by less-sophisticated aircraft had failed to fix the rest of the more than 85-mile slick that has been flowing down the Gulf coast since the British tanker Alvenus ran aground a week ago off Louisiana. Most of the oil already is ashore, has evaporated or dissipated in the Gulf, officials said.
The cleanup went into its third day today with bulldozers, road graders and dump trucks trying to remove the thick, gooey sludge from beaches. Most of the work was concentrated west of Galveston, where the oil made a 30- yard-wide section of beach look like a newly paved black road. The cleanup cost has been estimated in the millions of dollars. The ship’s owner, Alvenus Shipping of London, has agreed to pick up the bill.
Asbestos fibers are more widespread in public and private buildings than previously realized and may present a complex national health and economic problems, according to new information gathered by the Environmental Protection Agency. In addition, evidence that thousands of homes may contain loose asbestos particles, mainly in aging forced-air heating and cooling systems, is also being studied.
John Z. DeLorean’s trial in Los Angeles on charges of cocaine smuggling reached its final stages with summations from a Federal prosecutor and the defense. In the final stages of his trial on cocaine-trafficking charges, John Z. DeLorean was described by a prosecutor today as ”a loose cannon in society” and by one of his own lawyers as ”a victim of the very people who are supposed to protect us.” Assistant United States Attorney Robert M. Perry delivered the first round of closing arguments for the Government, a three-and-a-quarter- hour summation that was followed by a two-hour response for the defense
Four hours after partial bus service was restored for 20,000 commuters in the ninth day of a transit strike in Worcester, Massachusetts, 15 buses were pulled off city streets today after a driver was pelted by eggs, the police said. Guards rode four of the buses that ran through this central Massachusetts city of 162,000. But there was no guard on the bus that came under attack at 9:40 AM, the police said. ”I will not have my women drivers assaulted by thugs,” said Allan Weagle of the Weagle Brothers Bus Company.
A school prayer group is suing to continue to hold religious meetings at a high school in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The lawsuit seems headed for the Supreme Court and could affect dozens of similar groups in the nation. A key issue in the fight is what a Federal appeals panel, in ruling against the group, described as ”a constitutional conflict of the highest order” between students’ rights of free speech and the school’s First Amendment duty not to establish religion.
The Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox split, with Detroit outslugging Boston in the opener, 9–7, and Boston replying, 10–2. Aurelio Lopez (8–0) wins game one in relief as Chet Lemon and Lance Parrish each hit homers and drives in three runs. Marty Barrett has four hits for the Sox in the opener and Boggs does the same in the nightcap. Two of his hits are homers to fuel Roger Clemens to his 6th win.
Storm Davis pitched a six-hitter for his sixth consecutive victory since the All-Star break and Wayne Gross homered for the Baltimore Orioles as they downed the Cleveland Indians, 4–2. Davis blanked the Indians until Jerry Willard hit his seventh home run in the eighth inning. It was only the third homer allowed by Davis in 168 innings this season, the best ratio in the major leagues.
Buddy Bell’s walk-off two-out single in the bottom of the ninth inning scored Mickey Rivers from second base to give the Texas Rangers a 5–4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays. Rivers opened the inning with a pinch single off Roy Lee Jackson (7-4) and went to second on a sacrifice by Curtis Wilkerson. Jim Gott replaced Jackson and retired Billy Sample on a pop up before walking Gary Ward. Bell followed with a single to score Rivers and make a winner of Mike Mason (8-9).
The battle for first place in the National League East began with a rout today when the Chicago Cubs hammered Dwight Gooden for six runs in four innings and rolled on to bury the New York Mets, 9–3. The Cubs attacked the Mets with four singles, six doubles, two triples and a home run, and generally raised the roof in 60-year-old Wrigley Field before a roaring crowd of 31,793. And they shoved the Mets one and a half games into second place, a loss of six full games in the standings in 11 days.
Kevin McReynolds doubled with two out in the top of the ninth and scored on Luis Salazar’s single tonight, sending the San Diego Padres to a 1-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds. Mark Thurmond and Goose Gossage (6-3) blanked the Reds on three hits to give the National League West leaders their third straight victory and 11th in 13 games.
The Houston Astros shut out the San Francisco Giants, 8–0. Bob Knepper, a former Giant, pitched a six-hit shutout and doubled home two runs to cap a six-run sixth inning for the Astros. Knepper struck out five and walked one. It was the left-hander’s eighth complete game of the year, and his third shutout.
American athlete Carl Lewis wins long jump (8.54m), his second of 4 gold medals at Los Angeles Olympics. Lewis, who is trying to win four track and field gold medals in the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, won his second tonight. With a sellout crowd of 92,600 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum roaring at every step, Lewis leaped 28 feet, ¼ inch on his first long-jump attempt, and that was the best of the night.
The United States, which has dominated track and field competition so far, swept both the gold and silver medals in two races today.
After Americans Roger Kingdom & Greg Foster both equal the Olympic record in 110m hurdles semi’s in Los Angeles, Kingdom beats Foster in the final in a new Games record 13.20 seconds.
Valerie Brisco- Hooks, a 24-year-old from Los Angeles, beat Chandra Cheeseborough of Jacksonville, Fla., by 2 meters in the women’s 400-meter dash in 48.83 seconds, an Olympic and American record.
In a magnificent men’s 800-meter final, Joachim Cruz of Brazil, a 21- year-old University of Oregon junior, won by 5 meters in 1 minute 43.00 seconds, an Olympic record. Sebastian Coe of Britain took the silver and Earl Jones of Inkster, Michigan, won the bronze medal.
Doina Melinte of Rumania scored a 6-meter victory over Kim Gallagher of Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, in the women’s 800 meters in 1:57.60. Alberto Cova of Italy beat Martti Vainio of Finland by 20 meters in the men’s 10,000 meters in 27:47.54.
Oddibe McDowell hit a two-run home run and scored the go-ahead run today to give the United States a 5-2 victory over South Korea, propelling the Americans into the final against Japan. Earlier, Japan rode the hitting of Yukio Arai to a 2-1 victory over Taiwan in 10 innings.
In diving, Kelly McCormick, a second generation Olympian whose mother won golds in the event in the 1952 and 1956 Games, had to settle for a silver in the three-meter springboard event. Miss McCormick needed to average 8.5 on her final dive to catch Sylvie Bernier of Canada, but wound up instead with an average of 8 points. The gold medal for Miss Bernier was Canada’s first ever in Olympic diving.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1202.96 (+0.88).
Born:
Tim Wallace, NHL right wing (Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Islanders, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes), in Anchorage, Alaska.
Osiris Matos, Dominican MLB pitcher (San Francisco Giants), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
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