Mikhail S. Gorbachev, speaking at a dinner for the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party, called on China today to improve relations with both Moscow and Hanoi. The Soviet leader said Moscow would do what it could to help an improvement in relations between the Indochinese nations and their non-Communist neighbors, but blamed the United States for obstructing the peaceful settlement of regional problems. Mr. Gorbachev said the Soviet Union stood for “the prevention of hegemonism in any form,” presumably an allusion to the Soviet belief that Peking is seeking influence in the region.
Leaders of the outlawed Solidarity union said today that about 50,000 workers at three major Warsaw factories would strike Monday to protest government plans to increase meat prices by 15 percent. A statement by union representatives, who have met in secret since the union was banned, said plans for the scheduled one-day walkout were made last Tuesday. The strike call came after the government officially announced 15 percent increases in meat prices, effective Monday. The Government said the increases were needed to reduce food subsidies.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain urged other European leaders today to strengthen and enforce existing international agreements against aircraft hijacking and terrorism, officials said. On the opening day of a two-day conference of West European leaders, the British Prime Minister succeeded in putting the hijacking of the Trans World Airlines plane to Lebanon onto the conference agenda, drawing attention to international agreements aimed at curbing terrorism, which she said are not being properly enforced. In particular, Mrs. Thatcher stressed the agreement reached by the eight major Western powers at their 1978 meeting in Bonn under which they pledged to impose sanctions on countries harboring aircraft hijackers or failing to punish them.
Security at the Athens airport, where two hijackers boarded a Trans World Airlines jetliner and forced it to fly to Beirut two weeks ago, has been improved and now meets international standards, a team of security experts announced today. The announcement, by the International Air Transport Association, came after a meeting here of airline security experts who compared notes on terrorism directed against civil aviation. But the security measures used by at least five other international airports continue to be unacceptable, said David Kyd, a spokesman for the air transport group, which has 137 member airlines. Mr. Kyd refused to identify the five airports that the group’s investigators had found lacking, beyond saying that two were in Asia and three were in the Middle East and Africa. One of them is believed to be Beirut International Airport, the final landing place of the hijackers and 40 of their captives from T.W.A. Flight 847.
President Reagan, in his first public remarks on the hostage crisis in five days, reaffirmed today that he would not ask Israel to free more than 700 mainly Shiite detainees to gain the release of the American hostages. “I only know that none of us, any country, can afford to pay terrorists for crimes that they’re committing because that will only lead to more crimes,” Mr. Reagan said in response to a reporter’s question. Mr. Reagan made his remarks before reports that the hostages were to be transferred to Syria were made public tonight. Mr. Reagan, who came to this suburban community 30 miles south of Chicago to promote his tax plan, found his remarks on taxes overshadowed by the hostage crisis.
Release of 39 U.S. hostages is expected today after they are flown from Beirut to Damascus, a senior Reagan Administration official said. He said the arrangement called for the hostages to be received by Syrian authorities who would promptly release them through an unidentified third party to the United States. Israel, on its own, is expected to start freeing the 735 Lebanese and Palestinians in its custody. Their release has been the principal demand of the Shiite Muslim militants who took the hostages. Most of the American airliner hostages attended a banquet given by their captors at a luxury hotel Friday night amid indications that they would be leaving for the Syrian capital of Damascus within hours.
Most of the hostages left Beirut for Syria in an automobile caravan guarded by Shiite gunmen. An official of the Shiite militia known as Amal said that 4 of the 39 hostages were being held in a separate place and were not among the motorcade’s passengers. He did not name the four, and it was not clear whether they would be traveling to Damascus to join the others.
Iraq said its warplanes hit a naval target in the Persian Gulf today, and the commander of Iraqi naval defenses said his forces had destroyed 200 ships off the Iranian coast during the last three years. The Iraqi press agency said Iraqi warplanes hit a large naval target — a term used in the past to describe oil tankers — this morning near Iran’s main oil terminal at Kharg Island in the northern gulf. The Iraqi aircraft all returned safely to base, it said. The commander of Iraq’s Naval and Coastal Defense, who was not identified, said half of the Iranian Navy had been destroyed in the last three years.
A top-ranking Afghan Army general has been killed by anti-Communist guerrillas, the official Kabul radio reported today. It said a General Ahmeduddin had been killed in a “frontal clash with the bandits,” referring to Muslim rebels fighting the Soviet-installed regime.
American Sikh leaders say they are troubled by what they see as an increasing trend to make Sikhs scapegoats for acts of terrorism. Ujagar Singh, a leader of the Sikh Association of America, said yesterday that there had been “a gross misrepresentation” of Sikhs as terrorists, even before any conclusions of investigations into the recent Air-India crash and the explosion at Narita Airport in Tokyo. Jagjit Singh Mangat, president of the Sikh Cultural Society, said: “Our community is horrified over the Air-India crash that took the lives of Sikhs as well as people of other religions, and yet we have been dubbed as terrorists.”
A fleet of Cadillac limousines was formally handed over to Chinese officials in Peking by General Motors and a Los Angeles-based coachworks specializing in armor-plating. At the handover, Chinese officials lined up to accept the 20 dark blue limousines, described in Cadillac brochures as “the car of the stars,” each equipped with a built-in television set, refrigerator and bar. It was the kind of occasion that left Westerners with memories of Mao Zedong’s China shaking their heads in disbelief. The ceremony was held only a short bicycle ride from the stadium where Mao’s enemies were once paraded in dunce caps as “capitalist roaders.”
Heavy rains caused by a typhoon lashed the main Philippine island of Luzon, flooding wide areas of Manila and leaving at least 28 people dead, officials said today. The flood was the worst to hit this city of 6.8 million in more than a decade. Last week, another typhoon left 36 people dead on Luzon. President Ferdinand E. Marcos attributed the floods to garbage blocking the city’s sewers, and he appealed to Filipinos on national television “not to clog up the canals and sewage system with their garbage, which is an unpatriotic and selfish act.” In the capital, rescue teams, including navy frogmen on rubber dinghies, evacuated thousands of residents as the Office of Civil Defense reported that flood waters had surpassed a depth of 10 feet in low-lying areas. Weathermen said the typhoon did not actually hit the Philippines, but passed close enough to cause the torrential rains.
Nicaragua’s Interior Minister accused Congress today of making an “an extremely dangerous decision” by authorizing President Reagan to send United States troops to Nicaragua under certain conditions. “Perhaps only the American people could halt this savage iron fist against Nicaragua,” said the official, Tomas Borge, at the end of a conference in Managua of ethnic leaders from the Caribbean coast. “We could be immolated,” he said, “but no one will ever say we have been conquered.”
Troops occupied one of Bolivia’s provincial capitals today after demonstrators there set fire to an official car and stoned the homes of city and provincial administrators during a strike rally, officials said. They said soldiers moved into Sucre, the capital of Chuquisaca Province, where a mass rally was scheduled to discuss a four-day strike called by the authorities in the province, who have demanded greater local spending by the central Government. Interior Minister Gustavo Sanchez said the disturbances were caused by groups that wanted to sabotage the talks between the provincial authorities and the central Government.
The economy is picking up after a slowdown that began last summer, a sharp rise in a key economic index last month has indicated. The Government’s index of leading economic indicators, which usually signals changes in the course of the economy, turned sharply upward last month, the Commerce Department reported today. Analysts saw the increase, of seven-tenths of 1 percent, as the first clear signal of what many have suspected for a few months – that the economy has seen the worst of a slowdown that began last summer and that it will grow a little more quickly as the year progresses. “The economy is in a turning zone,” said Lawrence A. Kudlow, a consultant here who was the chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget early in the Reagan Administration. “We are bottoming out of a growth pause and we’re moving toward reacceleration, but gradually, not precipitously.”
The House voted late Thursday to freeze military spending. In approving the legislation, it set up a confrontation with the Senate over a variety of issues, including whether to permit United States forces to fight in Nicaragua. The House approved the bill authorizing military programs for the coming fiscal year by a vote of 278 to 106 before leaving, along with the Senate, for a weeklong Fourth of July recess.
Consumers are likely to begin paying as much as 3 cents a gallon more for leaded gasoline this weekend, as Monday’s deadline for reducing the lead content in such gasoline approaches. Late this week Exxon, Sun, Amoco, and Mobil raised their wholesale prices for leaded gasolines in all or part of the country by 2 cents a gallon, and other oil companies are expected to soon follow. The 2-cents-a-gallon figure is widely accepted as the industry’s increased cost of producing the lower-leaded gasoline. The other penny a gallon consumers may be paying represents dealers’ profit. The reduction, to five-tenths of a gram of lead per gallon, from the current standard of 1.1 grams per gallon, to be followed on January 1 by a further reduction to one-tenth of a gram, represents a major step in the Federal Government’s goal of eliminating lead from gasoline – and eliminating the danger it poses to human health and the environment. Leaded gasoline is used by approximately 35 percent of the nation’s 164 million motorists.
David A. Stockman was defended strongly by President Reagan following an off-the record speech in which Mr. Stockman, the budget director, said that tax increases may be the only way to curb the rise in the federal budget deficit if Congress will not act to reduce spending. Newspaper reports of the speech were “fallacious” and a “deliberate misquote,” Mr. Reagan said.
Justice Department officials reiterated today that the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of the nomination of William Bradford Reynolds to be Associate Attorney General would not alter the Administration’s civil rights policies. Mr. Reynolds, who heads the Justice Department’s civil rights division, was rejected for the No. 3 position at the department in a series of votes Thursday that reflected concerns about both his commitment to enforcing civil rights laws and the accuracy of his testimony at his confirmation hearings. Assessing the votes, Mr. Reynolds’s top aides said they saw politics rather than ideology as much of the reason for his rejection. They contended that Administration opponents lacked the votes to defeat Mr. Reynolds on policy grounds, so they seized on the issue of credibility.
The First Congressional District of Texas, nestled in the low green hills and plains of the state’s northeast corner, has not sent a Republican to Congress since the Reconstruction days of the 1870’s. Now the Republicans are gaining throughout the state, and the district could send a Republican to the House in a special election Saturday. That outcome is possible, even some Democrats concede, but a runoff late next month appears more likely, and it is on that eventuality that Democrats are pinning their hopes. Only one Republican is in the field, a one-time Texas A&M football star, Edd Hargett. He is opposed by six Democrats and one independent, and both major parties are concentrating unusual attention on the district.
Geraldine A. Ferraro, whose Democratic Vice-Presidential candidacy last year provoked a sharp debate on the abortion issue, said here today that the right of women to choose an abortion “is inseparable from our struggle for political and economic independence.” Sharing a platform with an astronaut, an Olympic athlete and a civil rights activist, all women, Mrs. Ferraro criticized “male-dominated, conservative religious groups” that she said wanted to make “our decision for us.” Mrs. Ferraro, the first woman nominated for Vice President by a major political party, came under attack in last year’s campaign from anti-abortion activists and some religious leaders for her position on the issue.
Immigration to the U.S. was eased for at least two wanted Nazi war criminals, an SS officer, and a convicted assassin, the General Accounting Office told Congress. All four were said to have links to United States intelligence agencies. Seven other important Nazis and their collaborators who had American intelligence connections were found to have entered the country but without official assistance, the accounting office reported. But the accounting office, an investigative arm of Congress, said it had found “no specific program” to help German Nazis who had worked with United States intelligence to immigrate to the United States.
The Constitution and Federal laws were violated by the intervention of the White House Office of Management and Budget in the writing of health environmental rules, the chairmen of five House committees charged in a Federal Court brief. They said such intervention represented a “systematic usurpation of legislative power.”
High-school dropout prevention is the aim of drive to be announced tomorrow by the National Education Association, which will spend $700,000 to get the program going. It will seek substantial financial aid from other groups.
Bert Lance should resign as leader of the Georgia Democratic Party, several party members asserted after the publication by The Atlanta Journal and Constitution of a confidential Federal report that sharply criticized Mr. Lance’s banking practices as head of a bank in Calhoun, Georgia.
West Virginia’s top judge, acknowledging “public outrage” over his dismissal of a secretary for her refusal to baby-sit, gave up the post of Chief Justice today but kept his seat on the Supreme Court and offered the woman her job back. The Chief Justice, Richard Neely, 43 years old, would have served in the rotating job until January. The controversy erupted when it was disclosed that Chief Justice Neely had dismissed the secretary, Tess Dineen, from a $23,000-a-year job because she wanted to stop baby-sitting his 4-year-old son. Chief Justice Neely, who has defended his right to order his staff to perform duties such as baby-sitting, collecting his laundry and typing books he has written, said in a statement that he was bowing to public pressure. Pat White, state treasurer of the National Organization for Women, said the decision by the Chief Justice was a “step in the right direction” but reiterated the organization’s demand that he resign from the court.
The fireworks factory explosion that killed 21 people was an accident, Federal and state officials said today, adding that there was no evidence of criminal negligence. The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the state fire marshal’s office said their investigators had concluded the blast began near a pickup truck that was being loaded at the Aerlex Corporation plant.
The Navy announced today that it had selected San Francisco as the home port for the refurbished battleship USS Missouri. But the Navy spread most of the ship’s escort vessels among other ports in California and Hawaii. An announcement on where along the Gulf Coast the Navy will berth the USS Wisconsin, the fourth in the resurrected fleet of World War II battleships, is expected next week. San Francisco and Long Beach in California and Pearl Harbor in Hawaii bid for the Missouri and its fleet of escort vessels because of the multimillion-dollar income it means in payrolls, new jobs and taxes.
Major League Baseball:
Mike Easler ripped four straight hits and drove in two runs as Boston handed Baltimore its fourth straight loss, topping the Orioles, 6–1. The Red Sox, shut out by Detroit in their previous two games, quickly ended the scoreless string against Storm Davis (4–4). Boston scored twice in the first inning and added single runs in the second, third, fourth and fifth. Bruce Hurst (3–7), banished to the Boston bullpen last month, started in place of ailing Bruce Kison and scattered six hits through seven innings. Hurst, who left the game because of a slight groin pull, struck out seven, including Fred Lynn three times and Eddie Murray twice, and did not walk a batter.
George Bell hit a two-run homer, and Dave Stieb throttled Detroit on three hits tonight as the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Tigers, 2–0, in the first game of their weekend showdown series. The victory, before 48,002 fans at Tiger Stadium, gave the Blue Jays a 3 ½-game lead over second-place Detroit in the American League East. Stieb (8–5) struck out six and walked two in pitching his fourth complete game. Dan Petry (9–6), who has won only once since May 22, gave up five hits. Petry now has pitched 21 straight innings without benefit of a run.
Ron Guidry led the Yankees to a 5–2 victory over Milwaukee tonight, New York’s fourth consecutive victory. After giving up two first-inning runs, breaking his shutout streak at 18 innings, the left-handed Guidry limited the Brewers to only four more hits before exiting after 7 innings. After Dave Winfield quickly tied the game with a two-run homer in the bottom of the first, Guidry danced around danger in the middle innings.
Kent Hrbek drove in two runs, and Roy Smalley reached base five times on two hits and three walks to help Frank Viola and Minnesota to a 5–4 victory over the slumping Chicago White Sox. Viola (9–6) gave up nine hits and struck out six over eight innings. He took a 5–1 lead into the eighth, but surrendered a run-scoring single to Tom Paciorek and Greg Walker’s two-run homer. Ron Davis pitched the ninth for his eighth save as Chicago lost for the seventh time in its last eight games.
Toby Harrah hit a two-run homer in the eighth inning to lift Texas to a 7–5 victory over the visiting A’s. Harrah’s sixth homer of the season came one out after Wayne Tolleson led off with a single. The home run helped blunt an Oakland comeback that saw the A’s overcome an early 5–0 deficit and tie the game in the top of the eighth on Dwayne Murphy’s bases-empty homer, his 11th. Reliever Greg Harris ( 2–1) got the victory. Keith Atherton, 3–4 took the loss.
Greg Pryor’s two-out single in the 14th inning drove home pinch-runner John Wathan from second base, leading Kansas City over California, 5–4, in a game that lasted almost five hours. Steve Balboni drew a leadoff walk from Doug Corbett, 2–1, in the 14th and Wathan entered as a pinch runner. Wathan went to second on an infield out before Pryor singled. “I’d have to say that getting the winning hit in a game situation like this, when your team is in a pennant race, is the best feeling a baseball player can have,” Pryor said.
The Mariners came from behind to down the Indians, 8–6. Gorman Thomas hit a three-run homer, climaxing a four-run rally in the sixth inning, as the Mariners set a team record with their seventh straight victory in this game at Seattle. The Mariners, who trailed, 6–0, had trimmed the margin to 6–3 heading into the sixth. Jack Perconte started the rally by drawing a two-out walk, and Phil Bradley was hit by a pitch. Jeff Barkley (0–3) relieved starter Neal Heaton and walked Al Cowens, loading the bases. Perconte scored on an errant pickoff throw, and Thomas then hit a drive 35 rows deep into the left-field stands to give Seattle the lead. Roy Thomas (3–0) picked up the victory, and Ed Nunez held the Indians scoreless in the final two innings to earn his 10th save.
The Cubs blanked the Pirates, 5–0. Keith Moreland hit a home run, and Steve Trout scattered seven hits in beating Pittsburgh for the fourth time this season. Moreland had three hits and scored twice as Chicago won its third in a row since ending a 13-game losing streak. The Pirates lost for the sixth time in seven games and are 1–9 against the Cubs this season. Trout (7–3) stranded eight Pirates over the first six innings in pitching his first shutout since last August 26. In 30 innings against the Pirates in 1985, Trout has allowed only four earned runs for an 0.60 earned run average. He walked four and struck out three. The Cubs took a 2–0 lead against Jose DeLeon (2–10) in the third. Bill Hatcher walked, advanced on Ryne Sandberg’s single and scored on Gary Matthews’s single. Sandberg scored on Leon Durham’s force play grounder.
Darryl Strawberry played in a baseball game tonight for the first time in seven weeks. But he went 0-for-3 as the Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3–2, for their third straight defeat and the fifth in their last six games. It was an old story for the Mets: not enough hitting. And John Tudor did nothing to help them escape the slump that has muzzled them all season. He got an early 3–0 lead over Ed Lynch, took it into the seventh inning before he gave up a home run to George Foster, gave another in the eighth to Mookie Wilson, but then got strong support from his bullpen and won his sixth straight game.
Mike Fitzgerald hit his first two home runs of the season, and the rookie Mitch Webster had three hits to lead Montreal over the Phillies, 5–3. Bryn Smith (9–3) pitched eight and two-thirds innings, giving up eight hits, striking out two and walking none before giving way to Tim Burke, who retired the final batter for his second save. Fitzgerald put the Expos ahead in the second inning with a home run off Charles Hudson (3–7). He hit his second homer in the eighth. Mike Schmidt tied the game for the Phillies in the fourth with his ninth home run of the season. It was the 800th extra-base hit of Schmidt’s career and his 40th home run in Olympic Stadium.
The Reds beat the Padres, 11–9. Wayne Krenchicki hit a three-run homer, and Dave Parker hit one with the bases empty to lead Cincinnati to its fourth straight victory. Parker’s 14th home run of the season leading off the fourth inning tied the game against Eric Show (6–5). An inning later, Krenchicki hit a three-run shot to cap a four-run outburst and give the Reds a 7–2 lead. The Padres, who lead the Reds by four games in the National League West, rallied for four runs in the bottom of the fifth with the help of Mario Ramirez’s two-run homer off Joe Price. When Jerry Royster followed with a single and was doubled home by Jerry Davis, Price gave way to reliever Ron Robinson (3–0).
Ken Oberkfell drove in three runs with a triple and a single, Terry Harper had four with a three-run homer and a single and Glenn Hubbard added a three-run homer as the Atlanta Braves rolled to its fifth straight victory, crushing the Dodgers, 11–2. Steve Bedrosian (5–6) earned the victory and combined on a four-hitter with Jeff Dedmon and Rick Camp. Rick Honeycutt (5–7) took the loss after allowing only one hit over the first five innings. After the Dodgers took a 2–0 lead with runs in the fourth and fifth, the Braves struck after two were out in the top of the sixth. Dale Murphy lined a single to left, Bob Horner had an infield single to second and Terry Harper singled to right to score Murphy. After the right fielder Ken Landreaux threw the ball away at the plate, enabling the runners to take second and third, Oberkfell lashed a triple down the right-field line that scored the tying and go-ahead runs.
The Astros downed the Giants, 3–1. Phil Niekro yielded 10 hits in 6 ⅔ innings at San Francisco, but solid relief pitching by Jeff Calhoun and Dave Smith enabled him to collect his 199th major league victory. Bill Laskey took the loss to fall to 1–10 on the year. He gave up solo homers to Denny Walling and Alan Ashby.
Baltimore Orioles 1, Boston Red Sox 6
Minnesota Twins 5, Chicago White Sox 4
Toronto Blue Jays 2, Detroit Tigers 0
California Angels 4, Kansas City Royals 5
Atlanta Braves 11, Los Angeles Dodgers 2
Philadelphia Phillies 3, Montreal Expos 5
Milwaukee Brewers 2, New York Yankees 5
Chicago Cubs 5, Pittsburgh Pirates 0
Cincinnati Reds 11, San Diego Padres 9
Cleveland Indians 6, Seattle Mariners 8
Houston Astros 3, San Francisco Giants 1
New York Mets 2, St. Louis Cardinals 3
Oakland Athletics 5, Texas Rangers 7
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1335.46 (+3.25)
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