Roman Catholics hurled gasoline bombs at police, and officers fired plastic bullets in reply during rioting at the end of a Londonderry march marking the 13th anniversary of Northern Ireland’s “Bloody Sunday.” Police said that rioters lobbed at least 50 gasoline bombs but that no serious casualties were reported. On January 30, 1972, British paratroops, saying they were fired on, killed 14 Catholics during an illegal civil rights march. An official inquiry later determined that none of the 14 had been armed.
Twins who had been the guinea pigs of a quack doctor at Auschwitz gathered at the site of the Nazi death camp in Poland to dramatize an appeal for the capture of Dr. Joseph Mengele. He is the most notorious of Nazi war criminals to have gone unjudged and unpunished and is believed to be in South America. Eight twins, accompanied by relatives and friends, took part in the appeal at Auschwitz. They were among 180 of Dr. Mengele’s twin subjects who survived his often lethal quackery. Among the them were Eva Kor, of Terre Haute, Indiana, who helped organize the visit, and her sister, Miriam Czaigher, from Israel.
Sweden has grounded most of its fighter planes because it suspects a recent crash may have been caused by sabotage, the daily Svenska Dagbladet reported today. The paper quoted an air force spokesman as saying that all Viggen aircraft had been grounded after technicians found that a crash last week was caused by loose screws and other metal objects in the plane’s guidance system. The spokesman said the same problem had been found in four other planes, adding, “We cannot rule out that the screws were placed by saboteurs.” He did not elaborate. The Viggen is a single-seat combat aircraft built by Saab. Early last year Sweden had around 250 of the planes in service, making up the bulk of its air defense and attack squadrons.
Four bombs exploded overnight on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, causing extensive damage but no injuries, the police said today. One damaged a cafe in Bastia, at the northern end of the island, and a bank and a court were hit in the southern town of Sart ene, where an unexploded bomb was found outside a Government building. The resort Propriano suffered power cuts after a transformer was damaged. The police said there was no immediate claim of responsibility. The separatist Corsican National Liberation Front has been waging a violent campaign to press its demand for independence from France. Six bombs exploded on the island the previous night.
Edgar F. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, said he has been invited by the Soviet government to visit Moscow. It would be the first such visit by a head of the international federation of Jewish organizations. “I believe I will be going to the Soviet Union toward the end of March,” BronfIman said in Vienna, where the congress’ governing board is meeting. He added that Austrian Chancellor Fred Sinowatz apologized to the congress over Defense Minister Friedhelm Frischenschlager’s welcoming ailing Nazi war criminal Walter Reder, a former SS major, back to Austria after 30 years of confinement in an Italian jail.
Former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who last week lost his $50-million libel lawsuit against TIME Inc., accused TIME magazine of publishing false reports about Israel for three decades. Time’s editor-in-chief, Henry A. Grunwald, who like Sharon appeared on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” again insisted that the magazine had not lied in reporting about Sharon’s alleged role in the 1982 massacre of hundreds of Muslim Palestinians by Christian militiamen. The jury that rejected Sharon’s libel suit “said not that we lied but that we made a mistake in good faith,” Grunwald said.
Egyptian and Israeli officials began trying to work out a solution today to the long-festering dispute over Taba, a 750-yard stretch of desert, but the two sides still appeared to be far apart. Conference sources said that Egyptian and Israeli delegates at the two- hour session at the Beersheba Desert Inn presented their countries’ longstanding positions about the beachfront desert strip, situated on the Gulf of Aqaba just south of Eilat. Both countries claim it as their own.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres told the Israeli Cabinet today that he believed Israel’s negotiations with Lebanon at Naqura had “reached an end” because of what he described as the “impossible” Lebanese demand that Israel produce a complete timetable for its withdrawal from Lebanon, the Cabinet secretary reported. The Lebanese have told Brian Urquhart, Under Secretary General of the United Nations, who has been shuttling between Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem, that they could not coordinate with the Israelis or invite United Nations troops in to prevent violence after Israel’s initial pullback until they had a timetable for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon.
King Hussein of Jordan, complaining of U.S. “double standards” in the Middle East, said the U.N. Security Council should resume an active role in searching for peace in the region. In an Amman interview, Hussein also urged that the United States, the Soviet Union and the Palestine Liberation Organization start talks to end a “state of paralysis” in peace efforts. He said that U.S.-Jordanian relations have been eroding since the 1967 Six-Day War and that the United States applies different standards to Israel than to Arab nations.
A Greek oil tanker was hit by a missile in the Persian Gulf near the Saudi Arabian coast. No injuries were reported. The missile was believed to have been fired from an Iranian warship, but Iran did not claim responsibility for the attack. Only hours earlier, Iraq said its warplanes attacked two ships south of Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal, but this report was not independently confirmed. Iran and Iraq have attacked dozens of ships since their border war began in 1980. In Athens, the Merchant Marine Ministry said a Greek tanker, the 97,688-ton Serifos, was struck as it was sailing in the Persian Gulf from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia. Ministry sources said it was apparently fired on by a warship. All 34 crew members were reported to be safe and had remained aboard to survey the damage, which initial reports indicated was not serious. An official said the attack took place in the middle of the Gulf, roughly level with the Saudi port of Jubail. Iraq says it has hit 24 Gulf targets so far this year. Six hits, including the raid on the Serifos, have been independently confirmed.
Indian security forces arrested more than 30 armed Sikh extremists in the northern border state of Jammu and Kashmir, the Press Trust of India reported. The rebels were intercepted during the last two weeks while trying to cross the border into Pakistan, the news agency said. In New Delhi, meanwhile, security was extremely heavy as Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi welcomed the leaders of Argentina, Greece, Sweden, Mexico, and Tanzania for a “summit meeting” on nuclear disarmament.
Many things caused the gas leak that killed at least 2,000 people and injured about 200,000 at the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, in central India, December 3. According to present and former employees, company technical documents and the Indian Government’s chief scientist, the leak was the result of operating errors, design flaws, maintenance failures and training deficiencies at the plant. A seven-week inquiry by reporters produced evidence of at least 10 violations of the standard procedures of both the parent corporation and its Indian-run subsidiary in Bhopal.
Vietnam has lived without you for a thousand years, and we can live without you for a thousand more,” a Foreign Ministry official told a group of visiting Americans recently. But diplomats and development experts from both Western and Eastern bloc nations, interviewed here on the eve of the arrival Monday of Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, tell a different story. Vietnam, they say, is desperately in need of Western assistance and wants to improve its relations with the United States.
A 23-member U.S. naval delegation led by Assistant Navy Secretary Melvyn R. Paisley arrived in Peking for arms talks that could result in China’s first major purchase of advanced American naval weapons and technology. Paisley’s group will discuss coastal defenses, particularly against submarines, the State Department said.
A Canadian Senate committee has urged an overhaul of the nation’s air-defense system, but the Defense Minister has suggested that Canada cannot afford all the panel’s recommendations. The Senate Committee on National Defense, in a report made public last Wednesday, described Canada’s air- defense system as obsolete and vulnerable.
Fifty-seven Nicaraguan rebels, defying their leaders, turned themselves in to authorities in the first reported surrenders under a government amnesty, military officials of the leftist Sandinista government said. A spokesman said 52 rebels of the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance surrendered last Thursday and Friday in the town of Rama-Kay in Zelaya province and five rebels from the Nicaraguan Democratic Force surrendered Saturday in Wiwili in Nueva Segovia province. Leaders of both U.S.-backed rebel groups rejected the amnesty, issued last week.
Four Roman Catholic priests who hold Sandinista Government posts in Nicaragua will be stripped of their priesthood if they do not reconsider their decisions to remain in public office, according to the leader of Nicaragua’s bishops. Bishop Pablo Antonio Vega, president of the Nicaraguan Bishops Conference, said last Wednesday that the four would be given 15 days to visit their superiors in a final effort to reach an agreement. As far as is known, none of the priests has yet sought such a meeting.
The Honduran Government may decide to stop supporting Nicaraguan anti-Government guerrillas if the United States Congress votes not to renew funding for the rebels later this year, according to several Honduran and Western officials here. Senior Honduran Army officers and Government officials are waiting to see how Congress votes before deciding on their policy toward the rebels. But the subject is already the source of emotional debate within the Honduran military and of sensitive negotiations between Honduras and the United States, according to officials here.
Pope John Paul II continued his tour of Venezuela by offering masses attended by more than a million people in Caracas and Maracaibo. His sermon in Caracas strongly condemned contraception, sterilization, divorce, abortion and euthanasia.
The brief and secret military mission of the space shuttlecraft Discovery came to a safe conclusion this afternoon with a smooth landing at the Kennedy Space Center. The five astronauts, their undisclosed satellite-launching mission apparently accomplished, returned to earth as they had left Thursday, in absolute silence. All communications between the winged spaceship and the ground were blacked out to the public. Air Force officials declined to comment on whether the three-day mission had been shorter than planned, or exactly as planned. Neither would officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. But they did say that the shuttle had experienced “no performance problems” in flight. After circling the earth 47 times, the astronauts steered the Discovery to a touchdown on the lagoon-fringed runway here at 4:23 P.M. The mission’s duration was 3 days, 1 hour and 33 minutes, the briefest flight since the initial shuttle tests in 1981.
The crewmen looked spry and healthy when they stepped out of the shuttle and gave its landing gear and heat-shielding tiles a quick inspection. But, unlike past missions, the astronauts had no public welcoming ceremonies before they were whisked away to their homes in Houston. Nor were there any post-landing news conferences. The Discovery’s crew members were Captain Thomas K. Mattingly of the Navy, Lieutenant Colonel Loren J. Shriver of the Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel James F. Buchli of the Marine Corps and Major Ellison S. Onizuka and Major Gary E. Payton, both of the Air Force. The space agency did not announce the Discovery’s imminent return until shortly after midnight. This was in keeping with NASA’s arrangement with the Defense Department to withhold all information on the mission duration until 16 hours before the planned landing.
President Reagan spends the day at the White House writing and answering mail.
Many people may pay higher taxes on their 1984 income because of stiffer rules that will make a number of deductions harder to claim. There will be a few new tax benefits, the principal one being a 5 percent across-the- board reduction in tax rates, representing the final installment of the 1981 Reagan tax cuts. But savings from the rate reduction will be more than offset by new restrictions on a host of tax benefits. Especially vulnerable are middle- and upper-income Social Security recipients, people who purchased cars or computers since last summer with the intent of writing off part of the cost as a business expense and investors in tax shelters.
The head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference charged in Atlanta that President Reagan has used a “wall of presidential immunity to deride and berate” black civil rights leaders but has failed to meet with them “for an honest exchange of views.” The Rev. Joseph Lowery, the black president of the civil rights organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called on Reagan to meet with blacks for “an honest exchange of views” after the President’s comments Saturday that suggested some black leaders are seeking to create racial disunity.
More than a dozen vigils were held in the United States and Japan to mark the 34th anniversary of nuclear bomb testing in Nevada, demonstration organizers said in Cedar City, Utah. Songs, prayers and speeches highlighted the vigils, sponsored by Citizens Call, a Cedar City-based organization formed to aid the victims of fallout radiation from nuclear testing at Yucca Flats, Nevada, 150 miles west of the Utah city.
Three Chicago teenagers have been charged with using home computers to make free long-distance telephone calls estimated to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, authorities said. Police spokesmen said the youths have been charged with theft of service-a felony-regarding the calls. They have also been charged with illegal use of a computer, a misdemeanor. The teen-age hackers, whose identities police did not release, range in age from 14 to 15, police said.
The reputed leader of the anti-Castro terrorist group Omega 7 faces trial today in federal court in Miami on conspiracy charges in the bombings of the Mexican and Venezuelan consulates. Eduardo Arocena and co-defendant Milton Badia, former arms dealer, are accused of conspiring to possess and manufacture illegal weapons. Arocena was sentenced last October in New York to life plus 35 years in prison for the 1980 slaying of Cuban diplomat Felix Garcia and for masterminding 25 bombings in a 10-year terrorist campaign by Omega 7.
Approximately 10 percent of federal criminal defendants awaiting trial are arrested, either for committing new crimes, violating the conditions of their release or failing to appear for trial, the Justice Department said in a report made public today. The department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, using figures gathered from 13 Federal courts that handled misdemeanor and felony cases in 1979, also found that the longer a defendant waits for a trial, the greater the likelihood the defendant will commit a crime. In a statement released to accompany the report, Attorney General William French Smith said, “There is unconscionable looseness in the system, which manifests itself in countless preventable murders, rapes and muggings.” But William Rhodes, who wrote the report, said in an interview that only 4.7 percent of Ffederal defendants awaiting trial are arrested for new felonies.
Remsen Wolff, a 44-year-old photographer who was held for two days for questioning in a series of disappearances and slayings in Fort Worth, Texas, was released from jail Saturday night, said a police spokesman, Doug Clarke. No charges were filed against Mr. Wolff, who had been arrested Thursday in connection with the rape last May of a 24-year-old woman, Mr. Clarke said. Mr. Wolff, a native of New York City, was arrested after the woman had identified him from pictures Wednesday, Mr. Clarke said. The police decided they did not have enough evidence to file formal charges of rape, he said. Since September 29, five young women have disappeared in Fort Worth. Four of the five have been found slain. The fifth is still missing.
State residency rules for lawyers are being tested by a lawyer who lives in Vermont and wants to practice in New Hampshire, which admits only state residents to its bar. Kathryn Piper has been fighting the New Hampshire requirement for five years. Her case, which has gone to the United States Supreme Court, is considered the most important challenge to date against residency requirements, which more than 40 states have imposed in various forms.
Forty-nine states require automobile safety seats for small children, but federal officials say the devices are used only about half the time-and then usually improperly. Safety experts also say the design of the child safety seats, their complicated instructions for use, and the fact that most cars are not made to use the seats all contribute to the problem. The National Transportation Safety Board has scheduled a symposium to discuss the matter.
A tentative settlement was reached today in an 11-day strike by 1,600 employees of the nation’s only Corvette sports car plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, a union official said. The proposed three-year agreement between the General Motors Corporation and United Auto Workers Local 2164 was approved by negotiators at 3:30 A.M., and a vote was set for Monday, said Eldon Renaud, president of the U.A.W. local. Mr. Renaud refused to discuss details of the package but said it deals primarily with classifications and job assignments according to seniority.
Meanwhile, in Wentzville, Missouri, a tentative settlement was reached Saturday in a 12-day strike over work rules by 3,100 U.A.W. members at a General Motors plant, company and union officials said. U.A.W. Local 2250 walked off the job January 15, halting production of front- wheel drive Buicks and Oldsmobiles, in a dispute over a proposed pool of special workers, which the company said would work efficiently, but the union said would weaken the seniority system. A ratification vote is scheduled for Monday or Tuesday.
Three teenage computer experts face charges that they used their home computers to cheat telephone companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of service. Officials of Illinois Bell Telephone Company, who have not finished adding up their losses, speculate the youths began by tapping into long-distance lines of local businesses. From there, they started using computers to bypass telephone billing systems. The youths also raided the American Telephone and Telegraph Company’s teleconferencing network, permitting up to 59 parties to communicate, as well as other long-distance carriers like Sprint and MCI, officials said. The young computer experts, all 15 years old, face juvenile theft charges. Court hearings are scheduled to begin next month.
Homer’s “Iliad” and the Trojan War seem more plausible to scholars than they did as recently as a decade ago because of new linguistic and archeological evidence. Professor Calvert Watkins, a linguist at Harvard, recently came across what he believes is the opening line of an epic song about Troy, written in the Trojans’ own language more than 500 years before Homer.
Inflation in medical costs slowed in 1984 for the third consecutive year, but was still about 50 percent above the overall consumer price index. The index for all items rose exactly 4 percent last year, while the cost of medical care increased 6.1 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A bureau economist said there had been “a substantial drop in the rate of increase” for physician fees, apparently because many doctors had frozen their fees last March at the suggestion of the American Medical Association.
Slow readers beware. The Missouri State Legislature is considering a proposal that could mean a five-year prison sentence for people who don’t return library books on time. Two bills concerning overdue library books are pending in the Legislature. One, backed by the Missouri Library Association, would make it a felony for book borrowers to keep materials worth more than $150 out for more than 60 days past their due date. Violation could mean a maximum five-year sentence and $5,000 fine. The other bill would make it a misdemeanor punishable by a 30-day jail term and a fine of up to $300. The director of the Kansas City Public Library, Dan Bradbury, says 27,000 books and items worth more than $250,000 were not returned last year. “We’re losing a quarter of our budget on non-returns,” he said.
Wintry weather hit the Plains as far south as Texas with snow and a mixture of rain and sleet that made travel a hazard from Illinois and Indiana to Oklahoma and Arkansas. Temperatures dipped into the teens along the Southeast coast and tumbled into the 20s in northern Florida. Asheville, North Carolina, set a record with a low of 7 and Savannah, Georgia, had a record 17. There was light snow across the Great Lakes region and central New England.
“Doug Henning & His World of Magic” closes at Lunt-Fontanne NY after 60 performances.
Mark Mckoy cycles world record 50m hurdles indoor (5.25).
NFL Pro Bowl, Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, Hawaii: AFC beats NFC, 22-14; MVP: Mark Gastineau, New York Jets, Defensive End.
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