President Reagan arrives in Bonn, Germany for the Economic Summit. Disputes over economic policy threaten the success of the seven-power economic summit meeting despite months of preparatory talks, according to senior officials preparing the meeting. As President Reagan and other leaders arrive for the 11th annual summit talks, which begin Thursday, these officials say this year’s talks appear the most difficult since the Versailles meeting three years ago. That meeting ended in a public quarrel between the Reagan Administration and its allies over the desirability of trading with the Eastern bloc and led to the United States trade sanctions against European countries helping the Soviet Union build a Siberian gas pipeline. “Politically, the trip has already gone sour” for President Reagan, a senior European official said in a reference to the discord surrounding the President’s planned trip on Sunday to a German war cemetery at Bitburg. The official added, “The danger now is that everyone will go away disappointed with the economic results and the whole summit will become an embarrassment for the American President.”
Archbishop John J. O’Connor of New York said yesterday that he sent a telegram to the White House on Sunday urging President Reagan not to visit the Bitburg cemetery. The Archbishop, who often talks about the effect that a visit to the Dachau concentration camp several years ago had on him, said he praised the President’s decision to visit the concentration camp site of Bergen-Belsen.
The Soviet Government press agency Tass said today that the United States was using the shooting of an American Army officer in East Germany to “kindle mistrust.” But the agency made no mention of the expulsion of a Soviet military attaché from Washington, and there was no word of any retaliatory action. The statement, which adhered to the Soviet version of the shooting of the officer, Major Arthur D. Nicholson Jr., by a Soviet sentry on March 24, was generally mild in tone.
Disorders erupted in Poland as pro-Solidarity marchers countered official May Day parades. In Warsaw, at least 15,000 people chanted illegal slogans during a two-hour procession, and in Gdansk, 2,000 demonstrators clashed with the police. The protesters threw rocks before giving way to water cannon and tear gas. Although rain, sleet and snow as well as shows of force by the police dampened demonstrations in other cities, the disorders in Warsaw and Gdansk were the largest since the Solidarity movement was declared illegal in 1981.
The family of imprisoned Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky said that Soviet authorities have shut off all contacts with him for the rest of the year. A statement released in Tel Aviv by the Free Shcharansky Committee said Soviet officials told his mother, Ida Milgrom, that letters to the prisoner are being confiscated and visiting rights suspended until the end of the year.
Britain’s new military budget will rise by 3 percent, adhering to a North Atlantic Treaty Alliance guideline for increasing defenses against the Warsaw Pact, the Government announced today. Defense Minister Michael Heseltine, introducing the annual military policy statement, said the budget would go up above inflation. The document restated Britain’s willingness to consult with the United States and other NATO allies about President Reagan’s proposal to conduct research of a space-based missile defense system.
A fierce artillery battle raged in southern Lebanon today between Christian defenders of Kfar Falous and Muslim militiamen stalled in the approaches to the mountain stronghold. Sectarian fighting was also reported in Beirut. Christian militiamen entrenched in Kfar Falous poured cannon fire from Israeli-supplied Sherman tanks into Muslim-held villages east of Sidon to block any new advance on their stronghold in the Shuf Mountains. In Beirut, militiamen exchanged tank, rocket and mortar fire along the three-mile Green Line that separates the city’s Christian and Muslim sectors. The police said five people were killed and 18 were wounded in the fighting, which drove residents of the capital into basement bunkers and bomb shelters.
In the first reported engagement between Shiite guerrillas and Israeli troops since Israeli forces in Lebanon pulled back to the border security belt, four Arabs were killed early this morning and one was captured, the military command said. A military communique made public this evening said the Israelis caught the guerrillas laying a large roadside explosive device near Reihan in the eastern sector of the planned security belt, and the soldiers opened fire.
Iraqi warplanes resumed strikes on Persian Gulf shipping, attacking a Turkish oil tanker with a French-made Exocet missile south of Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg Island. Lloyd’s of London confirmed the attack, the first successful air strike in the gulf in two weeks. Lloyd’s said the 134,372-ton Burak M, carrying Iranian oil, was slightly damaged. It was the 18th confirmed maritime attack by Iraq this year, part of the Baghdad regime’s attempt to damage the economy of its war foe, Iran.
Thousands of Indian civil servants in western Gujarat state began an indefinite strike to protest what they called police brutality during a demonstration earlier in the week. Police reportedly charged demonstrators who were campaigning against the government’s caste-based promotion system, injuring dozens. Meanwhile, unknown gunmen assassinated a local leader of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s party in the small town of Khanna in Punjab state, where Sikh separatists have been active.
A delegation of high officials from the United States Defense Department arrived here today to explore the possiblity of selling missiles, artillery and other arms to India. The planned discussions between American and Indian officials were described by aides on both sides as another sign of growing potential for friendship between two nations with a history of contention on security matters. United States officials said this week that Washington was eager to try to reduce India’s reliance on the Soviet Union for arms. But they said they expected no early agreements, adding that more discussions would be likely in the months to come.
China and Vietnam’s ex-trade ministers met in Peking for the first known high-level private talks between the neighbors since their 1979 border war, Western diplomats said. Vietnam’s Phan Anh, in Peking for a U.N. conference on Palestine, met Li Qiang, who supervised Chinese aid and trade with Vietnam in 1973-78. Senior Chinese and Vietnamese officials have met in public before, but the private meeting “is what the Chinese would do if they wanted to start a dialogue,” one diplomat said. “It is something important.”
Ten years after the fall of the American-backed Government of South Vietnam, Hanoi’s leadership appears divided over how to improve relations with Washington and whether the moment is right to make the effort. At a news conference today Lê Đức Thọ, the 74-year-old Politburo member thought to be the most likely successor to the Communist Party Secretary General, Lê Duẩn, took a sharply critical line toward Washington. Criticizing the United States for imposing conditions to the setting up of diplomatic relations and for refusing to allow more cultural and scientific exchanges, Mr. Thọ said, “I can see no possibility of normalization in the immediate future.”
Vietnamese troops and Cambodian guerrillas battled for more than three hours near the Thai border, with each side suffering more than 10 killed or wounded, Thai military sources said. The fighting began when Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas attacked Vietnamese troops opposite a Thai village south of Aranyaprathet, the sources said. Vietnamese occupation forces in Cambodia are trying to seal the border against guerrilla infiltration from Thailand during the monsoon season, which has just started.
The reputed head of a major international cocaine-trafficking ring, who is a prime suspect in the murder of a U.S. drug agent in Mexico, has been arrested by police in Cartagena, Colombia, the Drug Enforcement Administration said in Washington. DEA official John D. Lawn said Colombia acted on U.S.-supplied information in arresting Juan Ramon Matta-Ballesteros, a Honduran. With the latest arrest, three of the four alleged drug traffickers suspected of a role in the murder of DEA agent Enrique S. Camarena in Guadalajara last March are now in custody.
U.S.-Nicaragua trade will be halted, President Reagan ordered. Mr. Reagan told Congress in a letter that the policies and actions of the Sandinista Government constituted a threat to American security. Mr. Reagan also ordered Nicaraguan aircraft and ships banned from the United States. The announcement came in the form of an executive order and an accompanying letter to Congress. Both were made public only hours after Mr. Reagan arrived in West Germany for the 11th annual economic conference of seven major industrial nations. The three-day meeting opens Thursday in Bonn.
Nicaragua’s Vice President condemned the economic embargo ordered by President Reagan today, and said it would bring the Sandinista Government closer to the Soviet Union. Vice President Sergio Ramirez Mercado, calling the measures “absolutely illegal and arbitrary,” said his Government intended to protest to the International Court of Justice at the Hague. “Nicaragua is going to add this to the case we have initiated before the World Court against the U.S. Government,” Mr. Ramirez said. The World Court heard Nicaragua’s complaint about the United States’ mining of its ports in 1983. The United States has refused to accept the court’s jurisdiction in the matter, which is still pending.
Key Congressional leaders praised President Reagan’s imposition of a trade embargo against Nicaragua, but even backers of Mr. Reagan criticized his failure to consult Washington’s Latin American allies and act in concert with them.
The Ethiopian authorities forced about 56,000 famine victims to leave an emergency feeding center in a three-day operation this week, international relief agency officials said today. No official explanation was given for the reported evacuation, which was said to have begun Sunday and ended Tuesday, leaving only 2,000 people at the Ibnet camp. The Government has previously moved famine victims to non-drought areas in the south and southeast as part of a plan to resettle 1.5 million people. The military-run Government of Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam has said that the resettlement project is voluntary and that similar programs failed in the past partly because force was used to shift populations.
South African police, moving quickly to prevent black demonstrations against apartheid, arrested 41 members of the Metal and Allied Workers Union as they began a march through Johannesburg. Police also arrested 14 students after a protest at the U.S. Consulate denouncing “constructive engagement” with South Africa. And an afternoon march by more than 500 trade unionists was abandoned when 200 armed riot police confronted the protesters and made clear that they would be turned back by force.
Upholding Social Security benefits, the Senate rejected a proposal to curtail cost-of-living increases, a key element of the White House budget package. But the Republican leadership will try to turn that vote around when the Senate votes on a final budget package, perhaps by the end of next week, after a whole series of amendments are considered. The vote today was 65 to 34, with 19 Republicans joining 46 Democrats in voting to preserve full cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients. Eleven of the Republicans who voted to retain the increases are up for re-election in 1986.
Sentiment for a stiffer minimum tax on profitable corporations and wealthy individuals is growing in Congress. In the Senate, Bob Dole of Kansas, the Republican leader, and Bob Packwood of Oregon, the chairman of the Finance Committee, plan to offer a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that an effective minimum income tax should be enacted this year as part of an overall tax revision bill.
Republicans walked out of the House in an angry protest against a vote to seat Frank McCloskey, the Democratic incumbent in Indiana’s eighth district. The vote was 236 to 190. After an exhaustive recount supervised by the House, Mr. McCloskey was declared the winner over Richard D. McIntyre, the Republican challenger, by 4 votes out of more than 233,000 votes cast, the closest election in House history. The Republican walkout came after a six-month battle over an election that has shredded the fabric of civility in the House and now threatens to tie up legislative business on Capitol Hill. House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. swore in Mr. McCloskey, who was declared the winner after an exhaustive recount supervised by the House. In a brief floor speech, Mr. McCloskey said his winning margin of four votes, out of more than 233,000 votes cast, was the closest in House history.
The NAACP moved to block the Reagan Administration in its drive to rid court-ordered affirmative action programs of race- and sex-based numerical hiring and promotion quotas. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People — the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization — and three individuals charged that the Justice Department’s actions are unconstitutional as well as a violation of administrative procedures.
Animals upstaged astronauts, starring in a series of cameo appearances in television shows during the space shuttle Challenger’s third day in orbit. The New York-bred rats and a monkey from Harvard seemed healthy, relaxed and even appeared to enjoy their environment, although the monkey bred in the Boston area was just picking at its food, obviously bored with its diet of banana pellets. But it was in good spirits and even waved at the audience right on cue when a television camera was poked into its cage. Dr. William E. Thornton, one of two physician-astronauts serving on the Spacelab where the animals are caged, said the Boston monkey was ill briefly after liftoff, but that he himself would have liked to have adapted to the rigors of space as quickly as the monkeys had.
In a period marked by sharp debate over funding for the MX missile, aid to the Nicaraguan rebels and the trade imbalance with Japan, President Reagan’s standing with the American people has declined to the lowest level since before his reelection last November, the Gallup Poll reported. In the latest survey — conducted before the Bitburg cemetery controversy arose — 52% approved of Reagan’s actions, 37% disapproved and 11% were undecided. The President’s job rating has been gradually declining since late January, when 64% approved and 28% disapproved.
The number of wiretaps granted by federal judges jumped nearly 40% last year, representing a steady climb of electronic surveillance since the beginning of the Reagan Administration, a federal report released in Washington showed. Federal judges granted 289 applications in 1984 to place listening devices on telephone lines or to place a microphone to eavesdrop on conversations, contrasted with 208 in 1983, a 38.9% increase, a report by the administrative office of the U.S. Courts showed.
Gary Dotson, who is fighting to overturn a conviction for a rape that his accuser now says never happened, walked out of prison for the second time in a month today after his mother posted $10,000 cash bond. Mr. Dotson, 28 years old, has served six years of a 25- to 50-year sentence since his 1979 conviction of rape and aggravated kidnapping.
A former agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation testified today that he had regarded Svetlana Ogorodnikov, a Russian emigre who is accused of being a Soviet spy, as “psychologically hooked” on him at a time when he was assigned to get information from her. But the agent, John E. Hunt, said he did not think that she was in love with him, as Mrs. Ogorodnikov has asserted. Mr. Hunt, a former agent in the counterintelligence unit of the Los Angeles division of the bureau, is a Government witness in the trial of Mrs. Ogorodnikov and her husband, Nikolay, who are accused of conspiracy to commit espionage with another former F.B.I. agent, Richard W. Miller. Mr. Miller is to be tried later.
J. Peter Grace, a millionaire business executive who heads a presidential cost-cutting commission, is sponsoring a $2-million advertising campaign to pressure Congress into passing the $424 billion in federal budget cuts that his panel has been proposing for the last two years. Most of the money will be spent developing and publishing half-page newspaper ads urging people to write their representatives in Congress.
A new blood test for AIDS will falsely suggest that thousands of healthy blood donors have the fatal disease, and this could frighten off donors unless blood banks double-check results before releasing them, public health officials warn. The test is intended to screen out donated blood contaminated with the AIDS virus so the disease, which destroys the body’s immune system, will not be spread through transfusions. The test is highly sensitive to tainted blood, but it also sometimes falsely labels clean blood as contaminated.
Members of a right-wing survivalist group have returned to their 224-acre Ozarks compound near Three Brothers, Arkansas, which was raided by federal agents last week. They vowed to rearm themselves if the FBI does not return the weapons it seized. After a four-day standoff with the group, the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, federal and state officers on April 22 arrested five men, including the group’s leader, Jim Ellison, 48.
A sixth Cook County, Illinois, judge was charged in the federal government’s Operation Greylord investigation of corruption in the nation’s largest court system. A federal grand jury returned a 39-count indictment against Judge Reginald Holzer, 57, charging him with receiving $200,000 in gifts and financial benefits from persons he appointed to receiverships and other court offices since 1970. Indicted along with Holzer was Chicago real estate man Ernest Worsek, who allegedly gave the judge $40,000 in financial benefits in exchange for property receiverships. The three-year investigation has yielded 26 indictments.
A jury today convicted Alton Coleman of aggravated murder in the bludgeoning death of a woman last July in what the authorities called a crime spree. The verdict included specifications that could bring Mr. Coleman, who is 29 years old, a death sentence.
An 85-year-old immigrant accused of being a Nazi war criminal today was ordered extradited to his native Yugoslavia to face up to 7,000 murder charges. The man, Andrija Artukovic, interior minister for the Nazi puppet state of Croatia in World War II, originally had been ordered extradited for one murder.
A jury has found that a man who willed $1.3 million to the Federal Government was insane, rejecting arguments of Government attorneys who contended the deceased just did not like his relatives. The verdict came at the end of a trial last week in Ransom County Court, where relatives of Lloyd Miller, who left $1 apiece to his four brothers and sisters, sought to overturn his will.
The Pentagon has been exaggerating over the last two years its highly publicized assertions about cracking down on overcharging and abuse by military contractors, according to Congressional critics and the Pentagon’s Inspector General.
The new National Park Service chief is William Penn Mott Jr., who headed California’s park system when Ronald Reagan was Governor. The appointment of Mr. Mott, a 75-year-old career parks administrator, was welcomed enthusiastically by conservation groups.
Many cases of AIDS in a black ghetto 40 miles from West Palm Beach, Florida, have prompted the state authorities to focus on the overcrowding, poor sanitation and malnutrition in the inland farming community, Belle Glade. There have been 31 reported cases of AIDS in the community of 20,000 in the last three years, marking the highest known per capita rate in the world. Fourteen of the victims used injected narcotics, five were homosexuals and nine were Haitian immigrants.
Warning that America is on the verge of widespread “reading stagnation,” a federally sponsored study called for sweeping changes in the way the nation’s children are taught to read. The two-year study recommended that schools alter their teaching and testing methods and that parents take a more active role in their children’s reading development. “Our children are suffering as a result of not becoming readers and not becoming literate, and the costs of illiteracy are enormous,” said Education Secretary William J. Bennett.
William Hoffman’s “As Is” premieres in NYC.
The Buffalo Bills traded their longtime starter, Joe Ferguson, to the Detroit Lions, a move that left the Lions with five quarterbacks. But they returned to four quickly yesterday by trading Gary Danielson to the Cleveland Browns. Both trades were for a future draft choice.
Major League Baseball:
Toronto’s Jimmy Key beats the Royals 6–3 to become the first lefthanded starter to win for the Blue Jays since Paul Mirabella on October 4, 1980, a span of 614 games.
After watching his team stumble through two losses since he took over the managerial controls, Billy Martin got a victory. He made all the right moves — starting the seldom-used Ron Hassey and summoning Dave Righetti from the bullpen to pitch four innings — and the Yankees floored the Texas Rangers, 5–1, to stop a five-game losing streak.
Kent Hrbek and Roy Smalley hit homers in a six-run fifth inning that sent the streaking Minnesota Twins to a 7–3 victory over the Detroit Tigers today. The victory was the 10th straight for the Twins.
Cal Ripken cracked a two-run homer and Rich Dauer added a bases-empty blast as Baltimore defeated the Chicago White Sox, 3–1.
Yogi Berra visited Shea Stadium last night, and the Mets made him feel at home. Berra, who only Sunday was relieved of managing one injured, fumbling New York team, got to watch another one lose to the Houston Astros, helped by three errors, 10–3. Berra got to see 16 Met players and 16 Houston hits — three by Jose Cruz, including a three-run homer in the ninth inning.
The Expos beat the Phillies, 3–2. Hubie Brooks’s two-out homer in the top of the seventh inning snapped a 2–2 tie and gave Montreal the victory, snapping the Phillies’ four-game winning streak.
The Braves walloped the Reds, 17–9. Dale Murphy slammed a two-run homer and Chris Chambliss made four hits to pace a 25-hit attack. The run production was the highest for the Braves since they scored 18 in 1973. However, Pete Rose went 0 for 2. Murphy’s homer in the seventh was his 10th of the year.
The Cubs edged the Giants, 4–3. Shawon Dunston stole third base and came home with the winning run on a throwing error by the catcher, Bob Brenly, in the bottom of the ninth.
Chicago White Sox 1, Baltimore Orioles 3
Toronto Blue Jays 6, California Angels 3
San Francisco Giants 3, Chicago Cubs 4
Atlanta Braves 17, Cincinnati Reds 9
Minnesota Twins 7, Detroit Tigers 3
Cleveland Indians 6, Kansas City Royals 5
Houston Astros 10, New York Mets 3
Milwaukee Brewers 7, Oakland Athletics 4
Montreal Expos 3, Philadelphia Phillies 2
San Diego Padres 6, Pittsburgh Pirates 4
Boston Red Sox 0, Seattle Mariners 7
Los Angeles Dodgers 2, St. Louis Cardinals 1
New York Yankees 5, Texas Rangers 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1242.05 (-16.01)
Born:
Drew Sidora, American actress (“Step Up”) and reality TV star (“The Real Housewives of Atlanta”), in Chicago, Illinois.
Paul Pratt, NFL defensive back (Detroit Lions), in Woodland Hills, California.
History Diaries 