Polish priest Jerzy Popiełuszko is murdered. He was a staunch opponent of the communist regime and, in his sermons, interwove spiritual exhortations with political messages, criticizing the government, expressing solidarity with the interned and motivating people to protest. During the period of martial law, the Catholic Church was the only force that could voice protest comparatively openly, with the regular celebration of Mass presenting opportunities for public gatherings in churches.
Invited by the Pastoral Care of the Working People (Polish: Duszpasterstwa Ludzi Pracy), Popiełuszko arrived in Bydgoszcz today. At 18:00, he celebrated his last Holy Mass at the Church of the Holy Polish Brothers Martyrs. A car accident was set up to kill Popiełuszko on 13 October 1984 but he evaded it. The alternative plan was to kidnap him; it was carried out on this day. The priest was beaten to death by three Security Police officers of the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs): Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, and Waldemar Chmielewski. They pretended to have problems with their car and flagged down Popiełuszko’s car for help. Popiełuszko was severely beaten, tied up and put in the trunk of the car. The officers bound a stone to his feet and dropped him into the Vistula Water Reservoir near Włocławek from where his body was recovered on 30 October 1984.
News of the political murder caused an uproar throughout Poland, and the murderers and one of their superiors, Colonel Adam Pietruszka, were convicted of the crime. More than 250,000 people, including Lech Wałęsa, attended his funeral on 3 November 1984. The murder was widely used in political propaganda of the Polish opposition in the late 1980s. Popiełuszko’s murderers — Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala, Waldemar Chmielewski and Colonel Adam Pietruszka, responsible for giving the order to kill — received prison sentences. Popiełuszko was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest decoration, in 2009. After death, he was buried in St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, in Warsaw, where millions of visitors have paid tribute, including famous politicians like then-U.S. Vice President George Bush in September 1987.
Six Solidarity activists have gone on trial on charges of disobeying a government order to surrender printing equipment from one of the offices of the banned union, according to a lawyer following the case. The lawyer, Jerzy Kurcjusz, said in a telephone interview Thursday that the six went on trial Wednesday on charges of ignoring an order to hand over typewriters and printing machines from the Solidarity office in the southern city of Katowice. Prosecutors say the men took the equipment to use in printing pamphlets for the Polish underground, Mr. Kurcjusz said. If convicted, the six could be sentenced to more than five years in prison, he said. The six are Leszek Lorek, Andrzej Kisielewski, Jerzy Milanowicz, Michal Luty, Andrzej Niewiara and Andrzej Stolarczyk.
Friends of Andrei D. Sakharov say several telegrams and postcards have been received from the Sakharovs in Gorky, and the messages suggest the exiled dissident is now living in his apartment with his wife. The notes left intact many of the mysteries surrounding the Sakharovs in the more than five months since Dr. Sakharov began a fast to try to obtain permission for his wife to go abroad for medical treatment. It remains unknown why Dr. Sakharov abandoned his fast, whether he was fed by force, what his condition is now and what new restrictions might have been placed on the Sakharovs. The friends say almost all of the notes have been signed by Yelena G. Bonner, Dr. Sakharov’s wife. The absence of concrete information has led friends to presume that the authorities have placed strict constraints on what Mrs. Bonner can send out. Acquaintances of Dr. Sakharov’s children by his first wife said he had signed one or two telegrams sent to them on birthdays or namedays. Otherwise, all reported messages have come from Mrs. Bonner.
The United States today withdrew one of its key proposals for changing the adminimstration of UNESCO. The proposal was to require a vote of 85 percent of the membership to pass the organization’s budget. The change would have given the Western countries a virtual veto over UNESCO’s budget, the rapid growth of which has been one of the major complaints of the United States against the organization. The budget is commonly approved by consensus, as are most of the organization’s decisions, but can be passed by a simple majority. The American effort to put the proposal on the agenda of a meeting of UNESCO’s governing body did not earn the support of a single other member of the Western group. The United States announced at the end of last year that it would withdraw from UNESCO this December 31 unless major changes were made in the way the organization was run.
Israel has softened its conditions for troop withdrawal talks with Lebanon and is prepared to hold negotiations on a military level rather than exclusively between diplomats, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said today. Israeli officials are still awaiting a response to their new position from the Beirut Government, which has been refusing to engage in direct diplomatic negotiations with the Israelis, since that would imply a degree of recognition and normalized relations that Beirut is unwilling to concede now. The Lebanese are apparently awaiting a clear signal from Damascus on how to proceed. A senior Israeli military official said he expected the Lebanese to come back “with some very Lebanese, complicated, half-way counterproposal.”
The American Embassy in Lebanon, responding to almost daily terrorist threats, is evacuating dependents and other “nonessential” personnel and is considering reducing its already scaled-down staff to a minimum. A State Department spokesman said the six remaining American dependents in Beirut had been ordered to leave the country.
An Iranian F-4 Phantom fighter-bomber set ablaze a Panamanian-registered ship in the southern Persian Gulf today, killing two people and prompting a rescue by nearby United States Navy helicopters. Pentagon sources in Washington said the Iranian jet fired rockets into the 1,538-ton diving support vessel Pacific Protector east of Bahrain, setting the Panamanian-registered ship ablaze and killing two people. The source said a United States Navy Seasprite helicopter lifted the crewmen from the burning ship to the frigate USS Stark, which was about 20 miles from the Pacific Protector. A larger U.S. Navy helicopter then airlifted the more seriously injured crewmen from the Stark back to Bahrain, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified.
The State Department was warned in mid-August that a radical Shiite group would attack the American Embassy in Lebanon between September 20 and 22, according to Lucille Levin, an American with contacts in Lebanon. The car-bomb attack occurred on September 20.
China plans research in Antarctica. Peking is sending a major expedition to the continent next month as a first step toward establishing a permanent research base there.
Four CIA employees were killed when their unarmed civilian plane crashed while on a surveillance mission over El Salvador, Reagan Administration officials reported. They said there was no indication that the plane carrying the four Americans had come under fire.
Three American military officials flew into a rebel-dominated area of El Salvador a few hours after it had been occupied by an elite Army battalion. The presence of the Americans appeared to raise questions about the rules that govern the activities of American military advisers in areas of actual or potential conflict.
A CIA guerrilla warfare primer that offers advice on kidnapping and killing Nicaraguan Government officials prompted a disagreement between the senior officer in the largest Nicaraguan rebel group and the White House. On Thursday, a senior White House official said the primer was a first draft that was later revised before distribution. In an interview yesterday, the insurgent leader, who asserted he was in charge of publication of the primer, said, “There was only one draft.”
The president of the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops Conference pleaded not guilty today to charges that he made false statements about security forces in asserting that they had committed atrocities against villagers. Archbishop Denis Hurley of Durban, an outspoken opponent of apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation, appeared in Pretoria Regional Court, and the case was postponed until February. Archbishop Hurley said at a news conference 20 months ago that church investigators were told about the purported atrocities by villagers in South-West Africa, also known as Namibia. The Archbishop said an investigation uncovered allegations that a counterinsurgency unit in the territory trained by South Africa was terrorizing villagers.
Surprisingly slow economic growth of 2.7 percent occurred from July through September, the Commerce Department reported. Growth of the gross national product was substantially weaker in the third quarter than the 3.6 percent annual rate that the Government estimated last month. The decline in growth was attributed to unexpectedly weak consumer spending.
President Reagan’s foreign policy has apparently generated a close division of Americans, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll indicates. People say they approve of the way Mr. Reagan is handling foreign policy by a margin of 46 percent to 40 percent. But those respondents who say they have not decided which candidate to vote for say they disapprove of his foreign policy by 36 percent to 32 percent.
Vice President Bush preached the gospel of the Reagan recovery to troubled shipyard workers in Seattle today, donning a white hard hat and urging them to have faith. As the morning sun warmed the docks alongside a peaceful, tree-lined river, Mr. Bush told a group of 200 men and women who face possible pay cuts and layoffs, “I’ll admit with an 18 percent cut you’re not better off.” But he said that around the country Americans had benefited from lower inflation and interest rates and greater productivity. “We’re determined to keep this recovery going until everyone who wants a job gets a job,” he pledged while fielding questions.
President Reagan participates in a signing ceremony for H.R. 6311, the 1984 Act to Combat International Terrorism.
President Reagan works diligently on the closing statement for his upcoming debate.
President Reagan’s spokesman said today that the idea of comparable pay for jobs of “comparable worth” was a “nebulous” concept that would be “an unprecedented intrusion into our private affairs” by government. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said “comparble worth” would be difficult to put into effect and therefore needed to be “studied very closely” before it could be adopted.
Appointments to the Supreme Court were discussed by Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist in a speech in Minneapolis. He said that a President’s efforts to leave a lasting ideological mark on the Court are likely to fail because of unexpected legal developments, personal antagonisms, the Court’s tradition of independence and blind chance.
The Illinois Supreme Court today upheld the nation’s first pistol ban, ruling that the law in Morton Grove, a Chicago suburb, did not violate the constitutional right to bear arms. The court said in its 4-to-3 decision that Morton Grove had the authority to impose the ordinance under its law-enforcement power, as a way of reducing weapons-related injuries and accidents in the village. The 1981 ordinance, which bars the possession and sale of pistols in the village of 23,000 people, has been upheld by state and Federal appeals courts. Last year the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the ban. That decision let stand a Federal appeals court ruling upholding the ordinance. However, legal experts speculated that the High Court did not want to take up the case until the highest Illinois court had done so.
An espionage indictment in Los Angeles is generating questions whether the Soviet Union has taken advantage of the United States immigration system to filter spies into this country. Two indicted Soviet immigrants, Nikolay and Svetlana Ogorodnikov, entered the United States in 1973 as Jewish refugees. It is not clear that either is Jewish.
Six Roman Catholic nuns and another woman were arrested today by the United States Park Police for blocking a White House gate in protest of the policies of the Reagan Administration. Mary Irving, a spokeswoman for the nuns, said: “This Administration’s policies are moving toward death, not life. It’s spending billions of dollars on weapons and taking money from the poor.”
Hundreds of calls poured into a telephone center for information on missing children on opening day today. The director, Jay Howell, said it gave the police a new tool to find children who have vanished. The missing children’s center, operating from 9 A.M. to midnight, Eastern time, on weekdays, may be called toll- free at 1-800-843-5678, except from Alaska and Hawaii. Callers there with information can dial 1-202-634-9836. The phone service is operated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private group with $3.3 million in Federal funds. At the headquarters in downtown Washington, trained operators work at computer terminals from a 60-item questionnaire. All information they take will be given to state and local authorities, Mr. Howell said.
Eight ex-police officers were charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of two accused terrorists who had surrendered to them in a mountainous area of Puerto Rico more than six years ago.
The General Motors Corporation will begin shutting down automobile assembly plants in the United States on Monday as a result of the strike at its Canadian operations, an official said today. The action will idle nearly 11,000 American workers initially, with the number likely rise next week as the closings spread. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Canadian United Automobile Workers in Toronto said bargainers for both sides did not appear to have narrowed their differences, although talks were to continue through the weekend. Top negotiators for the union and General Motors of Canada met late this morning for what Robert White, the union leader, said was “a sharp exchange of views.” He said there were still “fundamental disagreements” over what would constitute an acceptable agreement after the two-hour meeting at the main negotiating table.
A Vietnamese refugee who gave a United States citizen a list of nine soldiers he said were held in Southeast Asia apparently fabricated the story to get access to this country, officials said today. The list included Captain David J. Phillips, whose wife, Peggy, was notified by Air Force officials Sunday her husband might still be alive after 18 years. On Thursday, an Air Force spokesman telephoned Mrs. Phillips at her home here, told her the list was a fabrication and apologized. The refugee, who fled Vietnam in April 1982, initially told interviewers in Thailand he had no information, according to Ann Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families in Washington. After being denied access to the United States, the refugee responded to an advertisement placed in a Vietnamese newspaper seeking information.
A few steps from the tiny laboratory where Ed (Doc) Ricketts, a character in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row,” worked as a marine biologist, residents here will learn Saturday what $40 million, and a wealthy father’s generosity, buys these days in the way of marine sciences. A huge 177,000- square-foot aquarium, said by its sponsors to be the largest in the nation, is scheduled to open on the site of one of the 23 sardine canneries that flourished on Monterey’s Cannery Row until much of the Pacific sardine population mysteriously vanished after World War II. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is a stunning ocean-front complex, built to resemble a cannery, with a vast collection of artfully exhibited marine life, from sea otters to sharks to towering forests of kelp. Its construction was financed by David Packard, co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, and his wife, Lucile, at the behest of two of their daughters who are marine biologists.
Two Japanese mountain climbers were not equipped for a sudden snowstorm and freezing temperatures that claimed their lives 140 feet from the rim of El Capitan, park officials say. The bodies of Sadatomo Keiso, 35 years old, and Kenji Yatuhashi, 32, both of Hiroshima, were hauled to the top of the 3,600-foot mountain Thursday. A ranger said they had frozen. The men were wearing cotton pants and had no warm clothing. About 14 inches of snow fell on El Capitan on Tuesday. The temperature fell to 10 degrees.
The third snowstorm of the week swept into the West yesterday, threatening to add to record autumn snowfalls earlier this week in Utah and Colorado. Tornadoes and heavy rain plagued parts of Texas, Missouri and Arkansas as the death toll from the unseasonable weather rose to six. Snow and rain blew in across Oregon, northern California and northeast Nevada yesterday morning. Weather forecasters said the weather system was headed for the central Rockies, where Salt Lake City was still digging out from a foot and a half of snow.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1225.93 (+0.55)
Born:
Josh Tomlin, MLB pitcher (Cleveland Indians, , Atlanta Braves), in Tyler, Texas.
James McDonald, MLB pitcher (Los Angeles Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates), in Long Beach, California.
Travis Schlichting, MLB pitcher (Los Angeles Dodgers), in Denver, Colorado.
Antwan Barnes, NFL linebacker (Baltimore Ravens, Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers, New York Jets), in Miami, Florida.
Jarrad Page, NFL safety (Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings), in Oakland, California.
Thundercat [Stephen Bruner], American bass guitarist (Flying Lotus), in Los Angeles, California.
Died:
Jerzy Popiełuszko, 37, Polish priest and Solidarity dissident, kidnapped and murdered by the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; the Polish secret police).
Henri Michaux, 85, Belgian-born French poet and writer (“Miserable Miracle”).
Resnik was an American electrical engineer, software engineer, biomedical engineer, pilot and NASA astronaut who died in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. She was the fourth woman, the second American woman and the first Jewish woman of any nationality to fly in space, logging 145 hours in orbit.
Recognized while still a child for her intellectual brilliance, Resnik was accepted at Carnegie Institute of Technology after becoming only the sixteenth woman in the history of the United States to have attained a perfect score on the SAT exam. She graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon before attaining a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland.
Resnik worked for RCA as an engineer on Navy missile and radar projects, as a senior systems engineer for Xerox Corporation, and published research on special-purpose integrated circuitry. She was also a pilot and made research contributions to biomedical engineering as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health.
At age 28, Resnik was selected by NASA as a mission specialist. She was part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group to include women. While training on the astronaut program, she developed software and operating procedures for NASA missions. Her first space flight was the STS-41-D mission in August and September 1984, the twelfth Space Shuttle flight, and the maiden voyage of Space Shuttle Discovery, where her duties included operating its robotic arm. Her second Shuttle mission was STS-51-L in January 1986 aboard Space Shuttle Challenger. She died when the orbiter broke up shortly after liftoff and crashed into the ocean.
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