The Senate overwhelmingly urged President Reagan to cancel his planned visit to a German military cemetery. By a voice vote, the Senate adopted a resolution co-sponsored by 82 legislators hailing the reconciliation between the United States and West Germany but adding, “The President should reassess his planned itinerary during his forthcoming trip to the Federal Republic of Germany.” Instead of visiting the military cemetery at Bitburg, the resolution said, Mr. Reagan “should visit a symbol of German democracy.” The unusual Senate resolution came amid a growing chorus of opposition to Mr. Reagan’s planned visit on May 5 to the cemetery, where 49 SS soldiers are buried among 2,000 German war dead. The outcry against the cemetery visit has embarrassed the White House, strained relations between the United States and West Germany and stirred protests from Jewish groups, veterans’ organizations and others.
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Government said today that it would not be swayed by a letter signed by a majority of the United States House of Representatives urging him to withdraw his invitation to President Reagan to visit a German military cemetery next month. At a news conference, Peter Boenisch, the Chancellor’s spokesman, noted that the West German Parliament on Thursday had overwhelmingly rejected a demand by the Green Party that the Government eliminate the stop at the Bitburg cemetery, where Waffen SS soldiers are buried. The vote was 398 to 24, with only Green deputies supporting the motion. “Just as we have to take a letter from 253 Congressmen seriously,” Mr. Boenisch said, “so these Congressmen have to take seriously a vote in the German Bundestag.”
The Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies today formally extended the Warsaw Pact for 20 years in a ceremony presided over by Mikhail S. Gorbachev on his first visit abroad as Soviet leader. Mr. Gorbachev and the leaders of the seven nations in the Soviet-led military bloc agreed at a two-hour meeting to renew the 30-year-old pact, whose expiration date was May 15. Polish television coverage of the signing ceremony focused largely on Mr. Gorbachev, who was shown being greeted with some deference by the older men who are the party leaders of the other member nations – Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Rumania. In marked contrast to a speech in Moscow three days ago, in which he said Washington was not seeking an agreement in the Geneva arms talks, Mr. Gorbachev toned down his characterizations of the United States in his remarks today. Instead he stressed Soviet proposals for mutual nuclear rollbacks, which he said could only follow the abandonment of United States plans for deploying weapons in space.
The United States today ordered the expulsion of a Soviet military attaché in retaliation for what it called “the unacceptable Soviet position” toward the killing of an American Army officer in East Germany last month. A senior State Department official also said President Reagan had directed Secretary of State George P. Shultz to continue to raise the American concern over the slaying by a Soviet guard on March 24 of Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr. Major Nicholson was a member of the United States military liaison mission permitted by agreement to travel and observe Soviet forces in East Germany. Mr. Shultz is likely to discuss the matter with Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko when they meet in Vienna on May 14, the official said.
The Soviet leadership announced a minimal remembrance for Konstantin U. Chernenko today, six weeks after he died, which included renaming a small town in his honor. The town, Sharypovo, in a western Siberian grain-growing area, has a population of under 20,000.
Prime Minister Olof Palme has denied a report that Sweden carried out nuclear-weapons research as late as 1972 despite a 1957 ban by Parliament. Mr. Palme said at a news conference Thursday, “No nuclear weapon has ever been constructed or exploded in Sweden.” But he also said it was sometimes hard to define the limits of “research aimed at protecting the Swedish population against nuclear arms,” which is allowed under Swedish law. The Swedish technical journal Ny Teknik said Thursday that the nuclear-weapons research was financed secretly by a small group of Government and military officials. It said the program gave Sweden, a neutral country, atomic-bomb capability by 1965 and culminated with 10 small, underground plutonium explosions in 1972. Tor Larsson, head of the National Defense Research Institute, said that the report was correct but that the 1972 blasts could not be termed explosions of “military nuclear devices.”
A powerful car bomb exploded early today outside the Paris offices of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, causing extensive damage but no injuries, the police said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack. Most of the windows of the six-story building on the Avenue d’Iena, 200 yards from the Arc de Triomphe, were shattered, as were others in buildings across the broad avenue.
The U.S. failed to get an agreement that could bring about direct talks between Israel and Jordan. The attempt was made in advance of a visit to Israel by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. Mr. Murphy reportedly said that the Arab world was still too divided to support a move by King Hussein of Jordan to enter talks with Israel and a delegation of Palestinians not affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Despite the continuing deadlock, the department announced that Secretary of State George P. Shultz would add Egypt and Jordan to his trip to Israel, which begins on May 9. Some State Department aides had previously said Mr. Shultz would go to Cairo and Amman only if the American official, Richard W. Murphy Jr., the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, made significant progress in his advance mission, which is nearly completed.
Hundreds of Palestinian guerrillas and Muslim militiamen overran Christian villages in the hills east of the southern port of Sidon today. There were reports of widespread looting and burning of houses that had been abandoned by Christians. Before the takeover, 60,000 Christians from several villages had fled about 10 miles east to Jezzin after realizing that when Christian militiamen left for Beirut earlier in the week it would not be long before the Palestinians and their Muslim allies moved in.
Prince Norodom Sihanouk has withdrawn his request to step down as president of the coalition of Cambodian rebel groups fighting the Vietnamese occupation, the coalition’s office in Peking announced today. Prince Sihanouk’s decision came after the vice president of the coalition, Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge, asked him to stay on, a spokesman said. It was the fourth time Prince Sihanouk has threatened to resign since the uneasy alliance of the Khmer Rouge and two non-Communist factions was formed in 1982 to combat some 160,000 Vietnamese occupation troops.
President Reagan meets with President of the Republic of Korea Chun Doo Hwan. President Reagan and President Chun Doo Hwan expressed concern today over the continued forward deployment of North Korean troops closer to the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. But after a White House meeting, the two leaders also said that they were encouraged by steps toward reconciliation now being made between North and South Korea. A senior Administration official, who took part in the meeting, said that although North Korea’s military moves and its agreement to meet next month to hold talks on trade relations seemed contradictory, they probably reflected North Korea’s uncertainty over how to achieve its longstanding goal of Korean unification.
A U.S. team rescued survivors of a Nicaraguan plane crash on the Greenland icecap last weekend. The rescue was carried out by a United States Air National Guard crew flying a transport plane. Three of the five flyers aboard the Nicaraguan-owned plane were taken aboard the American plane.
President Reagan meets with Assistant for National Security Affairs Robert McFarlane to discuss the situation in Nicaragua. Security and foreign policy advisers were directed by President Reagan to review possible measures by the United States against the Nicaraguan Government. The White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said Mr. Reagan had asked for a review of a “full family” of economic, political and other measures, which he declined to specify. The review was announced at the daily White House press briefing two days after the House defeated an Administration request for $14 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels. The possibilities do not include the use of military force, he said.
Argentina’s President Raul Alfonsin succeeded today in attracting tens of thousands of Argentines to a rally he called “in defense of democracy,” but the size of the crowd belied a serious loss of support for him in the last month. Mr. Alfonsin called on Argentines to attend the rally in the Plaza de Mayo after a nationally televised speech in which he accused unnamed “traitors” of planning a coup. The call to the plaza has tremendous political overtones here, because, rather than being a symbol of democracy, such rallies are reminiscent of those staged by Juan Domingo Perón and the military rulers who followed him. When Mr. Alfonsin’s administration took office in December 1983, he promised to break from the past. His critics were also quick to point out this week that a well-attended rally would not solve the country’s economic problems.
The South African police reported five more deaths today as violence and arson continued in black townships. A spokesman said two badly burned bodies had been found in the eastern Cape area. Two people died in separate incidents when the police opened fire with birdshot and shotguns near Port Elizabeth, and another was found dead after a clash with policemen near the Hartebeesfontein gold mine, 95 miles southwest of Johannesburg. Three white men who beat two blacks to death in revenge for an attack on a white friend were jailed today for 10 years each by a judge in Johannesburg who called the assaults “cowardly atrocities.”
For the second day in a row, the Senate Republican leadership put off a vote on the budget as President Reagan lobbied for support. White House officials and Republican senators say there are still about six Republicans, including Alfonse M. D’Amato of New York and Lowell P. Weicker Jr. of Connecticut, who are not supporting the package. Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, whose strategy is to mobilize a Senate majority for the Republican budget on the first vote of the debate, spent the day looking for ways to change their minds. Most of these Republicans, including Mr. D’Amato, are up for re-election in 1986.
The Senate today approved by a unanimous voice vote the nomination of Bill Brock, the United States Trade Representative, to be Secretary of Labor. Mr. Brock, 55 years old, replaces Raymond J. Donovan, who resigned March 15 after a New York judge ordered him to stand trial on charges of fraud and larceny in connection with the construction company where he was once an executive.
Svetlana Ogorodnikov, who is being tried on charges that she recruited an FBI agent to spy for the Soviet Union, burst into tears in court today when another former FBI agent testified that she had invited him to have sex. “Why you lie – liar!” Mrs. Ogorodnikov declared, interrupting the testimony of the former agent, John E. Hunt, who had been describing a dinner meeting he had with her in June 1982. Mrs. Ogorodnikov is being tried with her husband, Nikolay, on charges that they conspired with Richard W. Miller, who was then an FBI agent, to pass classified documents to the Soviet Union. Mrs. Ogorodnikov, who is 34 years old, has contended in court papers that her activities with FBI agents had been in connection with her role as an FBI informer. She said she had had an affair with Mr. Hunt when he was assigned to her case, and later with Mr. Miller. The Government has denied that Mr. Hunt was involved in an intimate relationship with her.
Segregation still exists in rural Southern towns despite the civil rights laws of the 1960’s that banned overt discrimination. There are bars where blacks know they cannot buy a drink and restaurants in which they cannot eat. These are the towns and rural areas that the civil rights movement largely bypassed as black-white relations in the region as a whole were indelibly changed.
The board of directors of United Press International yesterday unanimously authorized the news agency’s chairman to seek protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code. A company spokesman said the move would not interrupt service. He did not say when or in what Federal District Court the company would file for protection. The company must now find new working capital if it is to survive. Luis G. Nogales, the news agency’s chairman, was negotiating late yesterday for added operating money with the company’s principal lender, the Foothill Capital Corporation, and a U.P.I. spokesman said Mr. Nogales was optimistic that an agreement could be reached quickly.
The State of Pennsylvania and two private groups have asked a Federal appeals court to forbid operation of a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant until reports on unresolved safety issues are submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The court challenges, which involve the Unit 1 reactor, a twin of the Unit 2 reactor that suffered a partial meltdown in March 1979, came in separate petitions filed in Philadelphia late Thursday and today in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Unit 1 had been shut for routine refueling at the time of the accident and has not operated since.
The Army and a private foundation were in Federal District Court here today for a rare public confrontation over research for biological warfare. At issue was the construction of new laboratory facilities at the Army’s testing ground in Dugway, Utah. Money for a $1.4 million laboratory to test aerosol sprays used for dispersing biological agents was obtained last fall by a special budget process using unspent money from prior fiscal years without Congressional debate. But the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington group opposed to certain types of genetic engineering research, sued the Army to halt construction of the test facility, saying that it represented an unnecessary escalation in the field of biological warfare.
The leader of a white supremacist group and another man have been indicted on arson charges in the burning of a church for homosexuals and a Jewish center. In Hot Springs, Arkansas, James D. Ellison, 48 years old, leader of the supremacist group known as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, and a former member of the group, William Thomas, were named Thursday in a three-count indictment under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in connection with the fires in Bloomington, Indiana, and Springfield, Missouri, according to United States Attorney Asa Hutchinson. Mr. Ellison pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail. Mr. Hutchinson said Mr. Thomas was in custody on gun charges in Missouri. Meanwhile, Gary Lee Yarbrough, 29, of Sandpoint, Idaho, and Robert E. Merki, 50, of Boise, Idaho, identified as members of another white supremacist group, the Order, pleaded not guilty Thursday to different racketeering charges in Seattle.
The police in Providence, Rhode Island today sought three heavily armed men who climbed through a skylight and stole more than $1 million worth of platinum. Officers said the same gang probably staged a similar theft in 1982. The robbers, wearing black jump suits, handcuffed several employees of the Darmet Corporation before fleeing with about 300 platinum wire spools Thursday night, the police said. The wire is woven into material for use in automobile catalytic converters.
Hundreds of U.S. Marines and forest rangers battled along a 20-mile fire line today to hold back towering flames that threatened dozens of homes on North Carolina’s tinder-dry coast. More than 150 families fled the wind-whipped flames today, but returned later. Volunteer firefighters stood guard around homes endangered by the wildfire that broke out Thursday, destroying 8,000 acres of woodlands. Bruce Jewell, a United States Forestry Service spokesman, said he feared the start of another series of blazes across the South, adding: “The conditions are definitely building back up. There’s still quite a shortage of rainfall. There has been a few inches, but given the drought we’ve had all spring, that simply isn’t enough.”
In a stern lecture to 327 of New York City’s top police commanders, Commissioner Benjamin Ward yesterday warned that he would hold each of them personally responsible for brutality or corruption in their commands. Reacting to recent charges that police officers had tortured and abused prisoners in the 106th Precinct in Queens, Mr. Ward said he felt “personal shame and disgrace.” But he added that he would not allow the spate of brutality complaints to drive him out of office. No police officers have been convicted of charges in the cases.
Federal District Judge James A. Redden today banned the use of synthetic chemical insecticides to spray for gypsy moths, stopping their use in Oregon immediately and nationwide in January.
Segregation still exists in rural Southern towns despite the civil rights laws of the 1960’s that banned overt discrimination. There are bars where blacks know they cannot buy a drink and restaurants in which they cannot eat. These are the towns and rural areas that the civil rights movement largely bypassed as black-white relations in the region as a whole were indelibly changed.
Downtown San Diego, California is undergoing a renaissance. After decades of deterioration and decay, new buildings are going up; there is a sense of vitality downtown, and in the biggest change of all, middle-class San Diegans are moving downtown. This was long the quintessential “Navy town,” a city with a benign climate energized by the ebb and flow of great, gray warships and the appetites of sailors home on leave after months at sea. After San Diego became one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities in the 1960’s and 1970’s, few newcomers came downtown. The city’s growth occurred near freeways and shopping centers far from the center of San Diego.
Major League Baseball:
The Dodgers Orel Hershiser pitches his second consecutive shutout, a 2–0 one-hitter against the Padres. San Diego’s lone hit is Tony Gwynn’s 4th-inning single.
Ron Darling, who went to Yale, learned his lesson last night and, though the Pittsburgh Pirates’ batting order may not be much of a test, allowed only as many hits as Wally Backman got all by himself in a 6-0 Met victory at Shea Stadium. Darling, criticized by Manager Davey Johnson for throwing too many fastballs during his last start, mixed up his pitches and changed his and the Mets’ luck with a slump-stopping five-hitter. Backman became the first major league batter this season to get five hits in a game as the Mets scored single runs in six of their eight turns. Included were Backman’s first three runs batted in of 1985 and a towering homer by Darryl Strawberry.
The Cubs’ Dave Lopes belted a three-run homer to cap a four-run first inning and Ryne Sandberg homered and scored four times as Chicago beat the Phillies, 7–3. Dennis Eckersley (3-1), who pitched shutouts in his last two starts, gave up nine hits.
Hubie Brooks drove in four runs and Andre Dawson and Tim Wallach each hit home runs to lead Montreal to its fourth straight victory, as the Expos downed the Cardinals, 10–5.
Jack Morris overpowered Milwaukee with a five-hitter to lead the struggling Tigers to a 1–0 victory over the Brewers. Morris (3-2) struck out nine and retired 14 batters in a row until Cecil Cooper doubled with one out in the ninth. The Tigers scored in the first when Kirk Gibson tripled to the gap in right-center and raced home when the relay throw from the second baseman Jim Gantner skipped past the third baseman Paul Molitor.
Cleveland Indians 3, Baltimore Orioles 6
Kansas City Royals 2, Boston Red Sox 5
New York Yankees 2, Chicago White Sox 4
Atlanta Braves 2, Houston Astros 3
San Diego Padres 0, Los Angeles Dodgers 2
Detroit Tigers 1, Milwaukee Brewers 0
Oakland Athletics 7, Minnesota Twins 8
St. Louis Cardinals 5, Montreal Expos 10
Pittsburgh Pirates 0, New York Mets 6
Chicago Cubs 7, Philadelphia Phillies 3
California Angels 11, Seattle Mariners 3
Cincinnati Reds 6, San Francisco Giants 7
Toronto Blue Jays 6, Texas Rangers 5
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1275.18 (-9.6)
Born:
Sean Rodríguez, MLB second baseman, outfielder, and first baseman (Los Angeles Angels, Tampa Bay Rays, Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta Braves, Philadelphia Phillies, Miami Marlins), in Miami, Florida.
Corey Hilliard, NFL tackle (Indianapolis Colts, Detroit Lions), in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Tiffany Jackson-Jones, WNBA forward (New York Liberty, Tulsa Shock, Los Angeles Sparks), in Longview, Texas.
John Isner, American tennis player who played the longest pro tennis match in history, in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Jamie Gray Hyder, American actress (“True Blood”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”), in Washington, District of Columbia.
Nam Gyu-Ri, Korean singer (member of See Ya), in Seoul, South Korea.
History Diaries 