This will be the last successful shuttle landing for two-and-a-half years.
Only ten days after Columbia’s successful completion of the mission, Challenger launched for the ill-fated STS-51-L mission, which resulted in a loss of the vehicle and its seven-member crew one minute and thirteen seconds after liftoff.
Soviet officials confirmed today that the package of arms proposals offered by Mikhail S. Gorbachev last week included a new approach to the elimination of medium-range missiles in Europe. They also said the proposals signified no change in opposition to President Reagan’s space-based missile defense plan. Mr. Gorbachev had said that any progress in arms control was possible only if the United States renounced the “development, testing and deployment” of space weapons, and some American officials had shown interest in the fact that the statement made no mention of research. The officials — Georgi M. Korniyenko, a First Deputy Foreign Minister; Leonid M. Zamyatin, the head of Central Committee’s International Information Department, and Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, chief of the General Staff — discussed the latest arms proposals at a news conference. The proposals, announced Wednesday, include a three-stage plan for a elimination of the world’s nuclear weapons by the year 2000. It incorporates existing Soviet positions, but also introduced new elements.
Britain and France have decided to build a fixed transport link involving a twin rail tunnel but no immediate roadway under the Channel, according to reports in Britain’s Sunday newspapers. The Observer and The Sunday Telegraph said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain and President Francois Mitterrand had selected the $3.3 billion plan by Channel Tunnel Group-France Manche, calling for a fast-rail passenger route and shuttle trains for vehicles. Mrs. Thatcher’s office and the Ministry of Transport declined to comment on the reports, saying she and Mr. Mitterrand would announce their choice in Lille, France, on Monday. The Observer called the decision a defeat for Mrs. Thatcher since she had earlier expressed preference for a plan that would allow motorists to drive directly between the countries.
A letter by French President Francois Mitterrand to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev was reportedly instrumental in gaining exit visas for the son and mother-in-law of a Soviet emigre film director, Andrei Tarkovsky, Western diplomatic sources and friends of the family said. Tarkovsky, a renowned director lauded among others by Ingmar Bergman, decided with his wife in 1982 to stay in the West after Soviet authorities withheld exit visas for the relatives now about to leave. He went first to Italy, where he was directing the film “Nostalgia,” then in 1984 sought political asylum in France.
Young West Germans are backing off from the rebellious, anti-establishment values that gave birth to the leftist Green Party and fed the campaign against the stationing of American missiles in West Germany three years ago. A symbol of their conservative values in their shift away from political engagement is Boris Becker, the 18-year-old tennis star.
President Reagan’s attempt to impose an economic quarantine on Libya, and the lukewarm response of the Western European allies, has once again raised the question — asked by many Americans — of whether America’s allies are letting Washington down. Most Europeans — and many of the little band of Americans who deal professionally with trans-Atlantic relations — contend that there are perfectly reasonable explanations for European reactions to the crisis over terrorism as well as for European policies toward Lebanon and the war in Afghanistan. But they agree that the repeated disputes, and the frustration engendered among many ordinary Americans, constitute a danger to the solidarity of the Atlantic alliance that grew out of World War II. “A few months ago I was talking to a Texan,” one European ambassador said, “and he told me that Europe was ‘just an obsession of the New York establishment.’ Too many people in this country are already prepared to write us off that way. Now we are in a stormy time, and every fresh squall that blows up hurts Europe more.”
Some Administration officials have been considering proposals to abduct terrorists suspected of attacking Americans abroad and forcing them to face trial in U.S. courts, the New York Times reported. Although such proposals have not been approved, several people in the Middle East, thought to be involved in recent terrorist activities, were targets for abduction in contingency plans prepared by the CIA and the U.S. Marshals Service, the paper said.
A senior Palestinian guerrilla leader says that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian accused of having organized the Rome and Vienna airport massacres, receives various types of support from conservative Arab countries as well as radical movements and that he spends time in Iran. “Any state that finds it in its interest will support him,” said the Palestinian leader, Ahmed Jabril, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, in an interview in his Damascus headquarters. Mr. Jabril’s group is backed by Syria and Libya. “Abu Nidal has various relations with certain revolutionary movements around the world,” Mr. Jabril said. “They give him facilities here and there and some kind of assistance.”
Restarting the Arab-Israeli talks is the aim of an unannounced visit to Europe by the Reagan Administration’s top official on the Middle East, Administration officials said. Richard W. Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, met yesterday in London with King Hussein of Jordan, and had scheduled talks today with Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel in The Hague, the officials said. Mr. Peres is scheduled to be in The Hague on Sunday to confer with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez of Spain, which on Friday announced its formal diplomatic recognition of Israel. Officals here said they had not received a report on Mr. Murphy’s meeting with King Hussein.
Leaders of Muslim militias in Lebanon called today for the ouster of President Amin Gemayel, a Christian, as the only way to break a political deadlock over carrying out a Syrian-sponsored peace plan. “Cutting short the President’s term in office is the only way out of the impasse,” Nabih Berri, the leader of the mainstream Shiite movement Amal, said at a news conference here today. Mr. Gemayel has three years remaining in his six-year term. Mr. Berri’s Druze ally, Walid Jumblat, issued a statement Friday night declaring that from now on any cooperation with Mr. Gemayel would be “tantamount to treason.”
A Guatemalan airliner crashed, killing all 88 people aboard, including 11 Americans, officials in Guatemala said. The plane, which was on a tourist flight from Guatemala City to Mayan ruins in the northern province of Peten, crashed in a jungle near a landing strip in Santa Elena, about 120 miles north of Guatemala City. Officials said it was the worst air crash in Guatemala’s history.
Abduction of terrorist suspects to put them on trial in the United States when the victims are Americans abroad has been debated by the Reagan Administration, according to Administration officials. Senior officials have withheld approval, but the Administration is said to be continuing to consider the idea. The C.I.A. and the United States Marshals Service are said to be preparing a contingency plan for seizing several people implicated by American authorities in two recent terrorist actions. The discussions illustrate the quandaries inherent in the Administration’s recent efforts to apply the tools of the American legal system to international terrorism. The State Department’s legal adviser, Abraham D. Sofaer, would not comment on the Government’s internal debates. But he said he was prepared to support to “seizure” of fugitives in other countries if the chance for success were reasonable. He acknowledged that such a move would violate international law, but said there were legitimate arguments in favor of “bending” the rules in extraordinary circumstances.
The United States is making an exception to its order freezing all the American bank accounts of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s government and will allow Libyan students to continue to draw money to pay for tuition and related school expenses, U.S. officials said. They also said new students from Libya will be permitted to come to the United States. About 1,200 of the 3,200 Libyans legally in the United States are students. Many of them are supported by the Qaddafi government through a U.S. bank account, Treasury and State Department officials said.
The Marxist President of Southern Yemen, beleaguered in nearly a week of fierce fighting by hard-line Communist rebels, reportedly flew to Ethiopia late Saturday night. The report of President Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani’s sudden departure came from Michael Gurdus, the Israeli who has been the first to report a number of major news stories by monitoring aircraft communications from a battery of short-wave radios. Western experts on the remote, impoverished region said President Hassani appeared to have lost his struggle to keep control of his turbulent nation, although there was also speculation that he might have gone to Marxist Ethiopia to appeal for military help in the wake of a coup attempt. The President’s sudden departure came as renewed battles on Saturday in Aden, the capital, forced a halt to the effort to evacuate foreigners from the war-torn country.
Hanoi invited four members of a U.S. congressional delegation to make on-site investigations of reports that American prisoners of war are still being held in Vietnam, Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-Arizona) said. He said the invitation was extended by Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyễn Cơ Thạch and included three other congressmen. DeConcini and the other three, Senator Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Reps. Michael Bilirakis (R-Florida) and Bob McEwen (R-Ohio), said they will take up the offer. Before going to Laos, the four visited Hanoi for talks on U.S. servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War.
Senator Frank H. Murkowski went to Vietnam to find out about Americans missing in action in the Indochina war, but left today with two Vietnamese children who were separated from their mother seven years ago. Senator Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, led a Congressional delegation to Hanoi to urge the Vietnamese to help resolve the cases of Americans who remain listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War.
The Foreign Ministers of the Soviet Union and Japan signed financial and cultural agreements today, and their governments exchanged invitations for their leaders to visit each other’s countries. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the first Soviet Foreign Minister to visit Japan in a decade, arrived in Tokyo on Wednesday for meetings with his Japanese counterpart, Shintaro Abe. The financial agreement, for 1986-90, covers currency, transportation of commodities, trade consultations and ways of solving trade conflict. The two also extended a cultural pact, which would have expired January 26, through 1988. It covers film festivals and exchanges of people and publications, the statement said.
A small aircraft carrying President Ferdinand E. Marcos to a campaign appearance narrowly avoided a collision today with another small plane landing from the opposite direction on a small grass airstrip, according to officials traveling with Mr. Marcos. Though some witnesses said President Marcos appeared shaken and dropped his glasses when he emerged from the aircraft at the town of Calapan in northeastern Mindoro Province, the officials said he had not been aware of the close call. Moments before his approach, a single-engine Cessna that officials said was carrying security forces for Mr. Marcos’s protection aborted a landing at the same airstrip and swung around for a second approach from the opposite direction. According to witnesses, a colonel ran onto the airstrip waving his hat and flagged off the Cessna, which banked to the right above a stand of coconut trees, avoiding the President’s twin-engine, 10-seat Beechcraft by what one witness said was 3,000 feet.
Salvadoran guerrillas fighting to topple the U.S.-backed government blew up key power lines, leaving much of the country without electricity, authorities said. At least 10 of the country’s 14 provinces were blacked out or partially without electricity. Power was being rationed in San Salvador and Santa Ana. Meanwhile, about 8,000 people marched through the capital to protest expected government austerity measures. The belt-tightening moves would include higher gasoline prices and utility rates, the elimination of the currency black market and taxes on production and exports.
Honduran President-elect Jose Azcona Hoya said he is prepared to sign a regional peace accord that would remove the U.S. military from his nation if Nicaragua sends home its foreign military advisers. Azcona, who will replace outgoing President Roberto Suazo Cordoba next week, ended two days of talks in Washington with top Administration officials. At a news conference, he expressed confidence that a “comprehensive settlement” for regional peace could be achieved “before the end of the year.” Azcona also said he has invited Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to his inauguration ceremonies and expects him to attend.
A jetliner carrying tourists to Mayan ruins in northern Guatemala crashed in a remote jungle area today, killing all 90 people aboard, including 6 Americans, the airline Aerovias de Guatemala said. The twin-engine Caravelle jet went down as it approached the airport at Santa Elena, about 165 miles north of Guatemala City, the capital. Gerry Waters, a spokesman at the United States Embassy, said officials reported that the control tower’s last contact with the plane was at 7:58 AM and that the pilot had not indicated any problems.
Several people were reported today to have been killed in a clash between rival forces Friday night near Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, a black-ruled country encircled by South Africa. The fighting seemed part of a crisis that has illuminated both South Africa’s desire to steer events in neighboring countries and the internal strains produced in those countries that harboring foes of Pretoria. The state-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation said 17 men had died in fighting between Lesotho’s 1,500-member army, called the Paramilitary Force, and armed members of a North Korean-trained Youth League created by the ruling Basutho National Party of Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan.
The President’s polyps were benign, the White House said in announcing the results of laboratory tests of the three intestinal growths removed Friday. A small growth on President Reagan’s face was also benign, the White House said. Mr. Reagan, spending the weekend at the Presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., was informed of the results by his physician this morning. Albert R. Brashear, a White House spokesman, said there would be no further comment on the results of the medical examination Mr. Reagan underwent Friday for nearly six hours at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. It was the President’s most comprehensive examination since his surgery last July for a cancerous polyp in his bowel.
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1986. President Reagan quoted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. today in support of his contention that there should be no quotas in a truly “color-blind” society. The President used his weekly radio address, delivered live, to press the argument that blacks have benefited under his Administration. Mr. Reagan said he opposed quotas or mandatory minority hiring goals, an issue that has provoked heated debate within the White House recently. “We are committed to a society in which all men and women have equal opportunities to succeed, and so we oppose the use of quotas,” Mr. Reagan said. “We want a color-blind society. A society, that in the words of Dr. King, judges people not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Mr. Reagan rejected charges that his Administration had attempted to do away with affirmative action and antipoverty programs and weaken enforcement of civil rights laws. He argued that blacks had gained new jobs and enjoyed a rise in median family income under his Administration.
More than half of all blacks surveyed this month think Mr. Reagan is a racist and only one in four approve of the job he is doing, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. The findings represent a reversal of Mr. Reagan’s record approval rating among blacks last year. A New York Times poll conducted in December found 56 percent of blacks surveyed approved of Mr. Reagan’s performance. That poll had a margin of sampling error of 9 percentage points. The Post-ABC News poll, which used only black interviewers, found that 23 percent supported Mr. Reagan’s performance while 63 percent disapproved and 14 percent had no opinion. The poll of 1,022 blacks was conducted by telephone January 7 to 14. When respondents were asked, “Do you think of Ronald Reagan as a racist?” 56 percent said yes and 31 percent said no.
About 100 members of the Ku Klux Klan marched in Pulaski, Tennessee today to protest the first Federal observance, on Monday, of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to proclaim itself America’s salvation. A predominantly white crowd of more than 1,000 people, including some anti-Klan protesters, watched the parade, which included Klan members from as far away as Idaho. “The Klan is the answer, the watchdog, the salvation to save America,” John Norman Warnock, a lawyer from Camden, Ark., declared at a rally that preceded the march through Pulaski, where the organization was founded 120 years ago. Marchers carried flags and banners along a six-block route, chanting, “What to we want? White power!” and “Save the land! Join the Klan!”
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Prizzi’s Honor” together.
Space shuttle Columbia returned from its STS-61-C mission in space, which began a week ago today. Because of continuing bad weather, its landing was switched from Florida to Edwards Air Force Base. Guided by powerful floodlights, with the hint of dawn on a desert horizon, the space shuttle Columbia landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base today at 5:59 AM, Pacific standard time. The crew of seven astronauts had hoped to land in Florida, but they could not do so when the weather there took another turn for the worse after a landing was twice postponed. The mission began last Sunday. Landing conditions on the dry lake bed at the space agency’s facility here were perfect. The desert was illuminated by six floodlights that gave out an estimated 4.8 trillion candlepower as the spaceship landed under a starry sky.
Attorneys for Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards asked for a grand jury investigation of one of the jurors who served in the governor’s recent trial on racketeering and fraud charges. The trial ended in a hung jury largely because Clifford West, 33, held out against most other jurors, who wanted to acquit the governor. Edwards said in a statement he would like to know why West got a federal government job in the middle of the trial and what influence that may have had on his vote. West said there was no truth to suggestions that his role as a juror in the case got him a job at Martin-Marietta’s eastern New Orleans plant, which produces booster rocket fuel tanks for the space shuttle.
The director of the National Park Service abruptly canceled a scheduled speech today to a “Save the Everglades” conference because of political considerations, his spokesman said. Florida officials and leaders of conservation groups at the meeting here said they were astonished and angered by the sudden decision of the official, William Penn Mott. Mr. Mott’s chief spokesman, George Berklacy, said in response to questions that Mr. Mott canceled his speech after a conversation with William Horn, Assistant Interior Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, about possible “political implications” of the meeting. Mr. Horn was said to have expressed concern that Governor Bob Graham, a Democrat, would announce his Senate candidacy against Senator Paula Hawkins, a Republican, at the conference.
Many states have recently adopted laws requiring motorists to use seat belts, and more are expected to do so this year. But many of the laws do not meet six Federal standards that must be met if the government is to drop its requirement that cars sold in the future be equipped with air bags or seat belts that close automatically, according to a top Federal transportation official. “Not all of the six are present in every law,” said Diane K. Steed, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the Department of Transportation. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole has offered to withdraw the air bag rule if two-thirds of the nation’s population is covered by seat belt laws meeting the six criteria by April 1, 1989.
Mack Trucks Inc. said it will eliminate many of the 3,000 jobs at its Hagerstown, Maryland, engine plant and close its Allentown, Pa., operation to build a new plant elsewhere. Company sources said the $80-million plant will be built in the South. Mack has been demanding cuts in wages and benefits from the United Auto Workers, and the company said the UAW had not offered sufficient cost savings. The union had offered to divert roughly $1 an hour in wages to help Mack modernize.
An innovative program to improve tax collection has increased state revenue by 27 percent over the past two years, Massachusetts officials say, enabling Gov. Michael S. Dukakis to preside over the largest tax cut in Massachusetts history. The program, which combined an amnesty for delinquent taxpayers with tough enforcement measures and simplified tax forms, has been so successful that parts of it have been copied by several states, including New York. Some friends of the Democratic Governor cite the tax collection plan, and some other successful programs under his administration, as figuring into speculation that Mr. Dukakis, who is 52 years old, might seek a spot on the party’s national ticket in 1988. Indeed, officials here said that if their improved tax collection plan was used by the Internal Revenue Service nationally, it could help reduce the Federal deficit by $30 billion a year without raising taxes or reducing spending.
Representatives of 600 striking Boston school bus drivers agreed to a tentative 18-month contract, ending a 16-day walkout, school officials said. A ratification vote is set for Monday. The drivers, represented by the United Steelworkers of America, went on strike over their demand for a pension plan. School Supt. Laval S. Wilson said a panel of drivers and School Committee members would study pension plans and the drivers would select one to fund by themselves or through two private firms that provide bus service.
A Minneapolis woman and her baby may be the first ever to survive a complete uterine rupture, doctors at North Memorial Medical Center said. Ora Ard, 31, and her son were reported to be in good condition after the infant was rescued in surgery. Ard, who was seven months pregnant, checked into the hospital complaining of severe pain. Surgeons discovered that her womb had burst, causing massive internal bleeding. They said that the baby, found entangled in the mother’s intestines, began breathing after a few moments on a respirator.
A Rhode Island cardiologist accused of implanting as many as 55 pacemakers in people who did not need them has been convicted of taking kickbacks from pacemaker companies in return for using their products. The conviction of Dr. Felix M. Balasco, 46, of Cranston was the first time a physician has been charged and convicted in a Medicare fraud trial involving kickbacks from the pacemaker industry, a federal prosecutor said.
Harvard University officials relented to student protests and removed tent-shaped iron grilles they had welded onto heating vents to keep homeless people away from the 450-student Leverett House dormitory. The grilles were installed after John E. Dowling, a biology professor and the dormitory’s “house master,” said students had complained of harassment from homeless people who gathered there to keep warm.
A Federal district judge on today temporarily barred the Navy from discharging 11 recruits whose blood tests indicate exposure to the AIDS virus, pending a review of the case by the United States Court of Appeals here. Federal District Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer said the Navy could not discharge the recruits for at least 10 days.
Accused terrorist Marilyn Jean Buck, already charged in connection with the $1.6-million Brink’s robbery in 1981, was convicted in New York on a federal weapons charge in connection with an arrest last May. Buck, 39, faces up to five years in prison. She is also suspected of driving one of the getaway cars at the October, 1981, robbery of a Brink’s truck in which two police officers and a guard were killed in Nanuet, New York. At the time of the robbery, Buck was a fugitive from a federal prison in West Virginia. She was rearrested in Dobbs Ferry, New York, May 11, 1985.
The New York Lotto pays $30.5 million to one winner (#s are 19-20-27-34-41-46).
The AIDS charity record “That’s What Friends Are For” by Dionne Warwick with Elton John, Gladys Knight, and Stevie Wonder, hits #1.
Born:
Maarja Roxx [Kivi], Estonian pop-rock singer-songwriter and bassist (Vanilla Ninja, 2002-04 -“When Indians Cry”; solo — “Could You”), in Tallinn, Estonian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Eugene Lee Yang, South Korean-American filmmaker, internet personality, and LGBTQ+ activist (Buzzfeed; 2013-18), co-creator of the comedy group The Try Guys (2014-present), in Waco, Texas.
Died:
Claire James, 65, American actress (Jack Armstrong).
History Diaries 