Proposals for freer trade that the Reagan Administration sees as a cornerstone of the annual economic summit meeting of the leading industrialized democracies are being blocked by France, according to officials involved in preparing for the meeting. Paris reportedly will not set a firm date for trade talks unless the economic conferees call an international monetary conference to discuss ways to curb the volatility of the dollar.
A cooling in Bonn on “Star Wars” plans was apparent at a background briefing by a senior official of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Government. It appeared to be retreating from its earlier endorsement of the Reagan Administration’s research program for a missile defense system partly based in space.
A lone hijacker seized a Lufthansa jetliner en route from West Germany to Greece today and forced it to fly to Istanbul. He freed the passengers and surrendered to authorities, the semiofficial Anatolia agency reported. There were believed to be at least 141 passengers, but government and airline officials gave conflicting tallies. Lufthansa officials said the jet was diverted an hour and 25 minutes after it left Munich, West Germany, and one hour before it was due to arrive in Athens. They said the man had demanded to be flown to Libya in the jetliner.
Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Republican of New York, was named today to head the Helsinki Commission, a group of senators and congressmen that monitors human rights abuses in the Soviet bloc. Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, announced that Mr. D’Amato would replace Representative Dante Fascell, Democrat of Florida, as chairman.
A remote-controlled bomb exploded near an elementary school in Belfast, Northern Ireland, killing a British soldier but missing about 250 children who were staying indoors at lunch time because of cold weather. The outlawed Irish Republican Army took responsibility. The bomb, concealed in a workman’s hut, exploded as a security patrol passed by, killing the soldier and slightly injuring two civilians. The unidentified victim was in his early 20s. The overwhelmingly Roman Catholic IRA is fighting to oust the British from the province, which has a Protestant majority.
The Danish Government unveiled legislation today aimed at ending a three-day-old nationwide strike, the largest in state- run industry in 12 years. Prime Minister Poul Schlueter said the legislation, which includes a general economic overhaul, would bypass normal parliamentary procedure in an effort to bring 320,000 striking and locked-out workers back to their jobs by Monday. The legislation would keep wage increases to within 2 percent next year and to within 1.5 percent in the following one. Despite labor’s demands for a 35-hour workweek, it would grant a one-hour reduction to 39 hours before the two-year agreement expires on March 1, 1987.
CBS News confirmed yesterday that, in the wake of the killing of two of its news crew members by Israeli tank fire in southern Lebanon last Thursday, the network was canceling a week of “CBS Morning News” broadcasts from Israel just before Passover and Easter. “CBS Morning News” had planned a week of broadcasts from Israel by its correspondent Bill Kurtis beginning next Monday. A CBS News spokesman, Ann Morfogen, said yesterday that the broadcasts were canceled because they were “celebratory in tone, and no one was in a mood to celebrate.”
The United Nations will reduce its civilian staff in Lebanon to those carrying out the most essential functions because of security concerns, a U.N. spokesman said. U.N. officials said John Defrates, the British director of U.N. refugee relief in Beirut, has been ordered to leave for his own safety. An information consultant for the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, Alec Collett, was kidnaped Monday, and a number of other Westerners have been abducted recently.
A Syrian armed with a knife hijacked a West German Lufthansa airliner with 151 people aboard over Greece and demanded to fly to Libya, but Turkish forces overpowered the hijacker during a stop in Istanbul, Turkey, airline officials said. No injuries were reported. The man was identified as Marwan Hritani, 35, a geologist. Turkish officials and three crew members overpowered the hijacker after the plane landed in Istanbul for fuel.
A huge explosion rocked Baghdad soon after Iran announced that its forces had launched a surface-to-surface missile in an attack against the Iraqi capital. The blast occurred in a heavily populated downtown area, and Western residents and Arab officials said that hundreds of civilians were injured.
Afghan warfare is deadlocked, according to Western diplomats and West European medical volunteers who have traveled extensively in the country. A 21-year-old rebel commander, who is the leader of about 50 men entrenched in caves and ravines, vowed that he and his sons would fight the Russians “until Afghanistan is free.”
A Chinese Navy torpedo boat and 13 crew members were returned to China today by South Korean authorities, officials said. The transfer took place in the Yellow Sea, 150 miles from Kunsan, where the boat and crew had been held since last Saturday. The 40-ton Chinese vessel had been towed to Kunsan after a shooting incident in which 6 of 19 crew members were shot dead and 2 were wounded. As it left Kunsan yesterday, demonstrators pelted the South Korean Embassy in Taipei, Taiwan, with eggs and tomatoes to protest Seoul’s decision to return the boat and crew. One demonstrator was in critical condition after dousing his clothes with gasoline and setting himself afire. South Korea said it had agreed to return the vessel after China apologized for the intrusion into South Korean waters of three warships searching for the torpedo boat. The government refused to allow Taiwanese diplomats to meet the crew. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry expressed regret and dissatisfaction.
The Chinese Government announced today that it was moving to tighten bureaucratic controls it relaxed only five months ago. The controls were reimposed, it said, to prevent its new economic program from being undermined by a wage, price and credit boom and a wave of corruption among local officials. The decision to reimpose some state controls while preserving other aspects of the decentralization was revealed in a somber speech by Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang at the opening session of China’s nominal Parliament, the National People’s Congress. The address was televised live throughout this nation of one billion people, which is in the midst of one of the most ambitious programs of economic relaxation ever attempted by a Communist country.
At least 47 people were killed in clashes between Communist guerrillas and army troops in the southern Philippines, military sources said in Manila. They said the clashes occurred in several parts of southern Mindanao Island in advance of the 16th anniversary of the formation of the insurgent New People’s Army. Expecting more violence on the Friday anniversary, the commander of the armed forces, Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos, placed the army on its highest state of alert, canceling all soldiers’ leaves.
Opposition to Nicaraguan rebels was unexpectedly expressed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The panel voted 9 to 8 to prohibit the use of any foreign aid money for the insurgents fighting the Sandinista Government. The vote came on an amendment to a $12.8 billion foreign aid bill that the committee approved late this evening. The amendment was proposed by Senator Claiborne Pell, Democrat of Rhode Island, who said it would not prevent the Administration from asking Congress for $14 million in covert aid to the rebels. That money, if approved, would be channeled through the Central Intelligence Agency and not through the State Department’s foreign aid office.
The United States said it will raise the issue of peace in Nicaragua with the Organization of American States if the Contadora process fails to produce results soon. U.S. Ambassador J. William Middendorf’s comments to the OAS permanent council in Washington were intended as a “veiled threat of impatience, a gentle nudge” to the Contadora process, State Department sources said.
Salvadoran guerrilla commandos launched a mortar attack on the national police barracks in the capital, injuring four police officers and four civilians in the first such attack in 20 months. A Defense Ministry spokesman said the leftist rebels fired their mortars from a park about 200 yards away. They were fired on in return from guards on the barracks roof. Salvadoran military officials called the attack part of a rebel campaign to sabotage weekend national elections.
Peru absolved 17 Indians in the mass slaying of eight Peruvian journalists in the Andes two years ago. A prosecutor said he was dropping charges against the 17 villagers because their six-month trial had failed to provide sufficient evidence. The presiding judge has said the civil guard might be linked to the killings.
Brazil appeared headed today for an extended period of government under an acting President as the 75-year-old President-elect, Tancredo Neves, struggled to recover from his third major abdominal operation in 11 days. Doctors said that Mr. Neves was in “satisfactory” condition after surgery Tuesday to stem internal bleeding. They also said that a slight infection at the point of incision in Mr. Neves’s abdomen was being treated with antibiotics.
Seven bombs exploded at banks and government buildings in Santiago, the Chilean capital, injuring 15 people, before the scheduled start of a leftist protest against military rule. Small gangs of youths barricaded streets with rocks and burning tires in a few poor neighborhoods, but a planned noon march on the downtown municipal building failed to materialize. President Augusto Pinochet’s government sent troops to back up riot police at key intersections. No clashes were reported. A Communist guerrilla group, the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, claimed responsibility for the bombings.
The Reagan Administration today decided to drop a proposal by the Central Intelligence Agency to make it a crime for government employees to disclose national secrets without authorization, officials said. But they said the Administration remained concerned about unauthorized disclosures of national security secrets to reporters and others and had not ruled out proposing similar legislation in the future. The officials said the C.I.A. had joined in a “consensus” decision not to proceed with a proposal put forth earlier this month by William J. Casey, the Director of Central Intelligence, to send the criminal provision to Congress as part of the proposed Intelligence Authorization Act for the fiscal year 1986.
President Reagan attends a Cabinet Council meeting to discuss the drug problem.
President Reagan calls Members of the House of Representatives to thank them for their votes on the MX Missile program.
Bernhard H. Goetz was indicted on charges of trying to murder four young men in a Manhattan subway train last December. The indictment, which was handed up by the second grand jury to hear the case, was announced by District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, who said the panel had heard evidence not available to the first one. The first grand jury returned an indictment only on charges of illegal possession of guns. Mr. Morgenthau said he believed the “new evidence had a substantial impact” on the grand jury, but he refused to say what the new evidence was, citing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings. Goetz Declines to Testify The indictment came a day after Mr. Goetz refused to testify before the panel. Mr. Goetz’s lawyers had sought to have him testify, but to limit the scope of his testimony. The District Attorney rejected their proposal. Mr. Goetz did not testify before the original panel, either.
The police may not shoot to kill fleeing criminal suspects who are neither armed nor dangerous, under a Supreme Court ruling. The 6-to-3 decision invalidates present laws in nearly half the states that place no restrictions on police officers’ use of deadly force to prevent the escape of a felony suspect. A number of municipal police departments, however, have more restrictive policies. Both New York and New Jersey have state laws embodying aspects of the constitutional standard that the High Court announced today.
The House Ethics Committee concluded its internal investigation into last December’s news leak of a report on the finances of former Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, without naming the source of the disclosure. But the panel announced that it was tightening its procedures to guard against” such leaks in the future. And it adopted a resolution stating that “under no circumstances” should committee documents be disclosed to “anyone not a member or staff of the committee.”
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that he saw no problem with CIA Director William J. Casey’s holding possibly $6-million worth of stock in a media conglomerate outside the blind trust set up for his investments. Speakes refused to say, however, whether Casey should now put his Capital Cities Communications Inc. stock into the blind trust, as the company is in the process of effecting a $3.5-billion takeover of American Broadcasting Co. Inc. ABC has been the subject of a CIA complaint to the Federal Communications Commission over the network’s news reporting. “That’s not a judgment that I’m required to make,” Speakes said. “It’s one for the Office of Government Ethics.”
A pact with Pan Am was ratified by members of the Transport Workers Union. Their approval of a new three- year contract ended a month-long strike that shut down much of the airline’s operations. Ground workers at Pan American World Airways voted to end their four-week strike against the airline, which had threatened to fire thousands of employees. The agreement gives Pan Am the right to cut pensions, reduce health benefits, introduce part-time workers and offer lower starting salaries to persons hired in the future. It provides a 20% pay raise over three years and immediate bonuses of $600 to $1,000 as partial compensation for a 14% raise that the workers waived in 1982. Members of the striking Transport Workers Union voted 3,583 to 2,193 to ratify the pact. The airline still faces the threat of a strike by flight attendants, who have voted to walk out Monday.
Two Sanctuary leaders who aided Salvadoran aliens were sentenced to prison by a Federal District judge in Brownsville, Texas.
Two Sanctuary Movement workers were sentenced to federal prison terms in Brownsville, Texas, for aiding Salvadoran refugees who entered the United States illegally. Jack Elder, 41, director of the Catholic-sponsored Casa Oscar Romero refugee shelter in San Benito, Texas, and Stacey Lynn Merkt, 30, a lay worker, were also ordered to dissociate themselves from the Sanctuary Movement while appealing their cases. Elder was sentenced to six one-year prison terms to be served concurrently. Merkt was ordered to serve 179 days of an 18-month prison sentence.
Bruce Carroll Pierce, the reputed leader of a militant racist group called The Order who is wanted for questioning in the slaying of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg, was ordered held without bond on four federal warrants, a day after his arrest in northwest Georgia. Pierce, 30, from Metaline Falls, Washington, was arrested without resistance by FBI and Georgia agents and brought to Atlanta for arraignment. An FBI spokesman showed reporters three tables covered with weapons seized from the van that Pierce was driving.
Eduardo Arocena, the reputed leader of the militant Omega 7 Cuban exile organization, went on trial today in Federal District Court on charges of bombing the Mexican and Venezuelan consulates and businesses in Miami. Fifty prospective jurors were questioned for the trial, at which Mr. Arocena is charged with 24 counts of violating Federal explosives laws. If convicted, he could receive a maximum of 130 years in prison. The trial is the second in Miami and third in less than a year for the 42-year- old Mr. Arocena, a former longshoreman from Union City, New Jersey. He was convicted of 23 counts of violating Federal weapons laws in a two-week trial last month in Miami and faces a maximum of 115 years in prison. A sentencing date has not been set. Mr. Arocena was sentenced in New York in October to life plus 35 years for the slaying in 1980 of a Cuban diplomatic attache, Felix Garcia, and for masterminding 25 bombings over a 10- year terrorist campaign. Mr. Arocena is charged with placing bombs at seven south Florida sites between 1979 and 1983. No one was killed or injured in the bombings.
A 5-year-old girl, the youngest pupil to testify at a hearing in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, said Tuesday that she had been sodomized by the key defendant. She said the defendant, Raymond Buckey, 26 years old, threatened to kill her parents if she told anyone about sex acts she says occurred when she attended the school in suburban Manhattan Beach from September 1981 to November 1983. The girl is the sixth of 41 children expected to testify in the preliminary hearing for Mr. Buckey and the school’s founder, Virginia McMartin, 77, and six teachers, who are charged with 208 counts of molestation and conspiracy. The hearing is being held to determine whether they should be tried in Superior Court.
[Ed: Reminder: The trials ended with zero convictions, and “McMartin” became a byword for social contagion, hysteria and the epic failure of trusted institutions: law enforcement, courts, the child-therapy establishment and the media. Even the former Los Angeles County district attorney who brought the case to trial — the longest in the annals of U.S. law — acknowledges it was a mistake, so poisoned was the evidence by suggestive interviewing techniques. Few of the now grown-up McMartin children have spoken publicly, but some have described the pressure to fabricate stories or disbelieve innocent memories in favor of traumatic ones.]
A Texas judge today dissolved a temporary restraining order, clearing the way for a woman to have an abortion despite the objections of her estranged husband. “I don’t want to be put in the role of murderer of a child,” said Judge Peter Michael Curry of State District Court, “but I’m a believer in the Constitution of the United States.” A lawyer for the woman, Kim Hayes, 19 years old, said he expected her to have the abortion Thursday. Another State District Court judge, James Onion, issued a restraining order last week at the request of Mrs. Hayes’s estranged husband, Keith Hayes, who said he should be able to veto her abortion. After a brief session today, Judge Onion transferred the case to Judge Curry, who said, “I can’t see how I have the right to prevent this lady from having an abortion.” The couple were married October 16, 1984, according to a court document. Mrs. Hayes became pregnant shortly thereafter and the couple separated on January 28, according to the document.
A ban on sulfites in food was urged by scientists, members of Congress and people who said that they or their loved ones had suffered from inadvertent exposure to the chemicals, which are widely used in restaurants to keep food fresh-looking. Allergic reactions to sulfites have been linked to at least five deaths.
Lawyers for two children who were charged 50 cents every time they called Santa Claus filed a $10 millon lawsuit Tuesday accusing the Pacific Bell Telephne Company of deceptive advertising. The suit says the advertisement was aimed at luring children into calling repeatedly and did not make clear there was a cost. Josie Aaronson-Gelb, 7 years old, told reporters at the law offices of Public Advocates Inc., that all her friends were calling Santa Claus on the telephone last December, so she called him, too, a total of 45 times before Christmas. Josie’s friend, Rachel Kreps-Falk, is the other 7-year-old plaintiff. She said she did not know the calls to the number cost 50 cents each, said Robert Gnaizda, the lawyer for Public Advocates, who filed the San Francisco Superior Court suit. A Pacific Bell spokesman, Jack Saunders, said that under State Public Utilities Commission rules the utility’s only responsibilities with respect to such calls was to provide a working line and to have advertising that clearly stated the cost for the calls. The suit asks for a refund for an estimated 100,000 families and $10 million in punitive damages.
Snow and high winds from a blustery spring storm plugged mountain roads with near-blizzard conditions, shutting down a Utah ski resort and slowing efforts to restore power to thousands in parts of the West, where some areas braced for another foot of snow. The National Weather Service issued a warning in the Colorado Rockies for up to a foot of new snow from the second storm in two days. The high winds roared through with gusts of up to 76 mph, kicking up blinding dust clouds that caused a 35-vehicle pileup in Colorado and punching windows out of a Denver high-rise.
American actor Billy Dee Williams receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan acquiesces to put interviewer Richard Belzer in a hold, resulting in Belzer passing out, hitting his head on the floor, and requiring 9 stitches; Belzer sues Hogan for $5 million in damages for personal injury, they settle out of court, and Belzer buys a home in France.
Shortstop Dickie Thon impresses in a spring training game as he comes back from the beaning that ended his 1984 season in the opening week. He swats a double off the wall in a 3-1 victory over the Dodgers and turns a thrilling double play behind Bob Knepper. Thon explains his injured eye socket seems healthy once again.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1264.91 (+5.19)
Born:
Dustin Byfuglien, NHL defenseman and right wing (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Blackhawks, 2010; NHL All-Star, 2011, 2015, 2016; Chicago Blackhawks, Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets), in Roseau, Minnesota.
Jack Williams, NFL cornerback (Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions), in Norfolk, Virginia.
Caroline Winberg, Swedish supermodel, born in Sollentuna Municipality, Sweden.
History Diaries 