Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in a highly unusual statement on Tehran radio, denounced the reported mining of the Red Sea and criticized Tehran radio, which is run by his own Government, for implying sympathy for the actions. The Iranian leader also denied that Iran had been involved in recent airline hijackings. The Ayatollah’s statement was seen by diplomats and Iranian exiles as a new indication of political conflicts within Iran’s leadership. Earlier this week, Western and Arab diplomats, as well as the former Iranian President, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, reported splits within the ruling groups over the long war with Iraq and tensions with the West.
In addition to being charged with the mining, the Iranian Government, or factions of it, were charged in the French press with assisting the hijackers who pirated an Air France flight to Tehran last week. The charges were supported by virtually unanimous reports from passengers on the plane that the hijackers produced heavy arms only after the plane landed in Teheran. It is still not clear if the guns were given to them by someone on the ground at Teheran or were taken from luggage in airliner’s hold.
In the war, Iraqi planes attacked and damaged an Iranian oil loading platform in the Persian Gulf today. It was the second air strike in two days supporting Iraq’s declared blockade of the main Iranian oil terminal. An Iraqi military spokesman said Iraqi jets attacked a ”very big naval target” in the predawn raid today, scoring a ”direct and effective hit.” About eight hours later, Iran’s official press agency said the Iraqis had hit the Foruzan platform, 60 miles southwest of Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg Island, causing a fire that was quickly put out. The agency said there was minor damage. Foruzan is a permanent subsidiary oil-loading platform in Iran’s Feridun oil field. Feridun itself is part of the larger Marjan field, astride the median line running north to south down the middle of the gulf and dividing Saudi and Iranian oil rigs in the open sea.
Six wounded Afghan guerrillas and a 10-year-old Afghan boy with a bullet in his brain arrived in Washington for treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital in the first Pentagon-sponsored program of its kind. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in response to a request from congressmen, authorized waiver of fees for treatment at the U.S. government hospital and asked the Americares Foundation, a private relief organization based in Connecticut, to handle other arrangements.
Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization have agreed in principle on a link between the kingdom and a future Palestinian state, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat said. Speaking from his base in Tunis, Tunisia, Arafat said he and Jordan’s King Hussein have accepted a resolution of the PLO’s parliament-in-exile calling for “a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation.” He said the formula still has to be worked out, but he defined the confederation as “an equal relation between two peoples.” There was no immediate comment from Jordan.
About 90 Tamil separatists were killed in three days of clashes with security forces this week, Sri Lankan officials said, reporting that five policemen and two naval officers also were killed. President Junius R. Jayewardene defended his emergency rule as necessary to combat terrorism and defend the constitution. Tamils, who are Hindu and make up 17% of Sri Lanka’s population, complain of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese, who are mostly Buddhist. Tamil militants demand an independent homeland.
Jacek Kuron, the most prominent of the Solidarity supporters imprisoned under martial law in December 1981, was freed today under the Government’s recent amnesty. Mr. Kuron, who started a hunger strike in June to dramatize his demands for an open trial on sedition charges against him, told reporters that he was not pleased by the circumstances of his release. ”We wanted our trial,” he said. ”We forced our trial and what we have now is an amnesty that cannot be appealed.” Mr. Kuron, speaking with reporters in his Warsaw apartment, said he was not prepared at this time to offer an assessment of the political situation in Poland. Sri Lanka has been under a state of emergency since May 1983.
Arms shipments gave Bulgaria its largest export earnings in 1982, as the Warsaw Pact nation increased its weapons sales to the third world, according to an analysis by Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, a research group based in Washington. The report, citing detailed figures from what were described as ”official unpublished Bulgarian foreign trade statistics,” said that ”in 1982 exports of arms represented the leading source of export earnings,” 9.1 percent of Bulgaria’s export revenue. The analysis said that ”the data show quite clearly the rapid buildup of Bulgarian arms exports to the third world — their value tripled between 1979 and 1982 and reached $400 million to $500 million by 1982.” American officials have charged that Bulgarian arms shipments to the Middle East, third world and terrorists are partly financed by drug trafficking.
Masked youths fought with policemen in four cities today and at least 60 people were arrested, the police said. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, said tonight that an American who is a member of the New York-based Northern Irish Aid Committee had defied a British Government ban against entering Northern Ireland and slipped across the border. The American, Martin Galvin, is the Noraid publicity director. He had boasted in Dublin, the capital of the Irish Republic, that he would go to Northern Ireland despite the ban. A Sinn Fein statement issued tonight said Mr. Galvin had been in Londonderry, and that he had ”reiterated his determination to do all in his power to expose British misrule in Ireland.”
Today’s early morning violence across the British province marked the 13th anniversary of the start of Britain’s policy of internment without trial. Although the policy has been abandoned, unrest marks each anniversary. Masked youths threw gasoline bombs, bricks and stones at policemen in Belfast, Londonderry, Downpatrick and Newry, a police spokesman said. Policemen responded with plastic bullets from riot guns, and at least eight rioters were said to have been hurt. The police also said a man believed to have been an Irish Republican Army activist in Newry, identified as Kevin Watters, 24 years old, blew himself up when a bomb went off prematurely.
The French Senate, controlled by the opposition, rejected President Francois Mitterrand’s proposed constitutional amendment to expand his power to call referendums on matters of “public freedom.” Supporters said the amendment would give the public more control over civil liberties, but opponents said it would dangerously expand the president’s powers. Mitterrand made the proposal July 12, shortly after a government school-reform bill provoked a storm of protest. He withdrew the school bill but made it clear his proposed amendment would allow a referendum on the issue.
The Chinese Government said today that it had invited Queen Elizabeth II to visit China, in what would be the first trip by a British sovereign to a Communist country. A Foreign Ministry statement matched a Buckingham Palace announcement Wednesday that the invitation had been extended. No date was specified. The Queen’s press secretary said her decision on whether to make the trip would depend on the advice of her ministers. Buckingham Palace, saying it had no records on whether a British monarch had visited China, added that not one had visited a Communist country. The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London said no British sovereign had ever visited China. Britain and China announced their agreement last month on the transfer of Hong Kong back to Peking in 1997, when Britain’s lease on most of the colony expires.
Bells tolled and prayers for peace were said as thousands gathered in Nagasaki, Japan, to observe the 39th anniversary of the atomic bombing that killed at least 64,000 people. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone laid a wreath at the monument to the 2,217 who died in the last year of related illnesses and pledged that Japan will continue to forbid the manufacture or presence of nuclear weapons in the country. The annual observance ended a week of ceremonies commemorating the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The election of Jose Napoleon Duarte as President of El Salvador has at least temporarily swung Congress behind President Reagan’s policy toward that country, according to several lawmakers.
Nicaragua extended the registration deadline for candidates in November elections until August 16. However, the main opposition parties said their candidates will refuse to register unless the leftist Sandinista government agrees to negotiate with U.S.-backed rebels.
The Colombian rebel group known as M-19 and the Bogota Government plan to sign a truce Sunday to end one of Latin America’s oldest insurgencies, guerrilla and Colombian Embassy spokesmen said here today. The truce follows a similar cease-fire signed in April with Colombia’s other main rebel group, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. The embassy spokesman said a third major rebel group, the Popular Liberation Army, might also sign the truce. The embassy spokesman described the agreement with M-19, whose full name is the April 19 Movement, as part of President Belisario Betancur’s program to negotiate with the opposition and end the violence that has killed thousands and ravaged the economy.
Uruguay’s ruling military junta lifted a year-old ban on publication of news about political events and eased restrictions on political activity as part of a plan to return the country to civil rule through national elections Nov. 25. The government said the latest moves are aimed at creating proper conditions to permit voters to be informed about political parties. However, restrictions on criticism of the government remain in effect, as does a ban on political activity by more than 3,000 people whose civil rights have been suspended.
American Roman Catholics were urged to press the church’s position on public policy issues in a statement issued by the Catholic bishops in this country. But the bishops also urged the Catholic clergy to avoid supporting political candidates.
Efforts to control the G.O.P. platform are being pressed by the White House, which seeks to tamp down any dissent that might mar the unity of the party convention when it re-nominates President Reagan in Dallas later this month. Four public hearings on the Republican campaign platform originally scheduled around the country were canceled under White House orders.
President Reagan speaks with the Director of the U.S. Secret Service, John R. Simpson.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon meeting to discuss political issues with Stuart K. Spencer and James A. Baker. President Reagan, taking time out from his holiday to assess the latest problems of his re-election campaign, conferred at lunch today with two of his top political advisers about travel plans, opinion polls and the debate with Democrats over taxes. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said before the meeting that it had been scheduled some time ago and there would be a ”free-wheeling discussion and an open agenda.” The President’s luncheon guests at his ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains near here were two of his most trusted advisers, James A. Baker 3d, the White House chief of staff, and Stuart K. Spencer, a California political consultant who has been with Mr. Reagan since his first campaign for Governor of California in 1966.
Letters signed by Mark O. Hatfield have extolled a proposed trans-African oil pipeline as having ”profound and potentially beneficial impacts” on American energy resources and foreign policy. The letters by Senator Hatfield, Republican of Oregon, were addressed to Basil A. Tsakos, a Greek entrepreneur who headed the proposed project and who paid Mr. Hatfield’s wife $40,000 as a real estate fee.
Letters to Geraldine A. Ferraro from all over the country have been flooding her office since her nomination as the Democratic candidate for Vice President. But House Republicans denied Representative Ferraro’s request that she be allowed to use her franking privilege to answer the increasing volume of mail from people outside her district.
FBI Director William H. Webster urged a House subcommittee to tighten the Freedom of Information Act by making it harder for criminals to get the names of police informants from government files. Webster said 15% of the freedom of information requests received by his agency are made by prison inmates, and more than half of the requests to the Drug Enforcement Agency come from felons.
The Senate approved and sent President Reagan spending authorization measures. One, a $9.1billion military bill, was $1.4 billion under Reagan’s request for fiscal 1985, which begins in October. The second, a $11.5-billion spending bill for the departments of State, Justice and Commerce, includes $18.5 million for the Administration’s controversial National Endowment for Democracy. The bill also includes $305 million for the Legal Services Corp., $228.5 million for the Economic Development Administration and $64.3 million for the Federal Trade Commission.
A bill authorizing $650 million for safety repairs on federally owned dams in the West was unanimously approved by the Senate but, for the first time, making local water-users pay part of the costs. The bill now goes to the House. The measure would allow the federal government to pay 85% of the cost of repairs, while local users-cities, businesses, farmers-would pay the remaining cost.
The scandal over sexual abuse of children in New York City day-care centers continued to spread, with six centers and at least 39 cases under investigation. The centers are privately operated by nonprofit groups under contracts with the city’s mammoth welfare agency-the Human Resources Administration-and reports of incidents of abuse have snowballed since three employees were arrested last week. The Bronx district attorney’s office said it was investigating a new case reported in the Bronx, the fifth center involved in that borough. Thirty children at the Praca day-care center told investigators they were sexually abused by center employees.
[Ed: And, Again, It was probably all hysteria and psychologists implanting ideas in suggestible children. In January 1986, Albert Algerin, employed at the Praca Day Care center, was sentenced to 50 years for rape and sexual abuse. In May, Praca employee Jesus Torres, a former teacher’s aide was sentenced to 40 years. Praca employee Franklin Beauchamp had his case overturned by the New York Court of Appeals during May 1989. BUT – All five convictions were ultimately reversed.]
The New York Philharmonic has removed a work by a Jewish composer from its upcoming performance in Kuala Lumpur at the request of the government of Malaysia, a country with a large Muslim population, orchestra officials said. The piece is “Schelomo,” the most frequently performed work of Ernest Bloch, a Swiss-born American composer who died in 1959. “Schelomo” is the Hebrew word for Solomon and the piece is a tribute to the biblical king. The 106-member orchestra was to have played “Schelomo” in its Sept. 2 concert, a presentation of pieces by a variety of American composers.
Helmeted police hurled tear-gas to halt a confrontation between whites and Latinos hurling stones, bottles and firebombs in the second night of violence in a strife-town Lawrence, Massachusetts, neighborhood. Rioting the previous night sent 11 persons to the hospital. The melee Thursday started when a street corner religious service, designed to calm the racially mixed neighborhood, ended near a liquor store that had been gutted by fire the previous night. The initial conflict began when members of two families argued over a broken window, a city alderman said.
Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode called on the District Attorney’s office today to investigate whether any crimes were committed by police K-9 officers whose dogs reportedly attacked unarmed men and women. The decision came after a three-and-a-half-month investigation by the Mayor, the city managing director and police commissioner. As a result of the investigation, five police dogs are to be permanently retired from the force and 12 officers who handled dogs temporarily reassigned in the police department. The investigation was begun after a series of reports in The Philadelphia Inquirer that said some of the department’s 125 K-9 officers had lost control of their dogs or ordered them to attack unarmed men and women.
The NASA STS 41-D launch vehicle with orbiter Discovery again moves out to the launch pad. The space shuttle Discovery, thwarted in its first two attempts to launch its maiden voyage, was hauled back to the launch pad Thursday for a third try with a double payload-slated for August 29. Mounted atop the space agency’s ponderous crawler-transporter, it took about seven hours for the shuttle to complete the 3-mile trip to the elevated concrete pad after leaving the huge Vehicle Assembly Building at 11:36 pm EDT Wednesday. Workers at the Kennedy Space Center planned to spend the rest of the day hooking up various electrical and mechanical connections between the shuttle and ground facilities.
The launching of an international three-satellite probe to study the titanic forces that power Earth’s radiation belt was postponed at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for at least two days because of computer problems in West Germany. The blastoff had been. scheduled for Thursday but the countdown was halted when a navigational computer at the German Space Operations Center near Munich broke down. If the computer can be repaired in time, the Delta booster will blast off at 10:42 am Saturday, a spokesman said.
Helicopters will spray pesticide on opulent waterfront homes on islands in Biscayne Bay because two Mediterranean fruit flies were discovered at the nearby Port of Miami, officials said today. An eight-week aerial spraying campaign to cover four islands with the pesticide malathion will begin Friday, officials said. Fruit files could devastate Florida’s $1 billion-a-year citrus crop. Agriculture workers intensified their fly-trapping efforts today, setting out an additional 150 traps on Miami Beach and the four islands that will be sprayed, Hibiscus Island, Palm Island, Star Island and Dodge Island.
The Chicago suburb of Oak Park is considering offering cash incentives to tenants and landlords to integrate apartment buildings and keep the community ”racially diverse,” officials say. Under the proposed program, which would cost an estimated $1 million a year, a private concern would work as a rental agent, Ralph DeSantis, the village manager, said Wednesday. Blacks would be referred to predominantly white sections of the village while whites would be referred to largely black areas.
The Massachusetts state authorities today released drawings of two suspects in the theft here Wednesday of the first page of the English charter that established the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629. Secretary of State Michael J. Connolly and Capitol Police Chief Arthur Beaulieu said that the younger of the two men, 35 to 40 years old, was seen the day of the theft holding a large black portfolio as he leaned over the glass topped-case that held the charter. The two spoke at a news conference that took place around the case at the State Archives Museum. The other suspect, 50 to 65 years old, approached museum personnel Tuesday afternoon and asked to get a closer look at the charter, officials said. Both suspects wore glasses, according to six witnesses among the museum’s guards, interns and visitors. The younger man had a neatly trimmed moustache, the chief said.
The New York Yankees rough up starter Tom Seaver and trip the Chicago White Sox, 7–6. The Yankees battered Seaver for six runs in the three and two-thirds innings he pitched in his first American League start in New York. In his five starts since the All-Star break before last night, Seaver had won four times, lost none and allowed seven earned runs in 41 innings for a nifty 1.54 earned run average. But the Yankees nearly matched that run total in only three and two-thirds innings and sent Seaver’s season E.R.A. soaring to 4.04 while his record dropped to 11–7. Chicago’s scoring comes from Harold Baines, with a grand slam, and Carlton Fisk, with a 2-run home run.
The Kansas City Royals edged the Milwaukee Brewers, 5–4. Willie Wilson blooped a single to right field over a drawn-in Milwaukee infield to cap a two-run ninth-inning rally that gave Kansas City the victory. Darryl Motley started the rally with a single, his third hit of the game, off Pete Ladd (4-7), who had relieved Moose Haas to start the inning.
The Cincinnati Reds stake Jeff Russell to a 7–0 lead after 2 innings and he rolls to an 8–0 shutout of the San Diego Padres. Dave Parker clouts a 2nd-inning grand slam off Tim Lollar. Parker lined a 2-2 pitch from Lollar (9–10) barely over the right-field wall for his 11th homer of the season and his second in three games. Lollar set himself up for the grand slam by walking the bases loaded after getting the first two outs of the inning.
Andre Dawson’s two-out single scored Tim Raines from third base in the 10th inning tonight, and Dan Schatzeder pitched a four-hitter, striking out 11 and lifting the Montreal Expos to a 1–0 victory over the Chicago Cubs. The loss snapped a six-game Chicago winning streak, its longest of the season. With one out in the 10th, Raines singled off the reliever George Frazier (2–1). One out later, Raines stole second and third. Dawson then singled over first base to help Schatzeder improve his record to 5–3.
Manager Dave Johnson closed the New York Mets’ clubhouse briefly last night and told his team that ”every championship club goes through hard times, so don’t let it eat at you.” Then, in the quiet of a clubhouse quickly vacated after an 11–0 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, he conceded that his air of calm confidence was a purposeful effort to steady his team. The horrendous loss was the team’s fifth straight after dropping a four-game series in Chicago, and the 12th in 15 games. It was a display of ineptitude and impotence reminiscent of times this team thought it had relegated to memory. Rick Rhoden held the Mets to two hits and tallied 10 strikeouts, the most of his career.
Daley Thompson of Briton won the decathlon gold medal in the Olympic Games, just as he did in 1980 in Moscow. The 26-year-old, heavily muscled and emotional Thompson won comfortably from Jurgen Hingsen of West Germany. His 8,797 points to win the decathlon is later recognized as a world record.
In boxing, 10 Americans advanced to the final round, but an eleventh, light heavyweight Evander Holyfield of Decatur, Georgia, was disqualified for hitting on the break, a blow that had knocked out his opponent, Kevin Barry of New Zealand.
Valerie Brisco-Hooks beats fellow American Florence Griffith to win the 200m gold at the LA Olympics; completes the 200-400m double. Two years ago, Mrs. Brisco-Hooks had just given birth to a son and was 40 pounds overweight. At her husband’s urging, she started running again. The gold medal was the eleventh for the United States in the first six days of Olympic track and field. It was the eighth final in which Americans had finished first and second. One of those was a 1,2,3 finish Wednesday night in the men’s 200-meter dash.
In the day’s only other final, the women’s long jump, Rumania took the gold and silver medals with Anisoara Stanciu (22 feet 10 inches) and Vali Ionescu (22-4½).
A lonely monument to Jesse Owens on a vacant lot at a tiny crossroad in Oakville, Alabama, is visited by three or four people a day, according to a resident of the remote, mostly black community. But 2,500 miles west, the memory of the four gold medals Jesse Owens won in track and field at Berlin in 1936 and by which the greatest athletes are still measured have been recalled time and again at the Olympiad in Los Angeles.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1224.05 (+27.94).
Born:
Matt Moore, NFL quarterback (Carolina Panthers, Miami Dolphins, Kansas City Chiefs), in Van Nuys, California.
Graham Godfrey, MLB pitcher (Oakland A’s), in Tampa, Florida.
Pierre Perrier, French actor, in Nogent-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, Île-de-France, France.
History Diaries 