President Reagan participates in a meeting with American Jewish Women leaders. President Reagan assured a group of Jewish leaders at the White House that he was “not going to bomb Russia in the next five minutes,” according to a participant at the meeting. The comment appeared to be an attempt by Mr. Reagan to make light of an inadvertently taped quip that provoked criticism by Western European newspapers and denunciations by the Kremlin.
President Reagan appears to have escaped with relatively mild criticism from officials in Western Europe for his facetious remark last Saturday that he had outlawed the Soviet Union and that “we begin bombing in five minutes.” “He is fortunate that it came in August,” said a British Conservative politician of the remark, which Mr. Reagan made while waiting to record a radio broadcast. “Parliament is in recess, most people are on holiday and preoccupied with matters other than the strange sense of humor of this American President.”
The Government of Poland informed the United States today that it was prepared to begin talks on the Reagan Administration’s statement of intent to lift some economic sanctions, saying that it saw “a positive element” in the move. But at the same time, Warsaw declared it did not regard the Reagan statement as evidence of a change in Washington’s policies. The Administration has said it is ready to restore landing rights for LOT Polish Airlines and to renew scientific cooperation. The Polish statement was in the form of a nearly 4,000-word diplomatic note delivered to John R. Davis, charge d’affaires, by Jan Kinast, a Foreign Ministry official. “Although the recent U.S. moves cannot be taken as a change of the U.S. policies towards Poland, we can see a positive element in them,” the message said. “That is why the Government of Poland agrees to commence intergovernmental talks concerning air transport and scientific cooperation.”
A crowd of hundreds of youths hurled gasoline bombs and rocks at the police in a second straight night of Protestant rioting in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A spokesman said the police came under fire, but no one was hit. The officers fought back with plastic bullets. The spokesman said 20 rioters were arrested and four people were hurt — two officers, a rioter and a BBC cameramen. The protests were sparked by a scuffle Wednesday in a Belfast court between police officers and Protestants on trial on terrorism charges.
Valerian D. Trifa, a Rumanian Orthodox Archbishop who left the United States under a deportation order because of his reported Nazi past, applied today for a Portuguese residence permit, the state radio reported. Quoting an official at the Interior Ministry’s foreign section, the radio said the the Foreign Ministry would be urged to investigate Archbishop Trifa’s past as quickly as possible and would have three months to decide whether to allow him to stay. Earlier, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Portugal had known nothing of Archbishop Trifa’s past when it granted him a three-month entry visa. He entered Portugal on Tuesday.
The 70-year-old Archbishop, the head of the Rumanian Orthodox Church in America, was stripped of his United States citizenship and ordered out of the country for reportedly concealing his Nazi past when he was naturalized. He reportedly was active in the Rumanian Iron Guard, a group blamed for massacres of Jews during World War II.
Israeli jets today attacked what was described as a Palestinian guerrilla camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa region. The Christian-controlled Voice of Lebanon broadcast a report that four people had been killed and three wounded. Military officials in Israel said the jets bombed a base of the Abu Mousa guerrilla faction near Bar Elias, 25 miles east of Beirut. Abu Mousa acknowledged that the camp had been hit but said there had been no casualties. Abu Mousa announced in Damascus that it was responsible for a car bomb that the police in Jerusalem had neutralized on Wednesday. The Israeli military command said the base was used as a regional command post to prepare attacks on Israeli troops, which occupy south Lebanon. The Voice of Lebanon said the camp bombed by the Israelis was occupied by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
A Cypriot-registered freighter was damaged by an underwater explosion in the Red Sea today, the vessel’s managers said. A spokesman for Ledra Maritime Corporation, an Athens-based shipping company, said the vessel, the 11,765-ton Theoupolis, was not severely damaged. They said the incident occurred in the southern part of the waterway. The Theoupolis is the 17th vessel reported damaged by underwater explosions in the Red Sea or Gulf of Suez since July 9, according to a list of confirmed incidents issued today by Lloyd’s of London, the insurance exchange. Egyptian officials put the total at 17 ships on Wednesday.
The State Department will “be looking carefully” to determine whether the Kuwaiti purchase of Soviet arms will compromise U.S. arms pacts with the Persian Gulf nation, spokesman John Hughes said. American military trainers are currently serving in Kuwait, and some press accounts have reported that Soviet advisers will be stationed in that country under the agreement.
Saudi Arabia and three other Arab countries have secretly supplied South Africa with the bulk of its oil despite a worldwide embargo designed to protest the country’s apartheid racial policy, according to a survey by a Washington-based pro-Israel lobby. The survey, released by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that 76% of the oil South Africa imported from mid-1981 through 1982 came from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington denied that his country has any dealings with South Africa.
Two Afghan aircraft bombed the Pakistani border town of Teri Mangal, killing 14 people and injuring five in the second such attack this week, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said. The attack came just 24 hours after Afghan planes bombed another border community. A ministry spokesman said the Afghan charge d’affaires was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and a strong protest was lodged over the “wanton bombing.”
The Governor of an Indian state dismissed the region’s top elected official and replaced him with a rival politician who pledged cooperation with the Government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Opposition leaders in the southern state, Andhra Pradesh, termed the action “a coup” by Mrs. Gandhi. In a stunning maneuver engineered by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s ruling Congress-I Party, the popularly elected government of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh was ousted and replaced with a leadership that pledged to cooperate with Gandhi’s central government. The 19-month-old state government, led by opposition politician and former film star N.T. Rama Rao, was summarily dismissed by a Gandhi-appointed official, who declared that Rama Rao no longer held a majority in the state Parliament. Rama Rao was swept into office as chief minister in January, 1983, on a populist platform. He later became a leading figure in an initiative to unite regional parties against Gandhi.
The Philippine Supreme Court was petitioned today to restrain the police from using tear gas and truncheons against demonstrators marking the August 21 anniversary of the assassination of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Ruling tonight on the the first of two opposition petitions, the court upheld the police in denying use of a central plaza for a rally planned for Friday. The court urged the opposition groups to use a privately owned field instead. A second petition, still before the court, seeks an injunction against the police in larger protests scheduled Tuesday, the first anniversary of Mr. Aquino’s slaying at Manila International Airport on his return from exile. Major General Prospero Olivas, the Commander of Metropolitan Police Forces, recently sought to justify police action against opposition groups by asserting that they were infiltrated by the outlawed Communist Party.
Nicaragua acknowledged that it is building a large military airport, as the Reagan Administration has claimed, and gave journalists a tour of it. Officials said the facility, outside Punta Huete, 13 miles northeast of Managua, will be capable of handling “all types of planes” and could open by the end of 1985. They said that work on the facility, to include a main runway of 4,400 yards and another of about 3,900 yards, began two years ago. The United States has accused the leftist Sandinista government of building the airport to accommodate Soviet military aircraft.
The Colombian government and two left-wing guerrilla groups successfully completed talks on a cease-fire and will sign a truce next week to end the country’s endemic violence, rebel and official spokesmen for both sides said. The truce will involve the M-19, for 15 years Colombia’s major urban guerrilla group, and the rural Popular Liberation Army. The killing of an M-19 leader by unknown gunmen had delayed the accord. The pact follows a similar agreement earlier this year with another rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Chilean President Augusto Pinochet accused the Roman Catholic Church of frustrating his attempts to “save Chile from communism” and said he has no plans to speed up a transition to democracy. Pinochet, who overthrew the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende in 1973, criticized the church for defending the human rights of Communists.
A Roman Catholic cardinal from Uganda asserted today that about 80,000 people in his country were being held without charges in government-run camps. The prelate, Emmanuel Cardinal Nsubuga, also said that authorities in the capital, Kampala, had seized four priests and 50 to 60 worshipers from the Catholic cathedral there and that none had been seen since. Cardinal Nsubuga, the Archbishop of Kampala, said his own home was searched last week. At a news conference at which he was asked about recent United States criticism of Uganda’s human rights record, Cardinal Nsubuga also asserted that the Government of President Milton Obote had been unable to keep order. “There is shooting everywhere, especially in the capital,” the Cardinal said. He said his current world tour was not political but was intended to raise money for social services for Ugandans. Of the government-run camps, he said, “There are 80,000 people in the camps without any reason.”
John Z. DeLorean was acquitted by a Federal jury in Los Angeles of all eight counts of an indictment charging him with trafficking in millions of dollars worth of cocaine. The jurors at the DeLorean trial said their decision to acquit the former auto maker after 29 hours of deliberation was based on a belief that the Justic Department had entrapped him and had not proved its charges against him. Showing videotapes of Mr. DeLorean saying “I want to proceed” with a drug deal, and in the end accepting a suitcase with 55 pounds of cocaine, the Government had sought to depict him as a venal, ego-driven businessman trying to save his British-American automobile company through the sale of narcotics. The trial lasted 22 weeks. But some of the jurors said the government had failed to prove its case; others said the undercover investigation had sometimes slipped over the line into entrapment.
President Reagan participates in a signing ceremony for H.R. 4325, the Child Support Enforcement Act of 1984. Child support payments will be enforced under a comprehensive bill signed by President Reagan. The measure, which was approved by unanimous roll-call votes in both chambers of Congress, would, in many cases, compel employers to withhold funds from pay when a parent is one month late in making court-ordered support payments.
President Reagan receives the semi-annual “Summary Report of Inspector General Accomplishments.”
Conservatives were in full control in a debate before the Republican platform committee. The panel crushed an attempt to endorse the proposed federal equal rights amendment and rejected a proposed statement that the party respected the views of backers of the proposal. In a long day of debate, the committee also turned aside attempts by party moderates to soften language supporting voluntary prayer in the public schools and barring Federal financing of virtually all abortions. The committee completed a platform draft this evening. It will be officially adopted Friday and will be presented to the party’s national convention here next Tuesday. Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut said the platform shaped here today might appeal to conservatives but would limit the party’s ability to win moderate and centrist votes in a state such as his.
A $425,000 film on President Reagan that the Republicans have prepared for over a year to introduce him when he accepts renomination at the party’s convention next Thursday has generated a controversy. The three television networks have told the campaign there is a good chance that the 18-minute political film will not be broadcast except in small segments during news reports.
People who think things are better than they were in 1980 are very likely to vote for President Reagan, while people who think things are worse are only relatively likely to vote for Walter F. Mondale, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll. Mr. Reagan’s campaign is seeking to take advantage of a public perception that things are better by pressing the point at next week’s convention and in television commercials.
Finances of Agriculture Secretary John R. Block are being investigated by F.B.I. agents in Minnesota, according to sources familiar with the inquiry. Jim Nichols, the state’s Agriculture Commissioner, said the agents had questioned two of his employes about whether Mr. Block could profit indirectly from a $400,000 loan that the Government made to one of his business partners.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for rehearing in the case of condemned murderer Velma Margie Barfield, setting the stage for what could be the first execution of a woman in the United States in 22 years. Barfield, 51, the only woman on North Carolina’s Death Row, was convicted in 1978 of poisoning her boyfriend. She also confessed to poisoning her mother and two elderly persons for whom she worked as nurse and cook. In recent interviews at the Women’s Prison in Raleigh, she said that her 10-year addiction to prescription drugs led her to commit the crimes.
There are 23,181 more full-time permanent federal government employees since Ronald Reagan became President, a congressional report said. A House Civil Service subcommittee said that during the four years that Jimmy Carter was President, the number of such workers dropped by 37,607. The Defense Department has 6.8%, or 61,403, more full-time permanent employees, more than making up for declines at other federal agencies, the report said.
Hair and blood samples taken from the body of a slain woman show she was another victim of suspected multiple killer Christopher Wilder, officials said in Bartow, Fla. The samples were taken from Theresa Ferguson Wait, 21, of Satellite Beach, whose body was found March 22 in a Polk County ditch. They matched hair and blood found on the floor of Wilder’s car, Police Captain Grady Judd said. Wilder is suspected of killing as many as 12 women nationwide. Wilder, 39, a Florida businessman and race-car driver, shot himself fatally April 13 during a struggle with police.
The largest medical study of veterans of the Vietnam War to date concludes they appear to have no increased risk of fathering children with general birth defects, according to Government scientists. But they said that epidemiologists had found evidence that a small number of babies fathered by veterans who were most likely to have been exposed to Agent Orange had developed rare and crippling defects.
A Federal district judge ordered the City of Houston and two firefighters to pay $53,000 in damages to the wife of a black city employee whose death last year was partly laid to stress suffered from racial discrimination, court records showed Wednesday. Judge John Singleton said the Fire Department technician, James W. Hamilton, started the job in 1979 without blood-pressure problems. Within four years, he suffered a stroke and a fatal heart attack. The judge said stress “had physical side effects.” He ordered the city and Mr. Hamilton’s supervisors, C. P. Nelson and C. L. Wilford, to pay Carrie Hamilton $50,000 in punitive damages for her husband’s “humiliation, mental anguish and decline in his physical and mental health.” The judge also ordered the city to pay her $3,129 in back pay. According to the ruling, whites told black co-workers they should be sent back to Africa and posted defamatory cartoons. City Attorney Jerry Smith would not comment on the ruling until he reviewed the case, except to say the city did not condone discrimination.
The Federal Railroad Administration will make a special audit of the Burlington Northern Railroad after four fatal accidents occurred in 60 days. “Last year there were 17 fatalities in all railroad operations nationwide,” said John H. Riley, Administrator of the agency. “Earlier this year, Burlington Northern had 11 fatalities in a 60-day period. That suggested a need to look more deeply into the Burlington Northern’s total railroad operation.” Brian Sweeney, a B.N. spokesman, said the railroad would cooperate. “It’s a good opportunity for us to find out if we can do some things better,” he said. “We are not accusing B.N. of anything,” Mr. Riley said, noting that before this year, Burlington Northern’s safety record was above the national average.
A viable fetus is a person, and a driver who causes its death may be prosecuted for vehicular homicide, a sharply divided Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled. But the court, voting 4 to 3 in the landmark case, said the ruling would not be applied to the defendant, Daniel I. Cass, whose car struck a pregnant woman in West Yarmouth on November 24, 1982. The 82-month-old fetus was delivered by Caesarean section but had died in the womb because of the accident. The decision applies to all future cases.
A dozen kangaroos and three wallabies at the Knoxville Zoo, including five animals listed as endangered species, have died after being infected by parasites apparently carried by stray cats, zoo officials said today. The marsupials died between July 28 and August 8, Randy Wolfe, the zoo curator, said. They included three gray kangaroos, two red kangaroos, three wallabies and seven rat kangaroos. “The animals turned sick and were dying,” he said. “It took veterinarians five days to figure out what was wrong and start treating them.”
The Californian battle against the Mexican fruit fly, waged by Los Angeles County since last October, has been declared over, with county officials declaring that the pest has been eradicated. Quarantines that prohibited the removal of fruit from specified areas have been lifted, three months after aerial spraying of the insecticide malathion was halted. At the height of the infestation, the spraying occurred each week over a 63-square-mile area of the county, prompting protests that the effects of malathion on humans are not known. Agricultural Commissioner Paul Engler said that, in the future, increased trapping will provide notification of the flies’ presence in time for them to be eradicated with limited ground spraying.
Sunken liner Andrea Doria’s safe opened. More than a dozen bundles of U.S. currency and other waterlogged paper were pulled from an Andrea Doria three-ton safe after the vault, raised from the sunken liner’s wreck three years ago, was opened for the first time since the ship sank in 1956. The value of the safe’s contents was not immediately known. Peter Gimbel, who retrieved the safe at a cost of $2 million, opened it at the New York Aquarium on a live television program. Fifty-one persons were killed when the Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish liner Stockholm 40 miles south of Nantucket on July 25, 1956. Although divers recovered the safe in August, 1981, it stayed shut while Gimbel tried to stir up interest in his documentary on the recovery.
A Supreme Court Justice today refused to block the Navy from building facilities for testing a new way of communicating with submarines. Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, without comment, turned down an emergency request by Wisconsin and a Michigan county that said the electromagnetic radiation could hurt people. The idea of Project ELF is to allow communication with submarines 300 to 400 feet below the water’s surface through extremely low frequency radio transmissions. Submarines now must come close to the surface or send up an antenna to pick up radio signals, increasing the chance of detection. The local officials, who say the plans are illegal because there has been no study of environmental impact, prevailed in a federal trial court, but an appeals court in June allowed the Navy to resume construction.
NASA launches AMPTE-CCE. AMPTE-Charge Composition Explorer, also called as AMPTE-CCE or Explorer 65, was a NASA satellite designed and tasked to study the magnetosphere of Earth, being launched as part of the Explorer program. The AMPTE (Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers) mission was designed to study the access of solar wind ions to the magnetosphere, the convective-diffusive transport and energization of magnetospheric particles, and the interactions of plasmas in space.
The first space salvage mission is set for November. Under an agreement signed with insurance companies, American astronauts aboard a space shuttle will seek to retrieve and bring back to earth a commercial satellite stranded in a useless orbit. A precedent-setting space shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Center in November to rescue a stranded $40 million Indonesian communications satellite, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced. Contracts between the space agency and the satellite’s principal underwriters were signed this week. The Palapa B-2 satellite, originally owned by the Indonesian telecommunications agency Perumtel, and Western Union’s Westar 6 were sent into wayward orbits in February when their rocket boosters failed shortly after deployment by the crew of the space shuttle Challenger. The shuttle Discovery is scheduled to blast off Nov. 2 to deploy two communications satellites. Crew members Dale Gardner and Joseph Allen have been training for space walks to bring the stranded satellites back into the payload bay for return to Earth.
Women won full membership in the United States Jaycees under a resolution approved overwhelmingly by members of the all-male civic organization. The vote at a closed meeting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was 5,372 for admitting women to 386 opposed, with 77 abstentions.
Largest harness racing purse ($2,161,000-Nihilator wins $1,080,500).
Don Slaught hits a grand slam for Kansas City and Dan Quissenberry earns his 32nd save, pitching in relief of Charlie Liebrandt, as the Royals beat the Rangers, 6–3.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1209.14 (+10.16).
Born:
Candice Dupree, WNBA forward (WNBA Champions-Mercury, 2014; WNBA All-Star, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019; Chichago Sky, Phoenix Mercury, Indiana Fever, Seattle Storm, Atlanta Dream), in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Isaiah Stanback, NFL wide receiver (Dallas Cowboys, New England Patriots, Jacksonville Jaguars), in Seattle, Washington.
Died:
György Kósa, 87, Hungarian composer.
[Ed: Sorry, John. She stood by you to protect her investment, but now she’s going to clean you out in the divorce.]
History Diaries 