Secretary of State George P. Shultz said he “wouldn’t put a lot of money” on prospects that the United States and the Soviet Union will hold arms control talks in Vienna next month. In an interview, Shultz acknowledged that efforts to arrange the mid-September talks, first proposed by the Soviets, probably will not be successful. In later backing away from its proposal, the Kremlin accused the Reagan Administration of trying to add other arms control issues to the agenda while Moscow wanted the talks limited to space weapons.
Moscow’s handling of the crisis generated a year ago when a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean airliner with 269 people aboard prompted worldwide criticism and strengthened Washington in its relations with the Kremlin, according to Administration officials.
Greece protested to the United States today over purported violations of a recent labor agreement that ended a monthlong strike at the American bases here. The strike had aggravated the already strained relations between the two countries. Employees at the bases marched to the United States Embassy today and announced that a three-day strike would take place next week. The Greek protest was made to the American charge d’affaires, Alan Berlind, who was summoned to the Foreign Ministry. A United States Embassy spokesman declined to disclose details of the protest or to explain the American position on the matter.
Greece said it was protesting the refusal of the American military to reinstate 16 striking workers at the Hellenikon air base in Athens despite an understanding that there would be no dismissals over the strike. The dispute ended in a written accord between the two governments that provided for more frequent pay increases for employees at the bases. The workers had also sought a one-and-a-half-hour reduction in the work week.
French officials confirmed today that the cargo of a French freighter that sank in shallow water off Belgium last weekend included some more highly radiocative material than the uranium originally reported aboard. The officials said that three of the 30 barrels of uranium hexafluoride that divers were trying to salvage from the Mont Louis contain traces of highly radioactive waste from nuclear reactors. But they said a small quantity of such waste did not increase the danger of radioactive pollution. Belgian officials say the three barrels, which were said to be slighly more radioactive than the other 27, contain some plutonium, tritium, strontium and a form of uranium called uranium- 232. French Environmental Ministry officials said tests for radioactivity from the ship, which is in 46 feet of water, showed no significant emissions. Radioactivity near the wreck is 10,000 times lower than that allowed in ordinary drinking water.
An accord for an Israeli Government has been reached by Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, according to Israeli radio. Broadcasts said the agreement called for Mr. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, and Mr. Shamir, head of the Likud bloc, to alternate as Prime Minister in a national unity government.
Israeli leaders offered general condemnation of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the American-born extremist who has vowed to drive Arabs out of Israel and who tried to force his way past police into an Israeli Arab town on Tuesday. Caretaker Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, “The Kahane phenomenon is negative, dangerous and harmful.” The right-wing Tehiya party called Kahane’s attempt to enter Umm el Fahm “a needless provocation.” Meanwhile, Kahane announced that his supporters will try to stop Arab workers from entering the Jewish town of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem today.
Grim-faced in their black robes, the patriarchs, bishops, priests and monks of the Eastern churches today ringed a platform in front of the coffin of Pierre Gemayel, the founder of Lebanon’s Phalangist Party, in the mountain town of Bikfeiya. Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Melkite, Syrian, Coptic, Armenian Catholic and Armenian Orthodox, they carried staffs of office and wore jeweled crosses on their chests, high cylindrical or onion-dome- shaped headgear or the black hoods of the monastic orders. In privileged parking spaces only a short walk away were the black limosines of Lebanon’s oligarchs, the handful of notables of great families, the Za’im, who have long dominated politics here. Leaning on a fender of each car was a bodyguard, pistol prominent. Embattled Christianity and the fellowship of the Za’im were, in a sense, fitting symbols of Pierre Gemayel, as was his simple pine coffin, as austere as the man himself.
The State Department said it is reviewing the participation by private American companies in a huge irrigation project in Libya, which is on the U.S. government’s list of terrorist countries. Spokesman John Hughes confirmed U.S. approval of exports of some American equipment for the multibillion-dollar project, in which two U.S. companies are extensively involved. Hughes said no violations of U.S. law are indicated “at this stage,” but he noted that American contractors could have violated the U.S. ban on travel to Libya. The U.S. companies are Brown and Root of Houston, the general consultant, and Price Brothers of Dayton, Ohio. The Reagan Administration has charged that Libya is involved in international terrorism, and it has actively discouraged Americans from going to or staying in Libya. The water project, inaugurated Tuesday by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, will transport water hundreds of miles from aquifers beneath Libya’s desert interior to the Mediterranean coast. The cost of the first phase is projected at $3.5 billion.
Afghan rebel groups began moving out of Peshawar today in line with a Pakistani Government order to shift their headquarters out of the frontier city by Friday. Pakistan, concerned about what it sees as growing Communist infiltration of the rebel groups, ordered the groups last month to move their headquarters, hostels and unmarried men out of Peshawar by August 31. Rebel spokesmen said moving to buildings outside Peshawar would make contacts between groups more difficult but would not disrupt supplies of arms and equipment to the rebels.
Canada’s ruling Liberal Party called former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau out of retirement to campaign in Montreal, hoping his popularity will prevent defeat in Tuesday’s national elections. Trudeau, 64, agreed to make three campaign appearances today in an effort to offset the surge of Progressive Conservative Party leader Brian Mulroney. Polls indicate that Mulroney will defeat John N. Turner, who took Trudeau’s posts as Liberal Party leader and prime minister, by 46% to 32%, with 18% going for the socialist New Democratic Party.
A delegation of high-level Nicaraguan officials will go to the Vatican next week to discuss deteriorating relations between the Marxist-led Sandinista regime and the Roman Catholic Church, the Washington Post reported. The newspaper, quoting pro-government church sources, said the delegation will meet with Vatican officials September 6. The newspaper said it was not known if the delegation will meet with Pope John Paul II. The main cause of tension is the presence of four priests in high government posts despite the Vatican’s insistence they resign.
The general manager of the Nicaraguan opposition daily La Prensa said today that the police had confiscated more than 15,000 copies of the newspaper in two northwestern provinces. The manager, Jaime Chamorro, said the Wednesday issue had been seized in Leon and Chinandega provinces. It carried a front-page article on a demonstration against the military draft by 1,000 youths in the city of Chinandega, 84 miles northwest of Managua. Mr. Chamorro said censors had not eliminated the article when they reviewed material submitted for the issue, although military news is prohibited under the state of emergency in effect since March 1982. La Prensa has a circulation of 75,000, and Mr. Chamorro said distribution of the afternoon newspaper was normal in the rest of the country.
Bolivia’s Interior Minister, Federico Alvarez Plata, resigned today over accusations of torture, but he then withdrew his resignation at the request of President Hernan Siles Zuazo, a senior official said. The official, Percy Camacho, Under Secretary at the Information Ministry, said Mr. Alvarez Plata accepted the President’s request to remain in office. Mr. Alvarez Plata resigned after the Senate passed a motion to censure him, charging that he had allowed a suspect in the kidnapping of Mr. Siles Zuazo two months ago to be tortured.
The minister had pledged to resign if he was censured, but he denied that any of the nine suspects detained in connection with the June 30 kidnapping and attempted coup had been tortured. The Senate motion Wednesday said Mr. Alvarez Plata had violated the rights of Reynaldo Venegas, a suspect in the abduction of the President. Mr. Siles Zuazo was abducted and held for 10 hours in an unsuccessful coup attempt that the Government said involved former Cabinet ministers, cocaine traffickers and senior military officers.
South African police shot and killed a black youth and wounded two others as mobs went on a rampage in black townships around Johannesburg, authorities said. Three white detectives, attacked by about 60 black youths in a township near Germiston, opened fire, killing a 19-year-old and wounding two others, a police spokesman said. Earlier, police using tear gas dispersed a crowd of about 1,000 youths throwing stones, he added. The violence was believed to be related to continuing student protests, focusing on complaints that education for blacks is inferior.
The NASA space shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit on its maiden flight (STS-41D) after three postponements over two months and successfully deployed the first of three communications satellites in its cargo. The launching of the $1.2 billion space shuttle at 8:42 AM had been delayed nearly 7 minutes by the intrusion of a small private plane in the restricted airspace around the Kennedy Space Center. Commanding the Discovery is Henry W. Hartsfield Jr., who was a pilot on the fourth shuttle mission in 1982. The other crew members, all making their first trips in space, are Commander Michael L. Coats of the Navy, Lieutenant Colonel Richard M. Mullane of the Air Force, Dr. Steven A. Hawley, Dr. Judith A. Resnik and Charles D. Walker. Soon after reaching orbit, Dr. Resnik, an electrical engineer who is the second American woman to travel in space, radioed her first impressions. “The earth looks great,” she remarked.
In the late afternoon, on the Discovery’s sixth orbit, the six-member crew released a satellite owned by Satellite Business Systems, a telecommunications company. An attached rocket fired flawlessly to boost the satellite from the shuttle’s 184-mile-high orbit toward its intended operational position 22,300 miles over the Equator in the Western Hemisphere. The success was a relief to the telecommunications industry because similar rockets misfired on a mission in February, sending two satellites into useless orbits. The trouble was traced to defective rocket nozzles. Only after extensive testing this summer were the companies willing to take a chance on resuming flights with the rockets, known as payload assist modules, or PAM’s. Two other satellites are to be deployed Friday and Saturday mornings, and for the rest of the planned six-day mission the crew is to test a extendable solar-power panel for future space stations and to operate an experimental unit for processing drug products.
President Reagan tours the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. President Reagan is presented with a glass-blown model of the Solar Maximum Mission Satellite. President Reagan campaigned gently in the wake of the space shuttle launching today, telling a group of space scientists that he supported “high tech, not high taxes.” Mr. Reagan, on a tour of the Goddard Space Flight Center here where he thanked workers for their role in the space program, spoke optimistically of the country having the power to “create a bounty of new jobs, technologies, and medical breakthroughs surpassing anything we have ever dreamed or imagined.” High technology spurred by capital investment is the key, he emphasized, turning briefly to the tax question that has been an issue in his re-election campaign.
Reagan writes in his diary:
“A trip to Goddard Space Flight Center. How can anyone protest that our Space program is a waste. I saw miracles all spinoffs from our space program—a small metal disc that can be affixed to a diabetes sufferer and it by the magic of a small computer supplies insulin automatically to the person. Computer & insulin are all contained in the disc. An improvement in fish nets that will increase the catch but reduce the time spent at sea tremendously—and on it went.
“The V.P. & I lunched & talked about the campaign. Incidentally the Shuttle “Discovery” took off this morning. When the shuttle program was before Congress it passed by only 1 vote—leading the opposition was Fritz Mondale.”
Contamination of underground water by man-made toxics prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to announce a strategy to protect these water supplies. States would retain primary responsibility for safeguarding underground water, but the agency’s program would introduce a variety of Federal initiatives, including a plan to control leakage from underground storage tanks containing hazardous materials.
Data on the toxic waste programs administered by the Environmental Protection Agency are still being withheld by the White House, according to a final report by a House subcommittee that investigated the agency’s management of the programs and White House communications about them with E.P.A. officials.
A former Reagan aide was charged with using inside information to turn a $431,000 profit in securities trading three years ago. Thomas C. Reed, a former special assistant to the President for national security affairs, was also accused of perjury and submitting forged documents in testimony given in a civil lawsuit arising from the securities trading.
A judge removed John A. Zaccaro as overseer of an elderly woman’s financial affairs. But the judge, Justice Edwin Kassoff, said he had found “no suggestion of dishonesty or malicious intent” by Mr. Zaccaro when he borrowed $175,000 from the woman’s assets for the real estate business of which he and his wife, Queens Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, were officers.
Teamsters endorsed the President for re-election. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters also supported Mr. Reagan in 1980. The Republican re-election campaign was banking on the endorsement to help counter labor’s overwhelming support for Mr. Reagan’s opponent, Walter F. Mondale.
The troubled federal coal-leasing program will not resume competitive lease sales until an exhaustive environmental assessment is completed, at the earliest, in July of next year, Secretary of the Interior William P. Clark announced. The last time the government completed an environmental study on its coal-leasing program was in 1979, when the Interior Department was preparing to resume competitive leasing after a 10-year moratorium. The review is necessary to ensure that the government leases “only those federal coal lands which promote the national interests… while conserving total energy resources and protecting the environment,” Clark said.
The Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining has balked at enforcing federal mine reclamation laws and failed to collect up to $204 million in fines, Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Arizona) charged. Udall, chairman of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, asked the General Accounting Office to carry out “an intensive review and investigation.”
A reluctant President Reagan gave the beleaguered Legal Services Corp. a new lease on life but warned Congress against tampering with the powers of his nominees to the agency’s board. Reagan signed an $11.57-billion fiscal 1985 appropriation bill that provides $305 million for the Legal Services Corp. Reagan has tried to eliminate the corporation over the last three years but has been foiled each time by Congress.
The Administration is considering whether to go to the U.S. Supreme Court to try and reverse a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling that could limit presidential use of the pocket veto, Attorney General William French Smith said. Smith told reporters that the Justice Department is reviewing a 2–1 decision that ruled Reagan had improperly exercised his pocket veto option last November, as Congress was merely between annual sessions and had not adjourned.
Attorneys for a Mexican civil rights group and Houston’s schools signed an out-of-court settlement of a 28-year-old desegregation suit, but lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People expressed last-minute qualms and said they would seek minor wording changes. The agreement was reached among the three groups after almost four days of negotiations. The settlement included a proposal of a 60-40 ratio of minority group students to white students at magnet schools in an inner-city school district of 117,546 students.
Shoppers had only a 30-second warning today before a rain-soaked roof collapsed at a discount department store, injuring at least 15 people, the authorities said. A search through the wreckage at Wall’s Bargain Center in the Oklahoma City suburb of Del City was called off for the night at 8 PM, and the authorities said they had good reason to believe no one was trapped in the rubble. “Right now it looks like nobody’s been killed,” said Lyn Cusic, a spokesman for the Del City Police Department. Jim Lowe, a spokesman at the store’s home office in Shawnee, said people inside the 40,000-square-foot former bowling alley had a warning of “maybe 20 or 30 seconds at most.” Shoppers were blown out the front and others “crawled and ran out as the roof came down,” he said. Five men and nine women were taken to a hospital with injuries but none were hurt seriously enough to be admitted, a hospital spokesman said.
A Greenwich, Connecticut, town ordinance regulating the size, appearance and placement of newspaper racks has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. “It is clear that the First Amendment protects the distribution, as well as the publication, of newspapers,” U.S. District Judge Ellen B. Burns said in a 24-page decision. The suit was brought by the Southern Connecticut Newspapers Inc., publishers of the Greenwich Time and the Advocate of Stamford, owned by Times Mirror. They had likened newspaper racks to garbage cans, utility poles and telephone booths, objects not regulated by town ordinance.
Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said he has vetoed $820 million in proposed public works projects because of amendments that would give the City Council control over city contracts. “There’s still time to prepare new ordinances,” Washington said, leaving City Hall minutes after releasing the veto message. The mayor said that, despite criticism, he would not “make accommodations with these thieves.” The veto was criticized by leaders of the City Council majority bloc that has fought the mayor since he took office 15 months ago.
More than 2,000 people who regularly receive shipments of child pornography from abroad have been identified by Customs Service officials and many have been arrested as part of a nationwide move against its importation, a department official said today. The material came to from Denmark and the Netherlands to the customs foreign mail branch in Chicago and led to the identification of the recipients, according to Allen Wilk, regional assistant commissioner of enforcement. Mr. Wilk declined to say how many people had been arrested.
While Customs officials were aware that such materials were being mailed through the foreign mail branch in Chicago, Mr. Wilk said officials were suprised to learn that some of the recipients were “major pillars of the community, including physicians, corporate executives and college professors.”
Black Americans are unified in their political attitudes far more than whites, according to a public opinion poll made public by the Joint Center for Political Studies. The survey found that the consistency among blacks cuts across region, age, income and sex.
Fifteen fires covering 250,000 acres are threatening lives and homes around Montana, and 5,000 firefighters from throughout the West are battling major wind-driven blazes near four communities. The mountainous city of Helena is ringed by plumes of smoke from a 30,000-acre forest fire ranging out of control in the North Hills, 10 miles away.
Bituminous coal labor negotiations have entered their final weeks of efforts to get a new contract without a strike, something that has not occurred in 20 years. The mine workers’ contract expires Sept. 30, and in the next month Rich Trumka, who has headed the union for 20 months, will have a chance to live up to expectations that he can rebuild his proud but shrunken union.
A purported aphrodisiac has been found extremely effective in laboratory animals, and scientists at Stanford University say they have been innundated by men volunteering to test the drug. Of the 300 men who volunteered, 40 have been chosen to take part in experiments testing the drug, yohimbine hydrochloride.
Sotheby’s in London begins a 2-day auction of rock memorabilla.
In a 9–3 win over the Twins, Red Sox slugger Jim Rice grounds into his 33rd double play of the season to break the Major League record set by Jackie Jensen in 1954. By season’s end, Rice will extend his new record to 36. Wade Boggs drove in three runs, scored three times and had three hits. Teammate Rice added a two-run double as the Red Sox had 16 hits. Al Nipper (7–5) settled down after a shaky start, retired 21 of the last 22 batters and finished with a six-hitter. He struck out seven batters. Ed Hodge (4–3) was knocked out in the four-run fifth inning as the Twins dropped the sixth of their last eight games.
The Texas Rangers beat the Kansas City Royals, 4–3, as Buddy Bell singled in one run and scored another on Pete O’Brien’s triple in the first inning to back Charlie Hough’s seven-hit pitching.
Lloyd Moseby hit a two-run pinch-single to cap a three-run ninth inning that rallied the Toronto Blue Jays to a 4–3 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Moseby’s bloop hit to short left field with two out scored George Bell and Rick Leach. Tom Seaver (12–9) suffered the loss.
The Milwaukee Breweres edged the Cleveland Indians, 7–6. Rick Manning scored from third base on a wild pitch by Mike Jeffcoat in the eighth inning at Milwaukee as the Brewers ended the Indians’ three-game winning streak and their own three-game losing streak.
The Seattle Mariners scored two unearned runs in the eighth inning to nip the Detroit Tigers, 2–1. Throwing errors by Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson sunk the Tigers. Morris picked up Jack Perconte’s bunt and threw it into the right field corner. Gibson retrieved the ball, and promptly threw it into the dugout. Perconte circled the abses and scored, with Spike Owen scoring ahead of him.
Even before the Cubs rallied for five runs in the 10th inning tonight, scoring an 8–3 victory over the Atlanta Braves and stretched their lead to six games over the idle Mets, Chicago had come up a winner. In the game, Lee Smith (9–4) earned the victory with two innings of relief as the Cubs won for the 10th time in 12 games.
Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced this afternoon in New York that the Cubs would play day games at their home field if they were involved in postseason play. That would mean midweek day games in the National League championship series and a switch in the start of the World Series to the American League city to allow midweek night games. The decision was arguably a defeat for network television because midweek day games attract lower ratings and thus yield lower advertising revenues. The Cubs’ Wrigley Field is the only ball park in the major leagues without lights, and Kuhn had been under pressure to revise the postseason schedule, force installation of temporary lights at Wrigley Field or have the Cubs play their postseason home games somewhere else.
The San Francisco Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6–5, and lost to the Phillies, 6–5, in splitting a doubleheader. Mark Davis walked the pinch-hitter Sixto Lezcano with the bases loaded and one out in the ninth inning to give Philadelphia the nitecap victory and a split of their doubleheader. The Giants won the opener on Jeff Leonard’s two-run homer in the ninth.
Bill Virdon is fired as manager of the Expos and will be replaced by Jim Fanning. The Expos then beat the reeling Los Angeles Dodgers, 5–2. The Dodgers dropped their fifth straight game. Dan Driessen’s three-run homer in the fifth broke a 1–1 tie and was the deciding blow.
Rookie Jay Tibbs (3–2) scattered seven hits and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4–1, at Cincinnati to snap a five-game losing streak. The Reds scored four times in the third off Jose DeLeon (6–12) on a two-run double by Ron Oester, a wild pitch that scored player-manager Pete Rose and a run-scoring double by Cesar Cedeno.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1223.28 (-3.64).
Born:
Joe Staley, NFL tackle (Pro Bowl, 2011-2015, 2017; San Francisco 49ers), in Rockford, Illinois.
Trevor Scott, NFL defensive end (Oakland Raiders, New England Patriot, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Chicago Bears), in Potsdam, New York.
Tom Johnson, NFL defensive tackle (New Orleans Saints, Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks), in Moss Point, Mississippi.
Steven Wright, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2016; Boston Red Sox), in Torrance, California.
Trey Johnson, NBA shooting guard (Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Lakers, New Orleans Hornets), in Jackson, Mississippi.
Died:
Wesley Lau, 63, American actor (Lt. Anderson-“Perry Mason”).
History Diaries 