Turkey and the Soviet Union have signed trade, economic cooperation and cultural and scientific exchange agreements during a visit to Ankara by Soviet Premier Nikolai A. Tikhonov. A five-year pact calls for boosting trade from the present $400 million a year to $6 billion by 1990. The two sides also signed a 10-year economic cooperation agreement as well as an exchange pact for 1985-86 covering scholarships, artists and actors, language instruction and radio and television programs.
Italian police hunted a suspect in the bombing of an express train. The suspect — who police say left the train just before a bomb went off last weekend, causing major loss of life — has been sketched in a composite drawing. He is depicted as of medium height, 27 to 30 years old, with a short oval face, dark complexion, stubbly beard and glasses. Witnesses say they saw a man of that description get off the train, carrying a sports bag, at Florence, the last stop before the blast on the Naples-Milan express.
The world chess championship in Moscow between Soviet grandmasters Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov became the longest on record for an international title contest when the 35th game ended in a draw. That broke the record of 34, set in 1927 by Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca and Alexander Alyekhin of the Soviet Union. Karpov, the defending champion, holds a 5-1 lead and needs one more win to retain the title.
The Soviet Union’s only Roman Catholic cardinal, a former inmate of a Soviet labor camp, has been awarded a medal by the Soviet Peace Fund, the news agency Tass reported. Cardinal Julijans Vaivods, 89, who heads the church in Latvia, was cited for “the support of the church he leads for the peaceful policy of the Soviet state.” Vaivods was sentenced in 1958 on a charge never made public and served two years in a labor camp.
Making elaborate diplomatic and domestic soundings, Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his closest aides are striving to insure that West Germany is conspicuously included in the 40th anniversary ceremonies next May marking the Nazi surrender and the end of the war in Europe. “What we want to avoid at all costs is another Normandy like last summer, with all the Allies on the beaches and us left out,” one foreign policy adviser said, alluding to the ceremonies in France last June commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Mr. Kohl was gently rebuffed when he sought to be included at Normandy. Mr. Kohl is said to be deeply concerned about the May 8 anniversary in part because two days later a crucial election will take place in West Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine- Westphalia. A Normandy-style humbling would not help the image of his Christian Democratic Party.
Israeli Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai said that Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s insistence on economic reform does not go far enough toward curing the nation’s economic ills. “I think we have to go further and (cut) deeper,” Modai was quoted by the state radio as saying. A day earlier, Prime Minister Shimon Peres disclosed a warning by Shultz that Israel can expect no additional economic aid until austerity measures are enacted.
A fracas broke out briefly today when a six-member delegation from the West German Green Party visited Parliament in Jerusalem. Yair Tsaban of the Mapam Party was addressing the house on police violence when the West Germans filed into the visitors’ gallery. At their appearance, General Rafael Eytan and Geula Cohen of the Techiya Party raised posters in Hebrew and German reading “Out With the Greens-Browns.” Coupling of the two colors was intended to equate the left-wing anti-establishment Greens with the Nazi Brownshirts. The Greens are on the last leg of a four-country tour of the Middle East. Some Israelis have made it plain they are unwelcome because of reports that a planning paper prepared for their mission clearly indicated positions in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization and other radical groups in the Middle East.
Brigitte Heinrich, a Green member of the European Parliament who in 1980 was sentenced by a West German court to 21 months in jail for aiding Palestinian and German terrorists, was turned back at the Israeli border Tuesday when her six colleagues crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, in talks with a Church of England envoy, accused Britain of conducting a “campaign of hatred and harassment” against Libyans, the Libyan radio said today. The Libyan report, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation in London, made no reference to four Britons held as political detainees in Libya since last April’s siege of the Libyan Embassy in London. Terry Waite, a personal representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, said he met with Colonel Qaddafi late Tuesday and won a pledge from the Libyan leader to seek the release of the four Britons during the People’s Congress, which starts January 5.
Warplanes bombed a Spanish supertanker in the Persian Gulf today, setting it afire. Shipping sources said that the planes were Iranian and that it was the second Iranian raid in the same area in two days. No injuries were reported in the latest attack, on the 122,582-ton Aragon, which took place 10 miles north of the Shah Olam shoals, in the same area where the Indian supertanker Kanchenjunga was struck Tuesday. The Kanchenjunga had picked up a full cargo of Saudi Arabian crude oil at the Ras Tanura terminal and was on its way out of the gulf to India. The Aragon was on its way to Ras Tanura to pick up a load of crude destined for Spain. The two raids, the latest in the four-year- old Iran-Iraq war, were apparently meant to avenge a series of Iraqi attacks on ships near Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal over the last three weeks, according to the shipping sources.
Violence surrounding India’s elections continued. A member of the Andhra Pradesh state assembly, Uma Shankar Reddy, was ambushed and shot to death, the Press Trust of India reported. Andhra Pradesh is one of the key areas where the second of three days of nationwide parliamentary elections is being held today. Meanwhile, a national opposition leader was reported under death threat. A deputy to A.B. Vajpayee, leader of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, said Vajpayee received a telephone call warning him that if he were elected in his Gwalior constituency, he would not reach New Delhi alive.
The Government dropped a plan today that was meant to give the Tamil minority more political power and ease ethnic tensions between the Hindus and the country’s majority, who are Buddhist Sinhalese. The rejection of the draft legislation, which would have set up provincial councils and a second legislative chamber for the Tamils, came after representatives of both sides criticized the plan. President J. R. Jayewardene proposed the legislation at a conference of political parties last week. It was rejected at the weekly Cabinet meeting today. The plan was designed to satisfy Tamil demands for increased autonomy and end a violent campaign by Tamil militants for independence.
Senator Gordon J. Humphrey charged today that covert American aid to anti- Soviet guerrillas in Afghanistan was being lost because of “serious mismanagement of our aid program, perhaps of scandalous proportions. As a result, the Afghan freedom fighters are taking unnecessary casualties and losing battles they might have won,” Senator Humphrey, a Republican from New Hampshire, said at a gathering marking five years since the Russians joined the fighting in Afghanistan. He shared the spotlight at the rebel-sponsored meeting with two turbaned guerrilla commanders and a 7-year-old Afghan boy who said that he was the only survivor of a family of 10 and that he had lost the fingers of one hand to a mine disguised as a toy.
Vietnamese troops overran the largest rebel camp in Cambodia today in an attack that Thai officials said caused scores of casualties, many among civilians. The attack at the Rithisen camp came a day after Vietnamese troops, in the most intense fighting of the current dry season, attacked at least four Cambodian rebel camps including Rithisen. The attacks were estimated to have sent 63,000 civilians fleeing into Thailand, including about 61,000 from Rithisen. Westerners who have been following developments in the border area said the fighting today continued as the rebels mounted counterattacks. They predicted that the combat would spread as Vietnamese forces tried to wipe out other guerrilla bases before the start of the spring monsoon season.
Japan’s huge U.S. trade surplus was discussed with American reporters by Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in Tokyo. Mr. Nakasone, who is preparing for a meeting with President Reagan in Los Angeles next Wednesday, said he did not want to commit Japan to importing specific amounts of American goods as a way to reduce the surplus. He said that recent suggestions that Japan establish import targets were “not realistic and not advisable.” Mr. Nakasone, who is to meet with President Reagan in Los Angeles next Wednesday, also said his country was strengthening its military ability, but was doing so “for the sake of Japan, not for the sake of other countries.” The matter of military spending is sometimes linked to the trade issue by Americans who feel that Japan enjoys a “free ride” at United States expense.
Four cans of soft drinks laced with insecticide have been found in vending machines, Japanese police said, and a newspaper reported receiving a letter threatening to poison the products of a major brewery. A police official said cans of Kirin Brewery’s Tsubu-Tsubu, a pulp-filled orange drink, were found over the weekend in Yokohama. They contained a small amount of insecticide — “not enough to be fatal,” the official added. The newspaper Yomiuri said it received a letter from a group calling itself “a sect of a radical faction” that threatened action against the brewery.
Twelve Philippine opposition leaders today signed a declaration of unity on which to oppose President Ferdinand E. Marcos or his successors. The declaration called for the removal of foreign military bases from the Philippines, a review of economic treaties and financial agreements with foreign governments, the legalization of the banned Communist Party and a new democratic constitution. The declaration was signed by the principal anti-Marcos leaders except former Senator Salvador Laurel and Eva Estrada Kalaw, both of the United Nationalist Democratic Opposition.
The Philippine Supreme Court today condemned the 1982 closing of an opposition newspaper and ordered the military to return all seized items to the publisher. In a 12–0 ruling, described by opposition lawyers as a rebuff to President Ferdinand E. Marcos, the high court did not specifically say the closing of the newspaper We Forum was illegal.
Many reports from Nicaragua of atrocities against civilians by United States-backed rebels have been received by members of Congress and others in Washington as a result of the Congressional investigations of the Central Intelligence Agency’s manual on guerrilla warfare, according to Americans who said they have received the reports. Present and former rebel leaders said in interviews over the last few weeks that some of their guerrillas had been guilty of atrocities. The leaders said they deplored the acts, and they contended that they had evidence that the Sandinistas were guilty of the same kinds of abuses. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is a senior member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the committee was likely to investigate the reports of atrocities next year.
A Chilean journalist kidnapped a week ago by leftist guerrillas was freed unharmed Tuesday night after Christmas appeals for his release. The journalist, Sebastiano Bertolone, told reporters that he had been left in a district in the south of the capital and made his way to the residence of the Archbishop of Santiago, Juan Francisco Fresno, who had urged his captors to free him for Christmas. Mr. Bertolone, deputy editor of the Government newspaper La Nacion, said he had been blindfolded for most of the week and had no idea of where he was held by his captors, guerrillas of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front.
Child scavengers in Chad symbolize the devastating drought that is turning most of Chad into an extension of the Sahara. Chad and relief organizations put the shortfall of staple grains in Chad at 300,000 tons.
A team of federal explosives experts was assembled to investigate the bombings of three abortion clinics in Pensacola, Florida. The government offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case. The blasts early Christmas Day destroyed one of the targets and caused heavy damage at the other two. The total property loss was estimated at $375,000. No one has claimed responsibility for the bombings, which were condemned by local right-to-life leaders.
President Reagan participates in a message taping session for the Tournament of Roses Parade.
President Reagan presents National Security Advisor John Poindexter with his Vice Admiral stars.
Artificial heart recipient William J. Schroeder went back to his routine after a family Christmas, working at exercises to improve speech and coordination damaged by post-surgery strokes. He was listed in serious but stable condition, with his vital signs normal, said officials at Humana Heart Institute International in Louisville, Kentucky. One planned milestone, a shower bath, was put off, however, when Schroeder tired after the speech and occupational therapy sessions.
Leaders of a group occupying a church to protest the jailing of its former pastor said they will defy a judge’s order to surrender the building to Lutheran officials. However, supporters of the Rev. D. Douglas Roth differed on the chances for a peaceful resolution to the dispute over Trinity Lutheran Church in Clairton, Pennsylvania. The group seized the church after Roth, 33, was arrested at the altar and jailed November 13 for defying an order from his bishop to step down. Roth had leveled accusations that forces of “corporate evil” had deliberately put thousands of local steel workers out of their jobs.
The General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog often critical of the way other federal agencies award contracts, was forced to scrap a new $15-million computer system because of contracting problems, a Senate staff report said. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Delaware), head of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, released the report and said the computer project, called CAMIS, failed because of “longstanding deficiencies in GAO’s procurement activities” in awarding contracts, which have been identified by its own auditors but never corrected.
The civil rights group CORE has offered to pay for the legal defense of the fugitive “Death Wish” gunman who wounded four teenagers he said tried to rob him of $5 on a New York City subway train, and one of the city’s top lawyers agreed to handle his defense if he is found. At the same time, Governor Mario M. Cuomo called the vigilante shootings “dangerous and wrong. In the long run, that’s what produces the slaughter of innocent people.” Police said investigators have made little progress in their hunt for the unidentified gunman who has become a hero to many New Yorkers.
Friends and families of 27 miners killed in a Utah mine fire gathered today for a memorial service and heard a Mormon Church official pray for “a divine balm” to heal their hearts. A crowd of 1,700 packed Castle Dale’s Emery High School auditorium for the eulogy by Gordon B. Hinckley, second counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “There will be loneliness, but for those who believe in the mercy of our eternal Father, there will also be comfort,” he said.
A Missouri appeals court upheld multimillion-dollar verdicts for two of the most seriously injured survivors in the 1981 Hyatt Regency hotel skywalks collapse in Kansas City. The court rejected an appeal by defendants to cut a $12.75-million verdict for Sally Firestone, 37, considered the most severely injured of the survivors. She will need around-the-clock care for life. The court also refused to reduce or reverse a $3.75-million judgment awarded to Kay Kenton, 29, who suffered a broken neck and spinal cord damage.
A mother who told police her infant son had been kidnaped from a department store in Lansing, Michigan, was charged with killing the boy, whose body was found in the Red Cedar River on Christmas Day. Patricia Wing, 27, who said her 22-month-old son, Benjamin, had been abducted, was ordered held without bond after she was arraigned before Judge Terrance Clem of Lansing District Court. Mrs. Wing will undergo psychiatric tests to determine whether she is competent to stand trial, the authorities said. The body of Benjamin Wing was recovered Tuesday from the Red Cedar River by the Lansing police, and an autopsy indicated he had died by drowning, officials said.
The 24 nuns facing expulsion from their orders by the Vatican have refused to recant their statement on abortion that led to the expulsion threat. The nuns, who work in universities, prisons, government offices and shelters, signed a statement saying in part that a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among Roman Catholics. In separate interviews, several of the 24 nuns threatened with expulsion from their orders said their initial reaction of anger and dismay remained strong. Their responses highlighted complex problems, such as the place of dissent and the role of women in the church. The Vatican said December 18 that the nuns must recant their statement contending that Catholics hold a variety of opinions concerning the morality of abortion. Those nuns who agreed to interviews last week indicated that they would not comply.
Thirteen of the 77 Cubans detained by immigration authorities at Kennedy International Airport last week have “absconded” from the Queens hotel where they were being held, immigration officials said yesterday. The officials also said that, because of a lack of space in the New York detention center, 26 others were sent to a center in Houston on Christmas Eve without notice to their lawyers or relatives. The Cubans who fled were among those supposed to appear for hearings in New York yesterday on their requests for political asylum, said Duane Austin, an Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman. “But when we started proceedings and took a count, we found that 13 had not showed up,” he said.
Whether the Bell System’s breakup was a good idea is still being questioned by many Americans as the first anniversary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s divestiture of 22 Bell operating companies approaches. Supporters of the breakup say that it has already produced lower long-distance rates, a telephone industry teeming with competitors and a rush of new communications technologies that will give American companies an edge over foreign rivals. Opponents say the lower long-distance rates mainly benefit big business and are already forcing households to pay higher local rates, and they are skeptical about the technical revolution.
Nebraska’s Attorney General quit after his conviction two weeks ago for lying about his business dealings with a savings company. Paul Douglas said his resignation, which takes effect January 1, was linked to his concerns about his family and about the “image of this office.”
Two children who survived a small plane crash that killed three adults spent Christmas night huddled under a tree in rugged Texas country near the Mexican border until rescuers reached them today. Sarah Bunjes, 11 years old, and her 7-year-old brother, Aaron, were the only survivors of the crash that killed their mother, Kathleen Thompson Miears, 32, their stepfather, William Rogers Miears, 52, and Mr. Miears’ mother, Edith Rogers Miears, 77, all of Brackettville.
A statue of the infant Jesus is missing from a creche across the street from Town Hall, and the police say they have no clues concerning who is responsible. Dr. Michael Romano reported the 18-inch-long wooden figure missing Tuesday and has offered a $500 reward for its return. The creche is being displayed on the lawn in front of Dr. Romano’s office building. The town Nativity Scene Committee had asked permission to erect it in front of Town Hall, but the Town Council refused at a bitter meeting last week. The committee then placed it on the doctor’s lawn.
A judicial panel dismissed disciplinary proceedings today against a judge who had rebuked three officers of the A. H. Robins Company, the maker of the defective Dalkon Shield intrauterine birth control device. Chief Federal District Judge Miles W. Lord, who sits in Minnesota, was reprimanded last month by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit for calling three Robins officers before the bench and assailing them, even though a private settlement had been reached in the particular case and no trial was held. Judge Lord did so because of what he said was the “tactic of A. H. Robins of insulating its chief operating officers from any knowledge as to the widespread disability and death caused by the company’s product.” The 13-member judicial panel was appointed by the appeals court on May 1.
A rural mailman who had been dismissed for delivering his own unstamped Christmas cards to more than 500 people on his route was reinstated today, after his wife, his union and the public complained. Postal officials in Brighton, 40 miles northwest of Detroit, had told Frank DePlanche he would lose his job January 9 for placing the cards in about 545 mail boxes on his route, according to Mr. DePlanche’s wife, Marie. But district postal officials in Detroit said tonight that Mr. DePlanche would be reinstated to his job. William Smiley, the Postal Service’s district director of employee and labor relations, said Mr. DePlanche would be suspended for five days and would be required to pay the postage for the cards. Mr. DePlanche, a postal employee for 29 years, was hospitalized for stress Monday. He was listed in good condition.
[Ed: Without Government, Who Would Punish filthy criminals who deliver Christmas cards without the government getting its cut? Good Grief.]
Geriatric evaluation units designed to make elderly hospital patients well enough to to live on their own could keep 200,000 people a year out of nursing homes and prevent many needless deaths, a Veterans Administration report said. These wards have been common for many years in Britian but are new to the United States. Doctors at one of the first units established in the United States found that patients who spent time in the special ward were less than half as likely as other old people to be sent to nursing homes after their discharge, and that their death rate was halved.
A heavily armed anti-Semitic group that has “declared war” on the United States appears to be part of a much larger racist alliance, according to Federal investigators monitoring the ultraright. They said the anti-Semites appeared to have adherents in a half-dozen Western and Southern states. United States attorneys from Alabama, California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington met in Seattle to discuss strategies for a continuing investigation.
The inaugural edition of the Freedom Bowl matched the #19 Texas Longhorns of the Southwest Conference and the Big Ten’s Iowa Hawkeyes. After leading 24–17 at halftime, the Hawkeyes blew the game open with 31 unanswered points in the third quarter to win 55–17. Iowa’s Chuck Long threw for 461 yards and a bowl-record six touchdowns, and was named the game’s MVP.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1208.92 (-1.22)
Born:
Darin Downs, MLB pitcher (Detroit Tigers, Houston Astros), in Southfield, Michigan.
Brett Sinkbeil, MLB pitcher (Florida Marlins), in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Shawn Crable, NFL defensive end (New England Patriots), in Massillon, Ohio.
Alex Schwazer, Italian race walker, in Sterzing, Italy.
Died:
Tebbs Lloyd Johnson, 84, English race walker (Olympic bronze 50k 1948; oldest Olympic medal-winning athlete, at 48 years and 115 days).
Gösta Jonsson, 69, Swedish saxophonist, accordion player and bandleader.
History Diaries 