President Reagan was conciliatory toward Moscow in opening his first nationally-televised evening news conference since his re-election. President Reagan said today that he hoped the agreement with the Soviet Union on holding arms talks would produce “a new dialogue” and better relations between the two countries. Opening his first televised news conference since re-election with a statement praising the accord, Mr. Reagan said he wanted 1985, as it unfolded, to “emerge as one of dialogue and negotiations, a year that leads to better relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.” Mr. Reagan said he hoped the improved climate brought on by arms talks would also lead to warmer relations on other issues, such as trade and handling of regional conflicts. He declined an invitation to describe the new outlook as “detente,” a word he has often derided. He asserted that the United States would be “flexible, patient and determined” in future talks, and he called on Moscow to reciprocate “to help give new life and positive results to that process of dialogue.”
A Soviet shift on arms control talks surprised Western diplomats in Moscow. The Soviet press today portrayed the agreement between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko as a success, describing the accord to open new arms talks as a victory for Moscow. The Government newspaper Izvestia even allowed itself a moment of jubilation, exclaiming, “The talks are on!” Six months ago Western diplomats were writing off the possibility that the Kremlin might return to arms negotiations. They said the Soviet Union’s aging leaders were too insecure, too set in their ways, to take initiatives.
President Reagan meets with Secretary of State George Shultz to discuss the Secretary’s recent meeting in Geneva.
European leaders today welcomed the United States-Soviet agreement to resume negotiations on arms control, but they sought to stress that the road to positive results would be a long one. The general feeling in most European capitals seemed to be that the talks had accomplished more, in a remarkably short period, than anyone had thought they could. The Geneva meeting has dominated news coverage, particularly in West Germany, which has anxiously sought a warming of Soviet-American relations to spur its faltering efforts to improve ties with its Eastern European neighbors. The attitude of the 16-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization was summed up by a NATO official in Brussels who said the talks had brought “all that could be hoped for,” though there was little agreement on substantive issues.
A key defendant on trial in Torun, Poland for killing an activist priest described the ranks of the secret police today as frustrated, bitter and demoralized because they were prevented from moving against Roman Catholic priests who collaborated with the Solidarity underground. In an abrupt half-hour digression, the witness, Grzegorz Piotrowski, a former captain, said that once when the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, the pro-Solidarity priest he is charged with murdering, was released from a day’s detention “I saw adult men cry like children.” He also affirmed that he had told pretrial investigators “there would be no trouble in obtaining volunteers if he issued a call for police willing to maltreat the activist clergyman.” This segment of testimony centering on the defendant’s charge that the government was soft on the church and that political authorities tied the hands of the secret police made it appear at times that it was the murdered priest and even the Minister of Interior, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, who were on trial rather then Mr. Piotrowski and three other dismissed employees of the state security department that monitored religious groups and minorities.
An early-morning fire raced through one wing of a state-run home for the elderly in Grandvilliers, France, killing 24 residents and forcing 156 patients out into the sub-zero darkness, police reported. About 100 firefighters, hampered by freezing hoses, fought the blaze until morning. Police said the fire started after a frozen pipe burst, spilling water onto electrical wires, which short-circuited. The town is about 60 miles northwest of Paris.
Vacationers on the French Riviera found up to 15 inches of snow along the palm-fringed coast, and the holy water froze in West Germany’s Cologne Cathedral as a cold wave that has left 111 people dead gripped Europe and North Africa for the sixth day. New snow, some mixed with sleet and rain, fell on central and southern regions of Italy, where at least 15 people have died since Sunday in weather-related incidents. Thirteen airports were closed in Italy. In France, where the government ordered Paris subway stations to stay open to shelter the homeless from the killing chill, 36 people were reported dead from the cold.
An Italian policeman was shot dead today in a town south of Rome, and a group claiming to be part of the Red Brigades took responsibility. The claim of responsibility could not be immediately confirmed. Italian officials have expressed concern that remnants of the Red Brigades might resume their activities. The slain policeman, identified as Ottavio Conte, 28 years old, was part of a special antiterrorist unit. The police said two or three gunmen in the town of Tor Vaianica had fired six shots at him, four of which struck him in the head and the stomach. The gunmen escaped in a car.
The High Court in London has taken temporary custody of a 5-day-old girl, the first child known to have been born in Britain to a woman who was paid to serve as a surrogate mother. The baby’s father and his childless wife are wealthy Americans, according to The Daily Star. The newspaper said the couple had paid $7,475 to the surrogate mother, Kim Cotton, 28, who was artificially inseminated. The custody decision by the High Court’s Family Division was disclosed Tuesday night by an attorney for the London borough of Barnet. Today a High Court judge, Sir John Latey, limited news coverage of the case, banning reports that might help identify the father. The Daily Star said the father’s attorneys had applied to have the baby made a ward of the High Court in hope that the father could prove that he can provide a good home for the child. The Barnet council obtained a lower-court order Friday, a few hours after the birth, preventing Mrs. Cotton from giving her unnamed daughter to the childless couple. The council said it had sought the order because of uncertainty over the surrogacy’s legality.
Israeli jets bombed suspected Palestinian guerrilla positions today in the Syrian- controlled sector of the Bekaa region of Lebanon, the Israeli authorities and Lebanese radio stations said. In Tel Aviv, the Israeli military command said its planes hit a command post near the town of Al Marj, some 25 miles east of Beirut, that is used for staging guerrilla raids against Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon. Last year Israel made 16 bombing raids on Lebanese sites thought to be Palestinian or Shiite Muslim guerrilla bases.
An Arab university released photographs and eyewitness testiarmy’s claim that its soldiers fired mony that disputed the Israeli in self-defense during a demonstration in which an Arab student was killed. The 24-page report by Birzeit University, entitled “No Mercy,” said the soldiers fired telescopic rifles to break up a November 21 demonstration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank supporting Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat. An Israeli military source denied the report’s charge that the soldiers fired without warning.
Vietnamese military action along the border with Cambodia and Thailand was deplored by the United States. The United States today “categorically” condemned Vietnamese military action along the Thai-Cambodian border and offered to speed up military aid to Thailand if the Bangkok Government should request it. In a statement issued by the State Department, the United States charged Vietnamese forces with “unprovoked and hostile” incursions into Thai territory opposite the northwestern sector of Cambodia. The statement said that such incursions, along with attacks on Cambodian rebels operating in that area, constituted “violations of the accepted norms of decent international behavior.”
North Korea abruptly canceled economic and Red Cross talks with South Korea that had been set for later this month, citing as “a provocative act” the war games that the south plans to conduct with U.S. forces starting in February. But the north kept the door open by proposing that the two sides send vice premiers to the truce village of Panmunjom before January 17 to discuss ways of getting the dialogue back on track.
South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan ruled out any constitutional change to permit direct presidential elections in South Korea, as demanded by the opposition to restore full democracy. In an annual state of the nation address to Parliament, Chun said his 1980 constitution provides for the “blossoming of genuine democracy” by banning presidents from seeking a second term after seven years in office.
The Philippine Defense Minister warned today that the Communist insurgency in this country was becoming increasingly bold and effective. He said a “serious upsurge” in rebel activities resulted in the deaths of 2,000 civilians and military personnel last year. The Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, said the subversive and terrorist operations of the Communist insurgents “constitute the most formidable threat to our national security today and will continue to do so.”
Nicaragua’s new National Assembly was installed today, the first elected body to take office since the Sandinista- led revolution in 1979. In a newly redecorated hall, the 96 representatives filed to the podium, one by one, to receive their official credentials. But even among the legislators, there was no consensus on whether the new Government structure will be able to improve life for the country’s three million people. President-elect Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who is to be inaugurated Thursday, has warned Nicaraguans that they face continuing warfare and intensifying economic hardships. Mr. Ortega and the ruling Sandinista Front will dominate the elected Government, but the opposition holds one-third of the Assembly seats. Opposition representatives have said they will immediately challenge a number of key Government programs.
The Honduran Government said today that it would pay an American businessman for land it seized for construction in July 1983 of a United States-funded military base used to train troops from El Salvador. The base was built on 7,400 acres of a 14,000-acre ranch on the Atlantic coast that belonged for more than 20 years to Temistocles Ramirez de Arellano, a native of Puerto Rico. Gustavo Adolfo Alfaro, Minister of Agrarian Reform, said the government “is obliged to pay,” but he did not say how much. He said officials were discussing moving the base.
To an outsider it appears to be sadness, sharpened by fear, that lines the faces of Indian peasants who can be seen bent double under loads of firewood and dried corn in the highlands of Guatemala, where the horse and wheeled vehicles are still luxuries. The Indians backed the losing side in a bitter guerrilla war here and have paid the cost. As the Guatemalan Army mops up the remnants of Marxist rebel units in its fourth year of a major counterinsurgency drive, the peasant villagers of the region are trying to rebuild their shattered lives. “They will pretend any boss is a good guy,” said a relief worker who has dealt with the Indians of northern Quiche Province in recent months. “What they’re doing right now is surviving.”
Just days after denouncing the Israeli airlift of Ethiopian Jews, Ethiopia has accepted a $250,000 Israeli shipment of food and medicine for its famine victims, relief officials said. The Israeli consignment, consisting of half a ton of antibiotics, 55 tons of food, 800 tents and 10 field kitchens, will leave the Red Sea port of Eilat by freighter on January 27 and arrive at Assab, Ethiopia, two days later. Asked to comment on the timing of the approval, Israeli Red Cross President Arieh Harrell said: “I have no comment. I am only very happy that they did it.”
The South African authorities today turned down a request by Senator Edward M. Kennedy to meet Nelson Mandela, the imprisoned nationalist figure who is regarded by many black people as their leader. The announcement, by the Justice Ministry, was made shortly after Senator Kennedy, on the fourth day of a visit to South Africa, talked for an hour with Mr. Mandela’s wife, Winnie, in the township set aside for blacks outside this remote and conservative white settlement 250 miles south of Johannesburg. Mrs. Mandela has been banished here for more than seven years and has been a “banned” person in South Africa for 23 years. Under the terms of her ban, Mrs. Mandela may not meet socially with more than one person, other than her family, at a time and may not travel beyond the limits of Brandfort. Neither may she be quoted in the South African press. Her husband has been jailed for over two decades.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy visited the black village of Brandfort, South Africa, for an emotional meeting with Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela. The Massachusetts Democrat hugged and kissed her, telling reporters later that she “is a source of inspiration for people all over the world who care about freedom…”
[Ed: Well, she is a murderous bitch, so of course you like her, Teddy. Did she offer you a necklace?]
President Reagan holds his 27th Press Conference. Adjustments in Social Security cost-of-living increases would be considered by the White House if it was faced with an overwhelming Congressional mandate, President Reagan said at his news conference. But Mr. Reagan stressed he would strongly resist any proposal for a tax increase or cuts in the military budget to reduce the budget deficit. Reagan said tonight that he would consider adjustments in Social Security cost-of-living increases if the Administration was faced with an overwhelming Congressional mandate. Mr. Reagan, in a nationally televised news conference, stressed that he would strongly resist any proposal for a tax increase or reductions in the military budget to reduce the Federal budget deficit. “I think a tax increase will be counterproductive,” he said, suggesting it might bring on another recession. At another point, Mr. Reagan observed: “Defense is not a program in which we can determine what we want to spend. That is dictated by outside influences.”
The nomination of Donald P. Hodel, the Energy Secretary, to head the Interior Department is expected to be proposed by President Reagan, according to White House officials. They also said that a plan to merge the two departments would soon be considered by Mr. Reagan. The officials, who discussed the proposed changes on condition that they not be identified, said Mr. Hodel’s selection was assured whether or not Mr. Reagan decided to recommend the merger to Congress. They said the President had yet to consider the merger plan, which they acknowledged could face an uphill battle in Congress. Mr. Reagan pledged in the 1980 campaign to abolish the Energy Department to streamline the federal government. Mr. Hodel, 49 years old, was Under Secretary of the Interior when James G. Watt was Secretary, and he later became Energy Secretary. Mr. Hodel would replace William P. Clark, a longtime Reagan confidant, who notified the President last week that he would return to California in several months.
The government approved regulations allowing Medicare to pay health maintenance organizations in advance, a change expected to draw at least 200,000 elderly persons into the prepaid medical care programs over the next year. The Department of Health and Human Services announced the regulations, saying the new provisions should expand care available to Medicare recipients while reducing the cost to the federal government.
Former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, who last month decided not to run for Democratic national chairman because he could not get the unified support of Democratic elected officials, has changed his mind and plans to announce his candidacy Saturday. Six others are already seeking the job. Sanford’s partisans are counting on his getting strong support from Southern members of the Democratic National Committee in the February 1 election.
The Justice Department filed papers in federal court in Atlanta saying the government plans to deport all 2,746 Mariel Cuban refugees who were in U.S. prisons or mental hospitals on November 25, including those previously approved for parole. The documents, explaining the deportations planned under a U.S.-Cuban agreement, were filed in answer to questions from attorneys for the 1,500 Cubans being held at the federal prison in Atlanta. The Cubans’ lawyers contend that any inmates already deemed safe enough to be paroled cannot be dangerous enough to send back to Cuba.
The jobless rate edged up slightly in December, to 7.1 percent from 7.0 percent, despite a solid gain in the number of Americans working, the Labor Department reported. The report is the latest sign, analysts said, that the autumn lull in the economy was only a pause and did not portend a recession.
Darryl Cabey, whose spine was severed when Bernhard Hugo Goetz shot him on a subway train last month, briefly stopped breathing, but was revived and placed on a respirator, according to a spokesman for St. Vincent’s Hospital.
Prosecutors asked for a week’s delay in a court hearing for confessed New York subway gunman Bernhard H. Goetz so they can present additional evidence to a grand jury. Goetz, 37, said nothing during his brief appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court. A grand jury is considering an indictment against Goetz on charges of attempted murder and illegal weapons possession. He is charged with shooting four teen-agers who harassed him on a subway train Dec. 22 and asked him for $5. One of the four has slipped into a coma and was listed in critical condition.
William J. Schroeder now walks up to two blocks a day through hospital corridors and has lost 17 pounds with diet and exercise, 45 days after receiving an artificial heart, a hospital spokesman said. Schroeder, 52, weighed more than 200 pounds at one point after the operation but now weighs 183. He remains in satisfactory condition at Humana Hospital Audubon, in Louisville, Kentucky, where he received a Jarvik-7 plastic and metal pump on November 25 and suffered three minor strokes on December 13.
Roosevelt Green, convicted of murdering a convenience store clerk, was executed early today in Georgia’s electric chair. Mr. Green, 28 years old, was pronounced dead at 12:28 AM, said David Jordan, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Offender Rehabilitation. The prisoner chose his mother, Annie B. Green of Roosevelt, New York, to be among the witnesses. “Goodbye, Mother,” Mr. Green said before guards placed a leather mask over his face, and she lifted her hand to acknowledge him. Mr. Green was sentenced to die for the killing in 1976 of Teresa Carol Allen, who was abducted from the convenience store in Cochran where she worked. A co-defendant, Carzell Moore, 32 years old, was also sentenced to death, and is appealing. Before being put to death at the state Diagnostic and Classification Center near here, Mr. Green said: “I would like to say tonight that God is with me and I hope that God is with all of you tonight. What you people is about to witness is a grave injustice. I am about to die for a murder that I did not commit, that someone else committed.”
A 24-year veteran of the police force today became the first black to head the Miami Police Department, which has had three chiefs in less than a year. Clarence Dickson, a 50-year-old assistant police chief who is the department’s highest-ranking black, was appointed by Acting City Manager Randolph Rosencrantz, who said the new chief had “a reputation for being fair.” Mr. Dickson, who is to assume his duties Monday, replaces former Chief Herbert Breslow, who resigned last week. Police Chief Kenneth Harms, whom Mr. Breslow replaced, was dismissed last January 27. Relations between the police and blacks in Miami have been tense in recent years. The worst outbreak of violence occurred in May 1980, when 18 people were killed after a white jury in Tampa acquitted four former county policemen in the fatal beating of a black insurance man from Miami.
Lady Bird Johnson’s pet program to beautify the nation’s highways is losing its luster, a victim of money cutbacks and bureaucratic indifference, the government reported. The result is that since the former First Lady’s tree-planting spree spawned the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, many of the nation’s federally funded interstate highways are still studded with billboards, according to a General Accounting Office report. In fact, 30,000 new billboards were to be erected legally in 1983 alone, the report said.
Texas’s regulation of nursing care is the target of an amended suit. Lawyers representing relatives of an 84- year-old woman who died in a nursing home in 1982 charged that she suffered from bedsores so severe that they were infested with maggots. The amended suit says the state was negligent in investigating complaints.
Evangeline Gouletas-Carey, wife of former Governor Hugh L. Carey of New York, and her brother, Nicholas Gouletas, agreed last week to pay an estimated $953,000 in back real estates taxes owed on a Chicago apartment building. In a letter to Cook County Assessor Thomas C. Hynes, the owners said they would pay the 1983 tax for the building as soon as they received a bill. The building, Lake Point Towers, is on the city’s famous “Gold Coast.” In 1983, the Gouletases obtained a $953,000 tax break by filing a tax assessment complaint stating they did not own the land under the lakefront building. However, they had purchased the land for $20 million that year. Chief Deputy Assessor Arthur J. Murphy called the omission a “misrepresentation of facts,” and said the value of the 879-unit apartment building had risen to about $52 million. The Gouletases, who already pay an estimated $2.4 million in taxes on the building, said last week that they would pay the taxes but under protest.
New figures from The College Board show that black youngsters are continuing to improve their Scholastic Aptitude Exam scores faster than whites, but still remain far below national averages. The mean verbal score for the 71,174 blacks taking the college entrance test during the 1983-84 school year was 342 — a three-point gain from a year earlier, but still 84 points below the national mean of 426. The mean math score for black students was up four points to 373, far below the national mean of 471. White students rose to 445 from 443 in the verbal section, and to 487 from 484 in math.
The worst duck-hunting season in recent memory ends today in the table- flat prairie of southeast Arkansas, one of the largest bird wintering habitats in North America. Normal migrating patterns have been disrupted by a long drought in Canada, unseasonably warm weather in the northern United States, widespread flooding in Arkansas and the conversion of a key marsh to farmland.
An advance in research on a brain disease was reported by researchers at the University of California in San Francisco. They said that a protein previously found in a brain disease of animals had been detected in the brains of two patients who died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, one of the most mysterious known human diseases.
Koko, a gorilla that researchers say has a vocabulary estimated at more than 500 sign-language words, cried after it was told that its pet cat had been killed, officials said Tuesday. The 12-year-old female gorilla, which has appeared on television and has been the subject of magazine and newspaper articles about its ability to communicate, asked for a cat last year through sign language and got it. She was told recently that the cat had died, said Penny Patterson, director of the Gorilla Foundation, who taught Koko to talk. The tailless cat, which Koko had named “All Ball” in sign language and often held or carried around, disappeared December 21. The next morning a volunteer found the cat beside the road, apparently the victim of a passing car. Miss Patterson says the foundation plans to give Koko another cat soon.
August Wilson’s stage drama “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, starring Theresa Merritt, and Charles S. Dutton, closes at the Cort Theatre, NYC, after 276 performances.
The San Diego Padres sign free-agent reliever Tim Stoddard to a 3-year, $1.5 million contract. Stoddard was 10–6 with 7 saves for the Cubs last season.
The Calgray Flames set an NHL-record 264th regular season game streak without being shut-out.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1202.74.
Born:
Jade Eshete, American television and film actress (“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”), in Brooklyn, New York, New York.
Ken Cloude, MLB pitcher (Seattle Mariners), in Baltimore, Maryland.
Conrad Bolston, NFL defensive tackle (Minnesota Vikings, Green Bay Packers), in Burtonsville, Maryland.
Died:
Robert Mayer, 105, German-born businessman and philanthropist.
History Diaries 