Poland replaced its envoy to Moscow with an Ambassador of more moderate views. The move was viewed by Western diplomats as part of a drive by General Wojciech Jaruzelski to reshape the Communist Party along more moderate lines. The envoy, Stanislaw Kociolek, had long been associated with the hard-line faction that in general has favored greater discipline through police powers while discouraging even minimal gestures of dialogue or conciliation with the opposition. The man named as his successor. Wlodzimierz Natorf, has spent most of his professional life in diplomacy and does not have the support of any specific group in the middle ranks of the party as did his predecessor, a practicing politician. Mr. Natorf was Poland’s chief representative at the United Nations from 1982 until 1985.
A group of leading Soviet writers published a statement today protesting a Government project to divert water from north-flowing rivers to the south, saying it would cause irreversible damage to the nation’s cultural heritage. A joint statement published in the daily Sovetskaya Rossiya said the project to divert water from the Onega and Pechora Rivera at a point north of Moscow into the Volga, which flows across European Russia to the Caspian Sea, would mean the flooding of vast areas of fertile farmland and the destruction of ancient villages and towns. The project got under way last year. Publication of the statement, signed by Viktor Astafev, Vasily Belov, Yuri Bondarev, Sergei Zalygin, Leonid Leonov, Dmitri Likhachev and Valentin Rasputin, indicated that the debate on the merits of the plan was continuing within the Goverment, Western diplomats said.
Soviet cultural officials denounced two American movies as anti-Soviet propaganda. A group including the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko said the movies “Rocky IV” and “Rambo: First Blood Part II” were part of a deliberate propaganda campaign to portray Russians as cruel and treacherous enemies. Sitting behind the same table in the Foreign Ministry press center where Soviet spokesmen usually condemn United States Government policies, the group — including the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko — singled out the two popular movies starring Sylvester Stallone as representative of what they called a rash of anti-Soviet propaganda in American movies and on television. In “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” Mr. Stallone plays an anti-Communist Vietnam veteran who returns to Southeast Asia to try to rescue American prisoners, killing more than a dozen Russians in the process. In “Rocky IV,” as prizefighter Rocky Balboa, he battles a villainous Soviet boxer.
The three police officers in charge of security at the European Cup Championship in Brussels, Belgium last year have been reassigned, and there are reports that they have been demoted because of security lapses at the match, at which 38 people were killed in rioting. A spokesman for the gendarmerie, a paramilitary police force, confirmed a newspaper report that the major, colonel and captain in charge of security at Heysel Stadium have been reassigned to administrative posts. The spokesman denied the newspaper’s assertion that the changes resulted from the rioting last May, but a source indicated that the report was accurate.
West Germany ruled out sanctions against Libya. Other Western European countries reacted coolly to calls by the United States for collective action against Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Government, which is accused of supporting terrorist groups. At the same time, there were signs of growing concern, particularly among countries on the Mediterranean, over a possible flare-up of violence. The concern came amid reports of United States naval operations in the area and plans for eventual military reprisals for the apparently coordinated terrorist attacks on airports in Rome and Vienna. Nineteen people, including five Americans, were killed and more than 110 wounded; the dead included four of the Arab gunmen.
There was a mood of uncertainty over whether the Reagan Administration would take military action in response to the airport attacks in Rome and Vienna. A United States carrier battle group headed south toward Libya, while President Reagan asserted there was nothing unusual about the ship movements. But Mr. Reagan and other officials continued to refuse to comment on whether a military strike might be ordered against Libya for its purported support of the Rome and Vienna attacks. This approach of asserting that everything was routine, but at the same time leaving open the possibility that the carrier, the USS Coral Sea, might go into action, produced considerable speculation but no clear answers.
Anti-U.S. demonstrations in Libya protested United States and Israeli accusations that Libya was linked to the terrorist attacks in Rome and Vienna. Americans working in Libya expressed fear over a Libyan television report that said Colonel Qaddafi, was organizing suicide squads to attack American and Western European properties. The Libyan radio said state-sanctioned anti-American demonstrations began in several large Libyan cities today over United States and Israeli accusations that Libya was behind the Arab attacks at airports in Rome and Vienna on December 27. Nineteen people died as a result of the attacks and more than 110 were wounded.
A sharp decline in the economic ties between the United States and Libya has all but eliminated their economic leverage over each other. The decline has come since the imposition of trade restrictions by the Reagan Administration in 1981. Most of Libya’s exports to the United States have consisted of refined-petroleum products. But President Reagan in November banned further refined-petroleum imports from Libya. Crude-petroleum imports were banned in 1982.
Developments in recent weeks, including the recent meeting between King Hussein of Jordan and Syria’s President, Hafez al-Assad, have again shown the ability of Mr. Assad to move his country to the forefront of Middle East politics. Diplomats here and in Damascus say Syria has been brought to this position primarily by Mr. Assad’s patient, single-minded and sometimes ruthless pursuit of his goal of establishing what he sees as Syria’s historic role of dominance in the area. In recent weeks, Mr. Assad has achieved three major coups:
— The installation of sophisticated Soviet-made antiaircraft missiles along his border and in the Bekaa region of Lebanon, to challenge Israeli reconnaissance flights.
— The signing of a Syrian-sponsored peace agreement between Lebanon’s three main private armies, a move designed to end more than 10 years of civil war.
— A reconciliation, apparently largely on Mr. Assad’s terms so far, with King Hussein of Jordan, a pro-Western figure with whom President Assad has been at odds on most key issues for more than five years.
But diplomats in Amman and in Damascus note that in this volatile region, it is far from certain that any of these achievements will be a lasting triumph. Indeed, the diplomats say, each carries with it potential problems.
The Cambodian rebel leader Son Sann said today that he had banished a powerful dissident faction from his group amid an “open rebellion.” The dissidents say that they have taken over the leadership of Mr. Son Sann’s non-Communist group, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, and that they have the support of most of its 15,000 guerrillas. But Mr. Son Sann said today that he was still in charge of the group, one of three in a coalition fighting the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. The group is recognized by the United Nations as Cambodia’s legitimate Government. Mr. Son Sann, 74 years old, said he had issued an order banning the dissident group. “It is my duty to put an end to the open rebellion,” he said.
President Reagan addresses a crowd at the El Centro Naval Air Facility. President Reagan then departs El Centro, California, for Mexicali, Mexico where he is welcomed by the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, John A. Gavin.
The U.S. will help Mexico meet its financial problems, President Reagan pledged. He conferred for four hours in Mexicali with President Miguel de la Madrid. Mexico is seeking new foreign capital to meet its $96 billion external debt and is experiencing a series of domestic economic difficulties. While Mexico is not seeking direct United States financial support, Administration officials said it was asking the Administration’s backing for loans from commercial banks and international lending agencies. “Mexico’s debt burden remains a serious challenge,” Mr. Reagan said in public remarks to his host, adding that the United States “remains ready and willing” to help.
Leftist rebels in El Salvador have ended a holiday truce with attacks on more than 20 electric power stations. Parts of San Salvador were blacked out when rebels blew up four power pylons near Apopa late Thursday night. The eastern provinces of Morazan, Usulután, and La Union remained without electricity, according to officials of the state-owned electrical company.
The blackout of the Catholic radio this week in Nicaragua was the latest step in a three-month campaign against non-Sandinista news outlets. Since October, two periodicals have been shut down, and editors of two others have been warned to stop publishing. In one case, a labor union magazine was closed because the government said it did not have enough censors to read and check its contents. The two editors who have been warned to stop circulating material are trying to continue doing so through various subterfuges.
The police in the South African coastal town of Port Elizabeth have banned a memorial service for Molly Blackburn, a white anti-apartheid campaigner who was cremated here Thursday after she died in an automobile accident last Saturday. At her funeral, more than 10,000 black supporters flooded into a segregated white area on buses to pay tribute to her outside the church where the funeral service was held. The remarkable size of the black crowd in a white area, activists here said, seemed to have alarmed the white authorities, prompting them to ban the Saturday memorial service for fear that the numbers would be greater. The service was to have been held in a meeting hall in the city center at a time when many more blacks, at work during the ceremony Thursday, would have been able to attend.
A Democratic sweep in Honolulu has cast doubt on Republican assertions of growing strength in Hawaii’s forthcoming gubernatorial race. Republican candidates for three City Council seats that were contested in a special election received only 20 percent of the votes. The Democratic sweep comes as both major parties are preparing for the September primary elections for Governor. Gov. George Ariyoshi, a Democrat, is barred from succeeding himself. The Council vacancies were created when three members were recalled from office October 5 at a special election on their ouster. Democrats began the ouster effort when the three switched their party registration from Democrat to Republican on June 6.
The Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, has urged the Air Force to cancel production of its new T-46 trainer planes, contending they cannot be built on schedule or within their $3.5 billion budget. Canceling the T-46, which are produced by the Fairchild Republic Company, might produce new business for the Cessna Corporation, of Wichita, Kan., in the Republican leader’s home state. Cessna has proposed a plan to retool and refurbish the aging T-37 Air Force trainer, which Cessna originally built, as an alternative to the T-46.
A strike at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. national headquarters in Washington continued for the second day. Employees of the Food and Allied Service Trades department of the labor federation are striking for higher wages. More than 300 of the federation’s non-managerial employees walked out in support of the strike.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation acted legally in obtaining statements from a retired intelligence analyst on the night of his arrest for espionage, a Federal district judge ruled today. The judge, Albert V. Bryan Jr., said the statements could be used as evidence in the trial of the former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, Larry Wu-Tai Chin. The judge set a trial date of February 4. Before the ruling, Mr. Chin took the witness stand today for the first time and testified that he made the statements only after he was offered “legal advice” by an F.B.I. agent. Mr. Chin was apparently trying to show that he had made the statements because he had been intentionally misled into believing that he did not need a lawyer’s help.
Inmates who took over the West Virginia Penitentiary released their seven remaining hostages today and returned control of the prison to the state. Three prisoners were killed in the uprising. Governor Arch A. Moore Jr. said he believed some inmates had set up kangaroo courts to decide “who they were going to destroy.” He said that there would be no amnesty for the killers and that they would be prosecuted fully where murder cases could be established. Governor Moore escorted the seven remaining hostages from the prison and said all were unharmed. Several inmates were not accounted for.
Two men today killed a Virginia state trooper who had stopped a car they had stolen, then broke into a couple’s home, murdered the husband, kidnapped his wife and drove off in their van, only to kill the woman and themselves as the police closed in. The rampage apparently began Thursday night on Interstate 81, 180 miles northeast of Salem. Harry Walston Harris, 35 years old, of Martinsburg, West Virginia, said two men he picked up earlier in West Virginia forced him from his car near Front Royal. Mr. Harris said he ran when he got out of the car, was wounded by a shotgun blast and hid in a field. When the car left, Mr. Harris said, he walked to the road and was picked up by a passerby. He was in satisfactory condition today in Warren Memorial Hospital.
About four hours later, at 2:20 AM, Officer R. M. McCoy, 28 years old, stopped Mr. Harris’s 1972 Opel on I-81 a few hundred yards from the home of Mr. and Mrs. Anthony G. Loicano Jr. after two truck drivers complained over their citizens’ band radios that the car was following them with its headlights on high beam, according to Charles Vaughan, a state police spokesman. A trucker who said he had seen Officer McCoy fall radioed the state police in Salem from the patrol car. The two men broke into the Loicano house, shot and stabbed Mr. Loicano, abducted his wife, Christine, drove the Loicanos’ van through the closed garage door and fled, Mr. Vaughan said. A Salem police officer and a county sheriff’s deputy chased the van at speeds up to 85 miles an hour until it veered onto the road shoulder and flipped over. Mr. Vaughan said one of the men died of a shotgun wound. Mrs. Loicano and the other man died of pistol shots, he said. He said the pursuing officers had not returned gunfire from the van.
Mayor W. Wilson Goode today lifted the state of emergency he imposed on a racially troubled neighborhood in November and presented a plan to avert further racial problems. Mr. Goode said at a news conference that groups of four or more people would once again be allowed to gather outdoors in the southwest Philadelphia neighborhood as long as they did not threaten or harass anyone. His actions stemmed from a series of threats in the predominantly white neighborhood against against two newly arrived minority families. The home of a black family that moved out was set on fire December 12. Mr. Goode proposed the establishment of a crisis management system to be responsible for racially sensitive with residents of troubled neighborhoods to help change attitudes that might be contributing to tensions.
Striking bus drivers and the city’s new school superintendent remained deadlocked today as a walkout kept one of every five students from classes. The strike by 600 drivers, members of Local 8751 of the United Steelworkers of America, forced about 26,000 students ordinarily bused to school to find their own way Thursday, when the 57,900-pupil system opened for classes after the Christmas holiday. The superintendent, Laval S. Wilson, who began his job in September, has vowed that the schools will not close. The School Department says strikers’ demands for a pension plan, expanded medical benfits and extra bus safety checks would add $1.7 million to its $14 million annual bus contract. The drivers, who are employed by independent contractors, say the contractors, at the School Department’s urging, asked the drivers to make 13 contract concessions. The drivers earn $10.12 an hour, Mr. Wilson said.
Two women whose skeletons were found this week in a ravine were today declared victims of a mass killer, bringing the death toll in the nation’s worst unsolved mass killings to 34. The killer, whose first victims were found near the Green River in 1982, preys mainly on young prostitutes, the police say. There have been no arrests, and the most recent disappearance linked to the killer was in March 1984, the authorities have said. The killer is believed to have struck both in the Puget Sound area of Washington and the Portland, Oregon, area. A skull and bones found Thursday in a steep ravine that had not been searched before were identified as those of a white woman 14 to 17 years old, the police said, and bones found in the same area Monday and Tuesday were those of a black woman 20 to 25 years old. They were killed at least two years ago, the police said. Their identities were not determined.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell is forming a new political organization, the Liberty Federation, hoping to mobilize millions of conservatives who support his views on domestic and foreign policies. He said Moral Majority, the fundamentalist Christian lobby he founded, would continue to focus on “strictly moral” issues such as abortion and pornography as a subsidiary of the Liberty Federation. He said the federation supported President Reagan’s high-technology antimissile plan, favored financial aid to the rebels in Nicaragua and would help resist “possible Communistic takeovers in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, South Africa and all over the world.” Charles E. Judd, executive director of the Liberty Federation and Moral Majority, said the new organization would be “no more or less religious than Moral Majority.”
Former Louisiana Congressman Richard Tonry was indicted today on charges of bribing the chairman of the Chitamacha Indians to get a contract to run bingo games on their reservation. The Federal indictment charged Mr. Tonry, who resigned from Congress in a voting scandal in 1977, with paying $25,000 in August 1984 to the tribe chairman to get exclusive rights to run bingo games on the reservation at Charenton, in central Louisiana.
All 26 crewmembers of a Liberian freighter were stricken with food poisoning today after they ate a barracuda caught near the Bahamas. Six of the most critically ill were taken off the 3,700-ton Brazilian Sky and flown by Coast Guard helicopter to Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, the Coast Guard said. “Everybody’s pretty incoherent,” said Chief Petty Officer Bob Baeten in Miami. “Apparently, the entire crew’s sick.” Barracuda sometimes eat puffers, a fish with poisonous body parts, causing the barracuda themselves to become poisonous. Another 10 crew members were placed aboard the Coast Guard cutter Point Barnes for transfer to the hospital and the remaining 10 were being treated by physicians brought aboard the freighter, he said. The ship was 40 miles northwest of Nassau but its destination and cargo were unknown, Mr. Baeten said.
A sick female condor was captured in California beginning a roundup of last six of the largest North American birds known to be in the wild. The vulture was caught on the Hudson Ranch about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. The six condors known to be free will join the 21 in two Southern California zoos. “They flushed her out and just walked up and grabbed her,” said Jennifer Meyer, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. “She is in fact sick.” The condor, a member of the world’s only remaining breeding pair, was taken to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, where X-rays showed it had apparently been hit by seven shotgun pellets and had swallowed a lead fragment, the officials said.
Carl C. Icahn became chairman of Trans World Airlines yesterday, having gained control of a majority of the board of directors, the carrier said. The New York investor, who began his long and trouble-plagued quest last May, took over the carrier after working out a last-minute stumbling block with the pilots’ union yesterday afternoon. Mr. Icahn owns 52 percent of the stock and, under an agreement approved by the board, he would buy up to 12 million of the 24 million remaining shares. The minority holders would be paid completely in preferred stock. Under his original offer, he was to pay $19.50 in cash and $4.50 in preferred stock for all the outstanding shares.
Stock prices rose a sizable amount in an otherwise dull session yesterday as speculators turned for excitement to potential buyout targets. Other investors sought out secondary stocks. Volume on the New York Stock Exchange has been depressed for the last two weeks because many institutional investors decided to reward themselves for a successful year with a vacation. In this two-week lull, stock prices have shown no discernible pattern, climbing for a few sessions and then backtracking.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1549.2 (+11.47)
Born:
Liam Treadwell, English National Hunt jockey (Grand National 2009; 300+ race wins), in Arundel, England, United Kingdom (d. 2020).
Steve McLendon, NFL defensive tackle and nose tackle (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 55-Buccaneers, 2020; Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Ozark, Alabama.
Mackenzy Bernadeau, NFL guard (Carolina Panthers, Dallas Cowboys), in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Sammie Stroughter, NFL wide receiver (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Vallejo, California.
Nick Schommer, NFL safety (Tennessee Titans), in Red Wong, Wisconsin.
Nikola Peković, Montenegrin NBA center (Minnesota Timberwolves), in Bijelo Polje, SR Montenegro, SFR Yugoslavia.
Cedric Simmons, NBA power forward (New Orleans-Oklahoma City Hornets, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls, Sacramento Kings), in Shallotte, North Carolina.
Jenn Bostic, American Country and Christian singer-songwriter (“Jealous of the Angels”), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Lloyd [Polite], American R&B singer (“Dedication to My Ex (Miss That)”; “You”), in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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