Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger appealed to Western European nations today to support the Reagan Administration’s space weapons program, saying such weapons would promote stability between the superpowers and lessen the risk of war. Mr. Weinberger had been scheduled to speak at the second day of a security seminar in Munich, which had drawn about 150 NATO officials and experts. But bad weather in London blocked his flight, and his speech was read by Richard N. Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs.
A Pentagon study has concluded that the Soviet Union might use chemical weapons during a war in Europe on a selective basis against special targets, such as air bases and communications centers, rather than on a massive scale. The study of Soviet intentions was part of a reevaluation of the Pentagon’s chemical weapons program, Defense Department officials said. The Pentagon has been seeking a congressional appropriation to develop new chemical weapons.
Soviet allies have agreed to extend the seven-nation Warsaw Pact when it expires in May but have not yet agreed on the length of the term of the renewal period, according to a senior Romanian Foreign Ministry official. Western diplomats in Bucharest said the Kremlin allies have apparently discarded a tentative agreement on a 10-year term. The Soviets reportedly want a 15-year term.
A small, secret U.S. Air Force unit is redoubling its efforts to assure that Soviet technology will not be able to render American nuclear missiles ineffective. The project, the Advanced Strategic Missile Systems program, would get a sharp increase in funds in President Reagan’s budget. The money would be used to design and test advanced decoys, zig-zagging warheads and other devices designed to sneak past any defense the Soviet Union can develop.
The French Communist Party reelected Georges Marchais to a fifth three-year term as party leader. Marchais, 64, was named at the party’s 25th congress, which resisted calls for reform from dissident members to reverse the party’s decline in popularity. The rejected reforms included a tougher stand on human rights violations in the Soviet Bloc and less emphasis on Soviet-style methods in setting policy.
Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is leaving Monday for an official visit to the Soviet Union, at a time when Greece’s relations with the United States are strained anew. But Mr. Papandreou, in an interview Saturday, said the current tensions were the result of a squabble between friends. On some issues that have contributed sharply to the strain, particularly his comments on the Solidarity movement in Poland and the Soviet downing of the Korean jetliner, he seemed to be at pains to appease Washington’s irritation.
West German leftist terrorists have complied a “hit list” of 145 prominent citizens, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his entire Cabinet, a West German newspaper reported. Bild am Sonntag said the list contains the names of political figures, justice officials, military leaders and businessmen. It was seized in a raid last spring on a hideout in Frankfurt.
Margaret Thatcher’s popularity seems to be waning at home. The Prime Minister’s popularity dropped to its lowest level since the victory in the Falkland war, according to a British opinion poll, and that of her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, was even lower. The poll found that 52 percent of the voters believe the Prime Minister is doing a bad job of handling the economy.
The Israeli government has asked four Palestinians to become mayors of cities in the occupied West Bank in a move intended to create an improved climate for peace, Israeli and Arab sources said. in Jerusalem. Israeli army officers have been running the cities since Israel ousted the elected Arab mayors several years ago, purportedly for inciting violence. Businessman Basil Kanaan said he has conditionally agreed to become mayor of Nablus, the West Bank’s largest city. The other three choices — for Ramallah, Hebron and El Bireh — were not identified.
Seven people were killed and as many as 20 wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a Muslim militia facility in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, security sources reported. Two of those killed were members of Tawhid, a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim militia opposed to Syrian influence in Lebanon. Tawhid accused the right-wing Christian Falangist Party militia of planting the bomb. Another car bomb in Beirut occurred in a residential area, killing two men. The police said their car was apparently booby-trapped with 10 pounds of explosives. Prime Minister Rashid Karami accused Israel of responsibility for the explosions. Speaking in Tripoli, he said the Israelis were trying to further undermine Lebanon before their soldiers leave the south of the country.
Israeli jets, meanwhile, attacked a Palestinian guerrilla base in southern Lebanon, and two people were reported wounded. At about noon today, Israeli fighter planes raided a Palestinian guerrilla base at Taalbaya in the Bekaa Valley near the main highway linking Lebanon with Syria. An Israel Army spokesman was quoted by the Israeli radio as saying a one-story building belonging to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group, had been hit. The spokesman said the building was used as a jumping-off base for attacks against Israeli soldiers.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon in attacks by Palestinian guerrillas, Reuters reported. Two of the soldiers were killed in an explosion a few hundred yards northeast of the Israeli border town of Metulla. Earlier in the day, a soldier was killed and three were wounded when their convoy was ambushed in the town of Adassiye.
A team of United States experts flew to southern Laos today to search for the remains of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War, a United States Embassy official said. He said the team of 11 experts from the Honolulu-based Joint Casualty Resolution Center was to join Laotian officials to search for the remains of 13 American servicemen whose C-130 transport plane was shot down near Pakse City in December 1972. A preliminary inspection of the site by the team in December 1983 turned up wreckage of the plane and human bones, which are still being analyzed by the United States Army’s Central Identification Laboratory.
American backers of Kim Dae Jung, the South Korean opposition leader, deliberately provoked the violence that erupted Friday as Mr. Kim returned home from exile in the United States, the United States Ambassador to South Korea asserted. The accusation was rejected as “absolutely false” by the Americans. Ambassador Richard L. Walker also accused South Korean officials of not living up to their own agreement to keep Mr. Kim’s return “trouble free.”
Singapore’s newly emerging young leaders, shocked by the ruling party’s sharp fall in popularity in the general election in December, have promised to run a more open government and listen to opposition views. First Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said Saturday night that unless the Government gave the people what they wanted, it would face more setbacks in the next elections. Mr. Goh, regarded as a likely successor to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, said of the opposition: “We must listen to them because they might have some ideas which we can borrow.” Mr. Lee and his Cabinet colleagues had earlier maintained that the opposition was merely a nuisance and that their People’s Action Party should continue to rule without challenge in Parliament. Two opposition leaders gained entry into the Parliament in December, denying the People’s Action Party a clean sweep in a general election for the first time since independence.
Thousands of people defied New Caledonia’s official curfew tonight to protest independence plans for France’s troubled South Pacific territory. Cars and pedestrians, many of them waving French flags, converged on the capital’s center at 11 PM, starting time of the regular overnight curfew. It has been strictly enforced since its imposition last month when France declared a state of emergency here, but this time there were no arrests. The protest broke up after a speech by Jacques Lafleur, the white settler political leader who has opposed independence demands by indigenous Melanesians.
An agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration stationed in Guadalajara, Mexico, has been missing since Thursday and is believed to have been kidnaped by drug traffickers, a DEA spokesman said. Spokesman Robert Feldkamp said the agent, Enrique Salazar Camarena, “left the DEA office shortly after noon Thursday for a luncheon date with his wife and has not been seen since.” He said the DEA learned from a witness that four armed men were seen abducting Camarena and throwing him into a car. Feldkamp said that “this is the first suspected kidnapping of a DEA agent in Mexico.”
In his weekly homily, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of San Salvador said that neither the government nor the leftist rebels are taking steps to humanize the nation’s five-year-old civil war. He cited “insurgent actions, general sabotage and kidnaping as well as counterinsurgency activity with. the support of helicopter gunships and C-47 aircraft.” A humanization of the war was a goal agreed to by both the government and rebels during peace talks last year.
Complaining of inadequate security, the International Committee of the Red Cross suspended food distribution at an Ethiopian emergency center in Makale, in Tigre province. It said that “armed elements” abducted about 250 famine victims from the center. The Ethiopian government denied its troops were involved, the Red Cross said. Secessionist rebels have long been active in the province.
In a rare address to the nation, the Ethiopian head of state, Mengistu Haile Mariam, has acknowledged that the country’s economy is continuing to deteriorate and outlined “seven urgent measures” intended to stem the decline. Western diplomats said today that the measures, including demands for monetary contributions from “every Ethiopian national,” a ban on imports of textiles and “unnecessary luxury items” and “the thrifty use of petroleum,” would be unlikely to have a significant impact on Ethiopia’s overall economic plight. The importance of the speech,” said a senior Western diplomat, “is that Mengistu is admitting that he’s in trouble and saying that he’s not willing to move away from a Soviet-style economic path in order to correct that.” Mr. Mengistu’s speech, which was broadcast Saturday night on radio and television, followed nearly a week of secret, high-level Government meetings and preparations.
Nelson Mandela, the black leader in South Africa who has been a political prisoner for more than 20 years, has rejected a conditional Government offer of freedom, his daughter, Zinzi, said in a speech at a gathering of 9,000 people in Soweto. “My father says: ‘I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I, and you the people, are not free,” his daughter, Zinzi, told a cheering audience of 9,000 people in Jabulani stadium in this sprawling township of more than 1.5 million people. ” ‘Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.’ “
The USSR performs a nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan.
State legislatures are finding that the economic recovery has eased their financial pinch, and at least 15 states are considering cutting taxes as a result, a survey shows. “But overall, most states are not going to be cutting taxes, and most states that do, it’s going to be a fairly modest cut,” said Steven Gold of the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver. The survey was released just days after a National Governors Association study reported that many regions of the country remain vulnerable to President Reagan’s proposed $7-billion cut in federal aid, despite state budget surpluses.
President Reagan returns to the White House from the weekend at Camp David.
Drug-enforcement authorities in Miami said a record amount of cocaine — 4,364 pounds — was confiscated across Florida in a recent two-week period starting January 19 and was more than the amount confiscated in Florida in the first three months of 1984, which was a record year. The haul began when 500 pounds of cocaine was seized on the open seas by the Metro-Dade Marine Patrol. Agents called the bust “the largest . . . in marine patrol history.” One official, citing the size of the seizure, said authorities fear that it may indicate that there is more cocaine being smuggled in that is not being found. “You can ask yourself, ‘Does this mean more coming in, or does this mean we’re getting better at catching them?’ ” said Jim Dingfelder of the South Florida Task Force on Drugs. Lieutenant Tom Thompson of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Organized Crime Bureau said: “They’re bringing it in more because of the demand. The seizures are being made because we’ve stepped up our efforts, but we’d just be kidding ourselves to think we can stop it all.”
Crews from the Emery Mining Corporation Saturday suspended efforts to enter the Wilberg coal mine after failing to reduce high levels of poisonous gas inside. Crews may resume pumping liquid carbon dioxide into the mine Tuesday to cool the atmosphere and dilute carbon monoxide, a spokesman for the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration said. Air samples taken Saturday from inside mine, where a fire trapped and killed 26 men and a woman December 19, showed that “carbon monoxide levels are still too high,” a company spokesman, Bob Henrie, said. The company sealed the mine early last month in an effort to snuff the fire.
Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta has sent telegrams to the chief executives of the nation’s 100 leading corporate advertisers expressing his “deep concern” about “The Atlanta Child Murders,” a two-part movie being shown on CBS-TV, one part last night and the other Tuesday. The film depicts the investigation and trial of Wayne B. Williams, who was convicted in 1982 of murdering two young black men in Atlanta. The murders were part of a series of 29 killings of young people in Atlanta. Mr. Young and other Atlanta officials have called the film distorted and inaccurate, while CBS has defended its accuracy and fairness. The telegram did not ask advertisers to withdraw from the program. Thomas Offenburger, Mayor Young’s spokesman, said: “It is up to them if they are going to do anything.” Barrie Richardson, vice president of press information for CBS Entertainment, said all commercials in the five-hour film had been sold.
A study of 2,200 women with breast cancer shows that those who undergo simple removal of the tumor and radiation treatment do just as well as women who undergo disfiguring mastectomy surgery, Newsweek magazine reported in its February 18 edition. The study of women treated at more than two dozen U.S. cancer centers was conducted by the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast Project, Newsweek said. The head of the study, Dr. Bernard Fisher of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said that 92% of women who underwent “lumpectomies” together with radiation were free of cancer after five years.
The NASA Space Shuttle Challenger moves to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) for mating with her external tank and SRBs for the STS 51-E mission.
Late this summer, a space shuttle will carry aloft 30 pints of human blood, and although it is not on the written protocol for the flight, the shuttle may also carry a sample of bone marrow, a material that some scientists here think might cure victims of radiation in a nuclear war. “We have an extra berth on this flight, one more container,” said Dr. Douglas Surgenor, a Harvard Medical School professor, who is president of the Center for Blood Research here. “If we can get hold of some marrow, we may send it up.”
Nearly half of all couples of childbearing age in the United States are physically unable to have children, as Americans increasingly choose sterilization to limit their families, according to new government statistics. By contrast, in 1965 nearly three-quarters of couples in which the wives were 15 to 44 years old were considered able to have children, according to a study released today by the National Center for Health Statistics.
A Buddhist monk who has been involved in anti-Trident nuclear submarine activities outside the Bangor, Washington, submarine base has been ordered by immigration officials to leave the United States within 30 days. Since 1982, the monk, identified as the Rev. Gyotoku, has lived on Bainbridge Island where Buddhist monks and peace activists have started building a Peace Pagoda or religious center, near the submarine base for the Pacific Fleet, about 25 miles west of Seattle. Gyotoku, a Japanese citizen, was detained last week by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials after returning from Japan.
Carnival season swept New Orleans over the weekend with 18 Mardi Gras parades that halted traffic and attracted masked revelers who danced through the streets. But a parade in the suburb of Chalmette was marred by violence when a driver ran into three parade-goers, then was pulled from his car and beaten by an angry crowd. Police coverage was increased to control the crowds at the parades, and no other incidents were reported. Balls, parades and parties will continue daily until February 19, known as Fat Tuesday, the final day of revelry before Lent.
Despite federal laws barring racial discrimination, most of the nearly 10 million residents of federally financed housing are segregated by race, with whites faring much better than black and Hispanic people, according to a report published today by The Dallas Morning News. Almost all the projects that the reporters visited that were predominately occupied by whites were far superior in condition, situation, services and amenities to those that housed mostly black and Hispanic people, the article said.
Goats saved from certain death on a coastal island used as a target for naval guns began new lives today as pets. “I think they’re really neat pets,” Alice Rucker, of Sylmar, California, said as she arrived at the Los Angeles County animal shelter. Mrs. Rucker, her husband and their daughter picked a small, dark female and a tan male, paid $35 for the nanny and $25 for the billy, and signed a pledge to care for them properly. Since February 1 workers for the Fund for Animals tossing nets from low-flying helicopters have rescued 314 goats from San Clemente Island. The airborne roundup is to end March 4. Any goats remaining are to be killed by sharpshooters, the Navy has said.
The Federal Government will pay about $5.5 million to descendants of the Wyandot Indians to settle a 143- year-old treaty that forced the tribe to sell their Ohio homes in 1842 for less than fair value. The Government will send about $1,600 each in July to 3,600 people in Kansas and Oklahoma who have proved that they are Wyandot descendants, Dennis Springwater, a spokesman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, announced Friday. Under a program established in the 1940’s to settle claims filed by various Indian tribes for promises broken as settlers invaded their territories, the Government has recommended payment of more $800 million. The Wyandot settlement is based on an 1830 Federal law that required all Indians to move west of the Mississippi River. The Wyandots were paid 75 cents an acre for nine million acres of land that was worth $1.50 an acre, Mr. Springwater said. Private ownership of jails and prisons is expected to double in the next 18 months, according to the American Correctional Association. About 24 correction facilities are currently operated by private groups.
A report on undergraduate education says American colleges and universities have allowed their curriculums to slip into a state of “disarray” and “incoherence.” The Association of American Colleges said in its study, “Integrity in the College Curriculum” that faculty members were more interested in scholarly research than in teaching and college administrators had adopted a “misguided marketplace philosophy” to compete for students.
About 23,000 military retirees drawing pension checks totaling about $300 million a year live in and around Niceville, Florida, a Gulf Coast community near Eglin Air Force Base. Last week it was hard to find anyone in Niceville who could think of kind things to say about Budget Director David A. Stockman, who said Tuesday that military people are more concerned about their pensions than about the security of the United States. In Niceville, his remark was like enemy fire.
Protection of whistle blowers in the nuclear power industry would be weakened if a court decision is left standing, opponents of the decision say. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in a battle with the Labor Department over whether to appeal the decision.
Andrea Schöne skates ladies world record 5 km (7:32.82).
Julius Erving electrified the crowd with a cradle dunk. Earvin (Magic) Johnson made a seemingly impossible pass and George Gervin hit a 15-foot jumper from the hip. There were 21 other players looking for playing time and making moves usually reserved for the playgrounds, moves that some coaches might frown on in a game that counted. And in the end, the West beat the East, 140–129, in the 35th annual All-Star Game today. It was the West’s first victory after five consecutive losses, and it came before the largest N.B.A. crowd ever, 43,146, at the Hoosier Dome. Ralph Sampson of the Houston Rockets was crowned the star of stars. He scored 24 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and was named the game’s most valuable player.
Born:
Paul Millsap, NBA power forward and center (NBA All-Star, 2014-2017; Utah Jazz, Atlanta Hawks, Denver Nuggets, Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers), in Monroe, Louisiana.
Kyle DeVan, NFL guard and center (Indianapolis Colts, Philadelphia Eagles, Tennessee Titans), in Sacramento, California.
Anette Sagen, Norwegian ski jumper, in Mosjøen, Norway.
[Ed: This evil little charlatan pervert…]
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