U.S. ambiguity on summit talks was acknowledged by Robert C. McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser. He said Mr. Reagan could meet with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, this year even if a full-fledged summit conference was not possible. MacFarlane said he was seeking to clarify comments by American officials in recent days, and he drew a distinction between a summit meeting, with delegations of officials from both sides, and a meeting of two leaders. “The President has stressed that he would welcome a meeting with the General Secretary,” Mr. McFarlane said of Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. “He would also welcome a summit at the proper time and as the culmination of an extended dialogue which has produced a tangible accomplishment.”
A major review of U.S.-Soviet ties will be held over the next two weeks by the Reagan Administration, according to officials. They said the policy study would determine whether Secretary of State George P. Shultz would offer any new initiatives to Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko when they meet in Vienna on May 14. The United States and the Soviet Union formally announced the Shultz- Gromyko meeting today, but it had been planned for some time. They will both be in Vienna for ceremonies marking 30th anniversary of the 1955 treaty that ended the occupation of Austria by the wartime Allies.
The Reagan Administration’s senior arms control adviser today dismissed a Soviet moratorium on deploying medium- range nuclear missiles in Europe, saying it was inferior to an offer the Russians made to him in 1983. The adviser, Paul H. Nitze, said the Administration was right to rebuff the newest missile offer because it specified only missiles in Europe, without freezing missiles aimed at Japan or China from Asia.
Moscow urged a return to detente, the press agency Tass reported. It said that Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, had told a Congressional group, including House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., that United States-Soviet relations had been suffering an ice age and he urged Washington to show the political will to overcome it. Mr. O’Neill, at a news conference, said he and three other House members had talked with Mr. Gorbachev in the Kremlin for 3 hours and 43 minutes and had been impressed by his toughness, knowledge and persuasiveness.
A Soviet sentry who shot and killed U.S. Army Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. in East Germany last month is facing disciplinary measures and may be court-martialed, informed Soviet Bloc sources said in Bonn. They quoted Soviet officers as saying the sentry was under arrest and likely to be charged initially with violating regulations by using excessive force. But they added that the Soviet military was sticking to accounts that Nicholson was well inside a restricted military area when he was shot.
About 200,000 anti-government demonstrators packed Copenhagen’s Parliament Square, defying a warning from Danish Prime Minister Poul Schlueter to end their wildcat walkouts or face court action. Similar protests took place in other provincial cities. Workers were protesting emergency back-to-work laws passed by Parliament March 30 to end strikes and lockouts that have crippled the nation.
About 8,000 black Jews are still living in famine-stricken Ethiopia, an American involved in relief efforts for them said in Jerusalem. Nathan Shapiro, president of the American Association for Ethiopian Jews, told reporters that many of those remaining 8,000 are elderly and vulnerable. Shapiro commented as many of the almost 10,000 Ethiopian Jews who have migrated to Israel gathered in Jerusalem for a reunion with Israelis and Americans who have helped organize their exodus.
Premier Rashid Karami and three other Muslim members of Lebanon’s government announced that they will boycott future Cabinet meetings until action is taken to end the Christian-Muslim bloodshed in the southern city of Sidon. The Syrian-backed premier said he feels that his role in the government is meaningless because the Cabinet’s orders for the Lebanese army to try to stop the fighting in Sidon, which has claimed 71 lives since mid-March, have not been carried out. Mr. Karami and the other new boycotting Cabinet member, Dr. Selim al-Hoss, are Sunni Muslims. Two other Muslim ministers — Nabih Berri, a Shiite, and Walid Jumblat, a Druse — have been boycotting Cabinet sessions for several weeks because of disagreements with President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian.
King Hussein and Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, met at the royal palace tonight, and an aide to Mr. Arafat said they discussed their joint peace proposal and the upsurge in violence in southern Lebanon. Israel, the United States and hard- line Arab countries have criticized the plan, under which a Jordanian-P.L.O. team would first hold talks with the United States and those three parties would then meet with Israel to prepare for a Middle East peace conference that would include the Soviet Union, Syria and other countries. Israel has said it would never negotiate with the P.L.O., and both the United States and Israel oppose an international peace conference that would include the Soviet Union.
On the eve of a new trip to the Middle East by Richard W. Murphy, the State Department announced that Syria has accepted its request for a meeting on Mideast peace efforts with the assistant secretary of state. Department spokesman Edward P. Djerejian said that in addition to Syria, Murphy will visit Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. His precise schedule is being kept secret for security reasons. Meanwhile, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat arrived in Amman for further talks with Jordan’s King Hussein.
Pakistan’s first civilian Cabinet in eight years was sworn in today. President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, who also heads the armed forces, said the 13-member Cabinet should seek national unity and continue to work toward formation of an Islamic state. Speaking at a brief ceremony, General Zia said the nation would be watching the new Cabinet “not merely to find to what extent they were able to solve their problems, but also to see as to what extent they would play a role in making Pakistan a true Islamic republic.” General Zia, who has ruled Pakistan for eight years as head of the martial- law Government, has said that he intends a full return to civilian rule in the next few months and that he will step down as head of the army to become a civilian president.
Bangladeshi President H. M. Ershad said today that he would relax martial law and lift a ban on political activity after elections to rural councils next month. “I shall try again to restore democracy as soon as possible,” he said. “But many of my future initiatives depend on the attitude of the political leaders.” General Ershad said martial law, reimposed early last month, and the ban on political activity in Bangladesh would remain in force until the rural elections were over. He has set elections to the 460 rural councils for May 16 and 20 and said they would be followed by presidential and parliamentary polls.
The leader of the main non-Communist Cambodian guerrilla group said today that his forces needed American military aid to help it fight against Vietnamese forces in Cambodia. After meeting with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Son Sann, who leads the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, said in an interview that with new arms his group planned to regroup into small hit-and-run guerrilla units of about 100 men each. Previously, the Cambodian insurgents were grouped around large camps housing Cambodian refugees along the border with Thailand. But in recent months, Vietnamese forces have largely destroyed these camps, forcing the population to flee to Thailand.
China’s nominal parliament unanimously ratified a Sino-British agreement transferring Hong Kong to Communist rule July 1, 1997, and guaranteeing its capitalist system for 50 years thereafter. The 2,973member National People’s Congress also approved a resolution to create a committee that will draft a “basic law” for the British colony after the turnover. The law will serve as a constitution, defining the port’s economic, political and judicial system.
One of China’s top leaders said today that the United States had agreed not to include nuclear-armed vessels in a ceremonial port call the Navy is planning to make in Shanghai this year. The United States refused to give similar assurances to New Zealand before a planned port call earlier this year. When New Zealand barred a Navy ship, the United States pulled out of a joint naval exercise with New Zealand and effectively suspended participation in the Anzus military pact joining the Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The Chinese official, Hu Yaobang, who is the party leader, told a group of reporters from Australia and New Zealand here that “there has already been an understanding between China and the United States” on the matter. He implied that the assurances about the absence of nuclear arms aboard ships had been given at Chinese insistence.
An offshore earthquake shook wide areas of Japan, but no injuries or major damage were reported. The temblor struck at 1:27 AM, deep in the ocean bed, and registered 7.0 on the Richter scale, the government’s Central Meteorological Agency said. The epicenter appeared to be off the Izu Peninsula, near Tori-shima island, about 310 miles southwest of Tokyo. The quake was felt in wide areas of central and northern Honshu, Japan’s main island, and in parts of Hokkaido island to the north, the agency said. It said the quake was felt most strongly in Utsunomiya, 62 miles north of Tokyo.
Mexico’s reputed No. 1 drug trader, Ernesto Fonseca Carillo, has been arrested in the Mexican Pacific resort of Puerto Vallarta, the authorities announced. Rafael Caro Quintero, who is also said to be a leading Mexican narcotics trafficker, was arrested last week.
At least 20 Salvadorans were killed by hundreds of guerrillas in the village of Santa Cruz Loma, residents reported. Several villagers were missing and believed kidnapped. Witnesses said the incident began at dusk Monday, when 300 to 500 rebels approached Santa Cruz Loma, a string of huts along a crude road 25 miles southeast of San Salvador. Residents who spoke in interviews Tuesday said they thought the guerrillas were Government troops until they saw rebel initials on some of the uniforms. The villagers then opened fire first, residents said.
Nicaraguan draft evaders have been fleeing to other countries by the thousands since the Sandinista Government imposed conscription 15 months ago. The youths with money or connections settle in Miami or other comfortable havens, but they are in the minority.
President Reagan calls President of the Republic of Panama Nicolas Ardito Barletta Vallarino.
A hospital official said today that Brazilian President-elect Tancredo Neves, weakened by 6 operations in 25 days and suffering from severe breathing problems, was in “very grave condition with his life in danger.” Mr. Neves, 75 years old, has undergone five abdominal operations and a tracheotomy since March 15, when he was rushed into surgery hours before he was to be inaugurated as Brazil’s first civilian President in 21 years. Vice President Jose Sarney has served as Acting President. “We should not delude ourselves,” said Dr. Guilherme Rodrigues, director of the Clinicas Hospital where Mr. Neves is being treated. “The President-elect is in very grave condition with his life in danger.”
The Sudan’s new military leader said today that he was negotiating with civilian opposition groups to form a coalition Cabinet, and that he had sent an envoy to start negotations with guerrillas in the southern part of that north African nation. General Siwar el-Dahab, in his first news conference since he led a coup Saturday, also said he was anxious to maintain good relations with the United States. Long quotes from the news conference were reported from Khartoum by Egypt’s official Middle East News Agency. The Sudan’s telephone and telex lines were mostly shut down and its airports remained closed.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi said today that President Reagan’s “nose will be cut” if the United States interferes in the Sudan. “Reagan has nothing to do with Sudan,” the Libyan leader said in English to an American reporter as he left a news conference at his military headquarters here. “Sudan is ours, not an American matter. Reagan must take care of his county, and he has big problems there. He don’t interfere here, or his nose will be cut.”
Trade issues are reshaping politics. The Democrats, who championed protectionist legislation until last year, blame the Reagan Administration’s economic policies and the bloated dollar for a record $123.8 billion trade deficit. The Republicans, who are on the defensive, now appear to be swinging back toward protectionism. One reason, analysts say, is that the Democrats smell blood. Twenty-two Senate Republicans face re-election next year, and they could be vulnerable to the Administration’s enthusiasm for free-market solutions to the severe problems of the dollar’s high value.
President Reagan goes horseback riding and does chores around the Ranch in California.
The space shuttle orbiter Challenger moves to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) for mating of the STS 51-B mission. The two-day countdown for space shuttle Discovery’s mission began today as its sister ship, the Challenger, moved into an assembly hangar. The Challenger will be launched 17 days later. Mark Hess, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said, “We got off to a slow start this year, so it’s important that we achieve these two launches in a short period to get us back on a one-a-month launch schedule.”
600,000 people might become poor if Congress limited the increase in Social Security benefits as proposed by President Reagan and Senate Republican leaders, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The agency issued the first authoritative analysis of the compromise plan.
Marines and farmers joined firefighters to contain a 10-mile-wide inferno raging on the North Carolina coast as Governor Jim Martin declared 34 counties a disaster area. Martin asked President Reagan for federal aid to cope with the fires which have destroyed 74 homes and blackened 119,000 acres of forest, causing $51-million damage. At dawn, 140 Marines joined rangers, farmers and volunteer firefighters and started flooding fields to combat stubborn underground peat fires. More than 30 persons have been injured, mostly firefighters felled by smoke.
An outbreak of salmonella has been linked to two deaths and has caused illness among more than 2,200 people in five states, most of them in Illinois. Milk sold by the Jewel Food Stores has been linked to the infection, and the company has suspended operations at its Hillfarm Dairy in Melrose Park, Illinois. More than 10,000 persons could contract salmonella poisoning from those already infected by the contaminated milk, health officials said, in urging extra precautions in five states. As many as 2,827 cases of salmonella poisoning have been reported and 2,214 confirmed in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Patrick J. Buchanan has emerged as one of the most powerful policy-making figures in the White House. Mr. Buchanan, the White House director of communications and conservative columnist and author, has expanded his influence to play a key role in strategy aimed at building Congressional and public support for President Reagan’s policies.
The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis revived South Dakota Governor William J. Janklow’s $10-million defamation suit against Newsweek magazine concerning an article recounting the governor’s dogged pursuit of Indian leader Dennis Banks. The article, published February 21, 1983, mentioned that Janklow had once been a suspect in the alleged rape of an Indian girl. Janklow was never prosecuted in the incident. The U.S. District Court in South Dakota granted Newsweek a summary judgment in the case, saying the magazine had not claimed the rape charge was true, but the appeals court said the actual malice question to be answered in a defamation case “has not been adequately developed to enable us to rule on that issue in this appeal.”
A plan to require that toilet facilities and drinking water be provided by farmers for field workers has been dropped by the Labor Department, department officials said. The decision brought a strong and immediate protest from five department aides who have studied the legal and medical testimony in the case for several years.
Tom Bradley won his biggest victory as Mayor of Los Angeles as voters swept him to a fourth four-year term. Mr. Bradley captured almost 68 percent of the vote.
The largest personal income tax cut package in New York history was signed into law by Governor Mario M. Cuomo, who also approved continuation of some consumer and business taxes. The tax cuts will be phased in starting this year, and Cuomo said that almost 500,000 low-income residents will be taken off the state’s tax rolls. Under the plan, a family of four earning $26,000 with average itemized deductions would save about $620. New Yorkers are expected to save about $635 million in income taxes this year and $955 million in 1986.
Results of new tests presented at a Chicago hearing reportedly cast doubt on an alleged rape victim’s recantation of testimony that sent a man to prison for six years. Cathleen Crowell Webb, 23, now of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, testified last Thursday that she lied in 1977 when she accused Gary Dotson, 28, of rape. Webb, who said she concocted the story because she feared she was pregnant, testified last week she was only having sex with her boyfriend in July, 1977. Investigators said new tests indicate the blood and semen found on Webb in 1977 were not compatible with samples of blood and saliva provided by Webb’s former boyfriend.
[Ed: Dotson sought post-judgment relief based on Crowell Webb’s recantation, but the trial court found her recantation to be unbelievable and refused to free him. Dotson went through a series of paroles and re-incarcerations until DNA evidence proved his innocence in 1988. On August 15, 1988, IllinoisGovernor James Thompson and the prosecutors were notified that DNA testing had positively excluded Dotson and positively included Crowell’s then-boyfriend, David Bierne, as the source of the semen stain. Nevertheless, the governor stated he would not act without receiving a recommendation from the Prisoner Review Board, which then failed to consider it. The media took up Dotson’s case. In May 1989, his lawyer filed a new petition for post-conviction relief, which was accepted for hearing on August 14, 1989. The prosecutors publicly vowed to oppose the petition but later joined the judge in dismissing the original conviction and dropping all charges at the August 14 hearing.]
Infertility was linked with I.U.D.’s by two major studies. The research showed that using an intrauterine device for contraception seemed to double the risk of infertility and that 88,000 American women might be unable to bear children because of damage from the device.
The Florida Agriculture Commissioner said today that inspectors had discovered two more Mediterranean fruit flies, signaling an infestation of the citrus menace in the Miami area, and officials announced that a quarantine had been imposed on a 110 square-mile area in Dade County. The quarantine, which is to last 90 days, bans shipments of fruit from the area, officials said. The Commissioner, Doyle Conner, said a female Mediterranean fruit fly was discovered in north Miami February 25, prompting a trapping program that Mr. Conner said was expanded with the latest discovery. Most recently, flies were trapped in a calamondin tree, a miniature citrus tree, just outside Miami. An entomologist with the Division of Plant Industry confirmed Tuesday that they were male fruit flies. “Unfortunately, this latest find signals that an infestation does exist in Miami,” Mr. Conner said. “The crucial step is now to determine just where the core of the infestation is.” The fruit flies, which attack mostly citrus crops, burrow into fruit to lay their eggs, causing the fruit to shrivel and drop off trees.
The United Automobile Workers, threatened with the closing of the nation’s oldest car assembly plant, agreed today to a demand by the American Motors Corporation that profit sharing be used this year to pay back part of 1982 contract concessions, according to the auto concern. A company spokesman, Lloyd Northard, said American Motors had been told of the agreement by the union after three days of meetings at a suburban Detroit hotel. The union also agreed to open contract talks early at Kenosha, Wisconsin, the site of the company’s only auto assembly plant in the United States and the oldest plant in the nation. The company had threatened to close the plant and its nearby stamping and parts operations in Milwaukee if the union rejected profit sharing and insisted on a richer formula for paying back concessions. Union officials taking part in the talk could not be contacted.
An official of the American Civil Liberties Union said today the organization and the city of Philadelphia had approved a legal settlement that would bar the Police Department from conducting mass arrests. Barry Steinhardt, executive director of the Philadelphia branch of the Civil Liberties Union, said the agreement settled part of a suit filed against the city because of a police operation designed to reduce street-corner drug trafficking. Last month, police officers conducted a series of raids at sites with a record of a lot of drug activity or other illegal activity. The police said 80 people were arrested on drug offenses and 155 on disorderly conduct charges in the operation March 27 and hundreds more were stopped and searched. The Civil Liberties Union lawsuit charged the arrests violated the constitutional rights of those charged because the police had no probable cause to stop and search them.
A judge’s public scolding of a prosecutor over a widely publicized child sex abuse trial that ended in acquittal must be stricken from the record, the Minnesota Court of Appeals panel has ruled. The court, in a 2-to-1 decision, found Tuesday that the Scott County Attorney, Kathleen Morris, had “no effective notice or opportunity to be heard” when Judge Martin Mansur issued the reprimand. Judge Mansur called Miss Morris’s conduct at the trial of Robert and Lois Bentz of Jordan “reprehensible.” He said she had violated his order to keep witnesses apart when she housed a number of children together at a suburban motel and allowed them to take meals together during the trial.
A six-day excavation of a lot adjacent to the McMartin Pre-School produced no evidence to support former McMartin students’ testimony that animals were slaughtered to scare children into silence about sexual abuse reported at the school, prosecutors said Tuesday. An archeological concern hired by the District Attorney’s office found a turtle shell and some animal bones, but prosecutors said they havd no reason to believe that the objects were related to the reputed molestation case. Prosecutors were looking for evidence that the seven defendants in the case scared 41 children into silence about the reputed sexual abuse by slaughtering small animals in front of them. Virginia McMartin, the elderly owner of the now-defunct nursery school, her daughter, two grandchildren and three former teachers are in the midst of their eight-month-old preliminary hearing on charges they molested the 41 students.
[Ed: Nothing found — because there was never anything there to find. The entire case is pure hysterical witchunt.]
Major League Baseball:
At Fenway, the Red Sox score 9 runs (3 earned) in less than 2 innings against Ed Whitson as they paste the Yankees, 14–5. Bill Buckner completes the scoring in the 7-run 2ndwith a 2-run homer. Rich Gedman has 2 hits in the 2nd and 4 in the game: it won’t happen again until 2014 that an opposing catcher has 4 hits versus New York.
Texas Rangers 1, Baltimore Orioles 7
New York Yankees 5, Boston Red Sox 14
Minnesota Twins 6, California Angels 3
Montreal Expos 4, Cincinnati Reds 1
Cleveland Indians 1, Detroit Tigers 8
Los Angeles Dodgers 5, Houston Astros 4
Toronto Blue Jays 1, Kansas City Royals 0
Oakland Athletics 4, Seattle Mariners 5
San Diego Padres 3, San Francisco Giants 0
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1259.94 (+6.08)
Born:
Dion Phaneuf, Canadian NHL defenseman (NHL All-Star, 2007, 2008, 2012; Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, Los Angeles Kings), in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Tyler Polumbus, NFL tackle (Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Falcons), in Denver, Colorado.
Kory Sperry, NFL tight end (Maimi Dolphins, San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals), in Pueblo, Colorado.
Hayden Smith, Australian NFL tight end (New York Jets), in Penrith, New South Wales, Australia.
Clayton Mortensen, MLB pitcher (St. Louis Cardinals, Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies, Boston Red Sox), in Rexburg, Idaho.
Jonathan Diaz, MLB shortstop, second baseman and outfielder (Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays), in Miami Beach, Florida.
Eddie Castro, Panamanian jockey (record 9 wins in one race meeting, 2005), in Los Santos Province, Panama.
History Diaries 