If a major nonnuclear conflict broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Navy might seek to attack Soviet strategic submarines, the Navy officially acknowledged. The contemplated action, using conventional weapons, would be intended to tip the nuclear balance in favor of the United States and induce the Soviet Union to end the conflict on terms favorable to American forces, according to the Navy. In the past, some senior Navy officials have declined to commit themselves publicly to such a strategy. In an interview in November, the Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman Jr., said it was “not necessarily” United States strategy to attack Soviet strategic submarines in a nonnuclear war. Some critics have said that Navy attacks using conventional weapons against Soviet submarines carrying long-range nuclear missiles would put pressure on the Soviet Union to use nuclear weapons in response and would increase the risk that a conventional conflict would turn into a nuclear war.
Three Irish nationalist prisoners ended a monthlong hunger strike in Northern Ireland, officials said. The three inmates in Maze prison near Belfast accepted food after one said he was told that the appeal of his murder conviction will be heard, according to a member of the British Parliament who met with the prisoners. Ulster officials said no concessions were granted to the members of the Irish National Liberation Army, a splinter group of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. The three are among 27 nationalists who were convicted in a non-jury trial of murder and other crimes based on the uncorroborated testimony of a self-confessed murderer who turned police informer. Ten Irish nationalist prisoners starved themselves to death in 1971.
Antony A. Acland, 55, the top civil servant in the British Foreign Office, has been named ambassador to the United States and will succeed Oliver Wright in the post in September, the Foreign Office announced. Acland joined the foreign service in 1953 and was a Mideast and Arabic specialist in the early part of his career. In 1982, he was named to his present postForeign Office permanent undersecretary of state and head of the diplomatic service. Wright has served in Washington since 1982, when he was recalled from retirement.
A conservative French publisher has challenged the Socialist Government by buying a newspaper in violation of a law curbing the size of his holdings. An announcement that Robert Hersant had bought a major Lyons newspaper was seen as an effort to embarrass the Socialists in advance of the March 17 elections.
An group working on behalf of Soviet Jews said today that it planned an information campaign to show that Moscow could not be trusted on arms accords if it did not allow freer emigration. Morris B. Abram, chairman of the group, known as the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, said that if emigration was not liberalized by the time Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, visits the United States, demonstrations “as never before” would be held “to make the point that the Soviet Union cannot be trusted on arms.” The date for the visit has not yet been set. President Reagan has proposed the second half of June, and the Soviet side a later date, perhaps in September.
Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky has been sentenced to a new six-month term in a Soviet labor camp jail, his wife, Avital, said in Jerusalem. She said she recently heard from relatives in Moscow that her husband was sentenced in October to a new jail term in the Ural Mountains labor camp because he staged a hunger strike to protest not receiving his mail. Shcharansky, 38, was sentenced in 1977 to three years in prison and 10 years in a labor camp on charges of spying for the United States.
Yelena G. Bonner, the Soviet dissident, will undergo a heart bypass operation in the near future because medication has failed to improve her heart ailment, her family and doctors said today Her son-in-law, Efrem Yankelevich, said the operation would probably take place sometime after this week. A spokesman for Massachusetts General Hospital, Martin Bander, said Miss Bonner’s surgeon had not been selected.
Branko Mikulic, a hard-liner known for his opposition to Western ideas and criticism of internal dissidents, has been officially proposed as the next Yugoslav Prime Minister, the official press agency said today. The agency, Tanyug, said the collective eight-member state presidency had proposed Mr. Mikulic, a Croat, to succeed Prime Minister Milka Planinc, whose four-year mandate expires in May.
A conservative publisher has challenged the country’s Socialist Government by buying a newspaper in violation of a law curbing the size of his press holdings. An announcement over the weekend that Robert Hersant had purchased the principal Lyons newspaper, Le Progres, has caused a sensation in French political circles, where it was seen as a calculated attempt to embarrass President Francois Mitterrand’s Socialists during the campaign for the March 17 elections. In what was seen as a deliberate display of contempt for the Socialists’ efforts to limit his holdings, Mr. Hersant did not consult the Commission for the Openness and Pluralism of the Press, a body set up by the Government to review compliance with the 1984 law restricting press ownership. Last year, when Mr. Hersant bought a Reims paper called L’Union, he sought to get around the new law by making the purchase through his son Philippe. But this time he took over Le Progres in his own name.
An official of the International Chess Federation said there is no immediate decision on whether to take action against world champion Gary Kasparov for failure to meet a January 6 deadline to agree to a rematch with Anatoly Karpov. Federation President Florencio Campomanes, who was unavailable for comment, said last week that Kasparov would lose his title unless he agreed to the rematch by the deadline. But Lim Kok An, secretary general of the federation, said at its headquarters in Lucerne, Switzerland, that expiration of the deadline does not mean that Kasparov automatically loses his title.
The Pope named seven bishops on Epiphany. The one American appointed is Auxiliary Bishop Donald Wuerl of Seattle.
Immigration to Israel has fallen to its lowest annual level since the Jewish state was created in 1948, official statistics showed. In 1985, 11,298 immigrants arrived in Israel, 41% fewer than in 1984, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption said. The 1985 figure includes about 8,000 Ethiopian Jews. The previous low was 11,326 in 1953. “One problem is the economic difficulties we are experiencing,” ministry spokesman Gad Ben-Ari said. “It doesn’t make Israel attractive right now.” Immigration from the Soviet Union last year was 342, nearly the same figure as 1984. The publication of the Government statistics came at a time when some Israeli politicians have expressed concern about the possibility that the population of Arabs under Israeli control may grow numerically large enough to match the Jewish population.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said today that Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir had agreed to submit an Egyptian proposal for improved relations to key Israeli Cabinet ministers. The proposal by President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was said to hinge on Israel’s acceptance of international arbitration in a border dispute.
The White House has received intelligence information that as many as 15 camps have been set up in Libya to train Palestinian guerrillas and other terrorists, an Administration official said today. The official also said President Reagan would probably issue in the next few days “a clarification of what we know” about purported Libyan links to international terrorism. The existence of such links was denied on Sunday by the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, who said there were no Palestinian training camps in Libya. Mr. Reagan plans to announce additional United States economic sanctions against Libya at a nationally televised news conference on Tuesday evening, a senior Administration official said tonight. The official said the new sanctions were a retaliation for what the Administration has said is Libya’s role in supporting international terrorism, including attacks Dec. 27 at airports in Rome and Vienna in which five Americans were among the 19 people killed. The official declined to discuss details of the new sanctions. While the imposition of United States economic sanctions against Libya in 1981 has sharply limited trade between the two countries, some economic ties still exist, and presumably these could be severed under the new sanctions.
A Soviet Government spokesman said today that the United States was making “direct threats” against Libya and was not interested in a peaceful resolution of their differences. The spokesman, Vladimir B. Lomeiko of the Foreign Ministry, declined to say at a news conference what action the Soviet Union would take if the United States blockaded Libyan ports. His remarks were the first Soviet comment on the recent tensions.
Four people were killed and 15 wounded today in attacks in the Sikh stronghold of India’s Punjab State. The press agency Press Trust of India said gunmen killed two people and injured two other people at a gasoline station in the Jullundur district. Hours earlier a 60-year-old woman was stabbed to death in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar, where the Golden Temple, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, is situated. Gunmen also killed a flour mill owner in Gurdaspur district on the border with Pakistan, the agency said. Most of India’s 14 million Sikhs live in Punjab and form its majority. Hindus make up the rest. Nearly 60 people have died since October in attacks ascribed to extremists fighting for an independent Sikh nation in Punjab.
Two days of high-level talks between the United States and Vietnam on the issue of Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War ended today with both sides expressing satisfaction with negotiations but calling for quicker progress on unresolved cases. It was announced that a round of technical discussions would take place late next month to consider what the Vietnamese described as 50 new reports of remains. The two sides also talked about the opening of an American technical office here but decided such a move was unnecessary at this point, according to the American side. The United States delegation, the highest to come to Vietnam since the war, was led by Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard L. Armitage, who spoke to reporters after the final session today. He was joined at the news conference by Hoàng Bích Sơn, the Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister, who headed Hanoi’s delegation.
The young Chinese business official removed his spectacles, polished them with his handkerchief and leaned forward across his desk. “Off the record?” he said, using a phrase acquired during graduate study at an Ivy League college in the United States. “Last year I thought a capitalist enclave surviving inside the borders of a Communist country was unlikely. After what we’ve seen lately I’d say it was probably not workable at all.” A year after the Peking ceremony that sealed Britain’s agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997, an air of skepticism has seized many among the colony’s well-to-do Chinese. Among the merchants, the lawyers and the brokers who are the opinion leaders in the population of 5.5 million, it is probably only a minority now who believe that China will fulfill the spirit of the promises it made in the joint declaration concluded on Dec. 19, 1984.
Corazon C. Aquino pledged she would not allow any Communists in her Cabinet if she defeats President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines’ elections Feb. 7. Mrs. Aquino, the widow of the assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., challenged Mr. Marcos “to put up or shut up” on his repeated assertions that the opposition was “bedding with Communists.” At a news conference Thursday in the northern city of Baguio, Mrs. Aquino dismissed Mr. Marcos’s statements, saying, “I would be the last person in the world to be a Communist.” But she said: “So long as Communists renounce all forms of violence, we welcome them into the government.
In a new year speech to the nation, Mexico’s President Miguel de la Madrid hailed cordial relations with the United States and spoke glowingly about his meeting last week with President Reagan. De la Madrid listed the following among summit benefits: advances in commercial negotiations and financial support; new investments; cooperation to clean up pollution along the border, and cooperation in the fight against narcotics traffic. “We will maintain this policy of fruitful neighborliness and of loyal and dignified friendship,” he said.
General Samuel K. Doe freed 18 politicians and journalists from jail today as he was sworn in as Liberia’s elected President, less than two months after stopping an attempted coup. “I offer to our political opponents the olive branch of peace,” General Doe said at the ceremony, which also marked the West African nation’s official return to civilian rule.
20,000 workers have been dismissed for refusing to halt a platinum mine strike, Impala Platinum (Gencor), South Africa’s second-largest mining company announced. It said it would not rehire those it had dismissed, representing two-thirds of the workforce, and vowed to dismiss the remaining 10,000 workers if they did not return to their jobs today. All of the workers are nonwhite.
South Africa’s Impala mine, from which 20,000 striking miners were dismissed yesterday, is among the world’s largest producers of platinum and a major supplier of the precious metal to the United States, according to precious metals analysts. The United States imports nearly all of the platinum it uses each year from South Africa, and the Impala mine produces more than 40 percent of South Africa’s annual platinum output, the analysts said. Given the prospect that a continued strike might disrupt supplies, the market price of platinum jumped yesterday. On the New York Mercantile Exchange platinum rose by $14.90, to $358.70 an ounce. Volume on the exchange was 7,800 contracts.
Bishop Desmond M. Tutu yesterday thanked Americans who have protested against apartheid, but chastised those who have not supported the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa. Speaking at a news conference at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, Bishop Tutu, the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg and the 1984 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, said many Americans were citing the possible suffering that sanctions would cause black South Africans as an excuse for not supporting such measures. “For goodness sake, let people not use us as an alibi for not doing the things they know they ought to do,” he said. “We are suffering now, and this kind of suffering seems to be going to go on and on and on. If additional suffering is going to put a terminus to our suffering, then we will accept it.”
The Administration said today that assertions that President Reagan’s military buildup was threatened by a balanced-budget law were based on a “worst case scenario” that Congress could avoid by cutting other programs. In a pointed response placing responsibility for the future level of military spending on Congress, Larry Speakes, the chief White House spokesman, said Mr. Reagan remained committed to a 3 percent increase in the Pentagon’s budget above a rise to account for inflation in the next fiscal year. Mr. Speakes said Mr. Reagan believed such an increase could still be achieved under the legislation. Similarly, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said that across-the-board cuts that would be mandated under the legislation would not be necessary if Congress would “act reponsibily” and approve the spending cuts that Mr. Reagan proposes. Passing Responsibility “It’s in Congress’s hands,” Mr. Weinberger said.
The STS-61-C Columbia space shuttle mission is scrubbed at T-31 seconds because of a liquid oxygen valve problem. The shuttle Columbia’s return to space after a two-year layoff was delayed again today, this time because of troubles with a valve in the oxygen lines leading to the shuttle’s main engines. Last month the launching was first delayed when ground crews fell behind schedule, and a second time when problems with a secondary rocket engine forced ground controllers to abort the countdown just 14 seconds before liftoff. Space agency officials rescheduled Columbia’s liftoff for Tuesday at 7:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, barring further problems. According to Air Force meteorologists, Tuesday’s forecast calls for clouds and a chance of rain.
The State Department, Pentagon and CIA have suppressed reports that dozens of American prisoners of the Vietnam War have been held alive in recent years in Southeast Asia, present and former military and intelligence officers charged in affidavits filed in federal court in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Six people, some of whom said they personally saw American prisoners of war as recently as four months ago in Vietnam and Laos, accused the intelligence community and the U.S. Embassy in Thailand of quashing witness accounts. The State Department and CIA had no immediate comment.
Officials replaced Paul N. Carlin as Postmaster General after only one year in office. His successor is Albert V. Casey, a former chairman and president of American Airlines. Mr. Carlin, a career postal executive, reportedly dissatisfied both the board of governors and the top career managers of the Postal Service. Detractors call him inept.
President Reagan receives a call from Tom Benson, owner of the New Orleans Saints professional football team.
President Reagan participates in a meeting with Ezra Taft Benson, President of the Church of Latter-day Saints.
A new budget-balancing law prompted more opposition. Twelve members of Congress charged the statute was unconstitutional because it would delegate to three unelected officials the legislative responsibility of deciding how much money the Government should spend.
Federal Aviation Administration officials, conceding that many current air traffic controllers are less familiar with the mechanics of flying than their predecessors, announced a “fly-a-controller” program that seeks to familiarize controllers with the special problems of private airplanes. Private plane owners will take to the skies with controllers aboard in an effort to show them firsthand “what operating in an air traffic control environment is all about,” said John L. Baker, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. He said controllers often are unaware of the limitations of small planes in speed and climbing ability. He said the pilots, in turn, need to know more about traffic control procedures as well.
Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards said that he would call the Legislature into special session February 2-12 to consider a lottery for the state and casino gambling for metropolitan New Orleans as a way to offset “dreaded cuts” in services to education, the elderly and needy. A lottery should bring in $150 million the first year and increase to $250 million within a few years, he said. Casino gambling would create 100,000 new jobs and pump $2 billion a year into the metropolitan area, he said. The governor himself is a familiar figure at Nevada casinos, where federal prosecutors said he lost about $2 million between 1981 and 1984losses they cited as a motive for an alleged crooked business deal. Edwards’ recent trial on federal racketeering charges stemming from the venture ended in a hung jury.
The rash of corporate takeovers last year created a wealth of riches for stockholders of the acquired companies and helped send the stock market to a record high. But there is growing evidence that shareholders of the surviving company are no better off than they were before and that bondholders of both companies are often big losers.
General Dynamics’ monopoly as the builder of the Trident nuclear missile submarine has been of increasing concern to the Navy. In what officials said was a first step toward eventually breaking the monopoly, the Navy has offered a competing shipyard a contract to inspect and repair the newest Tridents.
Some low-level radiation escaped the grounds of a uranium-processing plant in Gore, Oklahoma, Saturday, a company official said. But the official, Robert Luke, said all significant radiation contamination from the accident had probably been contained on Kerr-McGee property.
Striking meatpackers demonstrated outside the plant of Geo. A. Hormel & Co. today after company officials said they would reopen next Monday despite a five-month strike. Police Chief Don Hoffman said 25 strikers from Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and their supporters began rallying at the plant at 5 AM while 60 cars drove around the perimeter. The demonstration was broken up about three hours later with no arrests. Daryl Arnold, the plant manager, said union members interested in working should report next Monday. In a letter to strikers Saturday, Mr. Arnold said, “The time has come to make work available for those who want to work.”
Twenty officers armed with shotguns and tear gas stormed a cell house at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, rescuing seven guards taken hostage in a brief inmate uprising that may have been staged to cover reprisals against informers, officials said. Three inmates were found bloodied and locked in their cells when officers quelled the 90-minute uprising at the 152-year-old, maximum-security prison, said Corrections Director Hal Farrier. Warden Crispus Nix said the three apparently were attacked by inmates who considered them “snitches.”
Two sons of a reputed organized crime leader in Milwaukee were acquitted for lack of evidence in federal court in Kansas City of conspiracy and racketeering charges in the skimming of $2 million from Las Vegas casinos. Although the motion for acquittal was made for all seven defendants, Joseph P. and John J. Balistrieri were the only two acquitted. Attorneys said it would take two or three weeks to present the case for the five remaining defendants. It was not known if any of the five would testify.
The Boston City Council elected the first black president in its 166-year history, naming ward Councilor Bruce Bolling leader of the 13-member panel. Bolling ousted five-term President Joseph Tierney by a 7-6 vote on the first ballot. Tierney, an at-large councilor, had held the gavel longer than anyone in the history of the council, established in 1820. Bolling is a member of Boston’s most politically powerful black family.
Several weeks ago, Mayor Harold Washington gleefully told reporters: ” ‘Council Wars’ are over. Peace has broken out. Come out of the cellar, Chicago. The bombing has stopped.” When the Mayor and the City Council then managed to agree on a $2.1 billion budget for 1986 more than a week before the deadline, Dec. 31, a first since he took office in April 1983, many people said maybe he was right. Since he became the first black to govern this city, Chicagoans have alternately displayed humorous tolerance, frustration and embarrassment at the raucous “Council Wars,” which on just about any subject found the majority bloc of 29 members led by Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak quarreling with the 21 who support the Mayor.
In an ornate Philadelphia courtroom, the only known adult survivor from the barricaded house of the radical group Move began defending herself today against charges stemming from the group’s confrontation with the police May 13. Arguing pretrial motions, the Move member, Ramona Johnson Africa, asserted that the nine charges against her should be dismissed because she had been arrested illegally. She also asked Judge Michael R. Stiles of Common Pleas Court to suppress all evidence, saying it had been illegally obtained. “It seems to me that every charge against me fits the police,” said Miss Africa, 30 years old, who sought and received permission to represent herself. “They fired 10,000 shots, set the house on fire where me and my family were, and killed my brothers and sisters.”
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the leader of Moral Majority, has agreed to serve as interim pastor of the Bangor Baptist Church until it recovers from the scandal generated by its founder’s admission in October that he had had an affair with a parishioner. The Falwell office in Lynchburg, Virginia, confirmed today that he would serve until a replacement could be found for the Rev. Buddy Frankland. Mr. Falwell said Mr. Frankland had assured him he was leaving the ministry after months of turmoil at the church, where membership has dropped sharply from its earlier 5,000. “Our prayers will continue to be offered for the Bangor Baptist Church and for Rev. and Mrs. Frankland that God will help them in their new life wherever they go,” Mr. Falwell said.
A rare Persian art collection is to be purchased by the Smithsonian Institution for $7 million. The collection remained in packing crates in New York for 40 years.
A halt in a pesticide use is sought by the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency proposed a ban on the use of diazinon on golf courses and sod farms because it has been killing wildlife.
The coyote is staging a comeback on the Texas range. The ravenous predator of lambs and goats is driving many ranchers to the edge of bankruptcy. They are buying guard dogs, hiring trappers and providing their herds with newly approved poison collars.
When Felipe Garza Jr. learned that his girlfriend needed a heart transplant, he told his mother three weeks ago: “I’m going to die, and I’m going to give my heart to my girlfriend.” Felipe, 15, had a premonition of his own death. The boy, who had seemed to be in perfect health, died Saturday after a blood vessel burst in his head. His family followed his wishes. Donna Ashlock, 14, also lives in the farming community of Patterson, California, where Felipe and his family worked. She had just learned that she had an enlarged heart and needed a transplant at the time when Felipe mentioned he would die to his half-brother, John Sanchez, 20. “I guess they were pretty close,” Sanchez said of Felipe and Donna. He said his brother complained of a pain on the left side of his head when he woke up Saturday. He was taken to a hospital in Modesto, where he was pronounced brain dead; a respirator was used to keep him alive. “We didn’t want to see him suffer any more, and what else could we do?” Sanchez asked. Felipe’s kidneys and eyes were saved for others, and Donna got his heart Sunday afternoon in an operation in San Francisco.
[Ed: Donna lived three years with her new heart before she followed Felipe into the dark, just before her 18th birthday.]
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1547.59 (-1.61)
Born:
Alex Turner, English rock singer-songwriter, and guitarist (Arctic Monkeys — “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”), in High Green, Sheffield, England, United Kingdom.
Scott Lehman, Canadian NHL defenseman (Atlanta Thrashers), in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
Irina Shayk, Russian model (Marc Jacobs SS16, Burberry SS19), in Yemanzhelinsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Died:
Louis Lebeer, 90, Belgian art historian, engraver, and academic.
History Diaries 