Immurement rites in Moscow for the ashes of Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov were marked by the absence of the Soviet leader, Konstantin U. Chernenko. It was not clear whether Mr. Chernenko had stayed away because of ill health or because of temperatures that dropped to just below zero Fahrenheit. Two days earlier, paying respects at Marshal Ustinov’s bier, Mr. Chernenko had looked pale and unsteady. Diplomats said it would have made sense for him to stay away today, given his history of lung problems. But they also recalled that absences from such ceremonies in the past have signaled failing health for Soviet leaders.
The Italian police were convinced that an explosion aboard a train packed with holiday travelers in northern Italy Sunday night was the work of terrorists. The number of dead was lower than initially reported. A revised casualty list estimated the number of dead at 15 and the number of injured at 180.
An Ulster court ordered Dominic (Mad Dog) McGlinchey, a Marxist terrorist leader who once boasted that he had killed 30 people, jailed for life for the murder of an elderly widow. McGlinchey, 30, chief of staff of the outlawed Irish National Liberation Army, simply stared at the ceiling of Belfast’s Crown Court as the life sentence was passed on him for the 1977 killing of 63-year-old Hester McMullen. Meanwhile, an appeals court overturned the terrorism convictions of 14 men that were based on the testimony of informer Joseph Bennett. Four of the men were set free and the rest detained on other charges.
Roman Catholics threw bricks, bottles and gasoline bombs and police wielded batons and fired plastic bullets in a two-hour battle along the route of a funeral procession for an Irish Republican Army guerrilla, police said in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Five civilians were injured, as were 31 police officers, authorities said. The guerrilla, Kieran Fleming, 25, escaped from Maze prison in September, 1983, while serving a life sentence, and apparently drowned while fleeing soldiers December 2.
A pro-Solidarity priest joined a four-day Christmas hunger strike to protest the imprisonment of a top official of the outlawed trade union. The Rev. Henryk Tribowski, vicar of St. Stanislaw Kostka church, joined 10 other strikers in a church in Gdansk, Poland, in protesting a three-month jail sentence imposed on Andrzej Gwiazda, 49, for his part in a pro-Solidarity demonstration Last week.
Socialism has not changed France very much since Socialists took charge of the Government three and a half years ago. Despite their attempts to model a more equitable society, many French Socialists express a sense of partial failure and doubt they have given France the feeling of being governed differently, the feeling that Socialism has brought real social change. For all their initiatives involving greater worker participation in management decisions, or protection of tenants, or expansion of local government powers, many Socialists believe they have failed to form a bond with the voters. Changes have been drafted into law, but France, three and a half years into Socialism, is perceived by some to be run much as it always has been. This is the opinion of President Francois Mitterrand. Regardless of what appears in the statute books, according to an aide, Mr. Mitterrand acknowledges that the method and style of government have not been altered sufficiently to convince many people that Socialism has brought real social change.
Shimon Peres appears to be on top in Israeli politics 100 days after taking office as Prime Minister, having outmaneuvered his political rival and coalition partner, Yitzhak Shamir. A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Shimon Peres was visiting a school in Ashkelon, a town known politically as Ariel Sharon country and a place where, in the past, Mr. Peres ran the risk of being pelted with tomatoes. This time, though, when the Prime Minister stepped into the crowd of Sephardic Jewish students, they hurled not tomatoes but chants of “Peres! Peres!” – as though he were the town’s favorite son. Mr. Peres’s face brightened with embarrassment at the cheers. He is not accustomed to such open adulation, but it has been coming his way lately as never before. In a public poll his popularity has risen sharply.
Sri Lankan President Junius Jayewardene fired a senior Cabinet minister who opposed the president’s proposals for a political solution to the Indian Ocean nation’s racial unrest. Industries and Scientific Affairs Minister Cyril Mathew, who is also president of a powerful trade union, was replaced by Jayewardene’s deputy, Denzil Fernado. Jayewardene has proposed giving the island’s 2.5 million Tamils, who complain of discrimination by the majority Sinhalese, more power to look after their own affairs in the areas in which they predominate. Mr. Jayewardene said in a letter to Mr. Mathew today that the criticism violated the rules and conventions of the Cabinet. “I presume you have decided to cease to be one of my ministers,” the letter said.
Vietnam launched a fierce attack on a major Cambodian rebel base near the Thai border on the sixth anniversary of Hanoi’s invasion of Cambodia. Field reports said Vietnamese shelling caused thousands of refugees to flee the sprawling Nong Samet camp and cross the border into Thailand. Some observers said it appeared that Hanoi’s forces had overrun the camp — a base of the Khmer National Liberation Front, one of three Cambodian groups fighting the Vietnamese occupation — but there was no official confirmation.
Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan V. Arkhipov began a tour of southern China to see the showpieces of Chinese economic reforms that have been branded as heretical by the Kremlin. Arkhipov, the highest-ranking Soviet leader to visit China in 15 years, is touring Canton and the special economic zone at Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong. Peking apparently hopes to show him that its steps toward worker incentives and free markets are not incompatible with socialism.
Left-wing guerrillas attacked a town in northern El Salvador today, breaking their Christmas truce, an army commander said. Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa, commander of military forces in northern El Salvador, said in a telephone interview that at least five insurgents and one soldier were killed in the assault on Concepcion Quezaltepeque, 30 miles north of the capital. Earlier this month, guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front said they would halt fighting for two three-day periods over Christmas and the New Year. The Christmas truce was due to go into effect today. The Government of Jose Napoleon Duarte has not responded to the guerrillas’ cease-fire, and army commanders have said normal military operations will continue during the holiday period.
The State Department said today that El Salvador’s rebels had adopted an inflexible position in peace talks with the Government, possibly reflecting “an emerging dominance” of the leftist military command over the more moderate political leaders. The assessment was in a 26-page report on the political, economic and social situation in El Salvador that the State Department submits every three months at the request of Congress.
In an attack Sunday night in Peru, Maoist guerrillas took over an Andean mining center for more than an hour and blew up the police station, wounding at least five officers, the authorities said today. Unconfirmed reports said 10 villagers, including children, might have been killed in the attack at Minas Canarias, 300 miles southeast of Lima. Two of the policemen were evacuated to Lima and are in critical condition, the police said. The police station and several houses were destroyed by the dynamite blasts. The police said more than 100 members of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”) swept into Minas Canarias late Sunday, trapping villagers in their homes and surrounding the police station. They began hurling dynamite at the post, which had been fortified earlier in the year because of previous attacks. An unspecified number of policemen returned fire for an hour and a half before the rebels fled in the darkness.
The police arrested two foreign Roman Catholic priests and three Chileans for distributing holiday greeting cards that wished Chileans a new year “without torture,” church officials said today. The Government, meanwhile, announced it had exiled 17 more dissidents to remote villages. The Rev. Liam Holohan, 29 years old, of Kilkenny, Ireland, and the Rev. Denis O’Mara, 44, of Chicago remained in a Santiago jail after their arrest Sunday for distributing the cards outside Santiago churches, officials said. A nun and two Catholic lay workers, all Chileans, were arrested with them and also remained in custody. Father Holohan belongs to the London-based Mill Hill Fathers and Father O’Mara to the Dublin-based Columbian Fathers.
A year ago Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar sought to draw the world’s attention to what he saw as an impending economic and social disaster in Africa. The response, diplomats and United Nations officials say, was inadequate. Now, with attention focused on the 150 million Africans suffering from hunger, Mr. Perez de Cuellar has been asking for help again. This time his appeal is coupled with what is likely to be a long-term coordinating operation. Last week he set up an Office for Emergency Operations in Africa to coordinate the efforts of all those helping the 21 African countries affected by famine, from United Nations agencies and nongovernmental bodies to donor governments. The unit is headed by F. Bradford Morse, a former Republican member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, who came here 12 years ago as an Under Secretary General and is now director of the United Nations Development Program.
Pro-Western guerrillas in Angola have greatly increased their attacks on the Marxist central Government. They have crippled the economy and forced the Angolans to rely increasingly on Cuban troops and East bloc arms for survival. The spreading insurgency appears to have blocked chances of any quick withdrawal of the estimated 35,000 Cuban soldiers in the country.
Terms for a postal workers’ contract announced by a panel of arbitrators include modest wage increases and, for the first time, sharply lower starting pay for new employees. The unanimous award by the five arbitrators, which is binding on the Postal Service and the postal unions, is retroactive to July 21, the old contract’s expiration date.
President Reagan places calls to members of each of the five branches of the military who are standing guard on Christmas.
The President and First Lady attend a private Christmas Eve Dinner at the Wick Residence.
Praise for the gunman who shot four youths in a subway train Saturday and escaped was expressed by many people in calls to the New York City Police Department. The calls were received on a hot line that was set up for information that might lead to the gunman’s arrest. New York police were flooded with more than 500 telephone calls cheering the “Death Wish”-style vigilante who shot four alleged muggers on the subway. The callers booed detectives for trying to catch him. Police said that “99.9%” of the calls were in favor of the gunman, who fled the train and escaped Saturday through train tunnels. However, Mayor Edward I. Koch said that “vigilantes are not heroes,” and “we will not permit people to take the law into their own hands.” The injured teenagers were all in stable or satisfactory condition. Transit Authority police have likened the shooting to “Death Wish,” a 1974 movie starring Charles Bronson about a vigilante who wages a one-man campaign against muggers and thieves in New York City.
The sealing of a Utah mine, containing the bodies of 27 miners who were trapped when the fire broke out last Wednesday, might be permanent, a spokesman for the operating company said. The mine in Orangeville was ordered sealed in an attempt to put out the fire. A fire-ravaged mine containing the bodies of 27 miners may become their permanent tomb once crews are able to seal off the persistent blaze that trapped them inside, a mining company spokesman said today. “There is a possibility the sealed portion of the mine may never be opened again,” Robert Henrie, spokesman for the Emery Mining Corporation, told a news conference. Asked if the bodies would remain in the mine, Mr. Henrie said, “Depending upon what the fire does, there may not be any remains to recover.”
Saying that “there should be room at this inn,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret M. Heckler turned the lobby of her Washington office building into a Christmas Eve dining hall for about 500 homeless men and women. Dropping by after nightfall to wish the guests a happy holiday, she said. “This whole department has as its mission caring and sharing with the neediest of Americans, whether the ill or the poor, in desperate circumstances, and I thought, really, there should be room at this inn. And I’m sure I can speak for the President as well.”
Seventy-seven Cubans who wanted to rejoin relatives in the United States spent Christmas Eve in detention in New York City for trying to enter the country without valid immigration papers. Federal officials detained the Cubans Friday after they arrived from Spain on Iberia Airlines. Inspectors were suspicious because many of them carried copies of the same document authorizing political asylum. The detainees have maintained they were tricked into buying forgeries, but Duke Austin, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the Cubans still had violated the law.
A company that restored part of the White House earlier this year has been charged with storing wastes from the renovation in a hazardous manner, the Connecticut attorney general said. Ramco Technologies of Hartford, which refurbished the North Portico of the President’s official home, was charged after an inspection of 110 drums of paint wastes, sludge and other liquids in a Hartford warehouse, state Attorney General Joseph Lieberman said. He said the company could face a fine of $25,000 per day for each day it is found guilty of illegally storing the material.
A man opened his clothing store in columbia, South Carolina dressed in a Santa Claus suit and thus became one of five local merchants arrested for breaking South Carolina’s laws forbidding certain sales on Sundays. The blue laws, in effect since Colonial times, restrict the sale of “unessential” items such as clothing. However, clothing considered a novelty, such as a Clemson Tiger T-shirt, may legally be sold on Sunday. The man arrested dressed as Santa, W. Thomas Moseley, said he opened his clothing store, Reflex, on Sunday “to secure the same rights for the clothing consumer and the clothier that are enjoyed by all other special-interest groups.” Four employees at other businesses were arrested on similar charges, officials said.
A volunteer searcher went out alone to find five boys who were missing in the rugged Eagle Creek Wilderness Area in Oregon, and he fired gunshots to attract rescuers because he could not lead them out in the deep snow and darkness, the authorities said today. Although searchers had called off the official hunt for the night because of poor weather, Russell Pierce, 35 years old, reached the boys before dark in deep snow about seven miles southeast of Sandy. The boys, ages 9 to 13, from the families, were with their parents on an outing Sunday when the boys became separated. Mr. Pierce and the youths were reached at 2 AM today by search teams, according to the Clackamas County sheriff’s office. The boys complained of cold feet but otherwise seemed in good spirits, rescuers said. The parents credited Mr. Pierce with keeping the boys together and leading them toward safety. “We just ran into him in the snow,” said Jim Reesman, father of two of the boys. “We have never met him. He went in and said they weren’t going to spend the night alone.”
About 350 marching, chanting people led by ministers filled downtown Houston, Texas streets today to protest the racist policies of the South African Government and draw attention to the famine in Ethiopia. The predominantly black crowd stopped twice to kneel and pray in front of establishments that spokesmen for the group said represented United States companies with investments in South Africa. As the crowd knelt on Main Street in front of the Texas Commerce Bank, the Rev. A. C. Nelson prayed that the demonstration would “shock” the consciousness of business leaders into helping to stop oppression and starvation in Africa. At the International Business Machines Products Center, a minister said, “They can play a great part in the relief of problems in Africa.”
In New York, 25 adults were arrested at the South African Consulate on Park Avenue and charged with disorderly conduct in connection with a demonstration against that country’s policies.
Union members in a bitter 17-month strike against the Phelps Dodge Corporation say they are delighted that the company’s Morenci, Arizona smelter will close next Monday. But the workers who replaced the strikers are shocked. The company announced the closing Saturday, saying it would lay off about 450 people, most of them indefinitely, on January 5.
Competition in fares for air, bus and train passengers between Boston, New York and Washington is changing travel habits up and down the East Coast. The trend is also blurring the boundaries between the three metropolitan areas.
Many Americans will go on smoking this year despite mounting evidence that smoking is a severe threat to health. About a third of American adults will use up 593 billion cigarettes. Four out five of these smokers say they want to quit, but, after numerous attempts, most find that they cannot. Recent research into the psychology and pharmacology of nicotine is beginning to explain the remarkable persistence of smoking behavior.
Several million dollars were stolen in a burglary at the York Armored Car and Courier Corporation in Perth Amboy, New Jersey Authorities said the thieves, who had turned off alarm systems and bored into a vault, took $3 million to $4 million in cash and checks collected from stores on the Christmas shopping weekend.
Clouds over Arizona, New Mexico and Hawaii threatened to force a two-day delay in today’s planned launching of an artificial comet from a satellite 70,160 miles above the Pacific Ocean, said Gerhard Haerendel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, a project coordinator. But a final decision was not expected until a half hour before the scheduled launching of a module that is to release a comet-like barium vapor cloud.
Freezing temperatures and snow combined for a white Christmas Eve across the nation’s midsection and strong winds kicked up ground blizzards and drifting snow in the northern Rockies. Dense fog stretched from northern Florida to the Gulf Coast. Temperatures dipped below zero from Montana to Minnesota and Wisconsin and south into Nebraska. Snow flurries blew from Wyoming south to Kansas and into Michigan, spreading one-inch accumulations in Casper, Wyoming, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Travelers advisories were posted for central Montana, and for mountain passes west of the Continental Divide in Montana where strong westerly winds produced ground blizzards and large snowdrifts.
Peter Lawford died at a Los Angeles hospital where he had been on a life-support system. The 61-year-old actor had made more than 30 Hollywood films.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1210.14 (+11.16)
Born:
Jehnny Beth [Camille Berthomier], French musician, singer-songwriter (John & Jehn; Savages; To Love Is to Live), in Poitiers, France.
Died:
Peter Lawford, 61, British actor, producer and socialite (“Mrs Miniver”, “Thin Man”), of cardiac arrest.
Ian Hendry, 53, British actor (“The Avengers”, “The Lotus Eaters”), of a stomach hemorrhage.
[Ed: LMAO. Tell us again, Jimmuh, how did your hostage thing work out for you? You have no business talking shit to anyone, you little putz.]
History Diaries 