The Soviet Union has proposed a mutual reduction of 25 percent or more in launchers for intercontinental nuclear weapons, the Reagan Administration’s senior adviser on arms control said today. The adviser, Paul H. Nitze, said such a step could be “counterproductive” and was unattractive to the United States because it counted “strategic nuclear delivery vehicles,” or missiles and bombers, rather than proposing a reduction in the number of warheads. Mr. Nitze, who said the proposal had been made since the Geneva arms talks resumed May 30, said a cut in delivery vehicles could reduce the number of targets while increasing the number of warheads available to destroy the targets, since more multiple warheads could be added to the larger Soviet missiles. He told reporters in a breakfast interview that this could increase instability in the strategic balance.
Helicopters and ships recovered one more body from the Air-India flight that plunged into the Atlantic on Sunday with 329 people on board. Searchers also recovered debris from the Boeing 747 that officials hope will explain its sudden destruction, but they have not yet found the two flight recorders that could confirm or cast doubt on the Indian Government’s belief that the airliner was blown up by a bomb.
The State Department plans to reduce the number of foreign nationals working in American embassies in Soviet-bloc countries because many of them are believed to be spies, government officials said today. Meanwhile, Secretary of State George P. Shultz told a Senator that he “endorsed in principle” an advisory panel’s recommendation that dozens of new embassies and consulates be built around the world to discourage terrorist attacks. In a letter to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Shultz said the cost of construction had been put at more than $3 billion dollars over the next five to seven years. The reduction of foreign employees and the construction program are among actions recommended in a report by an Advisory Panel on Overseas Security that Mr. Shultz set up in July 1984. The panel was headed by Admiral Bobby R. Inman, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.
Specialists on international terrorism and nuclear safeguards opened a two-day conference in Washington to take what one expert called “a hard look” at the danger of nuclear terrorism. Brian Jenkins, a security specialist with the Rand Corp., said at a news conference that “going nuclear would be a quantum jump” for terrorists. But he added that such a tactic “is not inevitable” if rigid precautions are taken.
Cyprus’ rightist National Union party won the most seats in parliamentary elections held by the self-proclaimed Turkish ministate on the island, but it did not get a majority, final returns showed. The breakaway state’s president, Rauf Denktaş, is known to favor the National Union, although he did not openly support any party in the campaign. The government of Cyprus, dominated by Greek Cypriots, condemned Sunday’s elections for a 50-seat Turkish Cypriot Parliament, as did Greece.
The man in charge of West Germany’s hunt for Josef Mengele declined comment on a report that he has asked Austria to exhume the body of the man whose identity apparently was assumed by the Nazi war criminal in Brazil. The report in the Bonn newspaper Welt am Sonntag said that in order to resolve any final puzzles about the identity of the remains exhumed in Brazil nearly three weeks ago, “there is to be a second exhumation at the wish of German authorities. The remains of Mengele’s friend (Wolfgang) Gerhard are to be examined in Austria.”
Italian legislators elected Christian Democrat Francesco Cossiga as the nation’s eighth president. Cossiga, 56, will be sworn in July 9 for a seven-year term in the largely ceremonial post, succeeding Sandro Pertini, 88, a Socialist. Cossiga is president of the Senate and has twice served as Italy’s prime minister. The choice, on the first ballot, again gives the Christian Democrats one of the nation’s two highest offices. Mr. Cossiga, from Sardinia, will be the postwar republic’s youngest president and the first to be elected on the first ballot.
A Vatican document advised Roman Catholics to understand the deep religious attachment that Jews have to Israel but not to think of Israel in religious terms. It said that the existence of the state of Israel should be seen “in reference to the common principles of international law.” The International Jewish Committee on Inter-Religious Consultations, based in New York, responded with a statement saying the Vatican document has “a regressive spirit.”
Mehmet Ali Ağca, the convicted assailant of Pope John Paul II, returned to the witness stand here today, offering new testimony and contradictory versions of several events. Mr. Ağca, who is the state’s key witness in the case against seven other men in a purported plot to assassinate the Pope, also reiterated that he was Jesus Christ and that he was prepared to prove it by raising a body from the dead in the presence of President Reagan and of Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary General of the United Nations. At one point, Mr. Ağca, who is on trial here with four other Turks and three Bulgarians, said he had had contact in jail with members of the Red Brigades, a terrorist group. The comment was regarded as significant because of charges that Mr. Ağca had been coached in jail to implicate Bulgaria and the Soviet Union in the purported assassination plot.
A previously unknown group calling itself the Peace Conquerors has taken responsibility for the bombing at the Frankfurt airport last Wednesday, and warned that it will explode a jumbo jet “before the end of the month.” The threat came in a letter sent Friday to Agence France-Presse in Paris and made public by the agency on Saturday, a day before an Air-India Boeing 747 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off Ireland. India’s Minister of Aviation said the crash might have been caused by a bomb explosion.
Scotland Yard said tonight that it had uncovered a plot by the Irish Republican Army to plant bombs at 12 English seaside resorts this summer. Twelve people have been detained under Britain’s antiterrorism law in an operation that began with the arrest of five people in Glasgow on Saturday. One is thought to be a man, identified as Roy Walsh, whom the police have been seeking for questioning in connection with the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton last September. Five people were killed in the bombing and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher narrowly escaped death.
American warships must withdraw from the Lebanese coast, the Shiite Muslim militia leader, Nabih Berri, demanded as a new condition for release of 40 American hostages. A United States naval flotilla, which includes the aircraft carrier Nimitz, has been sent to the eastern Mediterranian, but the ships are not visible from the coast.
Israel freed 31 Lebanese prisoners from a military prison and turned them loose in southern Lebanon. The release of the prisoners left 735 Lebanese and Palestinian detainees still in Israeli hands.
Washington urged worldwide action against recent “despicable acts of terrorists.” The State Department, in a statement that linked the recent rash of attacks on air travelers for the first time, said that “all nations must unite in decisive action to curb this threat.”
President Reagan cancels his trip to Rancho del Cielo in order to deal with the current international situations. The President canceled a vacation at his California ranch because of the hostage situation in Beirut, the White House announced. White House officials indicated that Nancy Reagan had played a key role in the decision to cancel the nine-day Fourth of July vacation.
President Reagan attends a National Security Planning Group meeting to discuss the options for resolving the hostage situation.
People close to the hostages say they are increasingly frustrated by what they regard as a lack of action by President Reagan on the Beirut situation. Some of the families and friends say they are demanding a meeting with Mr. Reagan.
A Beirut peace committee agreed in principle to the deployment today of police in three Palestinian refugee camps as part of a Syrian-brokered truce between Shia Muslim militiamen and Palestinian guerrillas after a month of fighting. Political sources, however, said some police are reluctant to move into the camps because the Palestinians may not have surrendered all their weapons. Shia fighters of the Amal militia continued to occupy key positions around two of the camps, Chatilla and Borj el Brajne.
The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, denied today that his country had anything to do with hijacking the Trans World Airlines plane and the taking hostage of 40 people in Beirut. “Iran had no connection whatsoever with this incident and had it known in advance of the hijack and of the identity of the hijackers, it would have prevented it,” the Speaker told a news conference during a visit here.
Four people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in Muslim-Hindu clashes in the west Indian textile center of Ahmedebad.
Opposition leaders in Nepal, citing recent terrorist bombings, announced the suspension of a month-long civil disobedience campaign, and 60,000 teachers were urged by their leaders to end a six-month strike. “The violence by undesirable elements has created a kind of anarchist state posing a threat to the nation itself,” said Girija Prasad Koirala, the jailed general secretary of the banned Nepali Congress Party. A series of bombings last week blasted the gates of King Birendra’s palace, a hotel owned by the royal family, the National Assembly building and other government structures.
Security at Canadian airports was made more stringent in the aftermath of an Air India crash off Ireland and a luggage bombing at a Canadian plane in Japan. The imposition of the new measures, including passing checked baggage through X-rays, caused departure delays of up to three hours. Canadian officials said they had yet to find any hard evidence linking terrorists to the crash of the Indian jumbo jet that was bound from Toronto to Bombay.
A general strike, called by major unions to protest layoffs and the high cost of living, began on the Caribbean island of Jamaica today, and union leaders asserted that it would last at least three days. A walkout by Water Commission workers cut off water in the northern coast resort of Montego Bay and union leaders at other utilities indicated they were joining the strike. Commercial flights were delayed because of a job action by some air traffic controllers. Prison guards, postal workers, bank employees and workers at a variety of private companies also struck.
Maoist guerrillas blew up two bridges on a key highway in southeast Peru, causing about $180,000 in damage, officials said today.
A United States official said today that tons of food had not reached famine victims in the western Sudan because a key railroad has been carrying religious festive goods instead of relief supplies. “Frankly, the railroad system has not delivered for the people of western Sudan,” Peter M. McPherson, Administrator of the Agency for International Development, said.
A Government official in Khartoum said today that the Sudan and Ethiopia planned to restore diplomatic relations for the first time in two years. The official, Maj. Gen. Fadlulla Nassir Burma, a member of the Sudan’s ruling transitional military council, was speaking on his return from a three-day visit to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa accompanied by Foreign Minister Ibrahim Taha Ayoub.
Parts of the tax revision plan proposed by the Reagan Administration face additional scrutiny, according to the chief tax official at the Treasury Department. The official, Ronald A. Pearlman, said in a interview that a proposal to alter the tax treatment of child-care expenses would probably be rewritten because the proposed change would be more unfavorable to middle-class families in which both parents work.
The chairman of the House Budget Committee accused President Reagan today of trying to “bust up” the budget process and suggested that House and Senate budget conferees might not be able to reach a compromise before the Fourth of July Congressional recess. The Administration “would like the budget process to fail,” the chairman, Representative William H. Gray 3d, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said, so the President “could campaign against Capitol Hill.” The remarks were in response to repeated criticism from the President and Administration officials, who have said that the House-approved budget plan was inadequate and included “phantom” savings.
The space shuttle orbiter Discovery landed safely and smoothly at Edwards Air Force Base in California, concluding what a space agency offical called “one of the most successful missions” in the shuttle program. Encouraged by the Discovery’s almost flawless performance, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration immediately pressed ahead with plans to launch the next shuttle on July 12, striving to maintain a once-a-month flight rate for the rest of the year. The next mission will be a smorgasbord of science, with the astronauts conducting a variety of biological experiments and probing the universe with an array of sensitive telescopes. But the winged spaceships will continue to land on the broad expanse of the Mojave Desert, instead of at the launchng base in Florida, until engineers can analyze and correct the persistent problems with the vehicle’s brakes and wheels. The entire landing-gear system is to undergo intensive ground dynamics tests in October.
The space shuttle orbiter Challenger moved to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center (Florida) for mating with her external tank and SRBs for the upcoming STS-51-F mission.
Two Department of Transportation agencies have found that three states, Maryland, Vermont and Arizona, have violated a Federal law requiring enforcement of the 55 mile-an-hour highway speed limit. The agencies have asked Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Hanford Dole to adopt their findings, a decision that would lead to the loss of several million dollars in Federal highway assistance to those states. The recommendations by the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were the first such steps since 1982 and only the second since the Federal speed limit was set a decade ago at 55 miles an hour. The action comes at a time of growing debate over whether the limit should be maintained as a tool to help reduce highway fatalities or allowed to rise again to facilitate faster travel, particularly in sparsely populated states.
The Food and Drug Administration refused to ban 10 widely used food, drug and cosmetic dyes linked to cancer in laboratory animals, saying that while it cannot prove the dyes are safe, it also does not believe they are dangerous. The agency said its decision, allowing continued use of the dyes while more studies are conducted, will stand for at least a year.
Attorneys for a Navy seaman and his father, charged in Baltimore with spying for the Soviet Union, asked for separate trials, with the son’s lawyers saying he could be found guilty by association if tried with his father. The two men are John A. Walker Jr., 47, a retired Navy communications expert and his son, Michael Lance Walker, 22. The elder Walker asked that he be tried alone unless incriminating statements purportedly made by his son are excluded. The elder Walker’s brother, Arthur, a retired Navy lieutenant commander, and Jerry A. Whitworth, an associate of the Walkers, also have been charged in the case.
Labor Secretary Bill Brock said today that the country would “have to have some form of affirmative action for the foreseeable future.” Mr. Brock made the comment at a news conference after addressing the 76th annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was the only member of the Reagan Administration scheduled to appear before the group, which has accused the White House of being “hostile” toward civil rights.
Condemned killer Charles Milton was moved to a small cell outside the Texas execution chamber in Huntsville, exactly eight years after the shooting for which he was sentenced to death by injection. Only a reprieve from Governor Mark White could keep Milton from the scheduled execution before dawn today, Milton’s attorney said. Milton, 34, was convicted of killing the woman owner of a liquor store in an aborted robbery.
A retired professor who was jailed during World War II for disregarding emergency orders that removed 120,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps testified today that he had hoped the United States Constitution would protect him from imprisonment. The professor, 67-year-old Gordon Hirabayashi, who was a college student when he was jailed, said in Federal District Court here that he expected his American citizenship to protect him from incarceration in an internment camp.
An “armed and powerful” Cuban mob runs a major illegal gambling ring in the United States that burns down shops and murders competitors to protect its business, a federal investigator and a hooded witness said. The group’s alleged leader, Jose Miguel Battle, 55. looked on impassively during a federal hearing in New York as an investigator called him a “Cuban godfather” whose group, known as “The Corporation,” makes up to $100 million a year. Battle refused to testify before the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, invoking the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination.
Plans for a 1992 World’s Fair to showcase Chicago as an international city are almost dead or very dead, depending on who is talking. What is certain, however, is that those who want to keep trying to stage a $1.1 billion exposition are decidedly in the minority. Mayor Harold Washington is one of the few who insist the effort is still alive. When a legislative advisory panel issued its report last week, declaring that “proceeding with the fair as planned would be a misguided economic decision,” one official after another bailed out, including Gov. James R. Thompson, House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and the Chicago World’s Fair 1992 Authority itself.
Natalya Solzhenitsyn came out of the seclusion of the Green Mountains today to take the oath of United States citizenship, but her husband, Aleksandr, the exiled Russian author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, remained behind at the couple’s fenced and forested estate 20 miles from here. A court official, Chris Barber, said she understood that Mr. Solzhenitsyn, the author of “The Gulag Archipelago,” “Cancer Ward” and numerous other works, was “not feeling well.” And so he did not appear in the Federal courtroom where United States District Judge Franklin S. Billings Jr. awaited him, along with a clutch of Federal marshals, Immigration and Naturalization Service officers, and three rows of reporters and photographers. A friend said everyone in the family was well. Asked whether Mr. Solzhenitsyn had stayed away to stay out of the spotlight or if there was some other problem, the friend said hesitantly, “It’s hard to say.”
Winds lofted toxic fumes from a smoldering chemical fire in southern California over a wide area today, raising to about 11,500 the number of people forced to evacuate their homes, officials said. One freeway was closed and a Coast Guard toxic waste team was called in as shifting winds pushed fumes across Anaheim and into the neighboring Orange County cities of Placentia and Fullerton, fire officials said.
The death toll from a rare bacteria today rose to 44 as California’s top health official reported that 428 stores continued to sell contaminated cheese after it was recalled, and one even cut its price as a “fast-sale item.” The cheese made by Jalisco Mexican Products was offered for sale at the stores after the recall was announced June 13, said Kenneth Kizer, director of the state Department of Health Services. But health officials reported that inspectors had removed nearly all the cheese from stores by June 16. One market in Long Beach discounted the cheese, then “marketed it as a fast-sale item,” Mr. Kizer said. “That’s surprising in my experience.” The state recall came after Jalisco cheese was linked to an outbreak of listeriosis, which can be fatal and is caused by Listeria monocytogenes bacteria.
The parents of a pregnant, mentally incompetent woman who was apparently raped while strapped to a nursing home bed have been unable to find a doctor to perform an abortion, a family lawyer said today. Because the surgery to remove the 20-week-old fetus could kill the woman, doctors apparently fear lawsuits and none of the physicians called would agree to perform the abortion, said Dick Runels, the family’s lawyer.
One of the three convicted assassins of Malcolm X was released on parole yesterday after 20 years in prison. The prisoner, Muhammad Abdul Aziz, who is 46 years old, was granted parole in May, when the State Parole Board reversed an earlier decision. Mr. Aziz, who throughout his imprisonment had maintained that he was not guilty, was freed from the Arthur Kill prison on Staten Island at 9:15 AM yesterday, said James B. Flateau, a spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services.
The U.S. military services cannot court-martial an officer for having sexual affairs with enlisted personnel if the services’ internal customs defining “conduct unbecoming an officer” aren’t sufficiently clear, the Court of Military Appeals ruled. The court partially overturned the 1982 conviction of an Air Force captain accused of engaging in sexual relationships with three enlisted women, none of whom worked under his command.
An Army doctor publicly rejected a promotion to major, saying the military had failed to respond properly to charges that his 3-year-old daughter and other children were sexually abused at a West Point day care center. Captain Walter Grote, a 33-year-old internist, said he was refusing his promotion in an effort “to fight for the human rights of all children.” A federal grand jury has been reviewing allegations that 11 children were sexually or physically abused at the child care facility at the nation’s oldest military academy.
President Reagan, at a dinner to raise money for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, saluted the slain President tonight as a “fiercely, happily” partisan who reveled in the rough-and-tumble of political battle. Mr. Reagan, speaking to 200 guests at the home of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, also praised the Senator’s brother as “a patriot who summoned patriotism from the heart of a sated country.”
2 million to 4 million illegal aliens are now in the United States, far fewer than previous estimates, according to a panel of the National Academy of Sciences. The panel also said the number had not increased sharply in recent years, despite findings to the contrary by many federal law enforcement officials.
The use of a robotic arm in surgery on the human brain was reported for the first time in medical history. Researchers said that a computerized robotic arm had been used by doctors in three experimental operations to calculate angles and to hold and direct a surgical drill and bioposy needle while the doctors applied pressure on the instruments to penetrate the skull and brain.
Major League Baseball:
Jim Rice drove in two runs with a triple and homer tonight to lead the Red Sox to a 9–2 victory over the Detroit Tigers. Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd allowed six hits and walked eight in pitching his 10th complete game, tops in the American League. He improved his record to 9–5. Walt Terrell (8–3), the Tiger starter, allowed only two infield hits before Rice started the Boston fourth by beating out a hit into the shortstop hole. With two out, Dwight Evans hit a grounder off the end of the bat for a double down the right-field line, sending Rice to third. After Rich Gedman was walked intentionally, Marty Barrett lined an 0–2 pitch into left field, scoring Rice and Evans.
Willie Randolph heard the rumors, but he was neither angered nor inspired by them last night. He only thought it would be fitting if he were to hit two home runs on the same day his name was mentioned prominently in yet another unfulfilled trade. He didn’t hit any homers, but he did hit a single through a drawn-in infield with one out in the eighth inning, scoring Omar Moreno from third base and nudging the Yankees past the Baltimore Orioles, 5–4, at Yankee Stadium. Randolph, who grew up in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, laughed about the rumors afterward. George Steinbrenner, the club’s owner, reportedly had considered a trade with the San Diego Padres for Alan Wiggins, the troubled second baseman.
Hal McRae hit a pair of home runs, and Lonnie Smith, Jim Sundberg and Darryl Motley also connected as Kansas City blasted Minnesota, 12–6.The five home runs tied a club record. Mark Gubicza (5–4,)worked five innings and allowed four runs but earned his fourth consecutive victory with relief help from Joe Beckwith and Dan Quisenberry. Pete Filson (3–5) lasted only two innings for the Twins.
Joe Carter’s leadoff home run in the eighth inning snapped a tie and gave Cleveland a 2–1 victory over the Angels. Bert Blyleven (7–6) overcame a hotly disputed run to pitch a four-hitter for his fifth consecutive triumph over California since 1981. He walked one and struck out 10, equaling his high for the season. Carter led off the eighth by lining his fifth homer of the season over the center-field fence off Jim Slaton (4–6), who had retired 19 of 21 batters before Carter.
Harold Baines drove in three runs with a sacrifice fly and a homer, and Dan Spillner pitched 5 ⅓ innings of scoreless relief for Chicago to lift the White Sox to a 7–1 victory over the A’s. The White Sox snapped a four-game losing streak. Spillner (2–1) entered the game in the first inning when Britt Burns was forced to leave with a stiff neck after throwing only 11 pitches.
Frank Wills and Ed Nunez combined on a five-hitter to lead the Mariners to their fourth straight victory, a 2–0 triumph over the Rangers at Seattle. Wills (3–1) allowed 4 hits, walked 6 and struck out 4 in seven innings. Nunez held the Rangers scoreless over the final two innings to earn his eighth save.
The Astros topped the Dodgers, 8–4 as Glenn Davis and Kevin Bass slammed home runs to support the five-hit pitching of Houston’s Joe Niekro. The Astros had lost seven straight to the Dodgers. Niekro (5–7) overcame early wildness to get his 198th career victory. He walked six, hit three batters and was charged with three wild pitches. With the scored tied at 3–3. In the Houston fifth, Niekro singled with one out. After Bill Doran flied out, Enos Cabell doubled Niekro to third and Bass followed with his seventh home run, deep into the left-center-field seats. That made a loser of Jerry Reuss (5–6).
Detroit Tigers 2, Boston Red Sox 9
Cleveland Indians 2, California Angels 1
Houston Astros 8, Los Angeles Dodgers 4
Kansas City Royals 12, Minnesota Twins 6
Baltimore Orioles 4, New York Yankees 5
Chicago White Sox 7, Oakland Athletics 1
Texas Rangers 0, Seattle Mariners 2
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1320.56 (-3.92)
Born:
Mike Brown, NHL right wing (Vancouver Canucks, Anaheim Ducks, Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers, San Jose Sharks, Montreal Canadiens), in Chicago, Illinois.
Curtis Painter, NFL quarterback (Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants), in Watseka, Illinois.
Candice Patton, American actress (“The Flash”), in Jackson, Mississippi.
Ariana Madix, American TV personality (“Vanderpump Rules”), in Melbourne, Florida.
History Diaries 