Soviet soldiers may use force against unidentified intruders found near Soviet military installations in East Germnay, the Soviet Embassy in Washington said. The statement was issued six days after the State Department said Moscow had given Washington assurances that its military personnel would not use force or weapons against American military patrols in East Germany. The assurances were reported after an American officer was killed by a Soviet sentry last month. The State Department, apparently caught off guard by the Soviet comments, said it had “informed the Soviet Embassy that their interpretation of the issue is unacceptable.”
Moscow’s leader will visit New York in September to attend the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, according to a senior Soviet editor. Viktor G. Afanasyev, chief editor of Pravda, told visiting officials of the Reuters news agency that the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, planned to attend the fall meeting, an occasion that might provide a chance for him to meet with President Reagan. No official announcement has been made of Mr. Gorbachev’s plans, and diplomats here cautioned that the Soviet leader could still alter them if conditions changed. But the Pravda editor was quoted as saying that “I know for sure that Mr. Gorbachev will go to the General Assembly session.”
Britain and the Soviet Union each expelled three of the other nation’s diplomats. The British Foreign Office said Moscow expelled three British Embassy staff members, including the naval attache, and Britain quickly responded by ousting three Soviet diplomats. Moscow took its action after London expelled two Russians last week for spying. Britain said the three additional expulsions are also related to espionage activities. The latest ousters bring to 15 the number of Soviet diplomats ordered out of Britain on charges of spying in the last four years.
A close aide to Chancellor Helmut Kohl said today that in a telephone call to President Reagan last Friday the West German leader obtained a firm promise that the American would not change his plans to visit a German military cemetery. According to the aide, Mr. Kohl had placed the call to Mr. Reagan after hearing that the President was being advised to call off the visit. The aide also said Mr. Kohl had no intention of suggesting an alternative site to the cemetery at Bitburg because of the uproar over the graves of 47 Waffen SS soldiers among its 2,000 dead. Sen. Bob Dole suggested Sunday that “maybe Chancellor Kohl could be helpful” in coming up with an alternative. In the 20-minute telephone conversation, the aide said, Mr. Kohl impressed on the President the importance of the Bitburg visit and found Mr. Reagan receptive. The Chancellor said that since the cemetery was formally opened in 1959, after scattered war dead had been brought there, American, French and West German officers have held a ceremony there every November.
Poland’s Supreme Court today rejected an appeal to reduce the jail sentences of four secret police officers convicted of kidnapping and murdering an outspoken pro-Solidarity priest. Judge Jerzy Mikos of the Supreme Court upheld 25-year jail terms imposed on Colonel Adam Pietruszka and his subordinate, Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, by a lower court in February. The two were accused of inciting the kidnapping, torture and killing of the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko last October. Judge Mikos said the court also refused to commute 14- and 15-year jail sentences given to two policemen convicted as accomplices, Lieutenant Waldemar Chmielewski and Leszek Pekala. The four defendants, who did not appear in court today, were ordered to pay $70 in legal costs.
Greek President Christos Sartzetakis agreed today to hold national elections on June 2, four months before the Socialist Government’s term expires. In a letter to Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, he cited two national issues — the revision of the Constitution and the Cyprus issue — for the early dissolution of Parliament and the proclamation of elections. The President’s letter was a reply to a request by Prime Minister Papandreou last Wednesday. The Parliament is scheduled to be dissolved immediately after the second of two votes on constitutional changes set for May 6. The changes, intended to limit the powers of the President, will be endorsed by the next Parliament.
The world’s population by the end of this century will be close to 6.1 billion, of which almost 80% will be living in developing countries, a U.N. report said. Global population is currently estimated at 4.8 billion. The report said the growth rate is expected to decline more slowly than in the last 15 years unless government population policies change significantly. The annual gain is expected to increase from 79 million at present to 89 million by the years 1995–2000. Among 33 advanced countries, 25 had a decrease in their growth rates between the early 1970s and the early 1980s and six had no significant change.
A senior leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization said the guerrillas aboard a merchant ship sunk by the Israeli navy intended to attack Israel’s military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Khalil Wazir, deputy commander of the PLO’s Fatah faction, said in Amman, Jordan, that the ship was sunk only after the raiding party was put ashore. The Israeli military said a missile boat sank the 1,000-ton freighter 100 miles off the Israeli coast and pulled eight guerrillas from the water, while 20 apparently drowned.
A Palestinian resident of a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank was convicted today of the murder of two Israelis six months ago, the Israeli radio said. The Palestinian, Issa Nimr Abd-Rabo, a 22-year-old resident of the Dehaishe camp near Bethlehem, was convicted by an Israeli military court of killing Revital Seri and Ron Levi, both 23.
The Christian militia that has been fighting against Muslims around the southern port of Sidon announced a cease-fire today. But artillery exchanges continued hours after the truce was supposed to take effect. A Muslim radio station here said the Christians had failed to observe their own truce. But a Christian radio station, Voice of Lebanon, said Christian fighters were observing the cease-fire, and accused Muslim militias of continuing to fire on Christian villages east of the Mediterranean port.
Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka set a timer wrong and blew up a bus carrying two dozen of their comrades instead of a military convoy, a government spokesman said. The bus was carrying Tamil guerrilla suspects rounded up by troops. Four soldiers also died in the blast, near Jaffna, capital of the country’s Tamil-dominated Northern province. The spokesman speculated that the device was the work of guerrillas of the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, one of several groups seeking a separate homeland in Sri Lanka, in which Sinhalese are in the majority. In another incident, authorities said an explosion damaged a newly built police station in the eastern harbor town of Trincomalee and that Tamils were suspected.
Defense attorneys today confronted a lawyer for the civilian panel on the killing of the Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., virtually putting the inquiry itself on trial. It was the first time the attorneys defending the military chief, General Fabian Ver, and 24 other soldiers and a civilian in connection with Mr. Aquino’s death had the opportunity to question a member of the civilian panel on how it reached its findings. The lawyer, Francisco Villa, 59 years old, one of the panel’s three deputy counsels, testified for nearly six hours. Chief Justice Manuel Pamaran overruled repeated objections from the special prosecutor allowing random cross-examination by defense attorneys on issues ranging from purported United States involvement to public pressure on the board. Mr. Villa was called as a prosecution witness to explain how the board’s legal panel uncovered a discrepancy in chemical analysis of bullet fragments.
President Reagan participates in a series of meetings with Representatives to discuss the Nicaraguan Peace Proposal. No compromise on Nicaragua was reached in a day of talks between leading Senators and White House officials on terms for providing $14 million in nonmilitary aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels. About a dozen legislators from both parties conferred for more than eight hours at the White House.
Support for Nicaragauan rebels is wide enough to insure that their campaign is likely to continue whether or not Congress votes to aid them, according to Nicaraguan refugees, rebels and Western diplomats in the region. Visits to guerrilla bases and Nicaraguan refugee camps in the last month indicate that the rebels are growing in numbers and that they pose a significant threat to the Sandinista Government despite serious political and logistical problems. Their principal support seems to lie in northern Nicaragua, where the level of fighting and the number of exiles fleeing to Honduras appear to indicate that something close to civil war is being waged. Two Salvadoran guerrilla officials who have spent considerable time in Nicaragua said in separate interviews that they believed the anti-Sandinista rebels were a serious problem. One of the Salvadorans has been involved in organizing the left for over 20 years.
Salvadoran troops captured two leftist guerrilla commanders, including a woman who took part in the first round of peace talks with the government last fall, the army said. Miguel Castellanos was seized at an unspecified location April 11, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. He added that the woman, Nidia Diaz, was captured in fighting last Thursday near Cerros de San Pedro, 36 miles east of San Salvador in San Vicente province. She was reportedly being treated for wounds.
A U.S. Army helicopter participating in joint military exercises with Honduras was heavily damaged in an accident at an air base at the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. Conflicting reports from U.S. Embassy and U.S. military spokesmen left it unclear if the CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed while landing or exploded while on the ground. At least eight American crew members were injured, one of them seriously, the sources said.
The body of Brazil’s leader, President-elect Tancredo Neves, was flown to Brasilia from Sao Paulo amid an explosion of national grief. The body will lie in state in the presidential palace he should have occupied five weeks ago. Hundreds of thousands of people shouting “Tancredo! Tancredo!” and waving Brazilian flags crowded the route taken by Mr. Neves’s cortege from the hospital in Sao Paulo where he died on Sunday night to the airport for the flight to Brasilia. In the sprawling modernistic Brazilian capital, the avenues leading to the Planalto Palace were also lined with mourners waving white handkerchiefs or simply applauding the memory of the man who had come to personify the population’s hopes for change after 21 years of military rule. Brought to the palace atop an armored car, his coffin was carried up the ramp that he had been scheduled to climb on March 15 to receive the sash of office from the departing President, General Joao Baptista Figueiredo.
The public trial of nine of Argentina’s former military rulers opened today amid controversy as President Raul Alfonsin accused civilian groups who oppose the hearing of trying to undermine his 16-month-old Government. The nine, including three former presidents, are charged with murder, kidnapping and torture during the military’s antisubversion campaign in the late 1970’s. In a television address Sunday evening, Mr. Alfonsin said, “The enemies of democracy have always conspired against the country’s fulfillment, but I can say without a doubt that never before has the Argentine nation been so often attacked as now, as if the institutional order were crumbling.”
A union activist who played a key role in protests that helped oust the Government of President Gaafar al-Nimeiry was named Prime Minister today. Sudan’s military leader, General Abdel Rahman Siwar el-Dahab, also named a leading politician from the southern region, the scene of a continuing guerrilla war, to be Deputy Prime Minister. The new Prime Minister, Dr. al-Gazouly Dafallah, 50 years old, pledged to maintain good ties with both Washington and Moscow.
Arsonists destroyed South African Government offices in a segregated township in the eastern Cape Province today, and a group of blacks attacked a police patrol in a poor area near Johannesburg, the police said. A police spokesman said government administration board offices in Queenstown, 400 miles south of Johannesburg, were set afire by a group of blacks. There were no casualties. The offices were used by the white-run board that manages Queenstown, collecting rents, picking up trash and caring for roads and street lighting, the spokesman said. Two more blacks were reported killed in racial unrest. The spokesman said a 23-year-old man was killed Sunday when the police opened fire on a group of arsonists.
President Reagan hosts the annual Volunteer/Action Awards luncheon. President Reagan opened a week of activities honoring America’s volunteers at a White House luncheon at which 19 groups and individuals were presented awards. Among the winners were the Volunteer Corps of the 1984 Olympic Games, which included 30,000 volunteers involved in every aspect of the event; and Parents Anonymous, a Torrance, California-based group formed in 1970 to give parents who are hurting their children physically or emotionally a place to go and be heard.
Four neo-Nazis gave up peacefully to the Federal authorities, along with the founder of a remote Ozark retreat the Government believes was a paramilitary training camp and munitions factory. The four members were arrested as they walked quietly out of a 224-acre compound that for 10 years has been the home of a fanatically anti-Semitic survivalist sect called the Order. The founder and spiritual leader of that group, Jim Ellison, 48 years old, was arrested on a separate charge of conspiracy to manufacture, possess and distribute machine guns and silencers over a three-year period. Federal officials regard the arrest of the four members of the Order and the discovery of weapons facilities as a breakthrough in their investigation of heavily armed neo-Nazi extremist groups, some of whom say they are bent on the destruction of the Government, which they maintain is controlled by Jews.
The capture of a Nazi war criminal is a likelihood, a Justice Department official told Senators and Holocaust victims attending a special hearing. The official, Neal Sher, said investigators believed the Nazi fugitive, Dr. Josef Mengele, “must be apprehended, and we are optimistic.”
A racial issue in jury selection will be decided by the Supreme Court. The Justices agreed to resolve whether the Constitution permits a prosecutor to use peremptory challenges to shape an all-white jury by selectively removing potential jurors who are black. The Court accepted an appeal from a Kentucky prison inmate, a black man convicted of burglary by an all-white jury after the state used its peremptory challenges to remove all four blacks from the panel. The inmate, James K. Batson, represented by the Kentucky state appellate defender’s office, is arguing that the jury selection deprived him of a constitutional right to trial by a cross-section of the community. The Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the conviction, citing a 1965 United States Supreme Court decision that has essentially made it impossible to appeal a criminal conviction on the basis of racial discrimination in the selection of a jury. That 20-year-old decision has come under increasing criticism. As a number of courts, including the Federal appeals court in New York, have found ways around the decision, pressure has mounted on the Justices to take a new look at the issue.
Doctors placed artificial heart recipient Jack Burcham on dialysis, a spokeswoman for Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville, Kentucky, said. Burcham, 62, was to remain connected to the machine for four to six hours, and implant surgeon William C. DeVries was to review the results before deciding if he requires long-term use of the machine, spokeswoman Donna Hazle said. Burcham’s kidneys have not been working properly since before his April 14 implant operation and DeVries now believes “dialysis would help Burcham’s overall condition so that he could be weaned off the respirator more quickly,” Hazle said.
The leaders of a three-week-old student demonstration against Columbia University’s investment policy on South Africa said yesterday that their blockade of a campus building would end Thursday. “We are going to continue the movement for divestment, but the demonstration will be over on Thursday,” said Laird Townsend, one of 10 members of a student steering committee that has directed the protest. “It’s time to move on to new tactics.” The decision was announced minutes before a judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering the demonstrators to allow access to Hamilton Hall, the classroom and administrative building they have been barricading in defiance of previous court orders.
Pan Am plans to sell its Pacific routes to United Airlines, the nation’s largest carrier, for $750 million. Pan American World Airways transformed itself into a global carrier by pioneering those routes. The agreement, which excludes Hawaiian flights, is subject to the approval of Washington and other governments that would be involved.
Efforts to clean up hazardous waste sites on military bases around the country could cost as much as $10 billion and stretch well into the next century, a General Accounting Office report to Congress said. The report noted that as many as 473 military bases may have inactive hazardous waste sites on their property, and Rep. James J. Florio (D-New Jersey), in making the report public, said the military has committed only $202 million to “its fledgling efforts” to identify and assess the sites.
A hearing will be held Wednesday in Miami to determine if a Nazi war crimes suspect accused of exterminating Latvian civilians in 1942 will be deported, immigration officials said. Konrads Kalejs, 72, was being held without bond for failing to appear at an earlier deportation hearing. Kalejs is accused of being a senior lieutenant at the Salaspils concentration camp in Latvia and of directing the destruction of the village of Sanniki, along with the extermination of the area’s civilian population.
R. Keith Parks, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Foreign Mission Board, said today that he would not support the re-election of the Rev. Charles Stanley as president of the nation’s largest Protestant church. Mr. Parks’s defection from the usual Southern Baptist practice of automatically re-electing a sitting president underscores the growing polarization in the 14-million-member denomination, which is to elect officers in Dallas in June. Mr. Parks said of Mr. Stanley, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta, “I do not have anything against him personally.” But he said he objected to efforts by fundamentalists to seize control of the church. Fundamentalists maintain that the church’s boards, agencies and six seminaries are drifting toward theological liberalism. Mr. Parks said there was no such drift. “The agency heads, the trustees of the agencies, the professors in the seminaries are Bible-believing Southern Baptists,” he said.
Potential jurors were questioned today on their beliefs about religion and psychiatry for trial of a lawsuit filed by a father who says negligent church counseling led to his son’s suicide. The action, believed to be the nation’s first clergy malpractice suit, was filed in 1980 by Walter Nally against Grace Community Church in the San Fernando Valley of California. Judge Joseph Kalin of Glendale Superior Court told the 150 prospective jurors that he needed to know whether their feelings about such topics as suicide, psychiatric treatment and the relations between people and their churches might interfere with their impartiality. Mr. Nally filed his $1 million suit in 1980, the year after his 24-year-old son, Ken, shot himself to death. The suit asserts that Grace Community pastors were negligent in the advice they gave his son in the final days of his life.
Nearly 400 clerical workers walked off the job at the Bath Iron Works in Maine today, and production was disrupted when thousands of shipbuilders refused to cross picket lines. The strike by Local 7 of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers began at midnight at the company’s main yard in Bath, its ship repair facility in Portland, and at facilities in Brunswick and East Brunswick. The shipyard, which is working on contracts for Navy cruisers, guided- missile frigates and destroyer overhaul, acknowledged that the walkout was affecting production. The strike came after the 375-member local representing clerical and technical workers voted Sunday to reject a proposal to extend the three-year contract that had expired at midnight.
Eight members of the environmental group Greenpeace were arrested in California today as they plugged an oil refinery’s waste pipeline, the police said. The diving team apparently managed to block at least two of the pipeline openings 100 yards offshore. The waste line serves a refinery owned by Chevron USA. El Segundo police arrested four divers and their boat crew after they saw the divers surface near the pipeline, a police spokesman said. Chevron officials said they called the police when they saw the Greenpeace divers go to the pipe. The company’s divers later removed two plugs. Greenpeace says the oil company has dumped illegal amounts of grease, oil, ammonia, cyanide, zinc, lead and heavy metals into the ocean. A Chevron spokesman said the company, which acknowledges the illegal discharges, had begun a $19 million project to correct them.
Surveillance cameras along nine miles of the United States-Mexico border have been such an aid in nabbing illegal aliens that the Border Patrol is considering their use elsewhere, Gustavo de la Vina, sector deputy chief patrol agent in El Paso, said. Since the cameras were put in use a year ago, apprehension of illegal aliens in the El Paso area has increased by as much as 60%, De la Vina said. The 11 cameras are monitored by an agent downtown who can switch to a larger screen for detail and dispatch officers to the area.
A key Navy surgeon has been ousted for insufficient competence, and the Navy is starting a formal inquiry to determine whether higher-level officials were culpable for allowing his appointment. The dismissed surgeon is Commander Donal Billig, who was until Friday the chief heart surgeon at the Navy’s flagship hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
No need for a draft is seen by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower, Dr. Lawrence J. Korb, and the Army Chief of Staff, General John A. Wickham Jr. General Wickham said, “I don’t really see a need for a draft,” so long as benefits are maintained.
Texas was struck again by several tornadoes yesterday, a day after twisters claimed the lives of three people in that state. Tornadoes also touched down in Nebraska and Oklahoma in a fourth day of violent weather across the Great Plains. In Texas, a tornado destroyed several mobile homes in Kyle, about 20 miles south of Austin, and damaged some mobile homes in Caldwell County. At least four other tornadoes were reported earlier in the day in central Texas. On Sunday three people were killed when a tornado struck near Olney, Texas. In Oklahoma, tornadoes touched down two miles east of Custer City and near Calumet, Eakly and Guthrie, but no injuries were reported. Some vehicles and farm buildings were said to have been damaged. Several tornadoes also struck central Nebraska but no injuries or major damage were reported.
A study sponsored by the conservative Free Congress Research and Education Foundation suggested that pornography, both “hard core” and “soft core,” is addictive and can cause sexual deviance in those using it for “harmless enjoyment.” But Barry Lynn, the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative director, said the study shows nothing new and provides a “road map for massive censorship of sexually explicit material.” The study, by Canadian psychotherapist David Alexander Scott, maintains that an increase in pornographic images in the media has contributed to a rise in crime.
Major League Baseball:
The Twins collect 16 hits in sinking the Mariners, 9–5. In the 4th, Kirby Puckett hits a 3-run homer, his first home run in the majors, off Matt Young. After no homers last year, Puckett will hit 4 homers this season before blossoming into a power hitter with 31 next year.
The Mets’ pitchers, who have been taking a lot of abuse lately, took some more tonight from the St. Louis Cardinals, and even squandered most of a 6-0 lead. But Jesse Orosco finished what the rookie Calvin Schiraldi started, and this time the Mets survived, 7–6. They got home runs from Darryl Strawberry and George Foster. But they still were not safe until Orosco weathered a ninth-inning storm with one run home and two more waiting on base.
Mike Scott and Dave Smith pitched a combined five-hitter as the Houston Astros snapped the Cincinnati Reds’ seven-game winning streak Monday night, 4–1.
Tony Bernazard singled in a run during a three-run fourth inning and doubled and scored to highlight a three- run seventh today as the Cleveland Indians scored a 6–4 victory over the Detroit Tigers.
Charlie Hough pitched a two-hitter and Toby Harrah went 3-for-3 for the Rangers, who downed the Baltimore Orioles, 6–1. Hough struck out eight and retired the last 19 batters he faced to pitch the first complete game of the season for the Rangers.
Kansas City blanked the Toronto Blue Jays, 2–0, as Charlie Leibrandt tossed a five-hitter, and Steve Balboni and Darryl Motley each hit bases-empty homers for the Royals. Leibrandt (2-0) struck out three and walked one en route to his second complete game of the season.
Oakland Athletics 1, California Angels 6
Milwaukee Brewers 4, Chicago White Sox 2
Detroit Tigers 4, Cleveland Indians 6
Cincinnati Reds 1, Houston Astros 4
Seattle Mariners 5, Minnesota Twins 9
Philadelphia Phillies 9, Montreal Expos 1
Chicago Cubs 3, Pittsburgh Pirates 5
Atlanta Braves 3, San Diego Padres 5
Los Angeles Dodgers 3, San Francisco Giants 2
New York Mets 7, St. Louis Cardinals 6
Baltimore Orioles 1, Texas Rangers 6
Kansas City Royals 2, Toronto Blue Jays 0
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1266.56 (+0)
Born:
Sam Altman, American entrepreneur (co-founder and CEO OpenAI), in Chicago, Illinois.
Died:
Paul Hugh Emmett, 84, American chemical engineer, developed BET theory for measuring surface area of porous materials.
History Diaries 