United States officials believe that Konstantin U. Chernenko, the ailing Soviet leader, has a life expectancy of about six months. Although officials believe that Mr. Chernenko is no imminent danger of death, the Reagan Administration is also assuming, based on medical data, that Mr. Chernenko will not live through the fall. Mr. Chernenko, who is 73 years old, was last seen in public on December 27.
Mr. Chernenko’s illness is believed to be irreversible emphysema, according to United States officials. The six-month estimnate is based on medical evidence of people in the same stage of the illness, officials said. The most recent indication of Mr. Chernenko’s illness came on Tuesday when a meeting in Moscow with the Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, was canceled. No details were given.
The Polish authorities brought charges today against seven Solidarity activists captured in a police raid on a meeting in Gdansk, and they summoned Lech Walesa for questioning on the same charge of inciting public unrest. Three of the seven activists were placed under arrest. Mr. Walesa, the former leader of the trade union movement, who also attended the meeting Wednesday but was released, accused the authorities of “hatred, repression and violation of human rights.” Poland’s official P.A.P. press agency said the three activists who were arrested were Adam Michnik of Warsaw, Bogdan Lis of Gdansk and Wladyslaw Frasyniuk of Wroclaw. Those charged and released this afternoon were Stanislaw Handzlik of Cracow, Janusz Palubicki of Poznan, and Mariusz Wilk and Jacek Merkel of Gdansk.
Pope John Paul II met today with a group of American Jewish leaders and afterward issued a ringing condemnation of anti-Semitism, which he called “incompatible with Christ’s teaching.” The Pope made his statements to a delegation from the American Jewish Committee, which called on him to grant formal diplomatic recognition to Israel. But although the Pope is schedule to see the Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres, next week, neither members of the delegation nor Vatican officials said they expectws the Holy See to change its approach to Israel soon.
The Karpov-Kasparov chess match for the world championship in Moscow was halted by the head of the World Chess Federation. He ordered that a new one begin in September. Both players protested, saying that they wanted to continue. Florencio Campomanes, the federation president, said he had halted the match after five months because it had “exhausted the physical if not the psychological resources not only of the participants but of all those connected with the match.”
Gary Kasparov’s disappointment and frustration at the termination of the world championship chess match in Moscow makes perfectly good sense despite his 2-point deficit in the contest. The 21-year-old challenger had won two games in a row against an opponent – Anatoly Karpov, the 33-year-old world champion – who was faltering, even with an enormous 5–3 lead. On Nov. 24, Mr. Karpov won Game 27 to increase his lead in the series to 5–0. He then needed only one more victory to retain the world championship that he was awarded in 1975 when Bobby Fischer refused to defend.
Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez said today that two American diplomats were asked to leave Spain 10 days ago because of suspicion of spying. The Americans, identified as Dennis McMahan, a political officer, and John S. Massey, an official at the United States Air Force Base at nearby Torrejon, left the country immediately afterward, top Spanish officials said in interviews. In Washington, the State Department confirmed that the two Americans had been asked to leave Spain, but it declined further comment.
UNESCO’s Director General, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, accused the United States and its Western allies today of seeking to overthrow the entire United Nations system of international cooperation established after World War II. Mr. M’Bow cited what he said were “persistent and apparently coordinated pressures and threats” against his agency. He spoke at the end of a four-day meeting of the group’s Executive Board, called to assess Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the loss of the 25 percent share of the budget that had been paid by the United States. “The stakes are essentially political,” Mr. M’Bow told the 50 Executive Board delegates, who represent member nations. “We must have the honesty to recognize it. It is as though certain circles wish to put in doubt the foundations of the international system set up after the Second World War.”
Israeli forces began their long-anticipated pullback from the Sidon region early this morning, Beirut state radio reported. The Israelis had said they would be out of Sidon by February 18, and if today’s troop movement is indeed the pullback — the first in a three-stage withdrawal from southern Lebanon — it would be two days early.
Syria played “a positive role” in the case of Jeremy Levin, an abducted American journalist, who gained his freedom after 11 months of captivity in eastern Lebanon, the Reagan Administration said. Going to unusual lengths to praise the Syrians, a senior State Department official said he believed that Mr. Levin had been permitted to escape and that the Syrians may have played a role. The 52-year-old journalist, Jeremy Levin, the Beirut bureau chief for Cable News Network, arrived tonight in Frankfurt, where he was reunited with his wife, Lucille. Earlier, in Damascus, he told reporters that he had escaped from his captors when they left him alone in a room and were “careless with the chains.” He said he had made his way down a mountain until he ran into a Syrian military patrol, which arranged his departure through Damascus.
Khmer Rouge rebels were routed from the last of their bases in western Cambodia by Vietnamese troops, Thai military officers reported. This was the second major defeat for the Khmer Rouge in six years. The Vietnamese were also reported to have set fire to the Khmer Rouge headquarters camp at Phum Thmei, which had been the diplomatic seat of the Cambodian rebel coalition led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The coalition holds the country’s United Nations seat, and Phum Thmei was used to receive foreign ambassadors. The Khmer Rouge base of Phnom Malai was also reported to have fallen.
A Laotian-American team looking for the remains of American servicmen who died in a 1972 air crash near Pakse, Laos, have found what may be human remains at the site, an American military spokesman said today. The plane, a C-130 transport with 16 people aboard, went down on December 21, 1972. Two Americans parachuted to safety and one body was found after the crash. Thirteen servicemen are still unaccounted for. The American military spokesman, who refused to be identified, said today that that what may be the remains of one or more of the missing Americans had been discovered by the joint expedition. He added that there would be no confirmation or identification of bodies until after the remains had been flown to Honolulu for examination.
A vast array of looted property has been put on display in Peking to give their owners who had been looted of valuables by the youthful fanatics known as Red Guards at the start of the cultural revolution in 1966 an opportunity to reclaim them. Since the return of the looted property was approved by the Communist Party several years ago, millions of items have been listed for “reclaiming exhibitions” in major cities. Now and then somebody finds a cherished inkstand or a scroll, and others cluster around to share their moment of pleasure. At the outset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, Mao Zedong unleashed the youthful fanatics known as Red Guards on a house-to-house rampage against “feudal dregs” from China’s past, and anybody with antiques or valuables was deemed fair game.
A Colombian 747 cargo jet was seized by Customs Service agents in Miami after they determined that it was used earlier in the week to smuggle more than a ton of cocaine into the United States. The cocaine’s street sale value was estimated at $600 million. The $119 million plane, operated by Avianca, the state-supported Colombian airline, was the largest single asset ever seized by the Customs Service.
Meanwhile, the Government of Colombia announced that it was investigating the circumstances of the seizure. In a terse statement released by the Colombian Embassy in Washington, it said it “deplored the publicity-oriented display which the U.S. Customs Commissioner set up in reference to these events, which are seriously detrimental to the good image of Colombia as a committed ally of the U.S. in the all-out war against drug trafficking.”
The Reagan Administration said today that it was sending a senior State Department official to Chile to urge President Augusto Pinochet and opposition leaders to find a way to move toward elections. Officials made it clear that the mission grew out of their alarm over continuing violence in Chile and what they regard as a worsening political situation. The official, Langhorne A. Motley, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter- American Affairs, is to leave on Saturday and to remain in Chile through next Wednesday, the State Department said. He will be the highest-ranking American official to visit Chile in years.
A third artificial heart recipient will undergo implantation surgery Sunday morning at the hospital in Louisville, Kentucky., where William J. Schroeder received an artificial heart November 25. The patient is Murray P. Haydon, a 58-year-old retired automobile worker, who is dying of a heart ailment. If the operation goes well, he will join William J. Schroeder at the Humana Heart Institute International in Louisville, Kentucky. Mr. Haydon has signed the consent form twice, at an interval of 24 hours, for the implant operation that is scheduled for 7 AM Sunday at the Humana Hospital Audubon, according to hospital officials. Dr. William C. DeVries will implant the plastic and metal Jarvik-7 mechanical heart in Mr. Haydon.
President Reagan spends the day clearing brush at the Ranch.
The prosecution began unfolding its felony bribery case against Attorney General Jim Mattox of Texas today, promising to prove he threatened to destroy the bond business of a prominent Houston law firm. Mr. Mattox, who has called the case nothing more than “a spittin’ contest between lawyers,” predicted he would be vindicated both in the courtroom and at the polls in 1986. The combative Attorney General, who styles himself the “people’s lawyer” and has taken on some of the nation’s largest oil companies in disputes over royalties, could face up to 10 years in prison and the destruction of his political career if convicted. He has said that he would stay in office even if found guilty, which is permitted under state law, but he would be barred from seeking re-election when his term expires next year.
A methyl isocyanate leak in the U.S., similar to the one in India that killed 2,000 people, was “extremely remote,” the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said. At the same time, the agency cited two plants that use the chemical, FMC in Middleport, New York, and Union Carbide in Woodbine, Georgia, for “serious violations” of safety standards.
The NASA Space Shuttle STS 51-E vehicle with the Challenger orbiter moves to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. This mission will never be flown; a problem with the payload TDRS-B satellite causes it to be cancelled. When STS-51-E was canceled, Challenger was remanifested with the STS-51-B payloads. STS-51_B will launch in April and carry the European Space Agency’s Spacelab on it’s third orital mission.
Gary Lee Yarbrough, said to be a key member of a militant neo-Nazi gang, pleaded guilty today to 11 counts of illegally possessing firearms and explosives at his home in northern Idaho. Mr. Yarbrough also faces trial in Federal District Court Wednesday on an additional charge of shooting at agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in his hometown of Sandpoint last October.
The jury for the retrial of Claus von Bülow will not include residents of Newport, where he is accused of twice trying to kill his wife, a judge ruled today. The trial was ordered moved last month from Newport to Providence. Judge Corinne Grande of Superior Court said after a meeting with prosecuting and defense attorneys that both sides agreed that the panel would be chosen from Providence and Bristol Counties. Mr. von Bülow, 58 years old, faces charges that he tried to kill his wife, Martha (Sunny) von Bülow, with insulin injections in 1979 and 1980. She is now in a coma. Mr. von Bülow was convicted in March 1982, but the conviction was overturned last year.
Glenn I. Wright was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in Federal prison today for masterminding the kidnapping of a wealthy Mexico City woman from a Washington hotel last summer. Mr. Wright, a 42-year-old Houston resident, was also sentenced by Federal District Judge Oliver Gasch to a total of 106 years in prison on other charges related to the abduction of Edith Rosenkranz, the 60-year-old wife of the founder of the pharmaceutical concern, Syntex Corporation. Mr. Wright will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years. On Thursday, Judge Gasch gave the same sentence to Dennis Moss, 27, of Cocoa, Florida, who was convicted with Mr. Wright of kidnapping Mrs. Rosenkranz at gunpoint from the hotel where she and her husband, George, were attending a bridge tournament. Mrs. Rosenkranz was freed unharmed two days later and the two men were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A third defendant, Orland D. Tolden, 26, was sentenced to seven years in prison.
The flawed McMartin sex abuse case continues: A 10-year-old boy said in testimony today that the owner of a suburban market had joined teachers from a nearby nursery school in molesting children in the market storeroom. Under cross-examination by the attorney for Raymond Buckey, the chief defendant in the case, the boy said he was touched by strangers as well as by teachers from the school, the McMartin Pre-School, at Harry’s Market in Manhattan Beach six years ago. The store owner, Rasheed (Ray) Fadel, denied the assertion in a telephone interview. The boy, looking tired after 12 days of testimony in the preliminary hearing for Mr. Buckey and six other defendants, again stood by his accounts of having been sexually abused and photographed by his former teachers, who are charged with 208 counts of molesting 41 children.
A man charged with setting a fire at an Indiana University fraternity house last October that killed one person and injured 34 others was found guilty today of murder and arson. The man, Jerry S. Zook, 23 years old, faces from 30 to 110 years in prison. His attorney said the conviction would be appealed.
A 337-foot ferryboat with 218 people aboard ran aground today midway between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but no one was injured. The ferry, the Arregina, which was also carrying 130,000 gallons of diesel oil, hit a reef about a quarter of a mile from Mona Island. It began leaking oil from a crack in its hull. All 143 passengers and 70 of the crew members were evacuated to the island, which belongs to Puerto Rico. The boat’s captain and four crewmen remained aboard. The Arregina, of Dominican registry, was sailing from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, to San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic.
A 15-year-old boy who was determined to be rid of the braces on his teeth drew a gun on an orthodontist and told him he didn’t care about going to jail, “as long as I can have my bands off,” the doctor said today. The police eventually disarmed the boy after a struggle in which two shots were fired into the floor, said Jack Patterson, the Public Safety Director of Grosse Pointe Woods. The orthodontist in a Detroit suburb, who was not the boy’s regular dentist, said he stalled by removing a few of the bands and a wire that ringed the boy’s teeth. He said he alerted members of his office staff, who called the police. The boy was not identified. The orthodontist, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said he first told the youth he would have to get his parents’ permission. He said the boy then “pulled out the .45 and he said, ‘Would this make you take my bands off?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it would.’ ” When four officers arrived, the boy grappled with them. In the struggle his gun fired once, and a detective’s gun fired when the boy grabbed it, Mr. Patterson said. Both shots hit the floor.
The International Business Machines Corporation said yesterday that it had fabricated a new, one-billion-bit memory chip that was almost twice as fast as the one it announced last year. The announcement came at the International Solid State Circuit Conference in New York amid signs that the competition to bring out the next generation of memory chips — the so-called megabit chips — was heating up. In addition to I.B.M., Toshiba, NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Fujitsu reported that they all had developed prototypes of the chip, which is expected to succeed the 256K RAM, or Random Access Memory, semiconductors. Many Japanese and American companies are now beginning to produce the 256K’s in volume. Two other American manufacturers, American Telephone and Telegraph and Mostek, have also announced successful megabit chip development efforts. The chips are expected to make it possible to design both personal computers and mainframes with far less expensive, more powerful memory.
35th Berlin International Film Festival: “The Woman and the Stranger” and “Wetherby” win the Golden Bear (tie).
Teen film “The Breakfast Club” is released, written and directed by John Hughes, starring Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy.
Doug Flutie’s first effort in professional football was adequate, nothing more, nothing less. In a preseason game tonight matching the New Jersey Generals and the Orlando Renegades, the sport’s most celebrated quarterback of the moment displayed some uncertainty, but he improved after an upsetting beginning. There were glimpses of capability if not brilliance. The Generals won, 24–14, with two of their three touchdowns coming from fumbles by the Renegades. John Joyce, the linebacker, scored both, the first on a 64-yard run and the second with a recovery in the Orlando end zone.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1282.02 (-5.86)
Born:
Natalie Morales, American actress (“Parks and Recreation”, “Grey’s Anatomy”), in Miami, Florida.
Russ Mitchell, MLB third baseman, pinch hitter, and first baseman (Los Angeles Dodgers), in Rome, Georgia.
Dantrell Savage, NFL running back (Kansas City Chiefs), in Columbus, Georgia.
Xavier Omon, NFL running back (Buffalo Bills), in San Diego, California.
[Ed: If a tree falls in the forest, you can be damned sure Jesse will show up for the cameras and claim credit.]
History Diaries 