President Reagan, affirming his decision to lay a wreath next month at a German military cemetery that includes graves of 47 SS soldiers, said that most of the war dead there were as much victims of the Nazis as the inmates of death camps. The President’s remarks immediately stirred a new burst of criticism from American Jewish groups and others, who reiterated demands that he cancel the cemetery visit. “I think that there is nothing wrong with visiting that cemetery where those young men are victims of Nazism also, even though they were fighting in the German uniform, drafted into service to carry out the hateful wishes of the Nazis,” Mr. Reagan said. “They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.” His remarks, made in response to a question at a White House session with regional editors and broadcasters, were his most detailed explanation yet of the decision to visit the cemetery at Bitburg, near the Luxembourg border. The cemetery has the graves of nearly 2,000 German soldiers, including 47 members of the SS, the Nazi elite guard.
Deploring the President’s comment on those buried in the German war cemetery in Bitburg, Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said, “To equate the fate of members of the German army bent on world conquest with that of six million Jewish civilians, including one million innocent children, is a distortion of history, a perversion of language.”
Elie Wiesel implored George Shultz to dissuade President Reagan from inflicting “pain and shame” on Americans by visiting the German cemetery. Mr. Wiesel is chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in a major policy statement to Parliament, called today for a joint Western European approach to the American research project for a space- based missile defense. Opening a parliamentary debate, Mr. Kohl defended President Reagan’s rationale for the project and said his Government endorsed “in principle” the proposed research program. Deputies of the opposition Social Democratic and Green parties rejected the plan. Horst Ehmke, the principal speaker for the Social Democrats, said the Reagan proposal would “open a new round of arms growth” and transform Western Europe into an “appendix of the United States military-industrial complex.”
Britain ordered a Soviet diplomat and an Aeroflot employee expelled for “unacceptable activities,” a diplomatic euphemism for spying. Captain Oleg A. Los, 44, assistant naval attache, and Vyacheslav A. Grigorov, 37, a charter flight manager for the Soviet state airline, were given seven days to leave the country, a Foreign Office statement said. No details were given. The expulsions would bring to at least 12 the number of Soviets who have been expelled from Britain for similar reasons since 1981.
Three top Solidarity activists have been indicted on charges of inciting unrest and conducting illegal union activities, a prosecution official said in Warsaw. The trial of Bogdan Lis, Adam Michnik and Wladyslaw Frasyniuk is expected to start early next month, Lis’ lawyer said. It would be the most significant action against activists of the outlawed union since last July’s amnesty, under which more than 600 were freed from jails.
Belgium is considering pulling several hundred soldiers out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s front-line forces in West Germany as an economy measure, defense sources said in Brussels. They confirmed a Belgian press report that the Belgian army chief of staff, Gen. Josef Segers, has proposed scrapping four anti-tank battalions, including two based in West Germany, and moving three other battalions back to Belgium. Belgium has about 25,000 troops in West Germany.
Rashid Karami took up a role as a caretaker Prime Minister today, traveling to Syria for talks with President Hafez al-Assad on the deteriorating political situation in Lebanon. The visit came 24 hours after the Prime Minister, a Sunni Moslem, submitted his resignation to President Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian. The 63-year-old Mr. Karami agreed to stay on in a caretaker capacity until a decision is reached by President Gemayel about the fate of the national unity Cabinet, which resigned along with Mr. Karami. The Cabinet was formed a year ago under Syrian aegis.
In another development, unidentified gunmen abducted the vice president for administration of the American University of Beirut. University officials said the kidnappers seized the official, George Sayegh, after breaking into his apartment in West Beirut soon after midnight Wednesday night and took him away. The 47-year-old Mr. Sayegh is a Greek Orthodox Christian from the northern port of Tripoli. The reason for his abduction was not known.
President Chadli Benjedid of Algeria voiced concern today about growing tension in North Africa, accusing Morocco of spurning chances for a political settlement of the 10-year-old conflict in Western Sahara. He said King Hassan II of Morocco might be considering a full-scale military drive against the Algerian-backed Saharan insurgents. In an interview, Colonel Benjedid, who met President Reaagn on Wednesday, seemed eager to denigrate King Hassan. The King is a longtime American ally, whose country receives considerable military and financial aid from the United States, and he provides emergency air bases to the Air Force in time of trouble in the region.
Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, said that “voices of hypocrisy” are trying to lure young Iranians into opposing the war against Iraq. While conceding the fact that there is domestic opposition to the war, Khomeini said the dissent is of meager proportions.
Hundreds of Pakistani troops poured into Karachi to control rioting directed against the city’s Pashtun community. At least 16 people have been reported killed and more than 100 wounded since the riots began Monday. The rioting began after two buses, allegedly racing down a street, plowed into a group of students, killing two and injuring three. The Pashtuns dominate the city’s transportation industry, owning and driving most of the private buses and taxis.
Political groups opposing President Ferdinand E. Marcos said today that they would support a single candidate in presidential elections scheduled for 1987. Leaders of the groups said the agreement was a breakthrough in efforts to unify to end the 20-year rule of President Marcos. Although Mr. Marcos has said there would be no presidential elections until 1987 when his present term expires, the opposition leaders said they were convinced he would call for elections this year or next.
Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang said in Wellington, New Zealand that China will cut the strength of its armed forces by one million men this year. He told reporters that the reduction in conventional forces will not diminish China’s ability to defend itself. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates China’s total regular armed forces at 4 million. Hu said the troop cut will be consistent with China’s foreign policy of “peace and stability in the world.”
Ten months ago, six people founded a human rights organization called the Mutual Support Group for the Appearance Alive of Our Relatives. Today, only two of the six remain. Two have been killed, one is in exile and another has quit the group out of fear. The two remaining directors, Nineth de Garcia and Isabel de Castanon, said this week that they hoped to keep their group alive. But the two young women are clearly terrified.
President Reagan spends the day in a series of meetings in support of the Nicaraguan Peace Plan proposal.
Nicaraguan rebels won’t receive more American weapons this year, according to a White House official. The official said that President Reagan, faced with almost certain defeat in Congress, had agreed to accept a compromise under which any United States assistance to the insurgents between now and October 1 could be used only for “nonlethal” purposes, including trucks and uniforms but excluding guns and ammunition.
American “nonlethal” aid that will total $7.5 million has started arriving in an area that serves as a major Nicaraguan rebel camp on the Nicaraguan-Honduran border.
Severe flooding brought on by heavy rainstorms has driven more than 500,000 people from their homes across northeastern Brazil, according to the government. Torrents of muddy river water have swept through l8l municipalities and caused at least 27 deaths, officials said. They said they still had little idea how many thousands of homes had collapsed in the towns and remote villages of the interior.
Brazilian President-elect Tancredo Neves slipped into “extremely critical” condition today, showing signs of failure in his heart and lungs, a government spokesman said.
South Africa announced today that it would restore a measure of self-government to South-West Africa pending international arrangements to give full independence to the territory. President P. W. Botha, in a speech to the Parliament here, said that executive and legislative functions would be turned over to the South-West African Multi Party Conference, a diverse group of parties in the territory, also known as Namibia, that last month formally demanded that they be allowed to form a transitional government until independence is achieved. Mr. Botha said that decisions of the interim administration would have to be signed by a governor general appointed by South Africa.
Angry South African blacks pulled a white man from his car, doused him with gasoline and set him afire just hours after autopsies revealed that 17 of 20 blacks killed by police at an illegal funeral in March were shot in the back. The attack in Uitenhage, near the black township of Langa, where the March incident occurred, was believed to be the first time in over a year of racial unrest that a white has been attacked in a white area. The man, identified as Erasmus Jacobs, 25, of Johannesburg, was hospitalized in critical condition. Police have offered contradictory stories about the Langa incident but basically claim that they opened fire because they were afraid they would be overrun by the demonstrators.
The economy slowed sharply to a weak 1.3 percent annual growth rate in the first three months of the year, far below the 4.3 percent rate of the final 1984 quarter, the Commerce Department reported. That was the smallest growth since the recovery began in late 1982 and was far below the 4.3 percent rate of the final 1984 quarter. According to most economists, the report dashed hopes that the United States could achieve the Reagan Administration’s 3.9 percent growth target for 1985. One of the implications is an adverse effect on the Federal budget deficit because lower economic activity, among other things, implies lower incomes, profits and Treasury revenues.
Two education officials resigned after their criticism of Federal programs for the handicapped provoked angry protests from members of Congress and groups representing the disabled. An Education Department spokesman said that the two officials, Dr. Eileen M. Gardner and Lawrence A. Uzzell, had submitted their resignations.
President Reagan calls the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery as they orbit the Earth.
The Discovery was set to land at Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 7:16 A.M. tomorrow. The astronauts prepared to conclude a space shuttle mission marked by surprises, frustrations and a variety of successful biological and medical experiments.
The second von Bülow trial has a jury after nearly two weeks of questioning. Eleven women and five men were seated to weigh the retrial of Claus von Bülow in Providence, Rhode Island, on charges that he twice tried to murder his wealthy wife with injections of insulin.
Two members of a white supremacist group known as The Order pleaded not guilty to charges in a racketeering indictment in U.S. District Court in Seattle. Randolph George Duey and Sharon K. Merki were among two dozen persons named in a 20-count indictment as members of the violent, right-wing, neo-Nazi splinter group of the Idaho-based Aryan Nations. Duey and Merki are charged with harboring Robert J. Mathews, 31, the leader of The Order, who died in a shoot-out with FBI agents last December. Duey also pleaded not guilty to weapons and robbery charges.
One-term Democrat Frank McCloskey of Indiana was unofficially declared the winner in the nation’s longest running House race. The state twice declared Republican Richard McIntyre the victor, but the House refused to seat either candidate pending a recount in southern Indiana’s 8th District. The House task force that ordered the canvass sent word of its finding to the House, which could act as early as Monday to formally declare McCloskey the winner.
James D. Briley, convicted of murdering a woman and her young son, was put to death tonight in the electric chair. He was the 42nd person to be executed since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and the 10th this year. Mr. Briley was pronounced dead at 11:07 PM, a spokesman for the State Penitentiary said. His execution came despite two last-minute appeals and an uprising by fellow inmates seeking to block his electrocution. Mr. Briley, 28 years old, was executed in an electric chair last occupied by his brother Linwood, who was put to death October 12 for a separate murder.
The third and final defendant in the 1983 massacre of 13 persons at a gambling house in Seattle’s Chinatown was found innocent of murder but convicted of robbery and assault. Wai-Chiu (Tony) Ng, a 28-year-old Hong Kong immigrant, was convicted of second-degree assault and 13 counts of first-degree robbery. The assault conviction came in the wounding of the lone survivor of the massacre.
A Rhode Island judicial ethics panel levied formal charges against the state’s top judge after investigating his acknowledged ties to reputed organized crime figures and convicted felons. The Commission on Judicial Tenure and Discipline announced it had voted unanimously to launch proceedings against Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph A. Bevilacqua. The charges themselves are secret. If convicted, Bevilacqua could face penalties ranging from censure to impeachment.
Some weapons from the shooting of antiwar protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, should be turned over to Yale University and the Ohio Historical Society, a Federal district judge has ruled. Judge William K. Thomas ruled Wednesday after a plea by a California lawyer, Sanford Jay Rosen, that one rifle, one pistol and one gas mask each be given to Yale and to the historical society. Mr. Rosen, who represented nine wounded students and the families of four students killed when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on protesters, said Yale had become a repository for information on the shootings.
Ted Turner bid for CBS Inc. amid Wall Street skepticism. The Atlanta- based cable and broadcasting entrepreneur valued his offer at $5.4 billion, or $175 a share, but analysts put it at $150 to $160 a share.
Failure to treat industrial wastes before discharging them into public sewers was cited by the Environmental Protection Agency in filing suits against seven small- and medium-sized cities and a municipal water system. The suit charged that more than 200 other cities were also violating the requirement, and officials said they included such major cities as New York, Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore.
U.S. military experts considered poisoning 500,000 Germans during World War II with radioactive food, according to a letter from A-bomb father J. Robert Oppenheimer to physicist Enrico Fermi. Oppenheimer wrote Fermi in 1943 about the plan, recommending that Fermi delay work on it until some technical problems could be solved. There is no evidence the plan was attempted. Barton J. Bernstein, professor of history at Stanford University who discovered the letter, said Oppenheimer’s request for the delay might have indicated an attempt to sabotage the plan.
Women who use birth control pills may increase their risk of developing chlamydia trachomatis, the most common sexually transmitted disease in America and a leading cause of some pelvic infections, a new study says. From 15% to 25% of the 2 million women who get chlamydial infections each year develop pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to infertility, Dr. A. Eugene Washington of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
The most expensive painting in the world is Andrea Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi.” The Italian Renaissance masterpiece was purchased for $10.4 million by the J. Paul Getty Museum of Malibu, California, at a Christie’s auction in London.
“Wham!” become the first western pop act to release an album in China
Major League Baseball:
At Kansas City, Jim Rice hits a home run with 2 out in the 14th to give the Red Sox a 4–3 win over the Royals.
The Cardinals lose 7–1 to the Expos today, but Vince Coleman goes 1 for 3 with two stolen bases in his big league debut. He finishes the year with 110 stolen bases, wins the Rookie of the Year Award and helps the Cardinals make the World Series.
San Francisco Giants 3, Cincinnati Reds 4
Baltimore Orioles 5, Cleveland Indians 11
Boston Red Sox 4, Kansas City Royals 3
California Angels 9, Minnesota Twins 8
Chicago White Sox 2, New York Yankees 3
Los Angeles Dodgers 5, San Diego Padres 0
Montreal Expos 7, St. Louis Cardinals 1
Texas Rangers 2, Toronto Blue Jays 4
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1265.13 (-7.18)
Born:
Rachel Smith, American actress, television host, model, and beauty pageant titleholder (Miss USA. 2007), in Panama City, Panama.
Elena Temnikova, Russian disco and Euro-pop singer (Serebro), fashin designer, and television personality, in Kurgan, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
History Diaries 