Most House members oppose a visit to a German military cemetery planned by President Reagan. They say that a visit to the Bitburg cemetery, where some SS soldiers were buried, “threatens to have long and serious repercussions in the United States.” In a letter, they asked Chancellor Helmut Kohl to withdraw his invitation to the site. The letter, signed by 257 of the 435 House members, was presented to the West German Ambassador, Gunther van Well, by Representative Robert J. Mrazek, Democrat of Long Island. The letter said a visit to the Bitburg cemetery, which includes 49 SS soldiers among its 2,000 dead, would have “the unintended effect of reopening painful wounds in the United States.”
Helmut Kohl praised the President as a friend of the German people for agreeing to lay a wreath next month at the military cemetery at Bitburg and gave no indication he intended to release Mr. Reagan from his commitment. Chancellor Kohl spoke in a debate in Parliament.
The West German Parliament rules it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.
U.S. and Soviet troops at the Elbe recalled their lost comrades and called for increased understanding between their countries as they reunited on the 40th anniversary of their linking in advance of V-E Day.
President Reagan attends a luncheon in preparation for the Economic Summit in Bonn next week.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today took up the long-delayed United Nations treaty condemning genocide and then put off for perhaps two weeks a vote to bring the matter to the floor. The delay was intended to allow time to rewrite conditions that are being sought by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, in order, he says, to prevent the United States from surrendering its sovereignty. The treaty has been accepted by 96 nations. Objections have centered on an article that calls for submitting disputes to the International Court of Justice.
The United States, displeased with the Soviet response to the killing of an American Army intelligence officer in East Germany, is likely to expel a Soviet diplomat, probably a military attaché, within the next several days, a State Department official said today. The official said that the United States has yet to receive a satisfactory response from the Soviet Union about procedures to prevent a recurrence of the incident in which Maj. Arthur D. Nicholson, Jr., a member of the American liaison team allowed to observe Soviet forces in East Germany, was shot to death by a Soviet sentry in East Germany on March 24 while preparing to take pictures in what the Russians said was a closed military installation. The shooting was discussed by American and Soviet officials on April 12. Later, the State Department said the Soviet side had given assurances that its personnel would not use force or weapons against the liaison team in the future. This week, however, the Soviet Union denied that it had renounced the use of force against intruders.
In a letter smuggled out of his jail cell in Gdansk, the dissident Adam Michnik has denounced the Polish police, appealed for international monitoring of his coming trial and urged that the treatment of political prisoners be added to the agenda of the Geneva arms talks. In the letter, titled “A Lesson on Dialogue,” the 38-year-old historian resumed the prison writings in which he challenged and ridiculed the Polish authorities from prison for more than two and a half years until he was freed in a general amnesty nine months ago. After six months of freedom, Mr. Michnik was arrested again in February at a meeting convened by Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity trade union. Mr. Michnik and his fellow Solidarity activists, Bogdan Lis and Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, are awaiting trial on charges of inciting public unrest in connection with the meeting. At the meeting the men discussed a strike as a response to Government plans for price increases.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres came to the nervous town of Qiryat Shemona today to reassure its citizens. It was a day after the Israeli Army staged its largest pullout in the phased withdrawal from Lebanon. For nearly three years, the people of Qiryat Shemona have not slept in their bomb shelters, and parents have not worried when their children went out. The Soviet-made Katyusha rockets, which for many years struck this town near the Lebanese border at random intervals, have not fallen since Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982.
Israeli intelligence agents traced Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele to South America 25 years ago and obtained his fingerprints from Interpol at the same time, the West German magazine Stern reported. Stern said its reporter was given a copy of the Mengele fingerprints, which the magazine subsequently turned over to West German officials. Hans Eberhard Klein, chief Frankfurt prosecutor responsible for tracking down war criminals, said Bonn authorities determined the prints were authentic. West German officials were reported to be upset because the Israelis had not told them about the fingerprints.
A freighter loaded with 14,000 tons of steel sank in the Red Sea after the captain reported an explosion. Lloyd’s shipping intelligence unit in London said the explosion was caused by a mine, but shipping sources in Saudi Arabia discounted that explanation. The crewmen of the 16,270-ton Mariner II, registered in Panama, were rescued unhurt and taken to Jidda, Saudi Arabia. Last summer, 19 vessels were damaged by mines in the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez, but none were sunk. Egypt accused Libya of planting those mines.
The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, and Oman inaugurated a ferry service this week between the Egyptian port of Nuweiba in southern Sinai and the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman combined the ceremony, on Tuesday, with a meeting that began aboard the Sultan’s yacht, a converted ocean liner, and continued later in the day at King Hussein’s palace in Aqaba. The official Jordanian press agency, Petra, said the leaders had discussed “pressing” Mideast problems, but gave no details.
Artillery duels broke out today between the Muslim and Christian halves of Beirut, and shells fell on residential areas for the first time in 10 months. Police and hospital sources said 5 people had been killed and 14 wounded in the bombardment.
It was the disposable decade, an era of such high living that little-used things could be thrown away. Furniture was replaced every six months, cars were traded in as soon as new models arrived, and designer silks from Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore were worn only once. Now, for the first time, wealthy Saudis are beginning to feel the effects of a three-year recession that promises to cut deeper in the years to come. The source of the problem is painfully obvious: Oil production has plummeted from a high of 10 million barrels a day only four years ago to 4 million last year. This year it will fall even lower, to 3.85 million barrels a day.
Rival mobs angered over Indian Government caste policies clashed with swords and stones today and hurled acid at each other in the western state of Gujarat. The police said 10 people died and at least 25 were wounded. The latest deaths raised to 68 the number of poople killed in the last three months in Gujarat state, the Press Trust of India, the domestic news agency, reported. Officials said they feared the death toll could climb much higher because 24 people were reported missing after Hindu-Moslem clashes Monday in a labor camp near the Gujarat state capital of Ahmadabad. Those clashes left some 5,000 people homeless. The bloodshed in Gujarat, birthplace of Mohandas K. Gandhi, began nearly three months ago. The riots were set off by protests against new government policies that dramatically increase the quotas of lower-caste Hindus and tribal people in state-run colleges and the civil service. The fighting has pitted upper-caste Hindus against lower castes, Hindus against Muslims and rioters against policemen.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk withdrew his resignation offer and said he will continue as president of the Cambodian resistance coalition, diplomats said in Peking. Chinese Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian reportedly had urged Sihanouk not to resign, and Son Sann, leader of a non-communist faction in the coalition, said that Sihanouk was irreplaceable. The coalition is fighting to expel Vietnamese forces from Cambodia.
Hundreds of men and women who resettled in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution broke a taboo on public protests today by occupying the steps of Peking’s Communist Party headquarters and demanding permission to live in the capital. Nearly 17 years after they set off for Shaanxi province proclaiming their support for Mao Zedong, the former Red Guards returned in a mood of truculence and disillusion. Although the policy of forcing young city dwellers to settle among the peasants was abandoned more than a decade ago, hundreds of thousands of people were never given the residence permits required to come home. Resentment can be found wherever resettlement took place, but concerns about retribution have generally stifled public protests. Instead, those separated from their families and friends have generally concentrated their efforts on working the network of influential contacts, known as guanxi, that Chinese try to develop as a means of getting favors from the bureaucracy.
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter picked up an American fishery official released by the Soviets, the State Department said. Becky Kruppenbach, an employee of the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, which monitors foreign fishing inside the 200-mile U.S. limit, was aboard a Japanese fishing vessel when it was seized by a Soviet icebreaker earlier this week in the Bering Sea off Alaska. Kruppenbach, of Chickasha, Oklahoma, was transferred from the Soviet ship to the U.S. cutter Munro at a point about 20 miles off Cape Olyutorsk, Siberia. Soviet officials have not explained why they seized the Japanese boat and its crew.
The French Government today dropped its plans for a referendum this year that it had hoped would lead to independence for the Pacific island territory of New Caledonia. Prime Minister Laurent Fabius said after a special 90-minute Cabinet meeting here today that the referendum would be held no later than the end of 1987.
Backers of aid to Nicaraguan rebels held talks in an attempt to revive the issue. The conferees were White House officials and disgruntled Democratic legislators .The Democrats, party moderates, expressed disappointment that a coalition of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats combined Wednesday to kill a compromise aid package that some of them had helped draft over the last few weeks. “I don’t think the issue is over yet,” said Representative Dave McCurdy, an Oklahoma Democrat, who said he met with White House officials today. “Many of us are concerned about the development of a policy. Right now we don’t have a policy.”
The setback dealt to President Reagan by Congress over aid to Nicaraguan rebels reflects a mood of mistrust toward the President’s objectives on the issue and a fear of deepening United States military involvement in the region over the long run. A string of negative votes in the House of Representatives has left Administration policy in temporary disarray, with both the White House and its Congressional allies groping for a new vehicle to revive some form of aid to the contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels are known. Although the President and Trent Lott, the House Republican whip, vowed bravely that the fight would be resumed, others, like Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the House Republican leader, Robert H. Michel, were shocked by the refusal of the House to pass any compromise measure. Mr. Michel had warned the White House of trouble, but even he was visibly shaken after the voting Wednesday night. In a Federal budget running in the hundreds of billions, the $14 million sought by the President is a tiny amount. But the issue had generated wide passions and intense lobbying both by President Reagan and by religious and other groups adamantly opposed to American military support for the Nicaraguan insurgency. In the end, no policy found a consensus.
President Reagan calls President of the Republic of Honduras Roberto Cordova Suazo to discuss Nicaragua.
U.S. military forces were joined by Honduran units in an anti-guerrilla training exercise that a Honduran army official called a “message” to neighboring Nicaragua. In a continuation of the “Universal Trek ’85” maneuvers that involve 420 Hondurans and 7,000 U.S. military personnel, Honduran army units joined U.S. paratroopers to relieve U.S. Marines guarding a remote airstrip on the northern Caribbean coast. The only hitch was a shortage of helicopters, which left rented school buses as the only means of transport for some of the troops.
Peru’s leftist parties decided to withdraw from the presidential runoff election, handing the office uncontested to center-left congressman Alan Garcia. Garcia, 35, took an estimated 47% of the vote in Peru’s April 14 presidential election, short of the absolute majority required under the constitution. In the runoff, he would have faced Lima’s Marxist Mayor Alfonso Barrantes, who had 23% of the vote in the first round. But Barrantes, who had said he didn’t expect to win, decided to pull out of the race after meeting with leftist party officials. Meanwhile, the official in charge of the elections, Domingo Garcia Rada, remained in critical condition after being shot several times in an assassination attempt, apparently by Marxist guerrillas.
Leaders of a small South African black community threatened with involuntary resettlement by the white authorities said today that they had written to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, asking him to intercede with the South African Government to prevent their removal. “We are very much afraid that the police will come in the night with guns and force us out,” the letter from leaders of the community, Mathopestad, said.
The Senate began a budget debate, but the Republican leadership put off a planned symbolic vote on a package to reduce the Federal deficit by $52 billion in the next fiscal year when it appeared it was short of the votes needed to win. Early in the day the Republicans had pushed for a vote on the plan endorsed by President Reagan in a television address Wednesday night, even if it meant they might lose. Democrats, who initially had pressed for a chance to have the Senate vote on their amendments to the plan first, made a surprise offer this evening to allow a vote on the Republican plan. But Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, unexpectedly recessed the Senate, putting off the vote when it appeared he was short of the votes needed to win.
A tax-shelter promoter pleaded guilty to conducting a fraudulent scheme that provided $445 million in false income tax deductions for wealthy investors. The promoter, 35-year-old Edward A. Markowitz of Washington, waived his right to having a grand jury weigh his case.
George Bush signaled a bid for President in 1988 with the announcement that he would soon establish a political action committee. But the Vice President told an interviewer he would wait until after the 1986 midterm elections before deciding whether to enter the race.
Texas will review murderer Henry Lee Lucas’ conflicting confessions but cannot afford the $120,000 requested by the state attorney general for a full-scale investigation, Governor Mark White said. Lucas, who had confessed to 360 killings in 26 states and has been convicted of 10 killings in Texas, now says that the only person he killed was his mother. He said he confessed to the other crimes to embarrass law enforcement officials.
A white supremacist leader was indicted in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the torching of a gay church and a Jewish center. James D. Ellison, leader of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, pleaded innocent in connection with the fires in Missouri and Indiana. He was ordered held without bond. Meanwhile, Gary Lee Yarbrough of Sandpoint, Idaho, and Robert E. Merki of Boise, both members of the neo-Nazi group The Order, pleaded innocent to a racketeering indictment in Seattle. Another defendant, David Eden Lane of Denver, agreed in Boise to be extradited to Seattle.
Some of the 450 passengers awaiting takeoff on a chartered jetliner in Michigan panicked today when they smelled smoke from a light fixture and were told to evacuate, according to those on the plane. More than 24 people suffered minor injuries in the evacuation. Walter H. Johnson, executive vice president of National Airlines, said in a telephone interview from New York that the Boeing 747 was ready for departure from Detroit Metropolitan Airport for Las Vegas, Nevada, when “it appears a fluorescent ballast blew.” The ballast is the part of a fluorescent light fixture that regulates energy going to the light-producing gas. A passenger, Dan Dell, 29 years old, said, “The passengers in the rear, when they heard there was a fire, you could hear them panic.” Mr. Johnson said the captain of the airliner ordered the evacuation as a precaution. “There was no fire or damage to the airplane,” Mr. Johnson said. “It appears the evacuation was unnecessary.” Officials at nearby hospitals reported treating at least 25 people from the plane for minor injuries. At least four people were admitted for examination.
An inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found evidence of falsified records at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, Vermont Governor Madeleine M. Kunin said today. But a spokesman for the plant, Harry McBrien, said a company investigation “has determined that no falsification of records has taken place.” The Governor said the inspection in March also found evidence of a failure by the plant to comply with quality assurance guidelines. Governor Kunin, at a news conference, said there was no threat to public safety. “What we have is a loss of confidence by these discoveries,” she said. The commission noted “potential falsification of receipt-inspection records in the receipt, storage, and handling program for safety-related material” at the plant, in Vernon. Mr. McBrien said: “We’re looking into the program of inspecting parts as they come into the plant. We’ve determined certain inadequacies and we’re dealing with those.”
A New York corporation and four individuals were charged with running a pornographic telephone service dialed by some Utah children. The indictments, issued in Salt Lake City, accused Carline Communications Inc., Carl Ruderman, Ira Kirschenbaum, Kevin Goodman and Samantha Fox, all of New York City, with interstate transportation of obscene matter. U.S. Attorney Brent Ward called the indictments “the first federal prosecution involving so-called ‘dial-a-porn’ services.”
An unemployed man who said he was a victim of racism and claimed to have a bomb mounted the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and demanded to be blessed by Archbishop John J. O’Connor. The bomb turned out to be an alarm clock inside a shoe box. The incident ended two hours later when the clock rang, the man dropped the device in disgust and police rushed him. O’Conner neither talked to the man nor blessed him. The man, identified as Pedro Laboy, 28, of Brooklyn, was hospitalized for psychiatric testing.
The National Labor Relations Board handed the United Mine Workers a major victory Wednesday in its dispute with the A. T. Massey Coal Company, accusing the company of an unfair labor practice for refusing to bargain as a single employer. The board said that Massey and its subsidiaries in West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania constituted a single company, and not a series of independent operations, as the parent company had maintained. A union spokesmn said its position had been vindicated by the board. The union struck Massey October 1, when its contracts with Massey subsidiaries expired. Massey has insisted that it is merely a sales agent for the 25 companies that produce its coal. “We’re not surprised by the ruling,” said Paul Barbery, Massey’s general counsel. “We feel confident we would prevail at any hearing if we go the hearing route.” Massey has the right to appeal the ruling, but labor lawyers say fewer than 4 percent of such appeals are granted. A labor board official said said he hoped a negotiated settlement could be reached.
Laboratories that test urine for commonly abused drugs often produce unreliable results, federal researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Ninety percent of the labs evaluated for the quality of urine testing for drugs had unacceptable error rates for barbiturates, amphetamines, cocaine and morphine, according to Hugh Hansen of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The percentage of correct analysis for each drug ranged from 0 to 100.
Caffeine does not appear to make women more susceptible to benign breast disease or breast cancer, contrary to other studies, researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Scientists from Israel and the New York Medical College at Valhalla studied 854 women and found no association between consumption of coffee, tea, cola and chocolate and breast lumps known as benign breast disease. The Israeli scientists also reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that they found no link between caffeine and breast cancer.
Two more New York City police officers were arraigned on charges of torturing drug suspects with a stun gun, and the entire 18-man top command of a city precinct was transferred in a growing brutality scandal. Governor Mario M. Cuomo ordered a state investigation of the incidents, saying something was “terribly wrong.” Four officers have been charged with brutality in the Queens precinct and have been suspended without pay. The scandal grew from allegations by three drug suspects that officers had coerced their confessions.
“I’m dead, but I don’t know who killed me,” said a dusty sergeant commanding a dozen “Soviet” infantrymen in a mock battle. When a rifleman asked what he should do next, the sergeant flopped to the ground, saying, “I’m dead – I can’t fight anymore.” The next morning, the same troops were defending a rocky outcrop several miles to the north against a numerically superior battalion of the Second Armored Division. The attackers had destroyed most of the defenders’ tanks, which had been modified to resemble Soviet T-72’s, and three American M-1 tanks rumbled out of the dust and smoke around the eastern shoulder of the outcrop. “Oh, no!” a military umpire exclaimed. “They should have dismounted some infantry and cleaned this area out first.”
The accuracy of this prediction was almost instantly confirmed, as concealed defenders with shoulder-held antitank weapons aimed and fired. One by one, bright yellow strobe lights on the M-1 tanks began to blink, signifying that the tanks had been destroyed. Such incidents take place throughout the year as the Army trains its soldiers and officers here under highly realistic battle conditions in which mistakes are instantly penalized and military performance is analyzed daily in painstaking detail.
This is accomplished on an electronically monitored battlefield about the size of Rhode Island in the southern California desert. The instrumentation at the Army’s National Training Center permits computers to track the location and movement of about 500 tanks, armored personnel carriers and other vehichles, and records their maneuvers in vivid computer displays that show the folds and wattles of the rugged terrain. The use of harmless, low-power laser beams instead of real ammunition also makes it possible to score the firing of a wide range of weapons, from 105-millimeter tank cannons to .223-caliber M-16 rifles. Perhaps most important, the mock engagements fought between visiting Regular Army units and a special “Soviet motorized rifle regiment” that serves as a sparring partner duplicates the “fog of war” with remarkable faithfulness. This tends to teach commanders the difficulties of retaining control over dispersed, fast-moving vehicles and of maintaining communications despite enemy efforts to jam radio frequencies.
A whooping cough vaccine is available again, Federal health officials announced. They said they were lifting a recommendation that doctors delay booster shots for children more than 1 year old because Connaught Laboratories has resumed distribution of the vaccine, which is used to protect millions of children from the illness.
A key site for spent reactor fuel is sought by the Energy Department, which said it would seek Congressional approval to build a facility in Tennessee to serve as a national transfer and temporary storage point for radioactive material.
Avoiding links with South Africa is a growing policy of American cities and states. An increasing number of them have enacted laws to withdraw investments in the 300 American companies that do business with South Africa. Twenty-four municipalities and six states have passed such laws, and 27 states are considering bills.
Roger Miller’s musical “Big River”, based on Mark Twain’s 1884 novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, opens at Eugene O’Neill Theater, NYC; runs for 1005 performances, wins 3 Tony Awards.
For second time, Wayne Gretzky, scores 7 points in a Cup game (3 goals, 4 assists).
Major League Baseball:
At County Stadium, the Brewers score 5 runs in each of the last two innings to win 11–7 over the Tigers. In the 9th, Paul Molitor hits a 2-out solo homer to tie the game at 7. The next three batters reach base and Ted Simmons ends it with a grand slam. All the runs in the 9th come off Bill Scherrer. Alan Trammell has 2 triples and a homer for the Bengals. The loss for Detroit, coupled with Baltimore’s victory, knocked the Tigers out of first place for the first time since opening day a year ago.
Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett hit the first pitch from the reliever Tom Tellman for a single to score Tim Teufel from second base with one out in the ninth inning, as the Twins edged the A’s, 5–4.
Phil Niekro’s knuckleballs baffle the Red Sox, as the Yankees win, 5–1. Even batting star Wade Boggs could not solve the puzzle: He struck out three times.
Andre Dawson drove in two runs, one with a home run in the fourth inning, to lead Montreal to a 4–2 victory over the Cardinals.
Chili Davis drove in four runs with two homers and a sacrifice fly for San Francisco, as the Giants downed the Reds, 7–3. Jose Uribe broke a 3-3 tie in the seventh, scoring from second when Pete Rose dropped an infield pop fly.
Cleveland Indians 1, Baltimore Orioles 7
Atlanta Braves 3, Houston Astros 2
San Diego Padres 3, Los Angeles Dodgers 6
Detroit Tigers 7, Milwaukee Brewers 11
Oakland Athletics 4, Minnesota Twins 5
St. Louis Cardinals 2, Montreal Expos 4
Boston Red Sox 1, New York Yankees 5
California Angels 3, Seattle Mariners 0
Cincinnati Reds 3, San Francisco Giants 7
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1284.78 (+6.29)
Born:
Jonathan Halyalkar, American actor (Billy-“Who’s the Boss”), in Ramsey, New Jersey.
Brandon Yip, Canadian NHL right wing (Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators, Phoenix Coyotes), in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Jacob Bender, NFL tackle (New York Jets), in Mayo, Maryland.
Giedo van der Garde, Dutch racing driver, in Rhenen, Netherlands.
Died:
Richard Haydn, 80, British actor (“The Sound of Music”; “Alice in Wonderland”), from a heart attack.
Murray Matheson, 72, Australian actor (Felix-“Banacek”).
History Diaries 