46 days to the final launch of the Challenger.
Clues to the crash of the jetliner that was carrying 248 American soldiers home from the Middle East Thursday were sought by searchers at the crash site near the international airport in Gander, Newfoundland. Investigators said that they still did not known what caused the crash that killed all 256 people aboard, including eight crew members. The chartered DC-8 had stopped to refuel at Gander. “I have not specifically and categorically ruled out anything at this time,” Peter Boag, the chief investigator from the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, told reporters at a briefing in the airport terminal late this afternoon.
Through most of the day ambulances and army trucks slowly bumped their way up a dirt service road from the thick woods on the shore of Gander Lake to a hangar on the edge of the airport grounds. By sunset, the vehicles had carried more than 200 of the victims of the jetliner crash Thursday to a temporary morgue where the work of identifying them had begun. According to rescue workers, about 20 bodies had been found but were yet to be recovered because they were buried under wreckage and fallen trees. Large floodlights powered by generators were prepared to continue the work into the night.
Safety specialists were still without solid clues yesterday on what caused the crash of a chartered jetliner in Gander, Newfoundland, on Thursday that killed 256 people, most of them American soldiers returning from peacekeeping duty in the Middle East. One line of speculation was that the heavily loaded four-engine DC-8 might have been unable to climb safely because it had not had its wings and fuselage sprayed with de-icing fluid during its hourlong refueling stop. An accumulation of ice could have added weight that exceeded the maximum the plane could cope with. Or ice could have distorted the airflow over the wings and hampered the craft’s ability to take off safely.
The international peacekeeping force that is deployed in Sinai will not use Arrow Air for a coming scheduled flight of American troops, a State Department official said today. The decision was made by the force, which is formerly known as the Multinational Force and Observers, after the crash of an Arrow Air plane in Canada that killed 248 American troops on their way home from their peacekeeping mission in Sinai.
Four Cuban Embassy employees tried to kidnap a former Cuban official in Madrid today but were foiled when about 30 bystanders intervened, the police said. The four embassy employees, including a vice consul waving a pistol, were arrested after the bystanders and a passing taxi blocked the Cubans’ car and helped the former official to escape, the police said. The police identified the former official as Manuel Antonio Sanchez Perez and said he had been a senior economic official in the Government of Fidel Castro. Spanish Interior Ministry officials said that he had asked for political asylum 10 days ago during a stopover en route to East Berlin and that it had been provisionally granted. His exact position in the Castro Government remained unclear. Western intelligence sources here said the kidnapping attempt indicated that Mr. Sanchez, 50 years old, was more than an economist. Cuban exiles here said he had been involved in political infighting in the Castro Government and may have had intelligence information.
The NATO allies, in a communique at the end of their two-day winter meeting here, said today that they were encouraged by recent East-West developments. The allies said they hoped the recent American-Soviet summit meeting and those planned for the future “will lead to improved relations” and to “broad cooperation on the full range of East-West questions.” In one of the most conciliatory final communiques issued by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in years, criticism of the Russians was muted, amid expectations expressed by several allies of possible progress on arms control issues in coming months. Secretary of State George P. Shultz cautioned, however, that these expectations should not push the United States into questionable accords.
The junior partner in Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition government said today that talks with Washington about possible German participation in research on a missile-defense system should focus solely on broad technical questions of industrial and scientific cooperation. That approach by the leaders of the junior coalition partners, the Free Democrats, seemed to reflect the party’s desire for an arms-length approach to the research program, which they said could complicate Bonn’s ties with Eastern Europe.
When General Wojciech Jaruzelski met this month with President Francois Mitterrand of France and later with Willy Brandt, the former West German Chancellor, it did not necessarily mark a clear-cut end to Poland’s status as a pariah in Europe. But it certainly reflected sharp divisions in a policy of ostracism that Western democracies agreed on after the Polish leader imposed martial law four years ago today. Since that morning when the tanks patrolled the streets and thousands of supporters of the Solidarity trade union movement were rounded up and detained, this united approach has been fine-tuned at meetings of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “The reports of NATO’s East European committee still convey a sense of united action on Poland,” a Western diplomat here said this week, before adding, “But this is a fiction, and all the players are going off on their own, developing their positions to the Jaruzelski regime.”
Edgar M. Bronfman, the president of the World Jewish Congress, spoke candidly today about his talks with the Polish leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, but he refused to say anything about the three days he spent in Moscow before his arrival here. During his three-day stay in Poland, newspapers in Paris and London have published speculative reports suggesting that President Francois Mitterrand discussed with both Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, and with General Jaruzelski a proposal calling for 15,000 Jewish families to be transported from the Soviet Union to Israel by French planes. At the lavish Polish Government guest house where he and three associates stayed, Mr. Bronfman acknowledged that the trip to Moscow was his second since September and that he hoped to visit there again soon.
Intensifying a bitter dispute over who first established the cause of AIDS, officials of the Pasteur Institute, a leading French research organization, announced today that it had sued the United States Government. The director of the institute, Raymond Dedonder, contended at a news conference that its research team headed by Dr. Luc Montagnier found the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome and developed the first test to detect antibodies to the virus in 1983, a year before an American team led by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute. Professor Dedonder said that after months of fruitless negotiations with American officials over recognition of the institute’s contributions to AIDS research and related commercial rights, the institute was suing to have its “rights recognized in the name of the scientific ethic.” But Dr. Gallo, the American researcher, said in a telephone interview that the Pasteur Institute was exaggerating its contributions. “We helped them a lot more than they helped us,” he said.
On the sunny speck of an island of Malta in the Mediterranean, the color a Maltese wears and the beverage he drinks betray more than esthetic preferences: they are political statements. Supporters of the ruling socialist Labor Party wear red; members of the conservative opposition Nationalist Party wear blue. Labor Party members drink Coca Cola; Nationalist Party people sip Pepsi. Most towns and villages — no matter how small — have two ceremonial bands: Labor and Nationalist. In such a highly charged political environment, the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner three weeks ago could have polarized the government and the 330,000 people of this nation, roughly comparable in area to the borough of Queens. Malta, however, has enjoyed almost a consensus in support of the government’s handling of the affair.
Pope John Paul II issued his annual message on world peace today, calling for dialogue between the United States and the Soviet Union, action to eliminate the inequality between rich and poor nations and respect for human rights. The message, published in several languages for the Roman Catholic Church’s 19th “World Day of Peace” on Jan. 1, urged nations to “construct a single peace on the basis of social justice and the dignity and rights of every human person.” John Paul called for greater equality between the rich and the poor and admonished the superpowers to show greater respect for peace and for “the small and the weak, the poor and the voiceless who suffer most.”
Seven UNESCO staff members ended a four-day hunger strike today after the organization yielded to demands for a joint committee to negotiate job cuts. The president of the UNESCO staff association, Bruno De Padirac, and six other staff members had fasted in the lobby of the agency’s headquarters. UNESCO’s Director General, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal, said in a statement that he had agreed to a joint management-staff committee with wide powers to handle cases of staff members victimized by job cuts and redeployment. UNESCO is expected to eliminate as many as 350 of 3,000 jobs because of the withdrawal of the United States and Britain. Those countries provided 30 percent of UNESCO’s budget. The pact ended a week of crisis at UNESCO, including a one-day strike by several hundred staff members.
Paintings are to be exchanged by United States and Soviet museums under the first major cultural agreement to result from last month’s Geneva summit.
Israel said today that the United States Government had cooperated in the export of technology for producing tank cannon barrels. It denied involvement in any illegal scheme to export the technology without proper licenses. On Thursday, agents of the Customs Service raided factories in three states as part of what Government officials said was an investigation of the possible illegal export of devices needed to manufacture the cannon barrels. An affidavit filed Thursday said that the technique, developed for the M-1 tank by the Watervliet Arsenal, a United States Army center near Albany, produced a gun barrel that was more accurate and more durable than those manufactured with other processes. It said the United States Government had never approved the dissemination of plans for the technique to the Government of Israel.
Four people were killed and nine wounded today as Christian and Muslim militiamen continued battling with tanks across Beirut’s dividing Green Line, officials said. The fighting, which began Wednesday night, was the heaviest here in two months. The police said 7 people had been killed and 14 wounded in that period. Sporadic artillery clashes were also reported in the hills east of the capital between Syrian-backed gunners of the Druze Progressive Socialist Party and Christian units of the army loyal to President Amin Gemayel. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The U.S. said it was ready to act as a guarantor of a peace settlement in Afghanistan that would include both a withdrawal of Soviet troops and an end to American aid to the rebels. Formal notification of the American position was made in a letter sent Wednesday to the United Nations Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, and made public in a speech tonight by John C. Whitehead, Deputy Secretary of State. He said the letter had conveyed the Administration’s acceptance of a draft text of a document being negotiated indirectly between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the United Nations as a mediator. The text, which has not been made public, reportedly includes provisions for noninterference.
The Soviet and Chinese Foreign Ministers will exchange visits next year in a further effort to broaden talks between the two nations, according to Soviet officials here. The officials said Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian was expected to travel to Moscow in May for meetings with his Soviet counterpart, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, who would return the visit later in the year. It would be the first exchange of Foreign Ministers in more than 20 years.
A House subcommittee looking at purported holdings in the United States of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines and his wife, Imelda, bogged down today amid partisan disputes and conflicting statements during public and closed sessions. Representative Stephen J. Solarz, Democrat of Brooklyn, and chairman of the subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee clashed with a subcommittee member Representative Gerald B. H. Solomon, Republican of upstate New York, over whether the committee’s investigation was interfering with elections set for Feb. 7 in the Philippines.
The Honduran Government’s resistance to channeling United States aid to Nicaraguan rebels was the focus of a report to President Reagan today from his new national security adviser, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, according to Administration officials. The problem was of such importance that it became one of Admiral Poindexter’s first orders of business, officials said. They noted that he visited five Central American nations Wednesday and Thursday to confer with officials and examine the Administration’s campaign to support the rebels, who are trying to topple the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua.
President Reagan meets with Assistant for National Security Affairs Admiral John Poindexter to discuss the Admirals recent trip to Central America.
The South African Government today banned the autobiography of Winnie Mandela, wife of the imprisoned black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela, saying the book was “found to be undesirable.” In a notice published in the Government gazette, the South African censorship board found Mrs. Mandela’s book, “Part of My Soul,” “to be undesirable and from Friday, December 13, it is an offense to import or distribute it in the republic.”
The F.H.A.’s sale “to private bidders” is proposed in President Reagan’s draft budget for the fiscal year 1987. The Federal Housing Administration was established in 1934 to provide mortgage insurance for homeowners. The agency could not be dismantled unless Congress passed legislation to do so. The agency has provided mortgage insurance for more than 51 million home buyers, enabling many to get mortgages they might otherwise not have been able to obtain. Confidential budget documents state that under the President’s proposal “F.H.A. will be sold in its entirety as a single package, including all existing assets and liabilities,” to bidders in the “private sector.” The proposal dramatizes Mr. Reagan’s commitment to sell Federal assets and to transfer Federal programs to private industry. In another move to turn over Government programs to private industry, the Defense Department has decided to let hospital chains and insurance companies bid on a contract to provide health care off military bases for military dependents and retirees, a Pentagon health official said.
House and Senate negotiators agreed tonight on a 1986 Pentagon budget of $298.7 billion and approved limited production of chemical weapons beginning next year, ending a 16-year ban. In separate bargaining on Capitol Hill, an agreement was reached on legislation to subsidize the sale of surplus tobacco to cigarette companies, bailing out the troubled program that aids tobacco producers. The military negotiators, from the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, also agreed to ban testing of antisatellite missiles and approved $2.75 billion for President Reagan’s program for a shield against missile attacks. The accord tonight needs the approval of the full conference committee.
President Reagan meets with the National Conference of State Legislators.
Progress on the 1985 farm bill was reported by Senate and House conferees. They reached agreement on 10 of its 20 major provisions. It is one of three major bills awaiting final passage before Congress adjourns for the year. But late tonight, a Department of Agriculture official said that the conference committee had not managed to trim any costs from the compromise bill on which it was working. According to Senator Jesse Helms, the conference committee chairman, the commodity price-support section of the bill would cost the Government about $56 billion over the next three years.
Price supports for tobacco farmers would be bailed out under an agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators on a Federal subsidy of the sale of surplus tobacco. The Reagan Administration, which opposes the program, estimates the Federal cost would be $1.1 billion.
The Defense Department has decided to invite hospital chains and large insurance companies to bid on a contract to provide health care off military bases for military dependents and retirees, a Pentagon health official said today. Those groups make up about three-quarters of the people served by military health care facilities. The plan is part of a Pentagon effort to limit military health care responsibilities to those related to wartime medical readiness. The Pentagon would rely on private health facilities to fill the gap.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz refused to comment today when asked about President Reagan’s executive order requiring polygraph, or lie-detector, testing for high officials, including Cabinet officers. “Well, that is, I think, a domestic U.S. type issue, and I’ll respond to it in a domestic setting,” he said at a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels. In the past, Mr. Shultz was said to have opposed widespread use of polygraphs, and his comment produced speculation among reporters that he might not be in favor of the order. His aides have also refused to comment. Mr. Shultz flew to Bonn late today. A birthday party was organized on his plane to mark his 65th birthday.
The Office of Personnel Management is seeking to revive a long dormant procedure to summarily dismiss Federal employees suspected of threatening national security. The disclosure of the effort came in a letter from the head of the personnel office asking the Defense Department and the military services to nominate officials to sit on boards that could be quickly formed to suspend and remove such Federal employees. It was the second disclosure this week of efforts by the Government to tighten security in the wake of the recent wave of espionage cases. The White House disclosed Wednesday that President Reagan signed a secret directive November 1 ordering more widespread use of polygraph, or lie-detector, tests for Administration officials with access to highly sensitive information.
Utah residents voted overwhelmingly last month to spend $335 million to help finish a federally planned system of dams and canals on the Colorado River after being warned that if they did not California would some day “raid” Utah’s water resources. Governor William J. Janklow of South Dakota recently brought a suit before the United States Supreme Court seeking to establish the principle that upstream states on the Missouri River have a right to take water from the river and sell it before the river flows downstream into Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri. The two developments are symptoms of a new phase in the battle over Western water that is taking shape as the nation passes from an era of huge federal water reclamation projects to one in which states are increasingly having to shoulder the cost of such projects. There is a new emphasis on water conservation, and water is being regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold like other natural resources.
Cleanup of polluted water supplies by Federal officials in northwestern Pennsylvania has touched off a bitter battle in a region that once fueled America’s factories. Gasses from oil and gas wells have been seeping into water supplies. The battle pits thousands of pollution victims against tens of thousands of residents who depend on oil and gas drilling for the livelihood.
Even sitting exhausted in a chair in his room at San Francisco General Hospital, John Lere can still talk about how he likes to raid the communal refrigerator at night. Talking between breaths from an oxygen mask, he likes to joke that his primary care nurse, Charles Cloniger, is “like having Mom at home.” This is Mr. Lere’s third stay at the hospital since he was diagnosed as having AIDS a year ago. And he has come to a conclusion about his hospital care. “I’d stay home and die if I couldn’t come here,” he said, referring to the Special Care Unit at San Francisco General Hospital.
City workers found themselves unable to use the restrooms in San Francisco City Hall for 15 minutes today as residents lobbied for more public facilities. About 75 protesters also presented petitions signed by about 500 people asking Mayor Dianne Feinstein to spend money on public toilets. Leasing and maintaining public toilets has been estimated to cost $12,00 a year each and some city officials have said the city cannot afford the expense. Midge Wilson, executive director of the Bay Area Women’s Resource Center, said her staff had to face the stench of human wastes at almost every downtown corner. “This isn’t an issue of personal convenience, she said, “it’s one of health hazards.”
A 200-pound jaguar pushed open a motorized automatic door on its holding cage before attacking and killing a 30-year-old zookeeper, city investigators in Grand Rapids, Michigan said today. The zookeeper, Gayle Booth of Kent City, who was seven months’ pregnant, was found dead in a holding area Sunday at the John Ball Park Zoo inside the building that housed the jaguar. Officials said the attack is under investigation.
A federal district judge today dismissed an amputee’s $55 million lawsuit against the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, ruling that the amputee, Floyd Roysdon, had failed to prove the company’s cigarettes were more dangerous than a customer should expect. Floyd Roysdon, the 51-year-old plaintiff, contended smoking Camel and Winston cigarettes had caused the circulatory problems that led to the amputation of his left leg. The judge, Thomas Hull, said the issue was “what an ordinary consumer would be expected to know.” Mr. Roysdon, who lives in Oneida, Tenn., testified that he had smoked since he was 10 and still smoked half a pack a day.
Three 15-year-old Philadelphia boys who said they hurled rocks and chunks of concrete onto a train track to see how far they could throw them were arrested for causing a trolley derailment that injured 59 people, police said today.
Federal investigators have concluded that the collapse of a series of beaver dams caused the flash flood that undermined a section of track in Vermont last year resulting in the derailment of an Amtrak train. Five people died in the derailment and 26 were seriously injured. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that railroad officials had no way of knowing that the track had been undermined in the night by the flood.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1535.21 (+23.97)
Born:
Andrew Gordon, Canadian NHL right wing (Washington Capitals, Anaheim Ducks, Vancouver Canucks), in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Michael Bumpus, NFL wide receiver (Seattle Seahawks), in Honolulu, Hawaii.
History Diaries 