Moscow might multiply its force of offensive missiles in the hope that it could saturate and overwhelm Washington’s proposed land- and space-based missile defense system, according to several experts. Interviews with specialists and a review of their writings and public statements show a general belief that, eventually at least, the Russians may also seek to build an offensive umbrella against intercontinental missiles.
President Reagan meets with Republican Members of Congress to discuss the MX missile program.
The United States’ anti-terrorist program is disorganized and probably unable to respond quickly to attacks on American embassies, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said. They expressed alarm after hearing a report by Robert B. Oakley, director of the State Department’s counterterrorism and emergency planning office. Oakley said that before an anti-terrorist plan can be implemented, his office must consult with other State Department agencies, the Defense Department, the CIA, the National Security Agency and the White House.
The British coal industry staggered back toward full operation today as most miners who had not already abandoned their strike marched back to their jobs. But some miners stayed at home and some who reported for work were turned away by unofficial pickets. Preliminary figures indicated that more than 160,000 men, or about 85 percent of the normal work force, had turned up for work. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, speaking in the House of Commons, swept aside requests for a blanket amnesty for dismissed workers, asserting that those who had committed criminal acts “must expect to face the consequences.” She said “the strike is very nearly over” and appealed for a united effort to rebuild a competitive industry.
As the yearlong coal strike ends, Britain is anxiously assessing the staggering costs of the dispute. But in the background lie worries that the sacrifice has still not secured the British coal industry’s future. Analysts already estimate that the cash cost to the Government will exceed $3 billion, even before the immensely expensive investment to rebuild the shattered industry begins. As a result, many Britons are expecting a surcharge to be announced on their electricity bills, already dubbed “the Scargill surcharge” by the British press, in reference to the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill.
President Reagan met with Prime Minister of the Italian Republic Bettino Craxi. Craxi, after meeting with President Reagan today, said the two leaders had a “broad and encouraging convergence” of views, but he avoided an outright endorsement of the Administration’s research program to develop antimissile defensive weapons. “I am convinced that the basic goals of the United States policy remain defense and peace based on a balance of forces,” Mr. Craxi said on the White House lawn after the two-hour meeting. He said Mr. Reagan had “assured me that these same goals will be pursued through the Strategic Defense Initiative, from whose research program we will draw mutual advantages in the scientific and technological field.”
Chanting “Death to Israel!” and “America, the Great Satan!,” thousands of Muslim demonstrators marched through the streets of West Beirut today to protest the death of 15 people in a bomb blast in a Shiite village in southern Lebanon. Shops and schools were closed here and in two other major Muslim areas, Sidon in the Israeli-occupied south and Baalbek in the east, after Muslim clerics called for “a day of anger” over “Israel’s murderous crime.” Israel has denied any involvement in the explosion Monday at a mosque in the village of Marakah, eight miles east of the port city of Tyre. Among those killed in the blast was Mohammed Saad, who newspapers here say was the commander of the Shiite guerrilla movement south of the Litani River.
Iranian forces shelled the Iraqi border city of Basra this evening, fulfilling a threat made the day before. Iraq responded with rocket fire and said it would hit 30 Iranian towns Wednesday. An Iraqi reporter based in Basra said most of the shells fell on the edge of the city, which has about one million residents and is the only major Iraqi population center within range of Iranian artillery. He said Iraqi officials did not give any casualty reports. The 45-minute barrage on the southern provincial capital began at 8:05 PM, 35 minutes after the time Iran had said it would make the strike, and the Iraqis “responded less than a minute later with multiple rocket launchers,” according to the reporter. He said the Iranians were firing about “one shell per minute,” adding, “For each Iranian shell the Iraqis are launching dozens of rockets.”
At least 22 people were reported killed and 100 injured as voters in India went to the polls for the second round of elections for 10 state assemblies, the United News of India reported. Clashes between rival political groups and between police and mobs claimed 16 lives in the eastern state of Bihar and three each in northern Uttar Pradesh and southern Andhra Pradesh states, the agency said. Results of the balloting are expected today. Observers said the outcome is expected to strengthen the hold of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s party.
Vietnamese forces broke a two-week lull on Cambodian battlefields with an assault on three resistance camps, Thai military sources said. At least 40 Cambodian civilians were killed or wounded in the assault on the Dongruk and Sanro Changan camps, the sources said. An international aid official said both camps apparently fell to the attackers. The Thais reported that the Vietnamese also struck for the first time at the Tatum camp. headquarters of guerrillas loyal to Cambodia’s former ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
South Korea liberalized its policy toward opposition politicians. The government announced a reinstatement of rights for the last 14 politicians from 811 who were blacklisted in 1981. They include the two most prominent opposition figures, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam. The decision erased the last vestiges of a ban imposed in November 1980 after General Chun Doo Hwan seized power in a military coup. The blacklist initially contained 811 names. But since Mr. Chun became President in early 1981 it has been whittled down, and by last November 30 all but the 14 had regained their rights. A government statement said the ban had been dropped because “a new political climate is now prevailing amid stability born of a harmonizing blend of freedom and order.” But it warned against “a regression into the old era,” referring to the pre-Chun days as a period when politics was “characterized by corruption, demagoguery, violence and intrigue.”
The Chinese army will retire 47,000 aging officers in the next two years as part of a program to modernize and reduce its staff, the New China News Agency said. Most of those to be retired are veterans of the 1937-45 war against Japan and the Chinese civil war and have the rank of colonel or below. Peking is trying to make the military more professional and less of an ideological organization.
Philippine Labor Minister Blas Ople offered to resign from the Cabinet of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, one day after Marcos fired Foreign Minister Arturo Tolentino and rebuked Ople. In a letter, Marcos had demanded an explanation of remarks in which Ople charged that Philippine politics depends upon patronage. In a letter of reply offering to resign, Ople called for a “new discipline” in public administration to respond to “an era of crisis.”
Officials of the Canadian province of Ontario contacted breweries in the United States in search of beer amid a labor dispute that has shut down most production and distribution. Albert Campion of the Ontario Consumer Affairs Ministry said at least 100,000 cases of American beer may have to be imported soon. Almost 4,000 employees of the Molson, Labatt and Carling breweries, and of a company that operates 450 retail beer outlets, were locked out more than a week ago after talks broke down with two unions on pay and job security.
Mexican authorities found the body of U.S. drug agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena Salazar. Camarena’s and Alfredo Zavala Avelar’s (who flew missions with Camarena and was a DEA asset) bodies were found wrapped in plastic in a rural area outside the small town of La Angostura in the state of Michoacán. Camarena’s torture and murder prompted a swift reaction from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and launched Operation Leyenda (legend), the largest DEA homicide investigation ever undertaken. A special unit was dispatched to coordinate the investigation in Mexico, where government officials were implicated — including Manuel Ibarra Herrera, past director of Mexican Federal Judicial Police, and Miguel Aldana Ibarra, the former director of Interpol in Mexico.
The Chief Minister of the Turks and Caicos Islands was arrested today by Federal undercover agents and charged with plotting to use the island chain south of the Bahamas as a base to smuggle narcotics into the United States. Agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration said the Chief Minister, Norman Saunders, 41 years old, and three others, including two high-ranking officials of the Turks and Caicos Government, were arrested at a Miami hotel after accepting cash payments from undercover agents. American officials said the payment was part of $50,000 accepted by Mr. Saunders over several weeks to protect a cocaine and marijuana transhipment base the agents said they wanted to establish on the Turks and Caicos archipelago in the British West Indies.
A new way to aid Nicaraguan rebels is being considered by the White House, according to a Reagan Administration official. He said that officials were considering asking friendly Asian countries to channel assistance to the anti-Sandinista insurgents.
Rights abuses by Nicaraguan rebels were sharply criticized in a report published by a private human rights group, Americas Watch. The report also assailed abuses by the Nicaraguan army but said there had been “a sharp decline” in the army’s violations since 1982.
The general picked by Argentine President Raul Alfonsin to replace the one who resigned as armed forces chief chose retirement in preference to the job. Army General Ricardo Pianta was named Monday to succeed General Julio Fernandez Torres, who had been chairman of the joint chiefs of staff until he resigned to protest military budget cuts. When Pianta unexpectedly announced his retirement, the Defense Ministry named General Nelsi Rodoni, the air force chief of staff, as interim replacement.
They galloped alongside the motorcade of four-wheel-drive vehicles moving swiftly on the narrow road in the eastern Sudan. On camels that they prodded with kicks and strikes from thin wooden sticks, the Sudanese riders greeted Vice President Bush as his American caravan made its way to a refugee camp that has come to symbolize the African famine. The camp, Wad Sherifie, contains about 70,000 Ethiopians who fled the northern provinces of Eritrea and Tigre. Relief officials estimate that 600,000 Ethiopians have poured into the Sudan as guerrilla war has made it difficult for agencies to provide them with food in their own country. On the second day of a trip through this region, Mr. Bush received what appeared to be an uncommonly warm reception. At the refugee camp, crowds stood outside barren huts to watch and at times offer a cry of approval. Mr. Bush, wearing a safari shirt, khaki slacks and leather boots and accompanied by his wife, Barbara, said at one point on the tour that “I can’t help but be deeply moved.”
A military budget ceiling that would slash $79 billion over three years from President Reagan’s budget was approved, 18 to 4, by the Senate Budget Committee in its first effort to reduce Federal deficits. The proposal, offered by Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina and backed by the nine other Democrats on the committee, was supported by eight Republicans, including the committee chairman, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico. Four Republicans voted no. Approval of the proposal, which is sure to be opposed by the White House, could open the way for a bipartisan package of measures to cut projected deficits more sharply than the President’s plan. Many Senate Republicans and some Democrats have argued that they would support most of Mr. Reagan’s proposed cuts and program eliminations in nonmilitary spending if they were combined with substantial savings from the military budget.
Action against General Dynamics was announced by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger. Mr. Weinberger said today that he would suspend for 30 days a small part of the Pentagon’s payments to the General Dynamics Corporation while the Defense Department looks into possibly improper billings by the nation’s largest military contractor. In a speech at an American Legion convention here, Mr. Weinberger also announced a review of billing procedures and a tightening of claims for overhead expenses of all major military contractors. The General Dynamics suspension involves payments for general and administrative costs, or overhead. This is 8 percent of the company’s Government billings, according to a statement issued by General Dynamics. A Pentagon spokesman, Michael I. Burch, told reporters the 30-day suspension represents about $40 million.
An emergency farm credit measure was approved by a 255-to-168 vote in the House despite threats of a veto by President Reagan. The representatives accepted a bill passed last week by the Senate that would provide advances on spring loans to grain and cotton farmers and $100 million to help rural banks lower interest rates on troubled farm loans. In the voting, 225 Democrats and 30 Republicans supported the measure and 150 Republicans and 18 Democrats opposed it. About half the Republicans in favor were from Farm Belt states. Most of the Democrats voting no were from urban districts.
About 700 grain farmers from America’s Midwest rally in Washington, D.C. at the Agriculture Department and march to the White House, demanding higher guaranteed prices for their products in pending farm legislation.
The financial status of farm banks has deteriorated seriously and will worsen, a study by the Comptroller of the Currency said.
Death threats identical to the one received by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun also were sent to another high court justice and to Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-New York), the FBI said in Washington. FBI spokesman Bill Baker said the agency is investigating all three threats, as well as a gunshot fired last week at Blackmun’s home in Arlington, Virginia. “They were identical letters,” Baker said. “We’re working all cases. We have not found any link between the letters and the shooting incident.” D’Amato revealed to reporters that he received the threatening letter, but the second Supreme Court justice was not identified.
The Senate, after scrapping its own highway bill, voted overwhelmingly today for a House bill that would release to the states $7.2 billion in Federal funds for road construction. The bill, passed by voice vote, was sent to President Reagan for his signature or veto. The House passed the bill 392 to 4 last week and sent it to the Senate, which had passed its version 95 to 0 the week before.
An impatient federal appeals court in Washington told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order natural gas producers to finish making about $1 billion in refunds owed for the last 22 years. “The law requires the ordering of refunds at the earliest possible moment. That moment has come and gone,” said the unsigned order of a three-judge panel of the court.
Education Secretary William J. Bennett told Congress an estimated 13,000 youngsters from families with incomes of more than $100,000 now get federal student loans. Bennett said these youngsters can slip through existing “need tests” by going to an expensive private school and by having two or three brothers or sisters in college simultaneously. He provided the 13,000 figure based on a 1984 survey.
Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., the black chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, said that black leaders and civil rights supporters are practicing a “new racism” by promoting preferential treatment for minorities. “Our so-called black leaders are spending every moment peddling pain, complaining about budget cuts,” instead of helping President Reagan “create a society that is truly colorblind,” Pendleton told a National Press Club audience in Washington.
Scientists say they have created a technique for enveloping a local anesthetic in “microdroplets” so that it works like timed-release cold medicine, delivering relief from pain for up to 40 hours with a single injection. The technique promises to give patients safe, effective relief from chronic or surgical pain without hindering healing, said a developer, Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of anesthesiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for a convicted child killer to die in Florida’s electric chair this morning, while a federal judge in a lower court indefinitely postponed a second execution scheduled in that state today, that of convicted killer William Middleton Jr. The high court, by a 5-3 vote, rejected an emergency request to spare the life of John Paul Witt, 42, who was sentenced to death for the October 28, 1973, murder of Jonathon Kusher, 11. Prosecutors said Witt, then 30, and a friend sexually abused and mutilated the corpse.
Bernie Sanders, the nation’s only Socialist Mayor, easily defeated six other candidates today to win re-election to a third two-year term in Burlington, Vermont. On an environmental issue before the state’s voters on Town Meeting Day, residents in at least 25 communities supported a referendum calling for immediate action to combat acidic rain. One community voted against the resolution. Mayor Sanders of Burlington, 43 years old, received 5,429 votes, or 55 percent, while his chief opponent, Brian Burns, a Democrat, had 3,095 votes, with all six wards reporting. It appeared that Mayor Sanders’s allies in his Progressive Coalition would retain their plurality of six on the 13-member Board of Aldermen.
A federal district judge, declaring that “the public’s right to a fair trial” is equal to that of defendants, today barred lawyers in a case involving three people accused of spying for the Soviet Union from talking to reporters about the case. The judge, David V. Kenyon Jr., issued the order on a request made Monday by the United States Attorney for the Central District of California, Robert C. Bonner. “It is the integrity of our judicial process that is fundamentally at stake,” Judge Kenyon said. “This trial will not become a circus show played out on the steps of this courthouse.” Judge Kenyon emphasized that his ruling was unusual in that it stressed the public’s, not the defendant’s, rights to receive justice.
New York City offered $100 cash to anyone who turns in any fugitive from a new list of the 100 “most dangerous of the dangerous” criminals. “This is a very easy $100 to make,” said Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward. “You don’t have to wait for a conviction. All we have to do is make the arrest and we will quickly pay the $100.” Ward and Mayor Edward I. Koch stood at a news conference between posters with pictures of the first 10 fugitives on the list.
A Vietnam veteran apparently shot and killed his wife and elder son and then wounded his younger son before killing himself in their apartment in Yonkers. Officials said the surviving son, who is 3 years old, “treated his gunshot wound in the chest with a Band-Aid,” then fed himself from a refrigerator and watched television for a day before the slayings were discovered by a neighbor.
A 68- year-old retired gardener has been arrested in the San Francisco, California killing of a young man who witnesses said accosted him and called him an obscene name on a downtown street Monday afternoon. The former gardener, Tony Cyril Thomas, calmly surrendered a short distance from the scene of the shooting on Market Street after being pointed out by witnesses. He was carrying a revolver in his pocket that was registered in his name, but he did not have a permit to carry a concealed weapon, as required by law. The victim, identified by the police as Franklin Levi Clingenpeel, 21, died Monday night.
A retired newspaper photographer who was injected with a formaldehyde-like substance while undergoing surgery was left in a coma today and apparently brain dead in what Miami doctors called “a tragic series of human errors.” The photographer, Bob East, 64 years old, was injected with the substance in his spine Friday at Jackson Memorial Medical Center by a doctor who believed it was spinal fluid. It was glutaraldehyde, in an unmarked bottle. Dr. James Ryan Chandler, the lead surgeon, said: “It was preventable. It was a tragic series of human errors.” Mr. East, who retired earlier this year after working for The Miami Herald since 1951, had undergone surgery for facial cancer twice before.
Fifteen universities were accused by the National Science Board of circumventing usual merit-review procedures and obtaining more than $100 million from Congress over the last two years to build laboratory facilities. In several cases, the board charged, the funds obtained “were diverted from other scientific activities that had been selected on the basis of their merit.”
Payola in the popular music industry has increased sharply. Record manufacturers, industry sources say, are paying more than $50 million a year to a small group of freelance promoters to highlight their records. According to Rick Sklar, an industry consultant, some promoters make regular payments to key station executives and thereby exercise total control over play lists.
38th British Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs): “The Killing Fields” Best Film, Wim Wenders Best Director.
NHL New York Islanders Mike Bossy is 1st to score 50 goals in 8 straight seasons.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1291.85 (+2.32)
Born:
Whitney Port, American television personality (“The Hills”), in Los Angeles, California.
Brad Mills, MLB pitcher (Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Angels, Oakland A’s), in Mesa, Arizona.
Rob Kurz, NBA power forward (Golden State Warriors), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
History Diaries 