The editor in chief of the Soviet party daily Pravda confirmed tonight that Konstantin U. Chernenko, the Soviet leader, is ill, but said he remains in charge of the country and the Communist Party. “I have to tell you that Comrade Chernenko is ill,” the editor, Viktor G. Afanasyev, told an Italian journalist, Enzo Biagi, in an interview over a telecommunications link between Rome and Moscow that was broadcast on Italian state television. “I am not in a position to say what the gravity of his illness is as I am not a doctor,” the Pravda editor said. “However, I know that he is still in charge of the party and the country despite being ill.” In recent weeks, Soviet officials have said openly that Mr. Chernenko is ill, but they have not disclosed the nature or degree of his malady. According to Western medical opinion, Mr. Chernenko appears to suffer from emphysema.
More than 1,500 police and troops evicted 150 anti-nuclear demonstrators from an abandoned Royal Air Force base that is being readied to house 64 of Britain’s 160 cruise missiles by 1988. The squatters were ordered to tear down the ramshackle camp they set up three years ago. The troops then quickly erected a 6-foot-high, barbed-wire fence around the 7½-mile perimeter of the Molesworth base, 70 miles north of London. Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine personally ordered the eviction operation to prevent delays in construction of the new facilities.
West German officials said today that Italy planned to join in discussions on how to fight terrorism in Western Europe. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Italy’s Interior Minister, Luigi Scalfaro, would come here next week for talks with Interior Minister Friedrich Zimmermann. Italy now heads the 10-nation European Common Market and Mr. Scalfaro discussed the antiterrorist program recently with France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Bulgaria and the United States exchanged accusations today over drug smuggling, with the Bulgarians charging that the Americans, for political reasons, had halted talks aimed at cooperative control of narcotics and arms traffic. The United States responded with a statement by Ambassador Melvyn Levitsky, saying that the Bulgarian Government had failed to move against known foreign narcotics dealers residing in Bulgaria. At a news conference in the modernistic Palace of Culture, Bulgaria also disclosed that it was preparing a trial in absentia against Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turk who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, on charges of slandering Bulgarian nationals.
About 100 Jewish survivors who were brutalized in the Auschwitz medical laboratories of Dr. Josef Mengele have gathered in Jerusalem for an international hearing. The meeting, attended by twins, dwarfs and others, is part of worldwide ceremonies marking the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp. The hearing is designed to draw attention to the crimes of the Nazi doctor, who remains at large.
Israeli forces, facing rising attacks in southern Lebanon, conducted major raids on several Shiite Muslim villages that have been centers of armed resistance. By this afternoon, the Israelis had surrounded most of the village of Burj al Shemali and an adjacent Palestinian refugee camp, according to sources in the south reached by telephone. This morning they also entered Marakah, one of the most stubborn centers of Shiite opposition. All are outside the southern port city of Tyre.
Iraq said its forces “totally crushed” an Iranian attack in the central sector of the war front today, killing 432 soldiers and wounding many others. It did not specify the combat area. The military communique about the attack also said that Iraqi jet fighters, helicopter gunships and artillery attacked Iranian positions across the 730-mile battlefront. The official Iranian press agency, quoting a military communique issued in Teheran, reported that an Iraqi warplane bombed Bijan, a rural area in the central sector, early today, but that no casualties or damage were reported.
The official Iranian press agency, monitored in Cyprus, said one person died and two were wounded when an Iranian Government building in Tehran was attacked with grenades today. Meanwhile, an Iranian bank in Frankfurt, West Germany, was set afire today, and 14 people were injured. Two groups opposed to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian leader, said they were responsible for the attacks.
Soviet and Indian officials here declined today to confirm or deny a report that a Soviet citizen “attached to the embassy” had been expelled from New Delhi, along with an East German and a Polish diplomat. If confirmed, the report in The Indian Express would implicate Moscow directly for the first time in what appears to have been a major espionage ring operating here. The Express quoted intelligence sources as saying that a second Soviet national, also apparently an official, was suspected of involvement in the espionage ring, but did not name either person. It said the expulsion was ordered after a businessman named Ashok Jaithka, who exports clothing to the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc nations, had spoken of their involvement to interrogators.
With Vietnamese troops continuing to press Cambodian rebels, five of the six countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summoned Soviet Ambassadors today to ask Moscow to stop backing the Vietnamese forces, according to the Thai Foreign Ministry. The coordinated protest came as four Vietnamese divisions were reported to be trying to close in on the major military center of the Khmer Rouge at Phnom Malai in Cambodia, near the Thai border. Thai military officers said the Vietnamese bombarded a string of rebel bases, while moving tanks and armored personnel carriers closer to the Khmer Rouge headquarters.
The United States Government is holding up a $23 million contribution to the United Nations Fund for Population Activities because of American concerns that it might go to support forced abortions in China, a spokesman for the United States Agency for International Development said today. Kate Semerad, the spokesman, said the agency’s Administrator, M. Peter McPherson, had postponed payment pending “a careful review” of the United Nations program. United Nations officials have denied that the United Nations funds supported coercive birth-control practices.
Australia’s Prime Minister said today that he had told the United States that because of a revolt in his own party, he would probably have to renege on a pledge to allow American planes to use Australian bases to monitor an MX missile test. As a result of this unexpected disclosure, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said this afternoon that the United States had decided to monitor the test of the latest American intercontinental ballistic missile “without the use of Australian support arrangements.’
Prime Minister Robert Hawke apparently startled American officials when he told them on his arrival here Tuesday night and again today that he would have to cancel the agreement to provide Australian base facilities for American surveillance planes because of a split within his governing Labor Party. Australia, New Zealand and the United States are members of a 34-year old South Pacific alliance known as Anzus. Australia’s unwillingness to associate with the testing of the missile coin cided with a decision by New Zealand’s Prime Minister, David Lange, not to permit an American warship to pay a port call to his country because of his Labor Party Government’s antinu clear policy. As a result of that decision, the United States and Australia canceled naval exercises scheduled to take place with New Zealand next month off Australia.
Canada’s federal environment minister announced that an agreement has been reached with the nation’s seven easterly provinces to reduce acid rain by limiting sulfur dixoide emissions east of the province of Saskatchewan. Suzanne Blais-Grenier said the federal and provincial governments have agreed to finance the necessary measures to curtail the emissions to 44 pounds per hectare — 2.47 acres — per year by 1994.
Members of the opposition National Action Party in the Mexican border city of Piedras Negras occupied the burned-out city hall, and two people were injured in the latest protest against alleged election fraud. Authorities said that about 1,000 party demonstrators, who say Dr. Eleazar Cobos was robbed of victory in the December mayoral balloting, also blocked traffic for 2½ hours across the international bridge between Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass, Texas.
A shopkeepers’ strike to protest government austerity programs including a devaluation of the peso spread through parts of the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo, already virtually paralyzed by private-transport operators who shut down because of huge increases in fuel costs. The main business district was virtually deserted, and widespread closings were reported in other cities.
There is no need for papal diplomacy in Central America now, Pope John Paul II said as he returned home from Latin America. Pope John Paul II, returning to the Vatican after a 12-day visit to South America and the Caribbean, said it is unlikely that the Vatican will play any role in mediating Central American conflicts. The pontiff’s comments seemed to contradict remarks from San Salvador’s Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, who said in an interview with the Catholic radio station in El Salvador that “the Pope has his eyes on Central America and has said he is prepared, if necessary, not only to speak out but also to do more for a peaceful solution.
Leftist Salvadoran guerrillas, armed with pistols and hand grenades, raided seven commercial radio stations in San Salvador and forced them to broadcast a revolutionary message. The taped messages said that guerrillas hold one-third of El Salvador and have inflicted 20,000 casualties on the U.S.-supported government army in the past five years of fighting. The rebels forced one of the stations, Radio ABC, to play a taped message for 30 minutes before police arrived and stopped the broadcast.
Nicaragua’s Marxist-led government announced food price increases of up to 110%. The Ministry of Internal Trade raised the price of meat and milk by about 100%, with eggs going up 110% and chicken by more than 50%. Officials said the prices of basic grains and sugar are under review and may be raised later. This year’s Nicaraguan budget allotted 40% to the military, and the war against U.S.-backed rebels has resulted in a drop of dollar income because exports of major commodities-coffee and cotton-have been affected by fighting in the richest agricultural areas.
A Nicaraguan rebel leader, Eden Pastora Gomez, said today that efforts by rival anti- Sandinista groups to form a united opposition front were “meaningless” and “not serious.” Mr. Pastora, head of the Nicaraguan Democratic Revolutionary Alliance, said that he met Monday with Adolfo Calero, head of the largest guerrilla organization, the Nicaraguan Democratic Front, and Arturo Jose Cruz, leader of a civilian anti-Sandinista group, and that the discussion was “disappointing and fruitless.”
Negotiations between the United States and Honduras to establish a regional military training center in that country have become deadlocked, raising American concern about the future of relations with Honduras, United States officials said today. Negotiations over the training center in western Honduras had been an important part of broader talks over this country’s relationship with Honduras, which has recently become the most important base for United States military activities in Central America. In recent months the Hondurans have said they were not happy with the amount of aid they were getting from the United States. They have also demanded greater security guarantees.
President Reagan’s main difficulty in winning support for his high military budget, Central America policy and plan to develop missile defenses in space are Congressional distrust of the Reagan Administration’s objectives and credibility, according to former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger. “A national consensus cannot simply be wished into being,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It can be restored only gradually over time, if at all. It will come about only through the development of mutual trust, reasonable success and the sustained credibility of the executive branch.”
President Reagan delivers the State of the Union Address. President Reagan urged the nation today to forge “a second American revolution of hope and opportunity” with an agenda of tax revision and economic growth and the elimination of the threat of nuclear war for the next four years. In a State of the Union Message to Congress designed to set the legislative goals of his second term, Mr. Reagan sounded the same buoyant note that marked his triumphal Presidential campaign last year. He said: “The time has come to proceed toward a great new challenge, a second American revolution of hope and opportunity; a revolution carrying us to new heights of progress by pushing back frontiers of knowledge and space; a revolution of spirit that taps the soul of America, enabling us to summon greater strength that we’ve ever known, and a revolution that carries beyond our shores the gold promise of human freedom in a world at peace.” Dominating his speech was the theme of “opportunity” for all Americans as the economy burgeons. “There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect,” Mr. Reagan said.
The Democrats broadcast a half-hour program tonight aimed at demonstrating that their party was “alive and well” and ready to listen to the complaints of voters who have defected to the Republican Party. The unusual low-key film was not produced as a direct response to President Reagan’s State of the Union Message, and it actually treated the President rather gently. Party strategists acknowledged that in light of Mr. Reagan’s huge victory last November, “nobody would have listened” if they had tried to criticize him directly. But as Democrats listened to Mr. Reagan’s speech in the House chamber tonight, their differences with Administration policies were evident. Few Democrats joined in the applause when the President urged passage of a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget or when he called for support for his Strategic Defense Initiative.
President Reagan celebrates his 74th birthday.
Economic growth next year will be slower and the Federal budget deficit will be larger than President Reagan’s 1986 budget estimates, according to Rudolph G. Penner, the director of the Congressional Budget Office. He told Congress that the agency’s analysts expected higher interest rates, leading to a higher cost of interest on the national debt, and less economic growth, leading to lower tax revenues.
David A. Stockman’s criticism of the military pension system set off a political storm, generating angry replies from veterans’ organizations, Pentagon officials and some members of Congress. But some key legislators joined the budget director’s call for reform and said that 1985 might be the year for a major overhaul of military pensions. “I would have said it differently, but Stockman is right,” said Representative Les Aspin, the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the House Armed Services Committee. “Military retirement is too expensive. The Pentagon has failed to grapple with this issue.”
A plan to end most price supports and subsidies for farmers over five years was defended by Agriculture Secretary John R. Block. Speaking at a news conference, he said that two-thirds of the nation’s farmers derived all their income from the marketplace without aid.
Senators backed the nomination of Lee M. Thomas to head the Environmental Protection Agency, but raised questions about his ability to act under pressure from the Federal budget office. However, every member of a Senate committee voted to recommend the nomination of Mr. Thomas, who has been the acting administrator of the agency since the resignation of William D. Ruckelshaus last month.
General William C. Westmoreland acted improperly in 1967 by delaying a cable to Washington reporting higher enemy strength than previously reported because it would be “a political bombshell,” according to testimony by Major General Joseph A. McChristian, who was chief of intelligence for General Westmoreland in Vietnam for two years.
The bail of Bernhard H. Goetz was reduced to $5,000 from $50,000 by a state judge after Mr. Goetz pleaded not guilty. He is charged with possession of unlicensed weapons, including the gun he used to shoot four youths in a subway train in December.
A DC-9 cargo plane crashed on a runway at Philadelphia International Airport as it was taking off in a snowstorm, slightly injuring the two crew members, an airport spokesman said today. The Airborne Express plane was about 100 feet in the air late Tuesday when an apparent engine failure forced the twin-engine jet to fall to the ground, said the spokesman, William Malone. He said the accident affected operations today but takeoffs and landings were “nearly normal” by evening.
More than 100 consumer, labor, civil rights, religious and other groups joined in a drive to head off an effort in the Federal Communications Commission to scrap the “fairness doctrine.” Opening a Washington news conference on the issue, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Michigan) sharply denounced the move by FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler to scrap the rule, which requires broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues, and predicted that Congress will not go along with efforts to change it.
A Federal jury today decided that E. Howard Hunt Jr. was not libeled in an article by a former agent of the Central Intelligence Agency that suggested that Mr. Hunt was part of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. A six-member jury found in favor of Liberty Lobby, a conservative Washington group that publishes The Spotlight, the tabloid in which the article appeared in 1978. Mr. Hunt, who was one of the men arrested in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington in 1972, was seeking $1 million in damages. The suit dealt with an article by Victor Marchetti, a former CIA agent, that contended that a 1966 CIA memorandum said Mr. Hunt was in Dallas the day Mr. Kennedy was slain and suggested that he had a role in the murder.
More than 2,700 Cuban refugees held in prisons and mental hospitals in the United States are to be deported to Cuba in groups of about 100 beginning in three or four weeks, Louis Richard, director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service office in Atlanta, says. The refugees left their country in the 1980 exodus by boat that brought about 125,000 Cubans to the United States. Under an agreement the United States and Cuba reached in December, 2,746 Cubans are to be returned. Mr. Richard said in an interview published in The Atlanta Constitution today that he understood the first group would be from St. Elizabeths, a Washington mental hospital.
A 3-year-old boy who suffers from herpes will be allowed to attend preschool classes in Annapolis, Maryland, the school board decided. After the school board’s decision, the boy’s mother, Mary Bigley, urged the other parents to send their children back to school and “give Johnny a chance.” The Bigleys said that they were generally pleased with the decision by the Anne Arundel County Board of Education to allow Johnny Bigley to attend classes as long as he does not have any active lesions on exposed parts of his hands, face or upper body. “We just want people to take a look at our kid; he’s not unique when 80% of the population has some form of herpes,” Bigley said.
The Environmental Protection Agency reversed itself and said it would permit use of the pesticide EDB on citrus fruit bound for Japan for another four months. An AFL-CIO officer said that means the EPA is making “sacrificial lambs” of several hundred truck drivers, dock and warehouse workers in Florida who will be exposed to the chemical. The agency last year banned almost all use of ethylene dibromide to prevent the spread of fruit flies, on the grounds that the pesticide is the most powerful cause of cancer in laboratory animals ever tested.
The Illinois Supreme Court threw out the murder conviction of a black Death Row inmate, saying his trial should have been ended after a “scurrilous” racist joke was circulated to some members of the all-white jury. Justices ordered a new trial for William T. Jones, 29, agreeing with defense attorneys that the lower court judge should have declared a mistrial. Jones was convicted of the January, 1982, murder of Margaret Dare and the attempted murder of her husband, James. The justices reversed the convictions in a strongly worded opinion, saying that the trial circumstances were “intolerable” and that Jones was denied a fair trial.
A strike by more than 1,500 Ozark Air Lines employees began late tonight when negotiators in Washington failed to reach agreement on a new labor contract, union officials said. Gary Poos, general chairman for District 142 of the International Association of Machinists, said pickets went up at more than 50 airports around the country served by Ozark. The union represents agents, reservation workers and clerical workers. Both Chuck Ehlert, an Ozark spokesman, and Mr. Poos said negotiations were continuing with a federal mediator in Washington. Mr. Ehlert said the strike would have “minimal if any effect” on Ozark operations tonight because only a few flights were scheduled that late.
Medical centers that treat the most difficult cases should be required to take in all sick people who need care, regardless of their ability to pay, the editor of a medical journal says. “Medical judgment, compassion and common sense are nowadays too often overruled by the economic concerns of hospital managers,” Dr. Arnold S. Relman, editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, wrote in an editorial in the issue of the Journal that is to come out Thursday. Dr. Relman, a frequent critic of the profit motive in medicine, said private hospitals should also be forbidden to transfer patients to government-run public hospitals unless the move was medically necessary.
Demonstrators opposed to construction of a parkway to the planned Jimmy Carter library in Atlanta put up tents at a small city park lying in the road’s path. “The tent city symbolizes that this is our land. We are not trespassing; we are not violating the law,” said John Michael, a member of a protest group known as Road Busters. “We want to symbolize that this is one of the few Olmsted parks,” Michael said, referring to Frederick Law Olmsted, a 19th Century landscape architect.
A federal judge in New York rebuffed a request for higher fees by lawyers who represented Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange in their landmark class-action suit. U.S. Chief District Judge Jack Weinstein last month approved payment of $9.2 million in legal fees to the lawyers, far less than the $40 million many had expected.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1280.59 (-4.64)
Born:
Crystal Reed, American actress (“Teen Wolf”; “Swamp Thing”), in Detroit, Michigan.
Kris Humphries, NBA power forward and small forward (Utah Jazz, Toronto Raptors, Dallas Mavericks, New Jersey-Brooklyn Nets, Boston Celtics, Washington Wizards, Phoenix Suns, Atlanta Hawks), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Kenny Iwebema, NFL defensive end (Arizona Cardinals), in Arlington, Texas.
Fabian Brunnström, Swedish NHL left wing (Dallas Stars, Detroit Red Wings), in Jonstorp, Sweden.
Yang Yu, Chinese swimmer (Olympics, silver medals, 4 × 200 m freestyle, 2004, 2008), in Hangzhou, China.
Joji Kato, Japanese speed skater (Olympics, bronze medal, 500m, 2010), in Yamagata, Japan.
Died:
Charles Briggs, 53, American actor (“13 Frightened Girls”, “Captain Newman”).
[Ed: “All-Peoples Congress.” Gee, I wonder where on the political spectrum they are? A bit to the left of Chairman Mao, I would guess.]
The Enterprise of course, was never launched into space, and was not capable of such, No shuttle ever flew from Vandenberg — but they were supposed to, as of 1985. The Challenger accident the following year put an end to those plans. The Enterprise was mocked up as part of developing the shuttle launch complex at Vandenberg.
History Diaries 