Despite three years of greatly increased attention, effort and expense, Reagan Administration officials acknowledge that they have not significantly reduced the flow of Western technology to the Soviet Union. In fact, enforcement officials say they have concluded that the methods of smuggling high technology are so varied, and the illegal business so lucrative, that all the United States can ever hope to do is slow the transfer of technology to the East. Soon after President Reagan took office, senior officials decried “the massive hemorrhage” of high technology to the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc nations. Mr. Reagan said that stanching the flow was one of his Administration’s priorities. Three years later, the Government has hired hundreds of new enforcement officers and has added tens of millions of dollars to the enforcement agencies’ budgets each year. As a result, Federal officers have seized hundreds of pieces of equipment that would have been shipped illegally to the Soviet Union, far more than were being intercepted before.
Solidarity activists by the hundreds ignored the government’s New Year’s amnesty deadline and will continue working underground against Poland’s Communist authorities, the outlawed union’s founder, Lech Walesa, said. “They will continue their struggle until a final victory,” he said in an interview. The government had guaranteed immunity from prosecution for Solidarity members who surrendered before the deadline. Some 600 political prisoners were freed under the July 22 amnesty set to expire tonight. The official press agency said 362 activists had abandoned underground activities between July and Christmas Eve. Those who stay underground face prosecution. Mr. Walesa said those involved in the illegal printing of Solidarity newspapers refused to give up their work because the amnesty would force them to betray the location of their presses. About 400 Solidarity newspapers are printed in Poland. Meanwhile, Ryszard Kalinowski, 34, former deputy chairman of Solidarity, fled to Norway with his wife and daughter and sought political asylum there, Norwegian officials announced.
A terrorist bomb damaged a French diplomatic building in Bonn, the eighth attack in two weeks on U.S., British and French installations in West Germany. Police reported no casualties in the attack on the building which houses the French Embassy’s technical department. They added that they suspect the attack was carried out by members of the Red Army Faction, which has begun a bombing campaign to coincide with a hunger strike by 39 imprisoned left-wing terrorists.
sraeli military officials say they are becoming increasingly convinced that Syria is no longer interested in an agreement for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to resume their United Nations-sponsored talks in Naqura, Lebanon, next Monday after a Christmas recess. The Israeli officials say that if the Lebanese, whose position is being dictated by Damascus, do not show some sign of willingness to agree to certain basic Israeli security conditions at the next session, Israel will have no reason to continue with the talks and will have no choice but to act on its own. The Israeli Army is already understood to have prepared a series of withdrawal options for Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Dissident PLO leader Abu Moussa addressed a guerrilla rally in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in his first public appearance since he suffered a mild stroke in November. Abu Moussa, leader of the Fatah faction, which is opposed to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, looked thin and tired as he spoke to about 3,000 armed supporters.
Iraq said today that its warplanes had crippled a large vessel in the Persian Gulf, but marine salvage companies in the region had no confirmation of such an attack. An Iraqi military spokesman read a communique on Baghdad television saying that a “large naval target” had been attacked. The communique did not specify where the attack had taken place. In Iraqi military parlance, the term “large naval target” generally refers to an oil tanker. “Our warplanes scored direct hits on the target and returned safely to base,” the spokesman said. “The attack was aimed at tearing apart the vital artery that feed the Iranian regime’s aggression on Iraq.” Iraq and Iran have been locked in a 51-month-old war, with the Iraqis often threatening to undermine Iran’s economy by blocking its oil exports. Most of the Iraqi attacks have been on tankers calling at the Iranian oil terminal of Kharg Island.
Amid thunderous applause and the pop of hundreds of flashbulbs, 40-year-old Rajiv Gandhi was sworn in today as India’s sixth Prime Minister. Mr. Gandhi’s 39-member Council of Ministers, a blend of the young and the experienced, was also formally installed during the ceremonies at the presidential palace. Soon afterward, a relaxed and smiling Prime Minister, buoyed by the biggest election victory by any party since India became independent in 1947, said that his Government would be “performance and efficiency oriented.” Mr. Gandhi, who was first installed as Prime Minister in October after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated, told reporters that he would “monitor” the performance of ministers and dismiss those who proved ineffective.
Separatist guerrillas in Sri Lanka have killed four youths who they said betrayed the Tamil cause, the radio reported today. It said the bodies of the four, all Tamils, were found on the outskirts of Batticaloa on Sunday with placards describing them as traitors. They had been shot in the head. It quoted local residents as having said that the youths had refused to join the guerrillas, who are fighting for a separate Tamil state in northern Sri Lanka. Official sources said the rebels this year killed more than 30 Tamil youths who they said were police informers or thieves.
Afghan guerrillas launched rocket attacks on Kabul and ambushed Soviet convoys to mark the fifth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Western diplomats in New Delhi reported. Quoting reports from Kabul, the diplomats said that rockets fell on central areas of the city through much of the week. The Muslim guerrillas also killed 17 Soviet troops and 436 soldiers of the Soviet-backed Afghan army in fighting in the strategic Panjshir Valley during December, the diplomats said.
Artillery and small-arms fire could be heard echoing across the border from Cambodia today, where non-Communist guerrillas fought Vietnamese troops for a seventh straight day. The heaviest fighting was concentrated at the rebel camp of Rithisen, two miles across the border from this small Thai village. Vietnamese troops overran the camp on Christmas Day, and guerrillas of the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front have been trying to take it back ever since. More than 60,000 people opposed to the Government in Phnom Penh lived at Rithisen. The area is now a battlefield, with “almost all” of its buildings destroyed, the camp’s chief civilian administrator, Tu Tun, said in a interview this morning at an evacuation site called Nern Din Daeng.
Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew announced a new Cabinet today that consolidated the power of a group of young leaders. Goh Chok Tong, already Defense Minister, emerged as a powerful figure with the additional appointment as First Deputy Prime Minister. Official sources said the position made him a likely successor to Mr. Lee. The previous First Deputy Prime Minister, Goh Keng Swee, has retired for health reasons. Prime Minister Lee, who says he plans to step down on reaching the age of 65 in 1988, remains firmly at the helm. His elder son, General Lee Hsien Loong, became a junior minister. Besides the Prime Minister, only two members of the governing party’s old guard remain in the new 13-member Cabinet.
Faced with a grain surplus and eager to diversify its farming industry, China announced that peasants will no longer be required to sell part of their harvest to the state. The grain-purchasing program, one of the last vestiges of the collective farming system introduced by Mao Tse-tung 30 years ago, has left state granaries overflowing after four record harvests. In October, the Communist Party said the law of supply and demand would be allowed to unclog the rigid planned economy of the past.
A congress of 800 Chinese poets, novelists and playwrights has called on the Communist Party to reject past restrictions on artistic freedom and restore China to the forefront of world culture. The call, issued by the Chinese Writers’ Association in meetings that began here over the weekend, represented the clearest demand for artistic freedom since an ill-fated burst of self- expression brought a sweeping crackdown 27 years ago. “We need works that can compare with the magnificent literary creations of our people in the past, and with the most famous works of mankind,” said Ba Jin, the 80-year-old chairman of the Writers’ Association and the author of one of this century’s most famous Chinese novels.
Suspected members of the Maoist guerrilla group Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”), some wearing police uniforms, shot and beat to death 40 members of a peasant vigilante band in the Peruvian Andes, survivors said today. Six wounded survivors who reached a hospital here said guerrillas armed with machine guns and clubs had swept into Pallcca and Ccentebamba where townspeople had formed defense squads to protect their homes. The guerrillas, some wearing police uniforms, killed 40 men, women and children, the survivors said. The townspeople were armed with slingshots and spears, they said. Pallcca and Ccentebamba are 100 miles northeast of here. Shining Path is seeking to topple the center-right Government of President Fernando Belaunde Terry and to form a regime of workers and peasants styled after Mao Zedong’s China.
The American public has given at least $40 million in two months for aid to starving Ethiopians, a response that exceeds any outpouring of United States aid in more than a decade, according to relief officials. In the two months since graphic television pictures about the drought and its effects began appearing in the United States, scores of aid agencies have reported a sharp increase in contributions. Leading American aid agencies have received the $40 million in donations since those reports at the end of October, according to Peter J. Davies, president of Interaction, a coalition of 121 private agencies that provide emergency and developmental aid abroad or work with refugees. Interaction was formed in July.
Rebels battling the Soviet-backed government of Angola said their forces overran the northeastern diamond mining town of Cafunfo, killing 130 government troops and capturing about 22 foreigners, including two Americans employed by an Oakland-based airline. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) said in a statement in Lisbon, that the town was captured Saturday after two hours of fighting. The Americans were identified as Gerhart Propel, a pilot, and Alen Bongard, flight engineer, members of the crew of a Hercules transport plane operated by Transamerica Airlines, which had brought supplies to the town.
Nigerian military leader Mohammed Buhari has granted an amnesty to more than 2,500 prisoners, including 144 political detainees, to mark the first anniversary of the military’s return to power. The amnesty means that most of the more than 500 politicians and businessmen who were detained after the overthrow of the civilian government last New Year’s Eve will be freed.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, returned to an emotional homecoming in South Africa from a foreign tour tonight, saying he hoped “that our country will be free for everyone in 1985.” About 100 of his supporters, including several white clerics, crowded and hugged him at Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts Airport as he emerged from immigration and customs controls. A white man thrust his young daughter toward the Bishop, who embraced her, under the gaze of uniformed police officers. The police made no attempt to halt the celebration.
A man identified as a convict being transported from the Virgin Islands to New York overpowered several guards and hijacked a DC-10 jetliner with 198 people aboard to Cuba, the authorities said. American Airlines flight 626 was commandeered at 6:17 PM, an hour away from Kennedy International Airport, by a prisoner identified by a corrections official as Ishmael LaBeet, who was convicted of murdering eight people on St. Croix, Virgin Islands, in 1972. The plane landed safely at Jose Marti Airport in Havana at 8:30 PM, the authorities said. Cuban officials said they had taken the hijacker into custody.
New York City subway gunman Bernhard Goetz surrenders to police in Concord, New Hampshire, saying he was the gunman who wounded four teenagers on a subway car 10 days ago, police officials said. They said Goetz, 37 years old, of 55 West 14th Street, had already been identified as a suspect in the shooting, which took place after the teenagers approached him and asked him for money. The police said Mr. Goetz, a slim man with blond hair, matched a police composite drawing of the suspect, who escaped into the subway tunnel after the shooting. A special telephone line that police set up to receive tips to lead them to a suspect instead attracted hundreds of callers who expressed support for the gunman’s actions. Some people offered to help pay legal expenses and others suggested that he run for Mayor.
The President and First Lady attend the annual New Year’s Eve party at the Annenberg Residence in Palm Springs.
Sweeping changes in the way nuclear power is regulated are needed if the industry is to revive from its current torpor, according to utilities, regulators and the industry’s critics. No new reactors have been ordered in five years, safety questions are rising faster than they are being resolved, and outsiders and some commission members alike say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, formed 10 years ago to provide dispassionate regulation, is ineffective. The industry is complaining of the weight of existing regulations and the speed at which they change. The commission has acknowledged strong doubts about the process it uses in one category of safety decisions. The critics say that major areas of safety are given scant attention by the commission.
The C.A.B. went out of existence. For 46 years the Civil Aeronautics Board oversaw the airline industry by setting fares and awarding routes. Many of the board’s remaining functions were assumed by the Department of Transportation.
A federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, who called former Atlantic City Mayor Michael J. Matthews a “crook” sentenced him to 15 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for his guilty plea to an extortion charge. “You served the people shamefully. The people of Atlantic City thought they were electing a mayor, not a crook and that is what you turned out to be,” U.S. District Judge Harold A. Ackerman told the 50-year-old accountant. Matthews pleaded guilty on November 27 to taking $10,000 from an undercover federal agent.
A federal appeals court ruled that the District of Columbia cannot seek reimbursement for emergency and rescue services following the 1982 crash of an Air Florida jetliner that killed 78 people. A three-judge panel unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that there was no specific legislation empowering the district to collect the $750,000 it requested from Air Florida. The case arose from the January 13, 1982, crash of a jetliner that slammed into a bridge over the Potomac River shortly after takeoff from National Airport.
The U.S. Postal Service said it has installed a telecommunications service to assist hearing-impaired customers who want to call in with inquiries or complaints about their mail service. Beginning Wednesday, any deaf person who has access to a telecommunications device for the deaf, or TDD, may contact the Postal Service by calling (202) 245-3858.
A compromise, $1.9-billion city budget was adopted by the Chicago City Council just hours before a midnight deadline and after weeks of confrontation between Mayor Harold Washington and his council opponents. Washington and Alderman Edward Vrdolyak, leader of the council majority bloc, emerged from a two-hour, closed-door meeting to announce tentative agreement on the budget for 1985, which was approved by a 4-3 vote 4½ hours before the deadline.
A federal appeals court today ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acted within its power in issuing an operating license to the troubled Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California. A three-judge panel of the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in upholding the licensing, said, “We conclude that Diablo Canyon is ready to begin generating electric power for the citizens of California.” The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, which has fought the plant for years, contended in a lawsuit that Diablo Canyon should not have been licensed because its owner, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, was not required to have an emergency plan dealing with a nuclear accident and earthquake occurring simultaneously. Opponents say they will appeal the ruling. Judge Patricia Wald, while agreeing with the other two judges that the licensing was proper, issued a partial dissent stating the commission’s decision not to consider earthquakes in emergency planning for Diablo Canyon “exhibits a substantial lapse in rational decision-making.”
A Michigan white man, apparently angered at seeing a black patron of a topless bar talking with white dancers, forced the black man’s car off the road in a chase and died when his own vehicle struck a tree, the police said. “The fellow driving the car was just upset over some things that were just really nothing to it at all,” Sgt. Robert Barthold of the Westland police said today. The black man, who was not identified, was not injured. The white man, Theodore Temple, 26 years old, died Sunday morning after a four-mile, high-speed chase through the Detroit suburbs of Inkster and Westland, the police said. Sergeant Barthold said a companion of Mr. Temple’s had told the police, “Temple was hell-bent to knock the black man off the road because he had been seen talking to the white women.” Investigators said Mr. Temple apparently waited for the black man outside the bar, then followed him in his car, traveling at speeds up to 70 miles per hour before losing control of his car and skidding into a tree. He died six hours later in a hospital.
A Federal appeals court today gave the Navy approval to kill 1,500 goats that it says are a threat to endangered birds, lizards and plants on an island off southern California, where military exercises are held annually. Two judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected an appeal by the Animal Lovers Volunteer Association to spare goats on San Clemente Island while the case proceeds through the courts. Navy officials say they plan to kill the goats because they eat four species of rare plants, which are food for two species of endangered birds and a rare type of lizard.
Fire raced through an Evanston, Illinois, museum housing paintings, sculpture and centuries-old manuscripts, destroying millions of dollars worth of art, officials said. The Byer Museum blaze, which sent smoke billowing over much of Evanston, a north Chicago suburb, was reported about 2 pm by a passer-by, fire officials said. The museum houses a collection of 16th and 17th-Century art as well as modern works, authorities said. It opened in 1982.
With the help of Vietnam War veterans from across the country, a new, larger temple has risen from the ashes of a Buddhist shrine that was burned last New Year’s Eve by three angry veterans of the war. Linda Albright, caretaker of the destroyed shrine, said the congregation of the Mahasiddha Nyingmapa Center in rural Hawley, Massachusetts, holds no grudges against the three veterans who claimed they torched the shrine to protest the lack of mental health facilities for men who served in Vietnam. “We’re sort of happy the veterans got the publicity they sought,” she said. “Their plight is probably worse than ours.”
Dr. William C. DeVries burned the diary he had kept after he implanted the first permanent artificial heart in Dr. Barney B. Clark in 1982. The diary, Dr. DeVries said in an interview, contained his feelings about himself, about the patient and about the surgeon’s hurt over criticism of the artificial heart from colleagues whom he admired.
A Cuban pledge to take back 2,746 refugees now in United States jails and hospitals could be jeopardized by a court order, according to the Justice Department. Nonetheless, Federal District Judge Marvin Shoob in Atlanta refused to lift the order barring deportation of the unwanted refugees until their claims for political asylum could be heard.
A new divorce compensation law has taken effect in California. The statue, effective Tuesday, provides that if family income was used in the previous 10 years to finance education that “substantially enhanced” the earning capacity of one spouse, the other spouse may be repaid half the amount at the time of divorce.
A nighttime closing of Midway Airport to curtail noise has been proposed in Chicago. Business leaders strongly oppose the plan. Alverta E. Figari and her neighbors do not need a weatherman to tell them which way the wind is blowing. They know by the sounds from Midway Airport, one street to the west of Mrs. Figari’s 68-year-old house on Keating Street. “The last two nights I’ve slept like a baby because the wind was from the northeast,” Mrs. Figari said on Sunday afternoon. Mrs. Figari, who has lived in her house since 1935, is one of many residents who are in favor of a proposal to shut the airport at night to curtail noise.
A string of tornadoes ripped through the environs of Houston, injuring at least 28 persons, a half-dozen of them seriously, and the winds damaged Gilley’s Country-Western nightclub in suburban Pasadena. Snow and freezing rain made New Year’s Eve travel hazardous in the Midwest. Travelers’ advisories were posted for Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Illinois. Winter storm warnings were issued in Missouri and Wisconsin. Snowfall of up to eight inches was expected from central Kansas to northern Iowa. In Chicago, forecasters predicted six inches of snow and authorities urged New Year’s Eve revelers to stay off the streets. Freezing rain and sleet glazed highways in northwest Illinois and southern Wisconsin.
Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses his arm in a car crash.
Despite 6 weeks of negotiations, the Basic Agreement between the Major League Baseball players and owners that was reached after the 1981 strike expires. The players are now seeking increased contributions to their pension plan from the clubs’ additional television revenues, while the owners are hoping to slow the rapid growth of player salaries.
1984 Peach Bowl, Atlanta, Georgia: Virginia defeated Purdue 27–24 in the first bowl game in school history. Purdue jumped out to a 24–14 halftime lead, but Virginia scored the only points of the second half with a touchdown and two field goals in order to pull out the win. Purdue quarterback Jim Everett passed for 253 yards and three touchdowns, but the Boilermakers gained just 75 yards rushing and committed four turnovers in their first bowl loss. Purdue finished the season 7–5 and tied for second place in the Big Ten. Virginia finished 8–2–2.
1984 Bluebonnet Bowl: West Virginia beat Texas Christian, 31–14. West Virginia and TCU both scored touchdowns on their first drives, then traded punts. On their 3rd drive, West Virginia scored on a 62-yard touchdown pass to Gary Mullen. The Horned Frogs then suffered from the loss of All-American running back Kenneth Davis to a knee injury at the end of the 1st quarter, and they trailed 31–7 at halftime. TCU scored in the second half just once, as West Virginia’s 302 passing yard attack overwhelmed a team lacking a rush attack. However, Anthony Gulley finished with 150 yards passing for the Frogs, with touchdown passes to Dan Sharp and Keith Burnett. Willie Drewery had six catches and 152 yards for West Virginia.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1211.57 (+7.4)
Born:
Corey Crawford, Canadian NHL goaltender (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Chicago, 2013, 2015; NHL All-Star, 2015, 2017; Chicago Blackhawks), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Anthony Cannon, NFL linebacker (Detroit Lions), in Pensacola, Florida.
History Diaries 