Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko said today that an American refusal to negotiate on its proposed space-based defense at Geneva would lead into a “blind alley.” He further described as “self-conceit” the comments by some Americans that the Soviet Union could not keep up with the American space weapons program. Mr. Gromyko made the comments in a speech in his constituency in Kaliningrad, a northern Moscow suburb, in connection with uncontested elections to the nominal legislature of the Soviet Union’s Russian republic next Sunday. The thrust of Mr. Gromyko’s comments was directed at President Reagan’s avowed insistence on going ahead with research on a space-based defense against missiles.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, meeting with labor leaders, stood firm today on the 49-week-old coal miners’ dispute. It was the first time in her six years in office that she had met at 10 Downing Street with union officials over a strike. In an hour-long session before flying to Washington, she told officials of the Trades Union Congress, the British labor federation, that no negotiations were possible until the National Union of Mineworkers had agreed to deal “clearly and unambiguously with the central point of the dispute.” That means, in her view, that the union must accept the right of the National Coal Board to close unprofitable mines. Arthur Scargill, the mine union leader, said the negotiations, which broke down in October, must resume without conditions. He was not at today’s Downing Street meeting.
All 148 people aboard were killed, officials said, when a Spanish airliner crashed into a mountain on an approach to the Bilbao airport. The Iberia Air Lines Boeing 727 was on a flight from Madrid. The Boeing 727-200 operating the flight crashed into a ravine after one of its wings sliced a television antenna on the summit of Mount Oiz in Biscay during an approach to Bilbao Airport. All 141 passengers and 7 crew on board died. The crash is the deadliest aviation disaster in both the Basque Country and Iberia history.
Spanish officials concluded that the crash had been caused by pilot error. During the approach to Bilbao, the autopilot’s altitude select system failed to engage due to undetermined reasons, enabling the aircraft to descend past its target altitude. The altitude alarm had sounded to inform the crew that they had reached the intended altitude. However, both crew members misinterpreted it and caused the aircraft to fly even lower. The left wing eventually struck a television antenna, shearing it off and causing the aircraft to crash.
The Irish Government was granted power in an emergency session of Parliament today to seize a bank account thought to hold well over $1 million in Irish Republican Army funds. The swift move to seize the funds was the latest in a series of efforts by the Irish Republic to undermine the I.R.A., which is illegal in both parts of Ireland. There was no hint that the action was planned until the debate began at 3:30 PM, as Irish banks closed. Both houses of Parliament approved the necessary changes in the Irish antiterrorist law after being told by Justice Minister Michael Noonan that the funds had been traced to criminal extortion activity by the I.R.A. and were about to be moved so they would be available “to fund its campaign of murder and destruction.”
Anatoly Karpov appealed to the president of the world chess federation to reverse his decision and immediately restart the championship match with the challenger, Gary Kasparov. The federation chief, Florencio Campomanes, said he annulled the match because after 5 months and 48 games the players and others associated with the match were physically and psychologically drained.
The rising Israeli casualties in southern Lebanon and a growing feeling that little is to be gained from staying there any longer are generating heavy pressure on the Government to pull its forces out faster than originally planned. The Israeli Cabinet is expected to hold an extraordinary session soon to set a date for the second stage of the three-stage withdrawal from Lebanon. The second stage, pulling back primarily from the eastern Bekaa front with the Syrians, will bring Israeli troops to within 10 to 15 miles of the border. This second stage is expected in April, after the snow melts, and the final stage in August. Israel completed the first phase on Saturday by withdrawing from the greater Sidon area. At the Cabinet session on Sunday, Yigael Hurwitz, Minister Without Portfolio and a former Likud bloc member, proposed Israel leave Lebanon immediately.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel met today with Pope John Paul II and said afterward that the Pope would be “a welcomed guest” in Israel. Mr. Peres was only the second Israeli Prime Minister to meet with a Pope. The first was Golda Meir, who visited Pope Paul VI in 1973. Mr. Peres said after his 40-minute meeting with the Pope that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital. The statement prompted a Vatican spokesman, Joaquín Navarro Valls, to call reporters together to reiterate the Vatican’s support for an international statute to govern Jerusalem.
Unidentified attackers firing submachine guns killed a French cease-fire observer in the southern slums of Beirut. Meanwhile, Israel’s leading right-wing newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, published a rare front-page editorial calling on the government to withdraw all its troops from Lebanon immediately. Israeli papers devoted much front-page space to the deaths in Lebanon the day before of two officers-one of them Col. Avraham Hido, chief liaison officer with the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army and one of the most senior officers killed during the 32-month occupation.
The U.N. Human Rights Commission adopted two resolutions charging Israel with human rights violations in occupied Arab territories and calling on the Security Council to impose sanctions on Israel. The United States was the only country to oppose both resolutions, declaring parts of them “grossly distorting.” The two resolutions condemned Israel’s settlements in the territories and what it called mass arrests, torture of prisoners and the confiscation or demolition of Arab property.
Separatist guerrillas in India’s eastern state of Nagaland ambushed an army convoy and killed 15 soldiers and defense volunteers in a hail of bullets, the Press Trust of India said. Officials said it was one of the most deadly attacks by the Maoist National Socialist Council of Nagaland in more than 30 years of agitation for an independent Naga nation.
Thailand accused Vietnam of using toxic chemicals in border battles against Cambodian guerrillas and said it will protest at the United Nations. The Thai supreme commander, General Arthit Kamlang-ek, said evidence has been found that rocket rounds fired by Vietnamese forces contained the chemicals. The charge coincided with a claim by the Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas that 11 of its men are in serious condition from the effects of chemical weapons. The allegations could not be independently confirmed.
At 10:16 a.m., Pacific Standard Time, while enroute from Taipei, Republic of China, to Los Angeles, California, China Airlines’ Flight 006 (call sign “Dynasty Six”), a Boeing 747SP-09, FAA registration N4522V, was cruising at 41,000 feet (12,497 meters), 300 nautical miles (556 kilometers) northwest of San Francisco, California. It had a crew of 23 with 251 passengers. The airliner had a flight crew of five under command of Captain Min-Yuan Ho, with a co-pilot and flight engineer, as well as a relief captain and flight engineer, due to the length of the trans-Pacific flight.
The Number 4 engine, the outboard engine on the airplane’s right wing, a Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A turbofan, refused to respond with the other engines as the throttles were advanced, and it “hung” and remained at a low power level. It did not flame out, as the crew believed. The crew attempted restart procedures, however they did so incorrectly. The airliner’s autopilot was engaged and the aircraft began to yaw and bank because of the asymmetric thrust. The copilot, First Officer Ju Yu Chang, used full opposite aileron to stop the roll, but neither pilot or copilot applied any rudder inputs to correct the yaw. (It was later determined that they believed, incorrectly, that the autopilot controlled rudder position.)
The airplane departed controlled flight, rolled over and dived. It lost 30,000 feet (9,144 meters) of altitude before the crew was able to recover, however the airplane was severely damaged, with bent wings, a damaged left aileron, lost parts of its elevators and horizontal stabilizers and damaged landing gear doors. It had experienced acceleration forces as high as 4.8 Gs as it descended through 30,552 feet (9,312 meters) and a peak 5.1 Gs at 19,083 feet (5,816 meters). Of the 287 persons on board, 24 were injured. Two were seriously hurt and the flight diverted to San Francisco. The 747SP was substantially damaged. It was nearly two years before repairs completed.
Nearly 200 U.S. Marine veterans and three dozen Japanese veterans shook hands and embraced on Iwo Jima, the island where 40 years ago they became embroiled in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific hostilities in World War II. Former Pvt. George Palazzo said, “It’s an ugly place, but at least it’s safe now.” The 1945 battle of Iwo Jima took the lives of 5,931 American marines and wounded 17,372, a casualty rate of about one in three, the highest of any battle in Marine Corps history. Nearly all the 21,000 Japanese defenders were killed, and only 200 Japanese were taken prisoner.
New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange said the United States has withdrawn two more invitations to his country to take part in military exercises after his government’s ban on visits by nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships. Lange said the cancellations left him “with a bit of egg on my face.” He added, “But that is worth it for this policy.” Lange said the new cancellations involve an allied exercise in South Korea and a “paper exercise” in Fiji and Australia.
President Reagan attends a National Security Council meeting to discuss the upcoming trip to Canada.
An unarmed U.S. cruise missile floated to a parachute landing on a northern Canadian lake, successfully concluding the first free-flight test of the weapon in Canada. The 18-foot-long missile flew for 4½ hours and 1,500 miles under its own jet power and, at the end, parachuted onto a frozen lake near a Canadian Forces base at Cold. Lake, 180 miles northeast of Edmonton, Alberta. Anti-nuclear protesters’ attempts to put balloons and a net in the missile’s path had no effect on the test.
Costa Rica told Nicaragua to cut the staff of its embassy in San Jose from 47 to 10 amid deteriorating relations in a dispute over political asylum. Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge said he is also studying other measures to retaliate for Nicaragua’s refusal to release a Nicaraguan student. Costa Rica says the student was kidnaped by Sandinista police from its embassy in Managua, where he had sought refuge. Nicaragua has described Costa Rica’s protests as a U.S.-backed maneuver to prevent regional peace talks.
The security police in South Africa arrested six leading black activists on treason charges today and held seven others for questioning in a countrywide crackdown on dissent. The death toll from police action against protesters in Cape Town’s packed squatter camp called Crossroads, meanwhile, was reported to have risen from 5 Monday to 13 today. In the operation against critics of white minority rule, homes and offices of dissidents were said to have been searched in raids that began before dawn. Opponents of the white minority Government interpreted the action as belying President P. W. Botha’s avowed readiness for limited change embracing urbanized blacks.
President Reagan asked television journalist Jeremy Levin to refrain from disclosing publicly any details about his ordeal as a hostage in Lebanon that “even inadvertently” might endanger four other Americans presumed kidnaped by the same terrorists. “I can’t tell you how gratified Nancy and I were to learn of your escape,” Reagan said in a telephone conversation with Levin broadcast on the Cable News Network. “Your abduction and that of our other Americans has weighed heavily on us for nearly a year. And not… a day has gone by that you weren’t in our prayers.”
The federal government’s power to regulate state activities previously considered immune from federal control was enhanced significantly by the Supreme Court. The Justices ruled, 5 to 4, that federal minimum wage and hour standards cover employees of publicly owned mass transit systems. The benchmark decision created an entire new framework for analyzing the constitutional balance between federal and state authority.
Some of the technology that would be needed for a space-based missile defense system will begin to be tested with the space shuttle in 1987, two years earlier than planned, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
The nation’s poor children and their families will lose a total of $5.2 billion in President Reagan’s fiscal 1986 budget, said an advocate of children’s rights who called the spending plan a “moral travesty.” Marion Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, said at a Washington news conference: “More American children die each year from poverty than from traffic fatalities and suicide combined. Yet for the fifth consecutive year… President Reagan has targeted poor children and families again for billions in new budget cuts,” she said.
President Reagan meets with veterans of the 28th Marine Regiment on the 40th anniversary of their landing on Iwo Jima.
Eliminating the 1888 adjustment for the cost of living in Federal benefit programs would save $8.6 billion next year, but would push 530,000 people into poverty, according to a new study by the Congressional Budget Office.
Farm state senators from both parties vowed to block the confirmation of Edwin Meese 3d as Attorney General unless the Senate leadership guaranteed them speedy action on a legislative package to make it easier for farmers to obtain credit as they prepare for spring planting in the coming weeks.
William J. Schroeder and Murray P. Haydon, the world’s only living permanent artificial heart patients, exchanged waves and smiles, then Mr. Schroeder went outside the Louisville, Kentucky, hospital for the first time since he had the implant almost three months ago.
A consumer group asked General Motors Corp. to provide free engine replacement to owners of 536,000 1984 cars whose 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engines may develop cracked blocks. In a letter to GM Chairman Roger Smith, the Center for Auto Safety also urged the nation’s No. 1 automaker to change its engine design and provide loaner cars at no expense to the owners while the cars are being repaired. A GM spokesman had no immediate comment.
Former Oklahoma Baptist minister Van Roosevelt Solomon, 41, was put to death in Georgia’s electric chair early today for the torture-murder of a convenience store manager during a 1979 hold-up. Solomon was taken to the death chamber in Jackson after a final meal of fruit and chocolate ice cream. Hours earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court and Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused his pleas for a stay and clemency.
Six witnesses testified in Federal District Court today that one of two people accused of smuggling Central American refugees into the United States was in New York the day the Government contends she was driving Salvadoran refugees to a bus station in Texas. The two defendants, Stacey Lynn Merkt and Jack Elder, are charged with conspiracy, bringing illegal aliens into the country and transporting them. Miss Merkt is accused of driving a Salvadoran couple and three juveniles to a bus station in McAllen, Texas, and helping them board a bus to Houston November 21. But six people, including her fiancé and Mr. Elder’s mother-in-law, testified she had arrived in New York November 16 and had remained there until November 23. Prosecutors, who had rested their case, appeared surprised by the testimony and asked few questions of the defense witnesses. Earlier, a Salvadoran national, José Andrés Méndez-Valle, testified that Border Patrol agents promised to allow him and four companions to remain in the United States if he testified against Miss Merkt and Mr. Elder.
More than 600 million gallons of sewage was pumped into the scenic Russian River today to empty holding tanks in the town of Santa Rosa. Officials said it would take three days to empty all the sewage into the river and nine days before the 22-mile stretch of the river, from Santa Rosa to the Pacific, 60 miles north of San Francisco, is clean again. Ben Kor, assistant executive officer of the North Coast Region Water Quality Control Board, said about 3,000 people who live near the river would have to boil water from their wells, or use trucked-in water. The treated sewage is usually spread over farmlands as fertilizer. Mr. Kor said board engineers believe city officials have failed to release enough of the sewage into farmlands since last summer, but Mayor Schuyler Jeffries of Santa Rosa said the dry winter had prevented the town from spreading more of the sewage. Mr. Kor said Santa Rosa may face stiff penalties.
The president of Auburn University, reacting to protests by black students, today ordered the all-white Kappa Alpha fraternity to stop displaying a giant Confederate flag but gave it permission to fly a smaller one. The president, James Martin, made the decision in a dispute between the fraternity and the Black Student Action Committee involving the fraternity’s annual festivities honoring the Confederacy. Mr. Martin, a former member of the fraternity, also called for the creation of a biracial student-faculty committee to address racial issues on campus. “It’s a beginning,” said Phylliss Kerney, chairman of the Black Student Action Committee. Jack Fite, president of the fraternity, said his group had recommended the creation of a committee to study racial issues. “We want to sit down and solve our problems,” he said. Auburn’s student population of 18,888 includes 583 blacks.
A Federal appeals court today upheld a ban on trapping timber wolves for sport, but government officials said they might appeal the decision on the threatened species to the Supreme Court. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that a government plan to allow trapping of wolves for sport in northern Minnesota violated the Endangered Species Act, a decision that was hailed by environmentalists. Brian B. O’Neill, an attorney representing 15 environmental groups, said the 2-to-1 vote by the court was “a tremendous result for the wolf and for other threatened species.” State and Federal officials contended the plan, which would have allowed limited trapping, was the best way to preserve the estimated 1,200 timber wolves in northern Minnesota.
Mardi Gras’ show of splendor, satire and sex jammed a million people into the French Quarter and along parade routes of the marching clubs as New Orleans whooped through its annual rowdy fling before the sober season of Lent began at the end of Fat Tuesday. It was a warm day of laughter and amazement, masks and painted faces, crazy costumes, scrambles for plastic necklaces and aluminum doubloons, and beer, wine, and booze. Police said the good-humored crowds, which began thinning at nightfall, were of near-record size.
Near-blizzard conditions stung the Michigan shores of Lake Superior with eight inches of snow and subzero temperatures. Thick fog enveloped parts of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Utah, where the mist was the worst in 54 years. Snow showers and gusty west winds lingered over parts of the upper Great Lakes. Winds hit 40 m.p.h. at Buffalo and Syracuse, New York. Snow showers were scattered across parts of the northern and central Appalachians and over the upper Mississippi Valley. Rain showers were scattered over parts of the northern and Mid-Atlantic Coast, the southern Appalachians, the Tennessee Valley and the lower Mississippi Valley.
Canned & bottled Cherry Coke introduced by Coca-Cola.
British soap opera “Eastenders” premieres on the BBC.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1280.59 (-1.43)
Born:
Haylie Duff, American actress (“7th Heaven”; “Napoleon Dynamite”), and singer-songwriter, in Houston, Texas.
Dan Otero, MLB pitcher (San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Cleveland Indians), in Miami, Florida.
Raymond Sawada, Canadian NHL right wing (Dallas Stars), in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada (d. 2023, after suffering a heart attack during a recreational hockey game).
Kenny Moore, NFL wide receiver (Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts), in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Kosta Perović, Serbian NBA center (Golden State Warriors), in Osijek, SR Croatia, Yugoslavia.
Died:
George Holmes, 66, American actor (“Man in the Trunk”).
History Diaries 