Commandos hijacked a cruise ship, the liner Achille Lauro, with more than 400 people aboard in the Mediterranean. The heavily armed hijackers, identified as Palestinians, demanded the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel. The leader of the commandos was quoted as saying that the first hostages to be killed would be Americans. It was unclear how many Americans were still on the ship. A spokesman for the cruise line said from California on Monday night that 62 Americans had been registered for the cruise. An Italian Foreign Ministry report said 72 Americans were listed as passengers. Unconfirmed reports on the state-run Italian television said that 28 Americans were on board the Italian cruise ship. The hijackers were quoted as saying they would blow up the vessel if a rescue mission was undertaken.
An Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman said that before the hijacking many of the 680 passengers had left the ship in Alexandria for a day of sightseeing. He said they were on their way by bus to Cairo. Of those, the largest number, about 300, were West Germans. The ship then sailed for Port Said with about 350 crew members and the passengers who chose to remain on board. There, she was to have picked up the sightseers. The Italian Foreign Ministry said 340 crew members and 70 to 80 passengers were still on board. The hijackers were quoted as saying they would blow up the ship if a rescue mission was undertaken. According to unconfirmed reports from Israeli radio monitors, the hijackers said they would begin killing the hostages unless their demands were broadcast on Egyptian radio and televison.
The hijackers’ leader said in a ship-to-shore telephone call to port officials in Port Said that the hijackers were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, a dissident faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, The Associated Press reported. In a telephone interview from Algiers, a senior aide to the P.L.O. leader, Yasser Arafat, said that members of his P.L.O. faction were not involved and that the gunmen belonged to a new, small guerrilla band composed of residents of the Sabra and Shatila refugee districts of Beirut. State Department officials said they were uncertain how many Americans were aboard the ship when she was hijacked. Information provided by the ship’s owners indicated that there were passengers of 22 or 23 nationalities on the cruise, but that none were Israelis, the State Department said.
President Reagan receives word of the Palestinian hijacking of an Italian cruise ship carrying approximately 50 American citizens.
Lord Carrington, the Secretary General of NATO, said today that the latest Soviet arms control plan was “greatly to be welcomed” even though he said the specific proposals were clearly unacceptable. Speaking to reporters after separate meetings with President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Lord Carrington gave his backing to the position that seems to be emerging from the White House and State Department about the proposals made in Paris last week by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader. The position, put briefly, is that the Gorbachev plan is badly flawed by one-sided proposals but that it nevertheless offers material for discussion before the meeting between Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev in Geneva next month, and that it could lead to agreement on the goals for subsequent negotiations. The Reagan Administration has so far addressed the Gorbachev proposals only piecemeal, with statements by various officials not always in agreement on whether the plan was welcome or not. A State Department official said today that he expected Robert C. McFarlane, the White House national security adviser, who heads the interagency committee dealing with arms control, to hold a news conference on Tuesday to summarize the Administration’s considered response.
President Reagan attends a National Security Planning Group to discuss the Soviet Union’s progress in defensive weapons against nuclear missiles.
Lech Walesa, founder of the outlawed Solidarity union, condemned the reported beating of Polish political prisoners. Walesa said he has learned that six prisoners, including Władysław Frasyniuk, a prominent Solidarity activist, were beaten in August and again this month, then placed in solitary confinement at Leczyca Prison in central Poland.
An Italian magistrate has begun investigating accusations that the gunman who tried to kill Pope John Paul II in 1981 was later coached in jail to implicate the Bulgarian secret service in the attack. Court officials said the magistrate, Franco Ionta, had questioned several underworld figures who may have involved the gunman, Mehmet Ali Acğa, in a deal to concoct testimony implicating the Soviet bloc in the shooting in exchange for his freedom. The investigation was another sign here of the growing official unease over the reliability of the testimony of Mr. Ağca, the prosecution’s key witness in the trial of eight men, including three Bulgarians. All are accused of conspiring to assassinate the Pope.
The United States announced today that it was ending its policy of automatic compliance with the decisions of the World Court. A State Department statement asserted that the Court’s procedures had been “abused for political ends,” especially by Nicaragua, and that most nations had long failed to automatically accept the tribunal’s jurisdiction. “Our experience with compulsory jurisdiction has been deeply disappointing,” said Charles E. Redman, a State Department spokesman. A United Nations spokesman, Francois Giuliani, said Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar had received a letter from Secretary of State George P. Shultz outlining the details of the American decision. The spokesman said the letter had been forwarded to the United Nations legal department.
Britain’s police warned they were prepared to use plastic bullets and tear gas in future confrontations with rioters. The warning was issued in response to rioting in the north London district of Tottenham in which a constable was killed. The Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, said the police would have the Government’s “full support” if they found it necessary to resort to new methods of control. “It is absolutely vital that the police have the equipment they need,” he declared. In fact, riot policemen were reported to have been armed early today with both plastic bullets and gas canisters — which have yet to be used in a civil disturbance in Britain — when they swept through the Broadwater Farm housing project just before dawn. They met no resistance, however, from the racially mixed crowd of youths that had been driven back during the night onto the grounds of the project and contained there.
Bombs exploded at a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Cologne, West Germany, and at the university Botanical Institute there. A fire bomb damaged another store in Hamburg, a day after five bombs set off blazes in six of that city’s department stores. There were no injuries in the blasts. The leftist Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility for the Cologne attacks and indicated that the target at the university was its Genetic Engineering Institute, which is adjacent to the Botanical Institute.
Syrian troops moved through Tripoli today, disarming rival Muslim militiamen, and the focus of Lebanon’s factional war shifted to a Shiite-Palestinian battle in Beirut’s refugee quarters. Shia Muslim militiamen using Soviet-made tanks and artillery pounded Palestinian refugee camps on the southern outskirts of Beirut in a new assault aimed at keeping the Palestinians from re-establishing a foothold in the Lebanese capital. At least three people were reported killed. Fighting also flared again between Christians and Muslims along the line dividing East and West Beirut. In Tripoli, Syrian troops enforcing a truce between rival Muslim forces tightened their grip on the northern port city, deploying tanks and bringing in more troops.
A large Soviet task force backed by tanks and helicopter gunships has launched a new offensive against guerrillas in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, guerrilla leaders said in Pakistan. They said their forces are trying to fend off attacks by 5,000 Soviet troops in central Logar province, 50 miles south of Kabul. Radio Kabul said 24 guerrillas were killed in one clash in the province. The reports could not be independently confirmed. The Soviets appeared to be trying to cut guerrilla supply routes from Pakistan.
Seoul said today that a North Korean patrol boat seized an 86-ton South Korean fishing vessel with 12 crewmen aboard while the ship was operating in international waters in the Yellow Sea. North Korea had no immediate comment. The South Korean Office of Fisheries said the vessel was forced at gunpoint to the north at about 8 PM Sunday while it was 41 miles west of the South Korean Island of Pyongnyongdo and 130 miles west of Seoul. The incident took place two days before the formal opening in Seoul of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Government officials said it was a scheme to “draw attention to tension in Korea and obstruct the I.M.F. and World Bank meetings, block the 1986 Asian Games and the 1988 Summer Olympics to be held in Seoul, and deal a hard blow to South Korea’s international prestige.”
Five French navy ships and three Greenpeace vessels protesting France’s nuclear tests maneuvered warily off Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific, but no clashes were reported. Jonathan Castle, captain of the Greenpeace, a converted tugboat, said the protesters are outside Mururoa’s 12-mile limit and are not thinking of crossing it “at the moment.” France drew international condemnation, and touched off a political furor at home, by sinking the environmental organization’s Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in July.
Peru renewed a state of emergency in six of 24 states as bombings by guerrillas rocked the capital and rebels stepped up attacks in the Andes. Six bombs exploded in Lima. One of them, inside a car, shattered windows at the headquarters of IBM in Peru, police reported. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks, which caused no injuries. Other blasts damaged two banks, food stalls, a school and a trucking firm. In the mountain town of Ayacucho, rebels killed an army corporal and wounded two other soldiers.
Major aid for drought-stricken nations of sub-Saharan Africa is set. Financial leaders from around the world agreed to set aside $2.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund for a special lending pool to help the poorest countries promote economic growth. Countries eligible for the loans are those whose average per capita income is below $410 and that have problems paying off bank loans and generating enough foreign currency to pay for key imports.
Hundreds of government troops went on a rampage of killing and looting in western Uganda after hours of fierce fighting with rebels, witnesses said today. Travelers reaching Kampala said 30 truckfuls of soldiers who had been sent to dislodge guerrillas of the National Resistance Army from western strongholds disbanded after coming under heavy artillery and gun fire near Kayabwe, 50 miles southwest of here. The soldiers spread into surrounding villages raping women and pillaging homes, the travelers told reporters. Some soldiers shot at civilians at random, killing some, the travelers said.
The Foreign Minister of Zimbabwe told the General Assembly today that his country was prepared to accept the consequences that economic sanctions against South Africa would have on Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe relies heavily on South Africa’s roads and railways to transport its exports. But the Foreign Minister, Dr. Witness Mangwende, said his country does not “want the international community to shirk its responsibility to the people of South Africa by hiding behind our vulnerability to South Africa’s reprisals if mandatory sanctions are imposed against it.”
The U.N. condemned South Africa for its air raid on a southeastern province of Angola a week ago. The unanimous Security Council resolution called the raid “premeditated and unprovoked.” Angola said the raid killed more than 65 people. The Council demanded that South Africa unconditionally and immediately withdraw all its military forces from Angola. The United States abstained in a separate vote on one article of the resolution that called on member countries to help Angola strengthen its military in the face of South Africa’s “escalating acts of aggression.” The resolution marked the third time since June that the Security Council has voted to condemn South African raids into Angola. The debate today signaled growing frustration, especially among black leftist African nations, with the white South African Government and its military intervention.
Mixed-race South African youths hurled gasoline bombs and stones and set fire to barricades of tires today as a school boycott in Cape Province gained new momentum. Riot police officers in armored cars surrounded Belhar High School, a mixed-race school near Cape Town, to search for a 17-year-old student who they said had fled into the school after being wounded by the police.
The Treasury pressed Congress to raise the government’s debt ceiling and approve a companion bill to balance the budget by 1991. The department said that if Congress failed to act by today, it would order banks not to honor government checks. The Reagan Administration, which supports the bill to balance the budget, made the threat as Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress maneuvered to achieve advantage from the deficit issue. Political maneuvering on the debt ceiling began last week when the Republican leadership in Congress backed a move in the Senate to offer the budget-balancing proposal as an amendment to the bill to increase the debt ceiling. The bill gives the Government the authority to borrow money, generally through bonds and notes. The ceiling, which is now $1.8 trillion, would need to be raised to just over $2 trillion to accommodate Government borrowing to cover the deficits accumulated over the years. . While Democrats in both the House and Senate have supported the idea of balancing the budget by 1991, they oppose the particulars of the Senate proposal.
The 21st NASA Space Shuttle Mission (STS-51-J) ends as Atlantis, concluding her maiden flight, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Under crisp blue skies, a pale crescent moon and with only a handful of spectators as witness, the space shuttle Atlantis landed safely this morning after its maiden voyage to space. The four-day mission, operated under strict secrecy rules imposed by the Department of Defense, ended with military precision. The shuttle touched down just after 10 AM. At the moment it came to a full stop, at 10:01 and 14 seconds, a recording of “The Star Spangled Banner” began playing over loud speakers that are usually dominated by communications with the astronauts. Fewer than a dozen reporters and about two dozen employees of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration were on hand for the landing, an event that usually draws hundreds of spectators. The military had given just 24 hours’ notice of when the secret mission was to end and had barred members of the public from watching.
55 Puerto Ricans have been killed in a landslide and flash floods, according to the commonwealth police. They said that a mud slide had buried dozens of people in a shantytown and that walls of water had surged through another community of shacks as heavy rains pounded the island for a third day. By nightfall, there were 47 bodies at the regional morgue. The police said other bodies would be kept in refrigerated vans until roads were cleared. Dozens of bridges were washed out, most major highways were flooded, hundreds of people were left homeless and telephone service was disrupted throughout much of the island. Rain was expected to continue through Tuesday in the west. Luis Martinez, a spokesman for the police in this southern industrial city of 190,000 people, said 30 people died beneath mud and debris in the Mameyes neighborhood, one of several hillside communities of wood-and-tin shacks. He said about 200 homes in Mameyes were buried by the predawn landslide.
Louis Farrakhan, the fiery leader of the Nation of Islam, defended himself against charges of anti-Semitism as he addressed a capacity crowd at New York’s Madison Square Garden amid tight security. Farrakhan urged the predominantly black audience to join his religion. Police ringed the Garden and vastly outnumbered about a half-dozen anti-Farrakhan protesters who waved signs across the street. Several New York political leaders condemned Farrakhan before the speech, including Governor Mario M. Cuomo and Mayor Edward I. Koch.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, resuming a campaign to eradicate marijuana plants with herbicides, sprayed a six-acre plot of federal land in a remote area of New Mexico last weekend, the agency announced in Washington. DEA Administrator John C. Lawn said the land near Carlsbad contained between 35,000 and 40,000 mature marijuana plants and was sprayed from the air with the herbicide glyphosphate. He said it was the second time the herbicide has been used since the DEA completed an environmental impact statement last July.
The Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of most pesticides containing creosote and coal tar, saying health risks of the substances outweigh their benefits. The agency will allow the continued use of creosote and coal tar in pesticides used to control gypsy moth eggs because no other effective pesticides against the insects exist. The EPA said its research shows creosote and coal tar cause cancer in laboratory animals. Products banned because of their use of the substances include herbicides, fungicides, disinfectants and insect and animal repellents.
Shipbuilders striking Bath Iron Works, a major Navy contractor, voted to accept a three-year contract that will freeze wages, cut starting pay and reduce medical benefits. A union spokesman said that the 14-week-old walkout of approximately 4,000 employees at the Maine shipyard would end today. Each worker will receive a $2,000 bonus for accepting the new terms.
Charges against an ex-C.I.A. officer reportedly identified as a Soviet spy raise serious questions about the agency’s procedures for dealing with disgruntled employees, according to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. They said their panels were conducting detailed examinations of the career of Edward L. Howard, who officials believe sold secrets to the Soviet Union to get revenge against the agency because it dismissed him.Mr. Howard was forced to resign from the C.I.A. in 1983; the agency was dissatisfied with his answers in a polygraph, or lie detector, examination that was apparently unrelated to espionage charges. Officials have said they suspect it was a desire for revenge that led Mr. Howard, who is believed to have fled the country, to provide secrets to the Soviet Union.
The High Court will review broadly court-ordered affirmative action programs that the Reagan Administration contends discriminate illegally against whites. The Supreme Court, in accepting 24 additional cases for review on the opening day of its new term, added significant new issues to a docket already crowded with controversial cases.
An insurance company whose underwriters were asked to identify potential AIDS victims will not automatically deny coverage to men in the high-risk group, a spokesman said today. But unmarried men between the ages of 20 and 49 living in cities with high numbers of victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome will be questioned more closely and might pay higher premiums, said the spokesman, Bill Forsythe of the Lincoln National Corporation.
An arson ring of Cuban gangsters, believed to have set 20 fires that killed eight persons, was broken up with the arrest of 11 suspects, New York City police said. Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward said the gang, known as the Corporation, had been setting fire to gambling parlors in a two-year-old turf war over illicit numbers operations. Ward said two of the suspects were charged with murder.
The National Academy of Sciences announced that it would not issue an expected new report on recommended dietary allowances of vitamins and minerals, saying it had reached an impasse with a scientific panel proposing controversial changes in the suggested intake of certain nutrients. A draft report leaked to the news media called for decreasing recommended allowances of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B6, iron and other nutrients. Critics charged that the proposed changes could lead to poorer nutrition for the nation.
Suicide researchers have identified a deficiency of a chemical, serotonin, in the brains of some people who are prone to take their own lives. Still, other researchers continue to place the greatest emphasis on psychological factors and, in particular, what they see as a lethal combination of rigid thinking and feelings of loss and hopelessness.
A storm system dumped heavy snow across the Northwest and threatened the wheat and sunflower harvest. Wind-chill factors of 20 degrees below zero were reported in Montana where snow drifted up to 4 feet deep. The large storm spread wintry weather from Idaho and northeastern Oregon south to Nevada and east to North Dakota. Officials at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming closed the park’s east, west and south entrances because of heavy snow and poor driving conditions. Eight Fairview, Montana, students and their driver were hurt when a freight train hit a school bus during a snowstorm.
The Pittsburgh Pirates today dismissed Manager Chuck Tanner, who had been with the club for nine years, as part of a shakeup that will put a partnership of local government and private business in control of the team. “We’ve decided that a change in field managers is in the best interests of the Pirates in 1986,” said Dan Galbreath, who will step down as president when Mayor Richard Caliguiri solidifies the buyers’ group he organized.
Bob Lillis is fired as manager of the Houston Astros. The former infielder is 276-261 in just over three seasons at the helm.
NFL Monday Night Football:
Faced with the prospect of falling into the far reaches of their division with another loss, the Washington Redskins returned to the familiar form of more successful times tonight. With George Rogers running for 104 yards, his best performance as a Redskin, and John Riggins for 103, the Redskins defeated the St. Louis Cardinals, 27–10, to improve their record to 2–3. The Cardinals, who lost the ball on five interceptions and a fumble, fell to 3–2, the same as the Giants. The Dallas Cowboys lead the division, the National Conference East, at 4–1. For the Redskins, it was an emotional and intense victory, one that followed two consecutive losses and one marked by fine play by all their units — offense, defense and special teams. That was especially true of their defense, which sacked Neil Lomax four times, hurried his passes on many other plays and finally forced him to the sideline in the fourth period with a pinched nerve in his left shoulder, the result of a hit on his last interception. “This is as much of a must-win as I’ve been a part of,” Joe Gibbs, the Redskins’ coach, had said before the game. “We sure need it.”
Joe Theismann, the Redskins’ quarterback, who had caught his share of criticism, completed 11 of 20 passes for 83 yards and two touchdowns. Lomax, who was replaced by Scot Brunner, the former Giant, completed 18 of 33 passes for 216 yards but no touchdowns. The Redskins scored on three of their first four possessions and held a 17–3 lead after two quarters. The first score came on a marvelous call by Theismann. On fourth down at the Cardinals’ 14, needing 1 yard to keep the drive going, Theismann faked a handoff to Riggins, who played his part in the charade well, diving over the line. That caught every defender’s attention while Theismann scampered around the right side into the end zone.
St. Louis Cardinals 10, Washington Redskins 27
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1324.37 (-4.37)
Born:
Evan Longoria, MLB third baseman (All-Star, 2008–2010; Tampa Bay Rays, San Francisco Giants, Arizona Diamondbacks), in Downey, California.
Kris Medlen, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions-Royals, 2015; Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Royals, Arizona Diamondbacks), in Artesia, California.
History Diaries 