Christmas Day
Pope John Paul II delivered his Christmas Day message to a world he called “scandalously” marked by human rights violations, oppression and suffering. Referring to himself as “the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter and one of the human beings on pilgrimage toward the end of the second millennium,” John Paul said he wanted to put the words of Jesus into the “context of the signs and needs of our times.” Wearing a gold miter and vestments, the Pope spoke at noon from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Thirty-thousand people were standing below in the chilly air under a gray sky.
In her annual message beamed to millions of people around the world on Christmas Day, Queen Elizabeth said the tragic events of 1985 should not obscure the “bravery and self-sacrifice” of people who help humanity every day. The television broadcast showed her sitting at her desk in Buckingham Palace with the day’s newspapers in front of her.
Police fired plastic bullets and one live round when 40 to 50 rioters attacked them overnight with bricks and bottles in Armagh, Northern Ireland, a police spokesman said. One officer suffered serious facial injuries during the clashes in the town near the border with the Irish Republic, the spokesman said. He said the live round was fired into the air. The identity of the rioters was not immediately established.
A military court in Istanbul acquitted 10 defendants and sentenced an 11th to three years in prison today on charges of helping Mehmet Ali Ağca in the 1979 murder of a Turkish newspaper editor. Mr. Ağca is serving a life sentence in Italy for an attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II in May 1981. The trial in Turkey in the 1979 killing of Abdi Ipekci, editor of the Istanbul daily Milliyet, was not connected with the attack on the Pope. The 10 defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence, the court said.
Mount Etna erupted suddenly, setting off a series of earthquakes that destroyed a resort hotel and killed one person in Sicily. Four rivers of red lava steamed down the sides of Etna, Europe’s most active volcano, which last erupted in May 1983. A Catania city official said about 200 firefighters, policemen and civil defense workers were ready if it became necessary to evacuate about 5,000 residents of two villages on the southern slope of Europe’s most active volcano. But the official, Roberto Sorge, said the towns did not appear to be in danger because the molten lava streaming from a height of about 5,900 feet was being trapped in a large reservoir about 1,640 feet below. “There’s a lot of space in the reservoir, and as long as it continues to flow there, there is no danger,” he said. The villages of Zafferana and Milo are about six miles away from the site of the eruption, which is on the volcano’s southeast side along a huge cleft called the Valle del Bove. The eruption occurred at 3:45 this morning.
Moscow may restore diplomatic ties with Israel and dramatically increase the number of Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel, according to reports of a conversation between a representative of an American Jewish group and a Soviet diplomat. The conversation, which occurred a few days ago, was disclosed in a telephone interview today by Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. According to Rabbi Hier, the Soviet diplomat, attached to the embassy here, initiated the luncheon and seemed eager to put across two points. These were that he “thinks” there will be full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Soviet Union in February, before the Communist Party congress that month, and that Moscow is going to allow many more Jews to leave than are permitted now.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ office said he has received a positive message from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak about improving ties but is awaiting clarification on the Taba border dispute. Israeli television said earlier this week that Peres recently asked Mubarak to provide a timetable for improving relations and for returning Egypt’s ambassador to Tel Aviv after a three-year absence. Mubarak’s response was “positive,” the Israelis said, but lacked “clarification” over which nation should control Taba, a Red Sea beach strip that Israel did not relinquish in its 1982 Sinai pullout.
Thousands of pilgrims from around the world crowded into the Church of the Nativity today to sing and pray in a variety of languages over the place where Christians believe Jesus was born. Masses were conducted nonstop in the grotto beneath the church, where some pilgrims waited in line for up to 30 minutes to touch the 14-point silver star marking the traditional birthplace. Christmas was a working holiday for most of the 15,000 Christian residents of this Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The rest of the town’s 50,000 people are Muslims. “Most Christians in Bethlehem depend on tourism, so we have to work on Christmas,” said Anwar Saca, 40, who owns one of the town’s largest souvenir stores.
The leader of an Israeli-backed Lebanese militia told Israeli officials that Iranian activists in south Lebanon are inciting Muslims against Israel. General Antoine Lahad, commander of the South Lebanese Army, told Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir at a meeting that Iranian delegations are visiting the southern Lebanese ports of Tyre and Sidon to urge Muslims to march on Jerusalem, according to Israeli officials. Lahad heads a largely Christian militia trained and equipped by Israel to patrol a narrow strip in south Lebanon against infiltration by guerrillas.
The body of a kidnapped Lebanese Jew was found in a bomb-shattered district of West Beirut hours after a militant Moslem group announced it had killed him, the police said today. A police spokesman said the body of the Jew, Chaim Cohen Halala, was found near a church in downtown Beirut’s old Riad Solh commercial district at 7:30 AM Tuesday.
Syria has been upgrading its forces facing the Israeli-held Golan Heights, Jane’s Defense Weekly said. “For the past few weeks, Syria has been building up an impressive force in this area,” near the northeastern frontier with Israel, the authoritative British defense magazine reported in its latest issue. Jane’s said Syria has deployed heavy artillery and anti-tank obstacles opposite the Golan Heights, which would allow the Syrians to “take the initiative with a surprise attack.”
The Soviet Union has assured Syria of support in its dispute with Israel over the deployment of antiaircraft missiles along the border with Lebanon, and Moscow has accused the Israelis of carrying out underground nuclear tests in the Negev, according to reports published here today. The state-controlled Damascus radio said President Hafez al-Assad had received a message from Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, about the missiles. The contents of the message were not officially disclosed. But according to Beirut’s leading daily, An Nahar, the letter dealt with what the newspaper called “Israeli threats” over the deployment by Syria of Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles, which the Israelis said threatened their reconnaissance flights over Lebanon.
Iraqi warplanes struck a shipping target today, an Iraqi communique said. It was the second consecutive day such a strike was reported in the Persian Gulf war with Iran, The planes recorded an “accurate and effective” strike on a large naval target — Iraq’s usual term for a large merchant ship or oil tanker — at 6 PM, the communique said. There were no immediate reports from independent shipping sources to confirm either the attack today or a similar strike in the Persian Gulf that Iraq reported Tuesday. The last independently confirmed strike on shipping in the waterway was an attack December 13 on the 162,000-ton Cypriot flag tanker Vulcan.
Police used tear gas and baton charges to disperse stone-throwing demonstrators who tried to hold a rally in Lahore to mark the birthday of Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. No injuries were reported. The demonstrators represented the Movement to Restore Democracy, which opposes the military government of President Zia ul-Haq. The government’s recent arrests of 60 leaders of the coalition has been cited by opponents as evidence that Zia does not intend to restore democracy, despite his promise to lift martial law.
Pirates killed 50 Vietnamese refugees on a boat in the South China Sea, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported. Of 80 people aboard, only 2 men and 28 women and children reached safety in Malaysia. Four days after the Vietnamese fled from the Ho Chi Minh City area, pirates in two fishing boats stopped their vessel, pillaged it, threw the adult men overboard and raped the women, the U.N. agency said. The attack was one of the most barbaric reported since the boat exodus started after the Vietnam War.
Taiwan’s President Chiang Ching-kuo today ruled out the possibility that he will be succeeded by a member of his family or a military government. Mr. Chiang, 75 years old, son of Chiang Kai-shek, told the Taiwan Parliament at a ceremony marking the 38th anniversary of Nationalist China’s Constitution that there were two questions about the future of Taiwan he wanted to clarify. “The first is the question of to the President,” he said. “If someone asks me whether anyone in my family would run for the next presidential term, my reply is, ‘It can’t be and it won’t be.’ The next President will be voted on by members of the National Assembly, which represents all the people, as stipulated in the Constitution,” he said. The Chiangs have led the Nationalist Government for more than 50 years, first on the Chinese mainland and later on Taiwan, where the Nationalists fled in 1949 after being defeated by the Communists.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed today that a twin-engine Antonov-24 airliner belonging to the Soviet civil carrier Aeroflot was hijacked to China last Thursday. But it said that “crew members and all the passengers” were returned to the Soviet Union two days later. The statement at a weekly news briefing for foreign reporters confirmed unofficial reports that had been circulating in Peking for several days. One such report said that there were four hijackers and that they had been detained in Peking after the others who were involved in the incident left for home last Friday, but the wording of the official statement appeared to contradict this.
Japan will send a team of military and science specialists to Washington next month for talks on possible participation in the “Star Wars” space defense program, government officials said in Tokyo. The Pentagon is known to be interested in Japanese advances in computers, microelectronics and other industries that might have applications to the missile system.
Family members said Tuesday that 10 men, some in uniform, entered the home of the Haitian opposition leader Sylvio Claude and beat him with “clubs, gun butts and fists” and that he had gone into hiding. They said the men, some wearing police and national palace guard uniforms, assaulted Mr. Claude on Sunday. It was not known how seriously he was hurt. Mr. Claude, founder of the small Haitian Christian Democratic Party, was arrested three years ago but was not charged. He was also beaten and jailed after announcing plans to organize a political party.
Leftist rebels in El Salvador have organized a “popular power” government as part of a network of services set up for their followers. The guerrillas are trying to maintain support in the dwindling regions where they have strong influence.
The Peruvian police arrested 1,000 people today in a sweep through Lima suburbs after Maoist guerrillas blacked out an Andean city, blew up seven vehicles and dynamited a statue, the police said. Many of the suspects were detained because they lacked identification papers. The police said they would be freed after their names and addresses were verified with relatives or friends. The police action followed an attack by Shining Path rebels on an electrical line in Huancavelica, 260 miles southeast of Lima, which blacked out the city of 20,000 for half an hour on Christmas Eve. In Laredo, 420 miles north of Lima, the rebels on Tuesday dynamited a statue of Victor Raul Haya de la Torre, the founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance.
Troops and planes from Mali invaded a border village and two towns in the neighboring West African country of Burkina Faso, killing four, Burkina Faso reported. Ten Malians were reported killed. In the Malian capital, Bamako, a communique from the ruling party said Malian troops had “freed” four border villages occupied by troops from Burkina Faso but denied Burkina Faso’s claims that 10 Malians were killed and six tanks destroyed in the fighting. It said Malian troops had mounted what it called a counterattack on the villages, which it said had been occupied by Burkina Faso forces two weeks ago. It said one Malian was wounded in the attack.
Tribal fighting in South Africa killed at least 53 people as about 2,000 Zulus clashed with 3,000 members of the Pondo tribe in what police called the worst factional fighting in years. Police said the fighting, involving thousands with knives, spears and possibly firearms, erupted Tuesday night at Umbumbulu, 20 miles south of Durban on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline. The reasons for the fighting remained unclear tonight. Clashes have arisen in the past over such issues as water rights, but there was no indication tonight if that had set off the latest dispute. The traditional Pondo territory adjoins that of the Zulus and tribal fighting between the two in what is now South Africa’s Natal province has been going on for years. Usually, the death toll from such clashes has been much lower.
In Cape Town, meanwhile, the black activist Winnie Mandela spent 40 minutes today visiting her imprisoned husband, Nelson Mandela, a leader of the outlawed African National Congress. Mr. Mandela has been jailed for over two decades serving a life sentence on charges of sabotage and plotting revolution. After the encounter, she told reporters Christmas was a “day of mourning” for the country’s 23 million blacks. “If anything, this particular Christmas is far worse than all the other Christmases,” she said of her husband’s plight, “because he is in solitary confinement.” Mr. Mandela, who is 67, underwent prostate gland surgery last month, and was then returned to the hospital wing of Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. The imprisoned anti-apartheid leader is the pre-eminent symbol in South Africa of black resistance to white rule and, in recent months, his wife, defying Government restrictions on her movements, has become the most prominent black challenger of white dominance.
President Reagan spends Christmas Day at the White House with family and friends. Celebrating Christmas, New Yorkers stayed indoors on the blustery, cold day. The Reagans shared a traditional feast of roast turkey with relatives and friends, while at the North Pole it was unseasonably warm — 18 degrees.
The shopping-mall plane crash in Concord, California, Monday has raised questions about the nearby airport’s ability to handle expanded traffic in an increasingly congested area. While many residents were saddened by the crash, several said they had expected such an accident.
The family of artificial heart patient Mary Lund spent Christmas Day around a lighted tree in a hospital lounge in Louisville, Kentucky, hoping for some improvement, but doctors reported little change in her condition. She remained in a light coma. Meanwhile, the world’s two surviving recipients of permanent artificial heart implants observed Christmas quietly at Humana Hospital Audubon in Louisville with relatives. William J. Schroeder, 53, who is recovering from a stroke, was joined only by his wife, Margaret. Murray P. Haydon, 59, was joined by his family. Nurses caring for Lund have been volunteering to work extra shifts because of concern over her slow recovery, hospital officials said. She remained in critical but stable condition at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.
Tennessee prisons had room to spare in advance of a federal judge’s December 31 deadline to reduce the number of inmates of 15 state facilities to 7,019. Correction Department spokesman John Taylor said 6,963 adults were behind bars. In addition, the state had 88 empty beds at three reception centers for new inmates, in sharp contrast to overcrowding that led U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Higgins to order the prison system closed to all but the most dangerous new inmates as of October 23 until all inmates had beds.
Two engineers accused of misconduct for their role in a hotel skywalk collapse that killed 114 people and injured 200 others in 1981 have been formally relieved of engineering duties at their company, officials said in Kansas City. The Missouri Board for Architects, Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors has set a January 22 hearing for the two men, Daniel M. Duncan and Jack D. Gillum, both of St. Louis.
Scores of volunteers turned out on Christmas Day to rescue more oil-soaked birds and help care for the nearly 1,000 waterfowl already scooped out of a massive oil spill off the Washington coast. The ARCO Anchorage ran aground at Port Angeles harbor and leaked 109,200 gallons of Alaskan oil. The Coast Guard reported that the vast majority of the spilled oil has been skimmed up.
Methodist bishops are preparing a denunciation of nuclear war that may be stronger than the pastoral letter issued by the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States. An early draft of the document, which bishops of the United Methodist Church have been deliberating for more than a year, said that nuclear deterrence, which the Catholic bishops conditionally accepted, “cannot receive the churches’ blessing.”
The Ford Foundation announced plans to award grants totaling $4.75 million in the next two years to help 39 colleges and universities — of which seven are in California — recruit teachers and improve their undergraduate curricula. The foundation said it is acting partly in response to a spate of recent studies that have questioned the quality of undergraduate education.
Families with children are sharing a smaller portion of the nation’s economic pie despite a recent trend of mothers going back to work, a new study commissioned by Congress shows. The study, conducted for the congressional Joint Economic Committee, said the share of national income going to families with children has dropped 19% since 1973. “If the nation’s children are regarded as its social, political and economic future, this information is very disturbing,” said Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wisconsin), the chairman of the panel. The study gave no simple explanation for the decline. But it mentioned as contributing to the situation the increasing number of families headed by one parent, usually a woman.
Pediatricians warned that baby powder is dangerous for infants and may even cause death by suffocation if inhaled by tots with tracheotomy tubes. “There’s no reason for parents to use it at all,” said Dr. William H. Cotton in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine. “It just makes babies smell good for a short while but can present a problem for any infant.” Representatives of Johnson & Johnson, the nation’s largest manufacturer of baby powder, countered that the “product is safe when used as it is intended.”
Not only are women who are scientists and engineers paid less and receive fewer promotions than their male counterparts, but they are also discouraged from taking such jobs in the first place, a Congressional survey says. Sex discrimination and stereotyping direct men into the sciences and women into nursing, education and related fields, according to a report released Tuesday by the Office of Technology Assessment. In a survey of college freshmen in 1984, the report said, 20 percent of the men questioned listed engineering as their field of choice, while 3 percent of the women had that objective.
The police arrested a couple today who were wanted in the slayings of three employees of pizza restaurants in Los Angeles and South Carolina. They arrested the two, Mitchell Sims, 25 years old, and Ruby Padgett, 20, after receiving an anonymous tip that they were at a Las Vegas motel. The police had sought the couple since December 10, when John Steven Harrigan, 21, a pizza deliverer from Glendale, California, was found strangled in a motel. Mr. Sims is also wanted in connection with the slayings December 2 of two workers in a Hanahan, South Carolina, pizza restaurant where he worked.
Tennessee prisons, faced with a Federal judge’s order to reduce crowding by December 31, had room to spare today with 6,963 adults behind bars, a spokesman said. Federal District Judge Thomas A. Higgins has ordered the state to reduce the number of inmates in its 15 facilities to 7,019. In addition, the state had 88 empty beds at three reception centers for new inmates, in sharp contrast to crowding that led Judge Higgins to order the prison system closed to all but the most dangerous new inmates.
The stabbing death of a prostitute has been linked to 10 other killings in Los Angeles County, the police say. Elizabeth Ann Landcraft, 41 years old, was found dead from numerous stab wounds late Sunday in an alley in south-central Los Angeles, Lieutenant Dan Cooke said Tuesday. The police announced September 23 that they were looking for someone they said had killed 10 prostitutes over two years. “We’re linking the case to the others because the prostitutes have all had numerous stab wounds or were strangled and the bodies dumped in various places,” Lieutenant Cooke said.
While many people were saddened by the crash of a small plane into a thronged shopping mall in Concord, California Monday that killed four people, many residents said they had expected an accident. “It was a situation where the accident was waiting to happen,” said Marion St. John, a Concord resident whose commute has taken him past Buchanan Field runways for 20 years. “I was really surprised when I saw new tall buildings going up on the street that borders the airport, and I was very, very concerned.” When Buchanan Field was built in this San Francisco suburb 42 years ago, it was surrounded by fields, marshes and thousands of acres of walnut groves. In the past decade, the orchards and fields have been replaced by housing developments and shopping centers, including the SunValley Mall, where the plane plunged through the roof Monday.
A garden dating to 1680, the earliest documented formal garden in the United States, has been discovered in Virginia. A team of archeologists uncovered the English-style Renaissance garden adjacent to Bacon’s Castle, near Williamsburg.
The forest fire that ravaged the Houghton Creek area in Montana 16 months ago left the mountainside blackened, but man and nature have combined to begin the long forest repair process. It will take another century or so for the forest to restore itself.
Vietnam veterans are at special risk for drug and alcohol addiction because of the range of psychological and behavioral problems that still plague many of them, experts say. Veterans with histories of substance abuse attribute their problems most directly to the hostility they faced upon returning home during the antiwar protests.
The country singer Johnny Paycheck was arraigned Monday on a charge of felonious assault stemming from a shooting at a Hillsboro tavern last week. Judge Jon C. Hapner of Hillsboro Municipal Court set a preliminary hearing for Friday. Mr. Paycheck, 44 years old, was arrested Friday in the shooting Thursday night of Larry Wise. Mr. Wise was released from a hospital after treatment for a head wound. Witnesses said the two men had argued about a band.
Born:
Perdita Weeks, British actress (“Ready Player One”, NBC’s “Magnum P.I.”), in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.
Died:
George Rhodes, 66, American pianist, composer, arranger, and music director (“Sammy Davis, Jr. Show”), of a heart attack.
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