Communist Albania, reasserting its political enmity toward both the United States and the Soviet Union, again ruled out diplomatic or other relations with the superpowers. “The foreign policy of socialist Albania will continue to be resolute, in the future, against all the aggressive and expansionist activity of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union, against militarism and war preparations,” said the Communist Party daily Zeri i Popullit. According to a report by the state-run ATA news agency monitored in Vienna, the paper denounced the “decadent culture and the mode of living that they advertise all over the world.”
Protestant rioters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, pelted police with bottles and stones, injuring 23 officers and burning two police cars, police said. The attacks came at the end of a march across the province by thousands of Protestants opposed to the November 15 British-Irish accord that gives Dublin a formal consultative role in the running of British-ruled Northern Ireland. The incident happened outside a heavily guarded building at Maryfield on the outskirts of Belfast occupied by the secretariat of British and Irish civil servants set up as part of the accord. One officer suffered a broken leg and three demonstrators were arrested, he said. Most of the crowd stayed peaceful, but a few hundred youths, some wielding clubs, became violent, he said. The police hit back with truncheons.
Italian Government officials met today to review the evidence of a possible Libyan connection to recent terrorist attacks here and in Vienna, amid growing anxiety about the possibility of military reprisals against Libya by the United States or Israel. The Italian officials seemed to be struggling to avert a military confrontation in the Mediterranean region, which Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini said Friday could “trigger an uncontrollable spiral.” The Government was reacting in part to a closing of Arab ranks, as several Arab nations declared their solidarity with Libya against any American threat. The Arab League, consisting of 21 Arab nations and the Palestine Liberation Organization, also warned the United States against military action.
Syria and Libya are behind the recent rash of terrorist attacks in the Mediterranean and Europe and are trying to discredit the Palestine Liberation Organization and hinder negotiations with Israel, Yasir Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said in an interview published in today’s issue of the Washington Post. Mr. Arafat also said the United States, by refusing to negotiate with the P.L.O., had stalled Middle East peace efforts and helped create an environment in which young Palestinians are recruited for terrorist operations by Arab intelligence agencies.
Israeli troops were reported to have moved 30 tanks into their self-proclaimed “security zone” in southern Lebanon, security sources reported in Beirut. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the armor was concentrated in the northernmost salient of the Israeli-occupied zone that juts into the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. The reported buildup. could not immediately be confirmed. The security sources also reported that a militiaman of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army was killed and four were wounded when guerrillas ambushed them in the Bekaa Valley.
Israeli policies on the West Bank that promised an improvement in the “quality of life” for Palestinians have left a record that is being questioned by some in Israel and the West Bank. Interviews with Israeli experts on the region and military officials, as well as with Palestinian lawyers, teachers, editors and businessmen, suggest that Israel’s record on improvements is ambiguous at best.
Gunmen in West Beirut ambushed a pro-Syrian politician, state-owned Beirut radio said. Witnesses said three men wearing armbands opened fire with machine guns on Antoine Alam’s car near the offices of Lebanon’s Syrian National Social Party. Alam, an official of the party, had emergency surgery for stomach wounds. His condition was not immediately known and it is not clear who staged the ambush. Meanwhile, militiamen of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian unit, seized all copies of the weekly magazine Al Massira, which contained an article critical of the recent truce agreement.
Syria removed its missiles from Lebanon, at least temporarily, Reagan Administration officials said. The deployment of the antiaircraft missiles had raised fears of an Israeli-Syrian clash. The pullback was viewed by officials as at least a transitory easing of tension in the Middle East. But officials were still considering a possible military response against Libya for its purported help for the terrorist attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports. No high-level meetings were reported today, and aides sought to suggest there was no particular timetable for a response.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli Army spokesman declined to comment on the Syrian pullback, but Israeli sources, although saying the move had apparently occurred, cautioned that its military significance was limited. They said the missiles were still in the same general area and posed a threat to Israeli planes patrolling Lebanese airspace. The Syrian missiles, Soviet-made SAM-6’s and SAM-8’s, are easily transported on trucks and tracked vehicles and were first withdrawn from Lebanon early last month after Israel had expressed concern about them. They were reintroduced at the end of the month in a step that was seen as a political challenge to Israel. American officials did not say how they knew of the latest withdrawal, but such information is known to come from satellite photos.
The Administration’s concerns over Libya, long focused on that country’s attempts to undermine neighboring pro-Western governments, have heightened in the last week with charges that Libya supported Palestinian terrorists who attacked the Rome and Vienna airports. If the charges are true — and the evidence is only circumstantial — it would be an ominous development, in the view of Administration officials. They say this is a new combination of three elements: the Abu Nidal group, one of the world’s best-trained terrorist organizations, with a supply of young men willing to go on near-suicide missions, and backing from a Government with an aggressive record. “It is getting more dangerous,” said a State Department official who specializes in watching terrorism. More guerrillas seem to be “willing to have their heads blown off,” he said.
The Afghan Government radio reported today that government forces had killed many anti-Communist rebels in recent clashes and captured large amounts of weaponry. It said 62 guerrillas had surrendered. The report did not say how many guerrillas had been killed by security forces, but it said 51 rebels had surrendered in Badakhshan Province in the northeast and 11 had surrendered in Kunar Province in the east. Among the large caches of arms and ammunition captured or destroyed, the radio said, were 41 ground-to-ground missiles, 7 mortars and 8 rocket launchers. The government bars Western journalists from the country, and reports from inside Afghanistan can rarely be checked independently.
A Tamil separatist group has asserted that it is poisoning Sri Lanka’s vital tea exports. The Government, although insisting the assertions are false, says it is “not taking any chances.” Major Montague Jayawickreme, the head of the Ministry of Plantation Industries, said that his agency was monitoring all tea exports and that the rebels’ report was false. The Minister of National Security, Lalith Athulathmudali, said: “Although the threat is a sure hoax, we are not taking any chances. We have taken all precautionary measures.” He said authorities were investigating and had alerted tea producers, brokers and exporters. No tea shipments have been recalled, he said. The officials’ comments came in response to a letter from a small Tamil guerrilla group, the Tamil Eelam Army, to diplomatic missions in Colombo, asserting that it had poisoned Sri Lanka tea with potassium cyanide. The Tamil Eelam Army wrote to the missions of the United States, Australia, Canada and Britain, among others. Sri Lanka earned $500 million from tea exports in 1984.
China has stepped up its border attacks on Vietnam in the last week in an effort to deter Hanoi from beginning dry-seaon operations against guerrilla armies in Cambodia, a Vietnamese general said today. According to the officer, Major General Trần Công Mân, a veteran combat commander against both the French and the Americans and now editor of People’s Army, the Chinese began on December 28 “to create maximum military pressure on Vietnam so that they could prevent a major offensive in Cambodia.” He said Peking, to “realize its promise to the Khmer reactionaries,” had been firing up to 20,000 shells a day into four border provinces, most of them aimed at the Vị Xuyên district of Hà Tuyên Province. He added that over the last month there had been two battalion-sized infantry assaults in that district.
The Taiwanese government said that it will continue to bar its citizens from visiting China, although many have made trips there. A Cabinet statement reiterating the ban followed a motion in Parliament asking the Nationalist government to clarify its policy since thousands of Taiwanese travel to China every year through Hong Kong or Japan. The statement said Taiwan, which is still technically at war with China, will suspend the passports of any citizens who visit the mainland.
In an effort to insure a fair election in the Philippines on February 7, a Filipino opposition group based in New York has started an international program in which people are being asked to “adopt” a polling precinct. The group, the Ninoy Aquino Movement for Peace, Freedom and Democracy said in a statement that with a $50 donation, a contributor can help finance the dispatch of election supervisors to one of the 90,000 polling districts. Ninoy was the nickname of the opposition leader, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who was assassinated in 1983.
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on U.S. relations with Mexico and Canada.
The Colombian government charged that rifles used by guerrillas in November’s bloody takeover of the Palace of Justice in Bogota came from the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. In a letter to his Nicaraguan counterpart, Miguel D’Escoto, Colombian Foreign Minister Augusto Ramirez demanded a “prompt and satisfactory explanation” of how the arms fell into the hands of M-19 guerrillas. The 27-hour ordeal ended after an army assault on the building. More than 100 people were killed in the takeover, including 12 Supreme Court justices and all the attacking guerrillas.
A human rights organization based in the United States has accused Colombia’s armed forces of being responsible for summary executions, torture and “disappearances” in its campaign against leftist guerrillas. In a report made public today, the organization, Americas Watch, also accused the armed forces of trying to “derail” President Belisario Betancur’s efforts to negotiate a peace agreement with an array of rebel groups after almost four decades of political violence in Colombia. Americas Watch said some kidnappings and killings of civilian noncombatants had been carried out by leftist guerrillas, but it blamed the armed forces for “the great majority of violent abuses of human rights.” “Despite Betancur’s good intentions, the army and police continue to violate human rights with impunity,” the report said. It also said that, with large areas of Colombia under military control, paramilitary death squads operated freely and were responsible for 1,455 assassinations between early 1982 and August 1985. Some 540 people are listed as “disappeared.”
Burkina Faso will soon release all Malians taken prisoner in a five-day border war, this country’s leader said Friday night. Speaking at a mass meeting, the leader, Captain Thomas Sankara, did not say how many Malian soldiers had been captured in the conflict, which ended on Monday after mediation by neighboring countries. International Red Cross officials have visited prisoners on both sides in the last few days. Burkina Faso troops displayed several captured armored vehicles and tanks at the mass meeting, and Captain Sankara presented combat decorations to soldiers.
The British trustees who administer the Rhodes Scholarships plan to ask the British Government for permission to change a provision in the founder’s will restricting two of the scholarships awarded yearly in South Africa to schools that admit only whites. The decision to ask whether the bequest of Cecil J. Rhodes may be altered represents a shift in the trustees’ policy and comes after two years of dispute between them and Rhodes Scholars. In speeches, in a petition drive, and in articles in The American Oxonian, an alumni quarterly, scholarship recipients, mostly Americans and Canadians, have said that the process for awarding the South African scholarships is unfair to blacks, whose labor built the fortune that finances the awards. Since the scholarships were founded at Mr. Rhodes’s death in 1902 to provide outstanding youths, mostly from British colonies or former colonies, with two or three years of paid study at Oxford University, nearly 700 South Africans have won. Only about a half dozen have been nonwhites.
Two whites were killed and two others wounded today when their pickup truck hit a land mine in the north of the country, close to the Botswana border, the South African military said. The blast, about 18 miles north of Ellisras, followed a spate of mine attacks last month further east, near the border with Zimbabwe. Six whites died in one incident on December 15. A bomb blast south of Durban on December 23 killed five whites, bringing the white death toll in three weeks to 13.
Transportation officials say President Reagan, as part of his budget for the fiscal year 1987, will propose combining Federal aid to highways and mass transit in a single grant with reduced funds. Under the proposal, city and state officials could use the money for highways, subways or buses, depending on local needs, but the total amount of Federal money available for mass transit — $4.1 billion last year — would be reduced by 40 percent or more. The proposal, which is subject to approval by Congress, is set forth in a “concept paper” and in draft legislation prepared by the Department of Transportation. Administration officials gave additional details in interviews this week, saying the new consolidated grant would be the major source of Federal aid to mass transit. But there would still be other sources of highway funds, probably more than $9 billion, independent of the block grant, the officials added.
Senator Gary Hart said today that he would not run for re-election this year and all but announced plans to seek the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1988. “My work has yet to be done,” Mr. Hart told a group of supporters at a restaurant in the mountains outside Denver, near his log cabin in a place called Troublesome Gulch. “As I forge some role to help move our party and our country into the future, I won’t be coy about my plans.” He added: “Does that mean I’m making some announcement about ’88? Nope. Does it mean I still have an interest in being President? Yep.” Mr. Hart said he was confident he could win the Senate race but had decided the time had come for him to find new ways to focus attention “on our unmet agenda for the future.”
The Defense Department’s assistant secretary for health affairs, Dr. William E. Mayer, has proposed halting the sale of cigarettes in military commissaries and raising the price of those sold in military exchanges to cut down on what he considers excessive smoking, Pentagon sources said. According to Pentagon data, 52.2% of service personnel under the age of 20 smoke, contrasted with 21.2% of high school seniors. A directive containing Mayer’s proposals is awaiting a decision by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, but there has been a delay, one source said, because tobacco revenue is a politically sensitive issue.
Political farm groups could tilt this year’s Congressional elections. Of the 100 to 150 groups formed since the farm economy began its precipitous decline in 1981, more than half were founded in the last 20 months, according to farm organizers. Virtually all the new groups describe themselves as “populist” and “progressive.” With 22 Republican Senate seats up in 1986, half from farm states, the movement leaders say if their groups support Democrats, Republican control of the Senate could end.
The Department of Transportation gave the Federal Aviation Administration’s Alaska division poor marks for 1985, saying it failed to enforce air travel regulations “vigorously.” A department audit cited Alaska’s FAA officials for failing to conduct inspections, reducing violators’ sanctions without justification and for operating a penalty collection process that “is susceptible to fraud or abuse.” FAA officials said they disagree with some of the audit’s findings but that they would comply with the audit’s recommendations.
The Food and Drug Administration said it will check on a finding that a Peruvian coca tea sold in the United States contains active cocaine. The report, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said that drinking two cups a day of Health Inca Tea could cause mild stimulation and mood elevation. It also noted that the tea leaves are sometimes chewed or smoked, and that some therapy centers use it to help addicts withdraw from cocaine.
A worker at a nuclear facility in Gore, Oklahoma died today after inhaling acid formed when a 14-ton cylinder ruptured, releasing a cloud of radioactive gas. The gas, a form of uranium used at the Kerr-McGee Corporation’s Sequoyah plant to manufacture fuel for nuclear reactors, combined with the air to form the acid, which injured more than 70 other workers and nearby residents, officials said. The injured were treated at Sequoyah Memorial Hospital where 26 were admitted for observation and treatment of exposure to the acid. A plume of white smoke shot into the air above the plant as the tank ruptured and the heated gas reacted with the colder air. But winds of nearly 30 miles per hour “dissipated” the gas, said Clyde Wisner, director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s office in Bedford, Texas.
The senior United States military medical officer in Europe says 12 special medical teams have been formed and trained to handle casualties arising from terrorist attacks. The officer, Major General William H. Greendyke of the Air Force, said in an interview here that teams were alerted to render medical help in at least three terrorist episodes but had not been put in action. He said the teams had run through 50 training drills in 1985. The general said the teams had been alerted during the hijacking of a Trans World Airlines plane to Beirut, the hijacking of an Egyptair plane to Malta and the capture of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.
A Federal court has called off Monday’s start of nationwide drug testing for 250,000 railroad workers until it can rule on union contentions that the program amounts to unreasonable search. In a 2-to-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted Friday to stop imposition of the breath, blood and urine test program developed by the Department of Transportation. Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Dorothy W. Nelson of the appellate court agreed to stop enactment of the regulations, which gives the court time to hear the union appeal. Judge Charles E. Wiggins dissented.
Prison guards cleaned up wreckage in a wing of the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville and searched for weapons possibly hidden by about 200 convicts during a two-day riot that claimed the lives of three inmates believed to be informers. Deputy Corrections Commissioner William Whyte said it was “solid speculation” that the three inmates were charged, convicted and executed by a kangaroo court, apparently for being informers. Officials said all missing prisoners were accounted for.
Mary Lund, the first woman to receive an artificial heart, is breathing well without the aid of a respirator, doctors at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis reported. Dr. Mark Pritzker described Lund, 40, as “awake, alert and talking” with visitors since a breathing tube was removed, and said she is now believed to have a 50-50 chance of surviving with the Jarvik-7 pump implanted in her chest on December 18.
Volunteers searching a wooded hillside near Seattle found another set of skeletal remains that could be linked to the so-called Green River killer, who may have killed as many as 34 young women, many of them prostitutes, since 1982, police said. The latest discovery followed the finding earlier last week of the skeletal remains of two young women in the same area. The remains of those two victims have not been identified, but investigators are convinced they should be added to the list of murders attributed to the Green River killer.
National Guardsmen worked around the clock today to build up a levee in southwestern Idaho and prevent millions of tons of sewage from spilling into the Snake River and contaminating water supplies. A 40-mile ice jam has caused flooding downstream. Officials feared that the rising water could flood sewage treatment lagoons, causing 15 million tons of partially treated sewage to spill into the river and spoil water supplies in towns along the Idaho-Oregon border. Five National Guard units equipped with 12 dump trucks were dispatched Friday afternoon by Governor John V. Evans after he declared three Idaho counties emergency disaster areas. The ice jam forced at least a dozen families to evacuate their homes earlier this week.
Negotiations between the Newspaper Guild and a prospective buyer of the shut-down St. Louis Globe-Democrat broke off, and no more sessions were scheduled, said Robert Steinke, executive secretary of Guild Local 47. Steinke said he had called a special meeting of the 250 Globe-Democrat union members for Wednesday to report on the talks. The Guild and Veritas Corp., which has the approval of a federal judge to purchase the paper, must reach an agreement before the sale can be completed.
The police arrested 37 protesters and 10 people were injured today in a rally by at least 10,000 people to bring attention to a six-month labor strike by pressmen and mailers at The Chicago Tribune. Strikers tried to stop truck drivers from delivering early editions of Sunday’s newspaper by throwing rocks and bricks at the vehicles.
After two decades of increasing numbers of divorces in the United States, the government is reporting a second consecutive year when fewer marriages were dissolved. The new figures, released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics, showed a 1 percent decline in 1983, after a 4 percent drop in 1982. There were 1,158,000 divorces in the United States in 1983, 12,000 fewer than 1982, the center said. Figures for those years were the most recent complete data available. The declines reversed a two-decade trend that had seen the number of divorces in the United States reach a high of 1,213,000 in 1981.
A new view of the cosmos shows that it is composed of a gigantic sea of bubbles to which the stars and galaxies cling. Scientists say this view of the universe, obtained with a new three-dimensional map, could require basic revisions in current theories regarding evolution. If the bubble structure is further defined by more mapping, they say, it could support a theory that vast powerful explosions — not the forces of gravity — were the primary shapers of the cosmos.
Christopher Isherwood died of cancer Saturday at his home in California. His stories were the basis for the play and movie “I Am a Camera,” and the Broadway musical and movie “Cabaret.” He was 81 years old.
NCAA basketball’s David Robinson blocks a record 14 shots.
NFL Divisional Playoffs:
Cleveland Browns 21, Miami Dolphins 24
The Miami Dolphins pulled out a comeback win, defeating the Cleveland Browns in their AFC playoff game, 24–21. Barely making the playoffs with an 8–8 record, Cleveland hardly seemed a match for the 12–4 defending AFC champion Dolphins. However, the Browns jumped to a 21–3 lead midway through the third quarter, but the Dolphins then scored 21 unanswered points — the final touchdown with 1:57 left to play. Aided by a 17-yard run from Woody Bennett on the first play of the game, Miami scored on their opening drive with a 51-yard field goal by Fuad Reveiz. Cleveland later marched 82 yards in 10 plays, mainly on the strength of their ground game, with Kevin Mack rushing for 12, Curtis Dickey picking up 9, and Earnest Byner’s 15-yard carry taking them into the red zone. Bernie Kosar eventually finished the drive with a 16-yard touchdown pass to tight end Ozzie Newsome to give the Browns a 7–3 lead. In the second quarter, Miami got two big chances to score, but came up empty both times. First, they threatened to score with a drive to a first down on the Cleveland 36-yard line. But the Browns defense stepped up, forcing two incompletions and a run for no gain, and the Dolphins decided to punt rather than risk another long field goal. On the Browns next drive, Paul Lankford intercepted Kosar and returned the ball to the Cleveland 25-yard line. Miami then drove to the 6-yard line, only to lose the ball when Dan Marino was picked off in the end zone by Browns safety Don Rogers, who returned it 45 yards to set up a 21-yard rushing touchdown from Byner, increasing the lead to 14–3. Miami responded with a drive to the Browns 29-yard line, but Reveiz missed a 47-yard field goal attempt as time expired in the half.
Byner ran for a 66-yard touchdown with 11:03 left in the third quarter, the longest play in Cleveland’s postseason history, to give Cleveland a 21–3 lead. However, Miami then controlled the rest of the game. A 13-play 74-yard drive, aided by a 15-yard late hit penalty against Cleveland and a 15-yard reception by Mark Clayton, was capped by Marino’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Nat Moore. Miami’s defense quickly forced a punt, and Jeff Gossett’s kick went just 26 yards to the Browns 49-yard line. From there it took just five plays to score on a 31-yard burst by Ron Davenport, who trucked right through Rogers and linebacker Clarence Weathers on the way to the end zone. Browns receiver Glen Young gave his team a chance to get their momentum back with a 35-yard kickoff return to the 42-yard line. But after a holding penalty wiped out a first down run, Cleveland could not recover and had to punt. In the fourth quarter, Marino got the team rolling on a 74-yard, 10-play drive for the game winning score, connecting with halfback Tony Nathan for a 39-yard gain (the longest reception of the day from either team) to the Browns 35-yard line, and later finding tight end Bruce Hardy for 18 yards inside the Cleveland red zone. On the first play after the two-minute warning, Davenport went into the end zone on a 1-yard score with 1:57 left to give the Dolphins the lead, 24–21. Cleveland then took the ball and tried to drive for the tying field goal, but on the game’s last play, Byner was tackled on the Miami 45-yard line as time expired. Byner finished the game with 161 rushing yards and two touchdowns on just 16 carries, while also catching four passes for 25 yards. Nathan rushed for 21 yards and caught 10 passes for 101 yards. Marino was 25/45 for 238 yards with a touchdown and an interception. Cleveland racked up a whopping 251 rushing yards against the Dolphins defense, which turned out to be an omen of what lay in store for them in the AFC Championship Game. This was the second postseason meeting between the Browns and Dolphins. Miami won the only previous meeting.
Dallas Cowboys 0, Los Angeles Rams 20
Los Angeles Rams’ running back Eric Dickerson scores twice as he rushes for an NFL postseason record 248 yards in leading the Rams to a 20–0 victory over the Dallas Cowboys in a NFC divisional playoff in Anaheim, California. LA’s defense held the Cowboys to 243 yards and forced six turnovers. Rams receiver Henry Ellard’s 23-yard punt return to the Dallas 38-yard line and 21-yard reception on the next play set up the first score of the game, a 33-yard field goal by Mike Lansford 5:19 into the first quarter. This ended up being the only score of the first half, while Ellard’s 21-yard catch ended up being nearly half of the Rams total passing yards (47) for the entire game.
Rams’ running back Charles White returned the second half kickoff (a squib kick by punter Mike Saxon, who had replaced injured kicker Rafael Septién) 14 yards to the Rams 45-yard line. Dickerson scored on a 55-yard touchdown run on the next play, giving the Rams a 10–0 lead. On the ensuing kickoff, Kenny Duckett fumbled, and the ball was recovered by Vince Newsome on the Dallas 18 to set up Lansford’s second field goal. In the fourth quarter, Dallas managed to reach the Rams 20-yard line, but Kevin Greene sacked Cowboys quarterback Danny White on third down. Now on 4th and 14 from the Rams 24 and without their injured kicker, the Cowboys seemed unsure of what to do. First they sent their field goal unit in, with linebacker Brian Salonen, who played kicker in college, lined up to make the kick. This caused the Rams to sense a potential fake try, so they kept their regular defense on the field. Then Dallas called a timeout and sent their regular offense back to try and convert the fourth down, which failed as White’s pass was batted away. The Cowboys defense subsequently forced a punt, but Gordon Banks muffed the kick and Rams cornerback Jerry Gray recovered the ball to set up Dickerson’s 40-yard rushing touchdown.
This was Tom Landry’s final postseason game as the Cowboys head coach, and also the final NFL playoff game at Anaheim Stadium. The Rams would not host another NFL postseason game until 1999, the team’s fifth season following their 1995 relocation to St. Louis. The Rams would not host another playoff game as the Los Angeles Rams until 2017. It would be their record breaking eighth playoff meeting between the two teams and the last one until the 2018 season. Rams defensive end Gary Jeter finished the game with three sacks, while Gray had a fumble recovery and an interception. The Rams won despite a dismal day for their 34-year old rookie quarterback Dieter Brock, who completed just 6 of 22 passes for 50 yards and was intercepted once. “It seemed like we just gave up,” said Dallas future hall of fame running back Tony Dorsett, who was held to just 58 rushing yards, though he did catch 8 passes for 80. “We should have gone back to Dallas and gave them the ball game at halftime.” “As far as playoff games go, I don’t think we’ve ever been dominated like we were today,” added White, who was sacked five times and threw three interceptions. This was the eighth postseason meeting between the Cowboys and Rams. Dallas had won four of the previous seven meetings.
Born:
Steve Slaton, NFL running back (Houston Texans, Miami Dolphins), in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
Deon Butler, NFL wide receiver (Seattle Seahawks), in Woodbridge, Virginia.
Payal Kapadia, Indian filmmaker, (“All We Imagine as Light” — 2024 winner of the Cannes Grand Prix), in Mumbai, India.
Died:
Phil Lynott, 36, Irish rock musician (Thin Lizzy — “The Boys Are Back in Town”), of pneumonia and heart failure due to septicaemia due to compplications from heroin addiction.
Christopher Isherwood, 81, English and American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
History Diaries 