A Soviet career military officer was appointed to succeed the late Marshal Dmitri F. Ustinov as Defense Minister of the Soviet Union. He is Marshal Sergei L. Sokolov, 73, who had been a First Deputy Minister of Defense for the last 17 years. The appointment signaled the return of the post to a professional soldier. Marshal Ustinov, who died Thursday at 76, was the national party secretary responsible for the military- industrial complex when he was made Defense Minister in 1976. Speculation About Romanov There had been the possibility that the defense post would again go to a civilian, and speculation focused on Grigory V. Romanov, the national party secretary who now oversees defense industry.
Marshal Sokolov’s appointment as Soviet Defense Minister was not expected by United Government officials, who had said they believed that Grigory V. Romanov, the party secretary in charge of the arms industry, was the leading candidate. The announcement underscored Western analysts’ difficulties in predicting the highly secret decisions of Soviet leaders, the officials said. Similar speculation was voiced by Western diplomats in Moscow. The erroneous forecast about Mr. Romanov seemed to underscore a complaint often made by senior policy-makers about the Government’s inability to pierce the inner workings of the Soviet Politburo and Secretariat.
President Reagan greets British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at Camp David. President Reagan explains to Prime Minister Thatcher the U.S. strategic defense research (“Star Wars”). Britain’s Prime Minister emphasized that there were “no differences” between Britain and the United States over the Reagan Administration’s proposed space-based missile defense plan. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made the remarks after the meeting with President Reagan. Mrs. Thatcher, at a news conference, made it plain that Britain supported the “research” of the Administration’s antimissile plan. But the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly voiced concern about an arms race in space, suggested that testing and deployment of the program was another matter. The British Conservative Party leader made her comments at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland shortly after a long meeting with President Reagan at Camp David. Administration officials have been concerned about Mrs. Thatcher’s views on Mr. Reagan’s proposed $26 billion program to develop a strategic defense against offensive nuclear weapons. The program, unofficially known as “Star Wars,” is in its earliest stages.
Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski said the security apparatus is being reviewed as a result of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko’s murder and that necessary shifts will be made, the news agency PAP reported. Jaruzelski told the Communist Party Central Committee it is necessary to more closely supervise the Interior Ministry, which controls the police. Three secret police officers have been charged with the October abduction and slaying of Popiełuszko, a Solidarity supporter, and an Interior Ministry colonel is accused of abetting them.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev, widely regarded as the likeliest heir-apparent to Konstantin U. Chernenko as the Soviet leader, impressed his British hosts this week as a man of power, intelligence and enough self-confidence to indulge his sense of humor in public. When Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary, asked him to say a few words at a luncheon, Mr. Gorbachev asked good-naturedly, “Mind if I finish my cup of coffee first?” Mr. Gorbachev’s influence seemed evident when on Friday, it was he rather than the Government press agency Tass that first announced the death of Marshal Dimitri F. Ustinov, the Defense Minister. Mr. Gorbachev then cut short his visit and flew home. He told reporters at the Edinburgh airport that, as a member of the ruling Politburo, he was needed in Moscow.
At least 100 people were killed in a gas explosion that ripped through a nine-story apartment building in Tbilisi, the capital of Soviet Georgia, earlier this month, witnesses told Western journalists who were visiting the republic. The journalists, who returned to Moscow Friday night, said one man living near the building told them he counted at least 100 bodies being carried out of the wreckage of the building, near the city’s main airport. On Tuesday the Government daily Izvestia reported a spate of gas explosions across the country but gave no details of the blast in Tbilisi.
West Germany says the three-month-long stalemate in its embassy in Prague is easing and that more East German refugees have abandoned their sit-in to win visas as a lost cause. Juergen Sudhoff, the Bonn government’s chief spokesman, said an undetermined number of refugees have recently left the embassy in the Czechoslovak capital and more are expected to do so before Christmas. Sources said that 60 refugees, 40 of whom are on a protest fast, remain inside the embassy. Sudhoff reiterated. Bonn’s pledge not to evict the East Germans.
In a grim Christmas-season message, the Irish Republican Army vowed to carry on its guerrilla campaign against Britain. The IRA’s declaration appeared in the latest edition of Republican News, the movement’s weekly newspaper. British security forces and local police are braced for attacks in the last days before Christmas, but police believe guerrilla plans for holiday terrorism were disrupted by the discovery last week of 1,000 pounds of explosives in a farmhouse west of Belfast.
Malta’s Prime Minister Dom Mintoff, one of Europe’s longest-ruling heads of government, resigned today, saying there was “now someone capable” of taking his place. Mr. Mintoff, 68 years old, was succeeded by Carmelo Mifsud-Bonnici, who had been Education Minister and the deputy leader of Mr. Mintoff’s socialist Labor Party.
An American commando rescue of the hostages on the hijacked Kuwaiti airliner was planned this month, but only if the plane had been forced from Iran to another country, Reagan Administration officials say. The officials said recent reports in Kuwait and elsewhere suggesting that the United States was preparing to storm the plane in Tehran were not accurate.
Iran rebuffed earlier hopes that the Islamic foreign ministers conference had made significant progress toward ending the Iran-Iraq war. “A cease-fire is out of the question,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati said at the conference in Yemen. “We will continue the war until we achieve victory.” He dismissed as untrue a statement 15 hours earlier by the conference spokesman, Habib Chatti of Tunisia, that Iran had approved the group’s appeal for an “immediate cessation” of fighting in the 51-month-old war.
Fires aboard two tankers hit in Iraqi air attacks in the Persian Gulf a day earlier were reported under control. Gulf shipping sources said the 52,661-ton Liberian tanker Magnolia had been towed to Iran’s Kharg Island terminal, indicating that the fire aboard was out. Two crewmen were killed. A Dutch salvage firm said the 114,099-ton Norwegian tanker Thorshavet had been towed out of the war zone, although salvage crews were still fighting a fire aboard the ship, which carried 203,000 tons of oil. The crew was uninjured.
Bhopal was safe again, local officials said, after the conversion of all the remaining methyl isocyanate at the Union Carbide plant into pesticide. Indian technicians in Bhopal finished converting the last of the methyl isocyanate at the Union Carbide plant, where a leak of the deadly chemical on December 3 killed more than 2,000 people. The state government of Madhya Pradesh said 24 tons had been converted into pesticide, ending a weeklong operation. An estimated 200,000 people left the city for fear of another leak when the conversion began, but most of them have now returned.
The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned today that any major American arms sale to Pakistan would undermine prospects for improved relations between the United States and India. The Senator, Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, in a report to the committee on a 10-day visit he made to India this month and a meeting with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, stressed the possibilities for better ties between Washington and New Delhi. Mr. Pell said that the new Indian leader was likely to be more pro-Western than his mother, Indira, and that India’s interest in developing a high technology sector gave it incentives for closer alignment with the United States.
Police in Bangladesh fired on demonstrators during the first hours of a planned 48-hour nationwide strike today, and local sources said three people, including a student leader, were killed. The clash in Rajshahi, 220 miles northwest of here, occurred when the police tried to remove barricades set up by students on the railway track near the Rajshahi University train station.
Official accounts today of the visit to China by a senior Soviet official offered new indications of the limited expectations both Governments appear to have for the occasion. The official, Ivan V. Arkhipov, a First Deputy Prime Minister, is the most senior Soviet official to come here in 15 years. His visit is being closely watched for signs of any thaw in the chilly political relations that have prevailed for nearly a quarter of a century between Moscow and Peking.
A senior military official has complained that China’s Army does not contribute enough to the Chinese economy, wastes resources and saps the state budget. Yu Qiuli, deputy secretary general of the Central Military Commission and political director of the 4.2 million- member People’s Liberation Army, said in a report published Friday that the armed forces should cut spending and contribute more to the economy.
Two French vacationers are being held hostage by an anti-independence group in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia, the police said today. They said the couple, Arnand Guiart and his friend Charlotte de Damas, were seized Friday from a bus near the western town of Bourail. They were blindfolded and taken to a secret address from where they telephoned the territory’s Les Nouvelles newspaper today to say they were being well-treated. “But they will not release us until my brother Rene gets out of New Caledonia,” Mr. Guiart told the newspaper. Rene Guiart lives in New Caledonia and is a sympathizer of the pro-independence Kanaka Socialist National Liberation Front.
Police across Canada searched for three gunmen who stole as much as $38 million in securities from two Merrill Lynch couriers in Montreal. The robbery, one of the largest on record, occurred just after the couriers made a pickup. They were accosted as they carried a securities strongbox across the lobby of the Montreal branch of Merrill Lynch’s Canadian affiliate.
Leftist guerrillas and Government soldiers in El Salvador began a 13-day holiday truce today and early reports indicated both sides were observing the cease-fire. The guerrillas announced over their clandestine Radio Venceremos that they before Christmas they would release eight civilian militiamen captured Thursday during combat in the southern San Vicente province. Transportation officials in the eastern and central sections of the country reported calm on the highways on the first day of a truce designed to allow safe passage during the 13-day Christmas holiday. The army, however, has refused to say whether it will observe the cease-fire in areas where it has planned counter-insurgency campaigns.
President Reagan has ordered a United States Air Force transport plane to fly famine relief supplies to Ethiopian refugees streaming into the Sudan, the director of the Agency for International Development said today. The President’s order is in response to a plea by a United Nations team working in the Sudan, the A.I.D. director, M. Peter McPherson, said. It marks the first time an American military aircraft has been used in the famine relief efforts.
Bernhard Goetz shoots 4 black muggers on NYC subway train. A gunman, unidentified at this date, on an IRT train shot and wounded four young men he had apparently singled out from among the passengers, the Transit Authority police reported. The southbound No. 2 train was halted just before it reached the Chambers Street station after shots were fired at about 1:45 PM. The gunman, described as a middle-aged man, briefly discussed the shootings with a conductor before fleeing along the tracks, the police said. Goetz fled to Bennington, Vermont, before surrendering to police nine days after the shooting. He was charged with attempted murder, assault, reckless endangerment, and several firearms offenses. A jury subsequently found Goetz guilty of one count of carrying an unlicensed firearm and acquitted him of the remaining charges. For the firearm offense, he served eight months of a one-year sentence.
The defensive shield in space proposed by the Reagan Administration has a substantially scaled back short-term goal — protecting the nation’s land-based nuclear arsenal — according to the Administration’s scientists in charge of research for the project. The project’s initial aim was an attempt to create an impenetrable defense. They say the change reflects a realization that, for the moment, the goal of an impenetrable defense is impossible, but they insist it remains a long-range aim. Others outside the Administration who criticized the original proposal contend, however, that the ultimate goal of an impenetrable defense has been tacitly abandoned and a more limited defense has become the only realistic objective.
Senator Sam Nunn, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, says his vote on the MX missile next year will depend in part on how seriously the Reagan Adminstration attempts to negotiate limits on new defensive weapons in space. The Georgia Democrat, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential senators on military matters, has consistently delivered a key vote in support of the MX. His statement this week added new uncertainty to the Administration’s chances of keeping the MX program alive in a closely divided Senate. Mr. Nunn said his own assessment was that President Reagan would lose on the MX issue if a Senate vote was taken today.
Artificial heart recipient William Schroeder spent the day preparing for a hospital Christmas and listening to a taped pep talk from a fellow Hoosier, Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight. The tape from Knight was sent to Schroeder’s bedside at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville, Kentucky, along with a basketball autographed by the entire Hoosier basketball team. Schroeder, 52, a longtime fan of Knight’s basketball teams, responded by promising to watch Saturday night’s televised game between Indiana and Kansas State. Doctors said Schroeder continued to make “steady progress.”
A new set of medical ethics is needed to match new medical technology that can control how long life lasts and when death comes, a Rochester physician asserts, and he has urged an open discussion of the issue. Whether to prolong the lives of gravely ill people is one of the decisions Dr. Richard B. Freeman, a kidney specialist, and his staff face daily at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
A dispute over a Princeton professor who has been accused of fabricating documents in a book about pre-Hitler Germany has grown so bitter that historians are urging a reassessment of the ethics of academic debate and the standards of scholarship.
All hope that there might yet be survivors of a persistent coal mine fire in Huntington, Utah ended tonight when rescue workers reaching the end of a long smoky tunnel found seven more bodies and concluded that none of the seven miners still unaccounted for could still be alive. “We believe that there will be no survivors,” said Robert Henrie, a spokesman for the Emery Mining Company. “And the rescue teams are now just attempting to locate more bodies.” The discovery of seven additional bodies brought to 20 the number of miners and mine officials found dead since the fire that trapped them broke out late Wednesday night at the Wilberg Mine, situated in a snowy canyon 10 miles south of mine headquarters here.
Governor Dick Thornburgh signed a bill Friday making it a crime to rape a spouse, but also making it a less serious offense than other rapes. The new law, which took effect immediately, is a revised version of one Mr. Thornburgh vetoed in October. Pennsylvania thus joins more than 20 states that do not allow marriage as an absolute defense against a rape charge. Most recently, New York’s highest court on Thursday ruled that spouses can be charged for raping their wives or husbands. The Pennsylvania law makes rape within a marriage a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Other rapes are first-degree felonies punishable by up to 20 years. Women’s groups criticized this and other provisions that they said implied that rape of a spouse was less serious than rape of a stranger.
The business manager of a Chicago union local whose national group has been the target of a Senate investigation for months, was found dead Friday in a car parked in a garage on the Loop. The authorities said Fred Rizzo, 62 years old, of Local 1 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union, had been shot several times. Mr. Rizzo was last seen alive with William Grossman, 58, vice president of Local 1, who apparently committed suicide Thursday. Investigators said they believed Mr. Grossman shot Mr. Rizzo, then killed himself. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has been looking into assertions that the 400,000-member union is tied to organized crime, and that money has been skimmed from members’ health insurance.
First Security Bank of Sandwich became the fifth Illinois bank, and the 79th nationwide, to fail this year, federal officials said. The assets and liabilities of the bank in Sandwich, 40 miles southwest of Chicago, have been assumed by First National Bank of Sandwich, a newly chartered subsidiary of First Union Bank Corporation Inc. of Streator, a spokeswoman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. The bank’s sole office will reopen Monday as First National Bank of Sandwich.
A county judge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has ordered supporters of a jailed minister to end their occupation of Trinity Lutheran Church, where he once preached in defiance of court orders. Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge Emil Narick ruled that officials of the denomination were within their rights in ousting D. Douglas Roth and temporarily disbanding his congregation. In addition, Narick ordered the church council to turn over all church property and to make a full accounting of church income and spending.
Harvard University said that it will return $4.6 million it received in federal research grants during an eight-year period. The federal government asked the university to repay $18 million last June because of violations of grant procedures discovered in an audit. Negotiations brought that figure down to $10 million, but Harvard will return only $4.6 million because the government, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department said, owes the university $5.4 million in “totally unrelated costs” from years past.
A spill of about 1,000 gallons of marine fuel has left a five-mile swath of oil on marsh and mudflats in Puget Sound, and $100,000 in federal “superfund” money has been earmarked to clean it up, the Coast Guard said. The oil streak is three feet wide. Birds coated with oil were found by Coast Guard investigators. Authorities were trying to determine who is to blame for the spill, apparently caused by a vessel passing through the area, near Whidbey Island.
Inspectors fighting citrus canker say they will search every yard in four southern Florida counties for the disease, and Governor Bob Graham has signed a bill providing $6.4 million for the canker battle. The inspectors plan to begin in January to try to find 82,000 trees that were sold after they were grown in nurseries later found to be infected. Citrus canker is harmless to humans but kills citrus trees. The four counties, Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe, have nearly 1.3 million households. The state has 400 inspectors and plans to hire 60 temporary inspectors. The bill the Governor signed Friday provides $3 million for the canker eradication program and $3.4 million to compensate growers. About 7 million trees have been burned since the disease was discovered in August.
High winds swept through Colorado as a storm dumped snow across the Great Lakes and northern Plains and temperatures plummeted in much of the Midwest. Winds gusting to 68 m.p.h. knocked down a two-story building under construction in Boulder, Colorado, and high-wind warnings were posted from Denver north into southeastern Wyoming. Temperatures remained below zero in much of North Dakota and northern Minnesota, with travelers’ advisories warning of up to four more inches of snow in much of Michigan.
An experimental drug that suppressed the growth of a virus that causes AIDS in laboratory tests could be tested on human patients in a few months, Dr. Donald Forthal of the National Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said. Forthal said in an interview that he and Dr. Joseph McCormick, who made the laboratory discovery, are planning tests of Ribavirin on AIDS victims. The drug is also being investigated as an anti-influenza agent.
[Ed: Ribavirin is still used as an antiviral for many diseases, though it has dangerous side effects. But sadly, it proved to have no real measurable therapeutic value for HIV infection.]
Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” single goes #1 for 6 weeks.
The 1984 Florida Citrus Bowl between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Florida State Seminoles ends in a 17–17 tie.
AFC Wildcard Game:
Los Angeles Raiders 7, Seattle Seahawks 13
In the opening game of the 1984 NFL playoffs, the Seattle Seahawks defeated the defending NFL champion Los Angeles Raiders, 13–7. The Seahawks rushed on 51 plays for 205 yards and the defense intercepted 2 passes and recorded 6 sacks to avenge their AFC championship loss to LA in the previous season. The Raiders crossed midfield only three times during the whole game, while Seattle’s defense and Jeff West’s punting constantly made them start each drive deep in their own territory. Their possessions in the game started from the 20, 4, 20, 18, 16, 22, 30, 20, 16, 16, 22 and 6-yard lines. Seattle quarterback Dave Krieg completed only 4 of 10 passes in the game, but one was a 26-yard touchdown throw to Daryl Turner in the second quarter. Late in the third quarter, Seattle linebacker Bruce Scholtz forced a fumble from Frank Hawkins, and cornerback Keith Simpson recovered it on the Raiders 38. Krieg gained 13 yards with a scramble on the next play, and Norm Johnson finished the drive with a 35-yard field goal to put the team up 10-0 with 1:29 left in the third quarter. On LA’s ensuing possession, quarterback Jim Plunkett, starting in his first game since week 6 of the regular season due to injuries, threw an interception to John Harris at the Seahawks 31-yard line, and Seattle ended up scoring another field goal on a 44-yard kick by Johnson, giving them a 13-0 lead.
With 5:05 left in the game, Plunkett threw a 47-yard touchdown pass to running back Marcus Allen. LA’s defense managed to force a punt on the next series, but only after the Seahawks ran the clock down to 45 seconds, and West’s kick pinned them back at their own 6-yard line. Seattle safety Kenny Easley then put the game away by intercepting a pass from Plunkett with 4 seconds left on the clock. Dan Doornink recorded 29 carries for 126 rushing yards and a 14-yard reception. Defensive end Jacob Green had 2.5 sacks. Allen rushed for 61 yards, while also catching five passes for 90 yards and a score. This would be Seattle’s last playoff victory until the 2005 NFC Divisional playoffs against the Washington Redskins. This was the second postseason meeting between the Raiders and Seahawks. Los Angeles won the only previous meeting the previous year. In his book about his years as a physician working for the Raiders “You’re OK, It’s Just a Bruise”, Robert Huizenga wrote that Jacob Green’s father had died suddenly in Texas right before the game, and Green was told by his mother that they were going to wait until the game was over to have Mr. Green’s funeral so Jacob could be there to bury his dad. Green and his teammates dedicated the game to Mr. Green and absolutely destroyed the Raiders’ offensive line on their way to victory.
Born:
Greg Finley, American actor (“The Secret Life Of The American Teenager”), in Portland, Maine.
Basshunter [Jonas Erik Altberg], Swedish record producer and DJ (Now You’re Gone), born in Halmstad, Sweden
Died:
Viola Wells [Evans], 82, American jazz, blues, and gospel singer.
History Diaries 