The trial of four Polish security officers for the abduction and slaying on October 19 of a pro-Solidarity priest began in Torun. One of the defendants testified that he had been assured the kidnapping had been authorized by his superiors, even if it resulted in the Priest’s death. The trial marked the first time a Communist country had publicly prosecuted security police in the murder of a dissident. The death of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, on October 19, jolted the government as no other event since the rise of the Solidarity labor movement in 1980. The Government first sought to convince the nation that it wanted to uncover all those who were behind the killing. Recently official spokesmen have sought to soothe the police establishment with assertions that the four accused were exceptions. As the first witness, Lieutenant Leszek Pekala, a slight, 32-year-old man, described in a faint voice how, at the request of his commanding officer, he and two of the other defendants discussed plans to dispose of the priest by pushing him from a bridge or having him burn up in a car crash. He said that the intent was to frighten the priest into giving up his political work, but that he had been told there was a possibility the victim might die.
President Reagan, marking five years since Soviet forces joined the fighting in Afghanistan, said today that the event was “a day of infamy” reminiscent of Pearl Harbor. “There is no legitimate excuse for a great power like the Soviet Union that is doing what it is doing to the people of Afghanistan,” Mr. Reagan said as he left Washington for five days of vacation here and at Palm Springs. The President, recalling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s characterization of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, said: “A President once called a similar day ‘a day of infamy.’ I guess that’s exactly what this is also, the anniversary of a day of infamy.”
Some 10,000 Italians, many demanding justice, attended an emotional funeral today for the victims of the terrorist train bombing that killed at least 15 Christmas travelers. “Enough of attacks!” Mayor Renzo Imbeni said in a speech after the funeral mass. “Enough of terrorism! I demand justice!” In Rome, Prime Minister Bettino Craxi told legislators that the police had not ruled out a plot to destabilize Italy or a diversion staged by the Mafia as the motive for the bombing of the Naples-to-Milan express on Sunday. Interior Minister Oscar Luigi Scalfaro told the Chamber of Deputies that 23 groups had taken responsibility for the bombing, in which 15 people were killed and 112 injured.
Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, who was absent from the funeral of Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov on Monday, appeared today at a Kremlin ceremony at which he presented medals to prominent writers. Mr. Chernenko’s absence from the funeral, which was held in Red Square, gave rise to some concern about his health.
For anyone feeling threatened by the spread of little computers into businesses, schools and homes, there is still a sanctuary in the developed world where the abacus is king and floppy disks are badly manufactured phonograph records. No young Russians sit glued to video screens chasing invaders from outer space, and none of their older brothers are busy at their personal computers finding ways to break into private mainframes. The situation is one that may give comfort to the guardians of secrecy in the Kremlin. But it is one that is alarming members of the scientific and academic elite, who are saying that unless something is done to raise computer consciousness in the Soviet Union, the East-West gap in electronic technology will become unbridgeable.
A United States request for permission to set up a transmitter in Israel to relay Voice of America broadcasts to the Soviet Union has set off a debate here among Soviet Jewish emigres. Some emigres said they feared Moscow would retaliate against Jews in the Soviet Union who want to come to Israel. Others argued for the transmitter, saying the only way to get anything from Moscow was by assertiveness. The Israeli Government has not replied to the State Department’s application, but the Minister of Communications, Amnon Rubenstein, said the Government could not refuse, considering Israel’s dependence on Washington for economic survival. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” the minister said.
Lebanese President Amin Gemayel held talks in Damascus today with President Hafez al- Assad of Syria on security problems in Lebanon and the deadlocked negotiations with Israel, the Lebanese state radio reported. Mr. Gemayel’s trip to the Syrian capital came a day after he had presided over a stormy Cabinet meeting at which Moslem and Christian members failed to reach agreement on a security plan designed to deploy the Lebanese Army along the coastal highway linking Beirut with the Israeli-occupied south.
A Sikh, the fifth suspected of involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was flown here today from the Philippines for questioning. The suspect, Jasbir Singh, was identified as a nephew of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the Sikh fundamentalist preacher turned extremist leader, who was slain with hundreds of followers during an Indian Army assault in June on the Golden Temple at Amritsar. An Indian spokesman here, noting that Mr. Singh had not been formally extradited from Manila, praised what he called “full cooperation” by the government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Mr. Singh, who is said to be about 22 years old, has been charged with sedition, terrorism and creating sectarian hatred, offenses that carry a maximum term of life imprisonment.
The military authorities in Pakistan detained more than 30 dissidents in Northwest Frontier Province today, an opposition party said. A spokesman for the local branch of the banned National Democratic Party said 34 party members, including the national secretary general, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, had been arrested. Mr. Bilour and a former Member of Parliament, Arbab Mohammed Hamayun, were placed under house arrest in the provincial capital of Peshawar, according to the party’s regional acting president, Bashir Ahmed Bilour. Thirty-two others who attended a political rally were sent to jail or into police custody, he said. No government comment was immediately available on the report.
Cambodian guerrillas carried today counterattacked Vietnamese forces that overran the Rithisen rebel camp near the Thai border on Wednesday, Thai military authorities and guerrilla sources said. According to Thai Army reports, the guerrillas were armed with rifles, mortars and some recoilless rifles, and the Vietnamese had tanks, artillery and other heavy weapons. The sources said Vietnamese troops were now moving toward the headquarters of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, a non-Communist rebel group that had been in control of the Rithisen camp. Colonel Anusorn Kissanasareni, deputy spokesman of the Thai Army, said that the Vietnamese were in position near the rebel headquarters camp at Ampil and that the guerrillas were carrying out night raids against the Vietnamese. The capture of Ampil would be a blow to the Khmer Liberation Front and the Cambodian alliance formed to fight the Vietnamese, who invaded Cambodia in 1978, toppled the Khmer Rouge regime and installed a pro- Vietnamese Government. Ampil, which is said to be defended by 5,000 guerrillas, was shelled on Christmas Day when the Vietnamese forces drove into Rithisen.
Singapore’s ambassador to France said his country is withdrawing from the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in a move “totally independent” of the U.S. decision to leave the Paris-based agency. The United States, which says UNESCO is politicized and mismanaged, is pulling out at the end of the year, and Britain recently announced its intention to follow suit next year if reforms are not made. Singapore’s Ambassador David Marshall said UNESCO’s work does not meet the standards for Singapore’s “limited resources.”
Japanese customs agents acting on information from United States officials have thwarted a plot to smuggle an American submarine-detection device to the Soviet Union, officials said today. Customs officials in Osaka, 300 miles southwest of Tokyo, seized the classified device in late October when a trading company attempted to ship it to the Soviet Union, a report in the Tokyo daily Sankei Shimbun said. The newspaper did not name the company. The Foreign Ministry confirmed, without giving details, that Japanese officials had seized the device at the request of the United States. “There was a notice from the United States but the Ministry has no comment as investigations are underway,” a spokesman said. The sophisticated sonar device, manufactured by Klein and Associates of Salem, New Hampshire, can detect submarines and deep-sea mines to a depth of 6,500 fathoms, or more than 7 miles, Sankei said.
Pemex, Mexico’s oil monopoly, said it will begin paying reparations next week to the victims of the gas explosion that killed at least 450 people in a Mexico City suburb last month. Pemex said that it will start making payments on Jan. 2 and that it hopes to be able to pay all claims by the end of January. The firm did not say how many people have filed suit, but Mexican officials last week said 431 people filed damage claims for homes and belongings totaling $2.3 million. This figure did not include compensation claims for death or injury.
Senior Reagan Administration officials say they are concerned about a recent ruling by a Federal judge that could force the Central Intelligence Agency to release numerous classified documents describing the agency’s involvement with Nicaraguan rebels. The officials say that the ruling, if upheld on appeal, could jepardize future covert operations. But others argue that the case means that the Administration cannot seek support for a “covert” operation by publicizing it, and then refuse to answer uncomfortable questions because it is secret. “This is a very important case, and it would be a real problem for us if we lost,” a senior Administration official said in an interview.
Unidentified gunmen kidnapped the manager of a Canadian shoe company, shot and killed his maid and have threatened to kill him if they are not paid $1 million, Bolivian police disclosed. Officers said that Antonius Van Ess, 48, general manager of a subsidiary of the Bata shoe chain of Toronto, was seized last Friday by gunmen who burst into his home in the southeastern city of Cochabamba, tied up his wife and then fled with him and the maid. The body of the maid, Cinthia Gutierrez, 34, was found Saturday in Van Ess’ car, along with a ransom note demanding $1 million for his release.
Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled that civilian judges can try nine former junta leaders, including three ex-presidents, who are accused of violating human rights during the nation’s years of military rule. It said that a lower court acted properly in deciding to take control of the cases from a military tribunal that had failed to act in nine months. The ruling clears the way for public trials before the appeals court that local news organizations have likened to the Nuremburg war crimes trials that followed World War II. The defendants are accused of involvement in the abduction, torture and disappearance of at least 9,000 people during a campaign by security forces against leftists in the late 1970’s. On trial are the generals and admirals who made up three successive three-man juntas that ruled after a coup in 1976. They are Jorge Rafael Videla, Roberto Eduardo Viola and Leopoldo Galtieri, who were Presidents and Army commanders; Emilio Massera, Armando Lambruschini and Jorge Anaya, who were Navy commanders, and Orlando Agosti, Omar Graffigna and Basilio Lami Dozo, who commanded the Air Force.
An American priest, arrested five times in the last year for demonstrating against torture in Chile, was deported by the military government, U.S. and church officials said. Father Denis O’Mara, 44, of Chicago, was put aboard a flight from Santiago to Lima, Peru, they said. The Chilean government said nothing about the expulsion, but the priest left behind a note saying he was told that the Interior Ministry considered him “a danger to the country’s internal peace.” O’Mara is believed to be the first foreigner expelled since Chile last month outlawed “intervention in internal politics” by foreigners.
Ethiopian refugees fleeing drought, famine and war are streaming into the Sudan by the tens of thousands. Their numbers have seriously strained supplies of food, water, and drugs, and, officials say, they are also straining the limited resources of the entire country.
Emergency aid to the Sudan will be expedited to help the country cope with the new wave of refugees from northern Ethiopia, according to the State Department’s emergency refugee operations office.
South Africa and neighboring Swaziland upgraded their diplomatic ties with the signing of an agreement to exchange trade representatives, their first permanent diplomatic envoys. No African country except Malawi has full diplomatic relations with the white minority government in Pretoria, although some have exchanged trade missions with the South Africans. Swaziland is a small, landlocked country, and most of its imports come from its powerful neighbor. South Africa and Swaziland signed a security pact 22 years ago obliging Swaziland to curb black guerrilla operations within its territory.
President Reagan acknowledged today that his Administration was considering a freeze on Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors. Reports have circulated since early this month that the Administration planned to ask for a one-year freeze, with no allowance for inflation, on the benefits for aged and disabled Social Security recipients.
The President and First Lady leave the White House for Los Angeles, California and then off to Palm Springs.
Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan and his co-defendants asked a New York judge to dismiss larceny and fraud charges against them, charging broad misconduct by prosecutors and no evidence of any crime. Donovan, former executive vice president of Schiavone Construction Co., is charged with conspiring to pad reported payments to a minority subcontractor on a $186-million subway tunneling project in 1979 and 1980. Donovan quit Schiavone to become labor secretary in 1981. He is on leave from his Cabinet post. The indictment charges one count of larceny and 136 counts of handling false business records.
The population of the United States climbed to 236,158,000 as of July 1, 1984, the Census Bureau reported. That is up 2,135,000 from a year earlier and is 9.6 million more than were counted in the 1980 census. The 1984 figures show Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa growing again after having lost population in 1981 and 1982. And Illinois continued its growth trend. The bureau said that West Virginia, Oklahoma and Wyoming suffered population declines but that California grew slightly, from 25,186,000 in 1983 to 25,622,000 in 1984.
Ten years after desegregation was ordered in Boston’s public schools by a Federal District, the classrooms have changed dramatically in terms of what is being taught, who is being taught and who is doing the teaching. But whether the education has improved remains in dispute. The biggest change is the racial composition of the student body. The percentage of white students in the school system has dropped by more than half, while the percentage of black students has increased substantially. School officials say so many whites have abandoned the system that not enough are left to provide racial balance.
New York was ordered to give $1.5 million to a deaf man, Donald Snow, 22, improperly labeled retarded as a child because of medical malpractice by state doctors, but another man, Frank Torres, 27, misdiagnosed as retarded by educators, lost his fight to collect damages. The orders by the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, upheld a ban against damage payments for malpractice. by educators but said awards may be granted in cases in which medical malpractice has educational consequences.
Robert Lee Willie, who raped and killed a teenager after her high school graduation party, was electrocuted in Louisiana’s electric chair early today. Willie, 26, was executed for the 1980 slaying of Faith Hathaway, 18, who was stabbed 17 times. Her mother and stepfather, Elizabeth and Vernon Harvey, witnessed the execution, saying they supported the death penalty and had waited years for Willie to be put to death. An unrepentant Willie, who mocked his death sentence by placing a tattoo of the Grim Reaper on his chest, had confessed to two other killings.
Crews resumed attempts to extinguish an 8-day-old fire in the Wilberg Mine, near Orangeville, Utah, where 27 miners remain entombed, by sealing a dozen or more portals leading to the surface. Robert Henrie, spokesman for Emery Mining Co., said the remainder of the openings should be sealed by Saturday or Sunday. Sealing the portals, officials say, will cut off the oxygen feeding the subterranean fire, and the blaze will die.
A man with five fatal diseases had a constitutional right to refuse legal medical treatment and be disconnected from the respirator that was sustaining, according to a ruling by a California Court of Appeals. The man has since died. In a case that has become a focus of the national “right to die” movement, a state appeals court ruled today that a man who was suffering from five usually fatal diseases had a constitutional right to refuse medical treatment. The man, William F. Bartling, who died Nov. 6, had sought to be disconnected from the respirator that sustained him for six months. The California Court of Appeal for the Second District ruled that Mr. Bartling’s right to die naturally outweighed the arguments of the Glendale Adventist Medical Center. The center contended that medical ethics and the responsibility to preserve life prevented the hospital and Mr. Bartling’s physicians from removing the respirator.
Two historic Washington, D.C. buildings that resemble the barracks of Nazi death camps will be torn down next year instead of being used to house a Holocaust museum, the group planning the memorial said today. The federal government donated the buildings to the group in 1981. The Holocaust Memorial Council, which got quick approval of its razing plan this month from the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation, said it had decided that the red brick, two- story buildings, with 50,000 square feet of floor space, were too small, The buildings’ similarity to barracks at Auschwitz,Buchenwald and other camps where six million Jews were put to death in World War II, had been applauded by members of the memorial council. But they said they are now planning to build a 250,000-square-foot building.
With faces marked by both sorrow and anger, members of the Trinity Lutheran Church, a congregation once held together by friendship and a common faith, were staring at one another today across a gulf grown wider than the street between them. Then the visitor they awaited arrived, and a new tension rippled through clusters of members and onlookers at the 56-year-old stone church. He was the Rev. Donald Anderson, the emissary both of his denomination and a county court, bearing a judge’s order supporting his mission to take control of their church and give substance to the declaration of their Bishop, that the troubled Trinity Lutheran Church no longer exists. Mr. Anderson strode to the church door, followed after an interval by Allegheny County’s sheriff, Eugene Coon. Mr. Anderson demanded both the keys to the church and its records. Defiant parishioners barricaded inside rejected the demand. Both then quickly walked away.
A Charleston, South Carolina teacher’s aide was dismissed and a physical education instructor suspended today for allowing a strip-search of 10 middle school students, school officials said. David Mack Jr., the district school superintendent, also said a security guard would no longer be assigned to Rivers Middle School, where the incident occurred. The officials said an investigation indicated that employees “illegally searched” three girls and seven boys for $40 reported stolen from a teacher’s aide. The money was not recovered. The physical education instructor was also to appear before the district board January 9 for possible further action.
Five bodies were recovered today from the wreckage of a single-engine plane that apparently broke up in flight, and a Florida sheriff’s posse on horseback searched rugged terrain for a sixth victim. Lieutenant Tommy Holcomb of the Polk County Sheriff’s office said the wreckage of the six-passenger Piper Cherokee was scattered along a two-mile line, indicating that it was disintegrating as it fell Wednesday night. Five bodies were found in the main wreckage near this small community in central Florida 35 miles from Tampa. Lieutenant Holcomb said the sixth victim apparently was thrown from the falling plane. The bodies were identified as James Long, the pilot, a stockbroker from Bloomington, Illinois, and members of his family who were going to Naples, Florida, for a Christmas vacation.
A Superior Court judge refused today to lift an injunction that temporarily permits Arthur D. Little Inc. to keep testing deadly nerve gas in a Cambridge, Maryland laboratory despite the city’s objection. Officials of Arthur D. Little want Judge Robert Hallisey to declare invalid a regulation issued in March by the Cambridge Health Commissioner, Melvin Chalfen, that prohibited the company from testing nerve gas and other chemical warfare agents in the city.
Residents of Memphis, Michigan were urged to keep boiling their drinking water as a precaution today, even though initial tests showed no contamination of the city’s water supply after an equipment malfunction allowed it to run dry Tuesday. Health officials said they would not lift their ban on unboiled drinking water until a second set of tests was completed Friday.
The first artificial comet was launched from a satellite 60,000 miles over the Pacific early today in solar wind so great that it sprouted a tail 10,000 miles long in 10 minutes. It was the first experimental demonstration of solar wind behavior.
Scientists exploring the Caribbean have discovered visible plant life deeper than any previously recorded, challenging current assumptions about such matters as ocean productivity and reef building. The plants, referred to as totally new coralline algae, were found growing abundantly at a depth of 884 feet, making them the only visible plants ever firmly established as living below 693 feet.
The nation’s largest commercial solar power plant, a 13.8-megawatt parabolic-trough system, has produced its first electrical energy. The Solar Electrical Generating System, SEGS-1, generated 1.7 megawatts of power in pre-Christmas tests, said Duane Steele, operations manager at the 66-acre desert plant in Daggett, 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles. “It is performing smoothly,” he said. “We’ll be fine-tuning and adjusting mechanical and electrical systems before going on line on a regular basis in mid-January.” The $62.8 million first phase of the new bowl-shaped trough system is the world’s first privately financed solar generating plant. When fully operational, the system is expected to sell enough power to Southern California Edison Co. to serve about 10,000 homes.
A blinding snowstorm blanketed the New York metropolitan area with up to six inches of snow, causing long delays for air travelers, and a new winter snowstorm moved into the West. Forecasters said up to 18 inches of snow was expected in southern Colorado, where winter storm warnings were posted. Snow fell from eastern New York state and northern New Jersey into New England, while freezing rain hit the mid-Atlantic states and the upper Great Lakes.
Free-agent pitcher Ed Whitson, 14–8 for the Padres, begins a nightmarish association with the Yankees by signing a 5-year, $4.4 million contract.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1202.52 (-6.4)
Born:
Le’Ron McClain, NFL running back (Pro Bowl, 2008, 2009; Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers), in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Gilles Simon, French tennis player (world #6 2009; Davis Cup 2017), in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Tye’sha Fluker, WNBA center (Charlotte Sting, Seattle Storm, Los Angeles Sparks, Chicago Sky), in Pasadena, California.
Pleasure P. [Marcus Cooper], American R&B singer (Pretty Ricky), in Miami, Florida.
History Diaries 