U.S. and Soviet arms negotiators in Geneva began detailed discussions on Moscow’s sweeping proposal to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2000. A U.S. statement said the negotiating groups on defense and space met for three hours and 25 minutes. Separate groups on long-range nuclear weapons are to meet today, and discussions on medium-range nuclear arms are scheduled for Thursday. The last session of the talks ended in a stalemate over the U.S. “Star Wars” program.
Jane’s Defense Weekly reported that Soviet-trained agents infiltrated the women’s anti-nuclear peace camp outside a U.S. military base west of London, where 96 U.S. cruise missiles are being deployed. The magazine, published by the firm that produces authoritative yearbooks on planes, warships and other military matters, quoted Soviet defectors and informants as saying that three to six Soviet-trained women agents have been in the Greenham Common area “at all times” since cruise missiles began arriving at the base in 1983. Both the women’s group and the Soviet Embassy denied the report.
The sharp fall in crude oil prices could have widespread repercussions for consumers, industry and the national and global economy, according to analysts and economists. The price of crude oil fell again yesterday following Monday’s sharp drop, with Brent North Sea oil, a key barometer of world oil prices, dropping below $20 a barrel. As crude oil prices continued their downward spiral yesterday, analysts and economists found the news generally good for consumers and the United States economy, but potentially very bad for oil-exporting countries, oil companies and banks with large portfolios of energy loans. So far, they said, the fall in oil prices could have positive effects by making gasoline and other products made with petroleum less expensive, thereby spurring economic growth and helping to keep inflation low. It would also benefit industries such as airlines that use much fuel.
Solidarity trade union founder Lech Walesa will be placed on trial for challenging the official voter turnout figures in Polish parliamentary elections last October, government spokesman Jerzy Urban said. Walesa, 42, winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, is formally charged with slander. If convicted, he could be jailed for as long as two years. A prosecutor in December questioned Walesa about allegations that he challenged turnout figures released by the government after the elections. Walesa contended that the turnout was 60%, not the official figure of 79%. Walesa based his turnout figures on union monitoring.
The Belgian police said today that they had arrested a suspected member of a leftist terrorist group that bombed multinational targets and seized a number of important documents and materials. A police spokesman said at a news conference that the suspect, Luc Van Acker, 24 years old, was arrested last Thursday on suspicion of belonging to the group, the Front for Revolutionary Action of the Proletariat, which is believed to be tied to a larger terrorist group known as the Fighting Communist Cells. The spokesman also said a raid on a Brussels apartment last week uncovered ammunition, small arms and leftist literature that belonged to the Fighting Communist Cells.
President Reagan participates in a meeting with several of his advisors to discuss the last round of the Stockholm Conference.
Israel, responding to a U.S. request, has agreed to return $51.6 million in economic aid to help the Reagan Administration comply with the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law, an Israeli diplomat said. Dan Halpern, an economic affairs official at the Israeli Embassy, said the details remain to be worked out, but “in principle, we told the U.S. government we will be responsive in this way.” Israel had already received all the $1.2 billion in foreign aid under the current U.S. budget when the deficit law took effect last month.
A bomb killed 22 people in Beirut and wounded more than a hundred, many of them seriously. The explosion occurred in a car on a busy street in the eastern section near a building housing the offices of President Amin Gemayel’s party. No one took responsibility for the blast. Car bombs, which have taken a heavy toll in civilian lives, have been a scourge of Lebanon’s 11 years of civil war. The explosion today contributed to fears about a relapse into indiscriminate bloodshed. Red Cross workers and firefighters clawed through the smoldering wreckage of eight buildings to bring out bodies and survivors. Witnesses described the scene as an inferno. The four-story Phalangist building was damaged. It was not immediately known whether officials were on the premises at the time. It was also not certain whether the building had been the target of the explosion. Some of the victims were charred beyond recognition, according to the Christian radio. It said that some of the dead had been trapped in blazing cars by the explosion, which occurred in the Furn el-Shubbak neighborhood.
Libya’s Foreign Minister said today that United States economic sanctions and threats of military action against Libya had prompted an improvement in Libya’s relations with neighboring Tunisia and with other Arab nations with whom ties had been strained. In an interview today, the Foreign Minister, Ali Treiki, said there had recently been contacts between Tunis and Tripoli that had included a discussion of the possible reopening of the border between the two neighbors. The border was closed and diplomatic ties severed last September after a feud broke out over Libya’s expulsion of 40,000 Tunisian workers.
President Reagan’s special envoy met with West German political leaders today and proposed a four-step program to retaliate economically against Libya for what the United States has said is its support of terrorism. The West Germans again declined to take part. The envoy, Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead, is visiting eight Western capitals to seek support for the United States measures. His visit to Bonn has been considered particularly crucial because many smaller European countries have said they will follow West Germany’s lead on the issue. Foreign Ministers of the European Economic Community are to meet in Luxembourg on Monday to decide on a common stand.
Fierce fighting still raged today between factions of Southern Yemen’s ruling Marxist party, according to refugees arriving in the African nation. The refugees and other sources said President Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani was apparently barricaded in an isolated section of Aden, the Southern Yemeni capital. Southern Yemen, which has the only self-professed Marxist Government in the Arab world, is a close ally of the Soviet Union, which has naval bases and 1,000 personnel stationed there. The fighting has pitted factions of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party in a power struggle that experts say appears to be reverting to traditional tribal warfare.
The President of Iran, his Islamic fundamentalism clashing with the customs of his Zimbabwean hosts, refused to attend a state banquet in Harare in his honor Monday night because women sat at the head table and wine was to be served. In what The Herald, the leading daily newspaper here, called “an unprecedented diplomatic incident,” the dinner went ahead at a Harare hotel without the Iranian guests and without the customary speeches. Officials said the Iranians wanted all women, including a Cabinet minister, to be confined to the table farthest away from the head table. The Iranian leader, Ali Khamenei, refused to shake hands with female members of the Zimbabwe leadership, but Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s Government refused to bend in its insistence that women are entitled to equal standing with men. The Iranian Embassy has also insisted that female journalists attending Mr. Khamenei’s scheduled news conference wear veils. Mr. Khamenei refused to shake hands with two women in the receiving line, the Natural Resources and Tourism Minister, Victoria Chitepo, and the Deputy Education Minister, Naomi Nhiwatiwa. Diplomats said Mrs. Chitepo was so incensed she refused to accompany the visitors on a trip to the Victoria Falls today.
A Sikh bodyguard was convicted of murdering Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, and his two Sikh co-defendants were found guilty of conspiracy, defense attorney Rupinder Sodhi reported. Satwant Singh was convicted of murder by Judge Mahesh Chandra, who heard the case without a jury, and two other Sikhs — Balbir Singh, a police guard at the prime minister’s residence, and Kehar Singh, a civil servant-were found guilty of conspiracy. Earlier, Sikh militants and moderates set aside a dispute on reconstruction of a key section of the sacred Golden Temple of Amritsar. The Press Trust of India reported that the factions agreed to form a committee of Sikh religious leaders on the rebuilding of the Akal Tahkt, damaged when the army attacked the shrine in 1984.
Foreign election observers and foreign journalists will be banned from polling places under an election commission ruling reported here today. The observers, whose role will be to assess the fairness and honesty of voting procedures, have been invited by President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Under the ruling, they and the journalists will be subject to imprisonment and deportation if they approach closer than 150 feet to polling places when the vote is taken February 7. Mr. Marcos’s opponent in the election, Corazon C. Aquino, campaigned on the southern island of Mindanao, where bad weather kept her from landing in a small aircraft at two rallies. At one, in the Muslim-dominated city of Marawi, 8,000 people waited for eight hours.
Canada’s Justice Minister today announced his approval of the extradition of a convicted murderer to Philadelphia, where a jury in November 1983 recommended that he be sentenced to death. The convicted man, Joseph Kindler, 24 years old, escaped from the Philadelphia Detention Center in September 1984 and fled to Canada, which has abolished the death penalty. In several past cases, Canadian officials. as a condition for extradition, have demanded assurances from the authorities in the United States that they would not seek the death penalty. John C. Crosbie, the Justice Minister, said in a letter to Mr. Kindler’s lawyer, “I have concluded that Canada should surrender Mr. Kindler without seeking any assurance from the United States that the death penalty will not be imposed.”
Nicaraguan rebels need more aid, in the view of President Reagan, according to a White House official. He said Mr. Reagan had decided to ask Congress for $90 million to $100 million in military and other aid for the insurgents. The official said at least $60 million would be used for military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, generally called contras. He said the remainder would be set aside for food, medicine, clothing, boots and other nonlethal supplies. The disclosure about the aid package came as Congress returned from a monthlong recess. President Reagan welcomed key Republican senators to the White House today and told them that the Soviet Union’s perception of United States strength and resolve in the next year depended largely on Congressional moves involving aid to rebels in Nicaragua and Angola, as well as protection of the Administration’s military buildup and support for space-based missile defenses, popularly known as the “Star Wars” program. Mr. Reagan, observing that the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, is scheduled to visit the United States this year for a summit meeting, said: “Make no mistake about it, however, the ability to succeed in that meeting will be directly affected by Gorbachev’s perception of our global position and internal solidarity.”
Nicaragua’s Cardinal issued a letter today accusing his country’s Government of harassing Roman Catholics and church institutions with the goal of “neutralizing religious activity and the preaching of the Gospel” there. Among the oppressive Government measures listed were these:
— Government intimidation of foreign priests and warnings “not to meddle in politics.”
— Interrogation of Nicaraguan priests and documentation of them “as if they were criminal.”
— “Pressures and threats, even including imprisonment, of laity who cooperate in church activities.”
— “Harsh censorship which includes the prevention of publication or the destruction of documents” in an attempt “to leave the church without the means or materials to preach the Gospel.”
The charges were made in a letter from Miguel Cardinal Obando Bravo to Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar.
After five years of political opposition and forced exile, El Salvador’s small Social Democratic parties have loosened their ties with the armed rebel movement, according to senior party officials. A few of their members are quietly returning to test conditions in El Salvador. The moves by the Social Democrats, who are organized under the banner of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, fall short of a break in their alliance with the armed guerrilla movement. But they mark an important shift within the rebel opposition and may come to represent a slight opening in El Salvador’s highly polarized political system.
Leftist guerrillas attacked Peru’s main mining center on Monday night, wounding 11 people as they threw sticks of dynamite at a political party office, a police station and other buildings, the police said today. They said one man, seven women and three children attending a meeting were wounded in the attack on the offices of the ruling American Popular Revolutionary Alliance in Cerro de Pasco, 110 miles east of Lima.
United Nations and Somali officials say a new wave of Ethiopian refugees is fleeing into the East African nation of Somalia to avoid government resettlement programs, worsening one of the world’s worst refugee problems. Ethiopia is moving people from scattered family farms and hamlets into centralized villages, making services more accessible to the families but separating them from their land. More than 5,000 Ethiopians have arrived in northwest Somalia since mid-December, and the local office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says 30,000 to 60,000 more could follow.
Representatives of Lesotho’s new ruling military council flew to South Africa to seek a relaxation of border restrictions, and the Pretoria authorities said the two countries have pledged to work toward better relations. South Africa had imposed a virtual trade blockade on Lesotho, which it accused of harboring guerrillas of the African National Congress, the main rebel group fighting apartheid. Maj. Gen. Justin M. Lekhanya and his 1,500member paramilitary organization Monday overthrew Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan.
Two white South African policemen were said to have been stabbed and beaten to death by a crowd of blacks near a segregated township outside Johannesburg. Two unidentified blacks were said to have died in a subsequent police action pitting policemen against blacks armed with stolen police pistols and shotguns. The slaying of the two officers represented the first deaths of white policemen in the more than 16 months of political violence in South Africa. Black policemen, by contrast, have frequently been the targets of attack by other blacks who accuse the officers of collaborating with white minority rule.
Congress returned to work today on a testy note as lawmakers from both parties sharply attacked President Reagan’s budget proposals and said they would be soundly rejected on Capitol Hill. As the second session of the 99th Congress opened, many legislators voiced a related view that a new budget-balancing law could seriously harm their constituents, particularly in areas with economic problems. In addition, the mood today pointed up the importance both parties place on the elections this fall and on their determination to use budget battles to maneuver for political advantage. Mr. Reagan’s budget proposal for 1987 will not be formally presented to Congress for two weeks, but Administration officials have already said it will move toward a budget balance by proposing to end many domestic programs and sell Government assets. The President will also ask for an increase in military spending while barring any new tax increases.
The relatives of four Americans being held hostage in Beirut left meetings in Washington with Reagan Administration and Syrian officials with renewed optimism that negotiations will continue for the captives’ release. The families met for one hour in the White House. Present were Eric Jacobsen of Huntington Beach, the son of hostage David P. Jacobsen of the American University in Beirut; the families of Father Lawrence Jenco, a Jesuit priest, and Thomas Sutherland, dean of agriculture at American University. Two other American hostages in Beirut are William Buckley, an official of the U.S. Embassy, and Peter Kilburn, librarian at the American University in Beirut. Buckley has been reported killed, although the reports have not been confirmed.
The Bank of America must pay a record $4.75 million civil penalty. The Treasury Department announced it had imposed the penalty on the nation’s second-largest banking company for failing to report more than 17,000 large cash deposits or transfers from 1980 to 1985. The penalty is part of a drive by the department to halt what it suspects has been the use of banks by drug traffickers and other criminals to “launder” money, shifting it from illegal activity into ordinary channels.
President Reagan receives a report of the 1985 United Way fundraising effort and accepts the position of Honorary Chairman of the United Way Centennial Year.
Five reputed organized crime figures in the Middle West were convicted of plotting to divert more than $2 million in untaxed winnings from Las Vegas gambling casinos. All five, who have been pictured by Federal investigators as principal figures in organized crime in the Middle West, were found guilty by a Federal jury on each of the eight counts against them. The four who were present sat impassively as they listened to the jury’s findings. Federal District Judge Joseph E. Stevens Jr. told the jurors, who had deliberated for 30 hours, “Your decisions are courageous ones.” The four-month trial, which produced dramatic developments and testimony, was one of several simultaneous trials involving reputed organized crime figures. Justice Department officials have described the trials in Kansas City, New York and Boston as the broadest attack ever undertaken against criminal organizations in this country. There have been no verdicts yet in the New York and Boston trials.
A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today reinstated a lawsuit brought on behalf of the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were removed from their homes and detained in camps in World War II. The three-judge panel, voting 2 to 1, held that the lower court erred when it dismissed a suit seeking $24 billion because the statute of limitations had expired. On May 17, 1984, Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer of the Federal District Court here ruled that the lawsuit was barred by a six-year statute of limitations on suits against the government.
Police with dogs and riot gear confronted a rock-throwing crowd of 200 fishermen angry at a renegade seafood auction house they say will undermine their strike in New Bedford, Mass., the nation’s most profitable fishing port. Fifteen people were arrested. As buyers drove up to purchase fish caught by non-striking crews, the crowd began pelting cars with stones, police said. Several windows were broken, but no injuries were reported. Fishermen claimed no union fishermen had been to sea.
Guardsmen and policemen cooled tension in Austin, Minnesota. They closed a Hormel meatpacking plant in exchange for a pledge by strikers to reduce picket lines and stop blocking city streets. The company said it was insistent that its plant be reopened, perhaps Wednesday. The bitter meatpackers’ strike here, reminiscent of confrontations of the Depression and the years after World War II, is part of a pattern of harsh struggles between American unions and employers in recent years. Strikers and strike leaders here characterized their actions as a major fight to stop concessions and block attacks on other unions by employers. The company, on the other hand, characterized its stand as an important effort to control labor costs and to demonstrate the right of a company to operate in the face of excessive union demands and sometimes violent tactics.
A helicopter carrying an ABC News crew to the meatpackers’ strike in Minnesota crashed today in thick fog, killing the two ABC News employees and the pilot, the authorities said. An ABC News spokesman in New York City identified the two employees as Joe Spencer, a correspondent, and Mark McDonough, a producer, both 31 years old and based in Chicago.
A commuter plane tried to go to the aid of Rick Nelson’s burning DC-3 as the singer’s pilot repeatedly pleaded for help, according to radio transcripts made public today. “Smoke in the cockpit,” the pilot cried before the plane went down near DeKalb, Texas, killing the singer and six others, the Federal Aviation Administration transcripts show. The transcripts indicate that just before the December 31 crash the pilot of an American Eagle commuter plane offered to pull up to the wing of the Nelson plane and lead it to safety. The pilot of the American Eagle plane relayed messages from the Nelson plane to the control tower and then turned toward the DC-3, but the controller called to say it was too late.
A martial arts expert accused of killing three elderly widows with karate chops was convicted of first-degree murder in Washington, Pennsylvania. The Erie County jury deliberated for two hours and returned the verdict against Roland Steele, 39, just before midnight. Steele faces death in the electric chair for the murders, with deliberations on the sentence to begin today. He also was found guilty of two counts of robbery and two counts of theft. The panel heard eight days of testimony, including Steele’s denial of guilt in the slayings of Lucille Horner, 88, Minnie Warrick, 87, and Sarah Knutz, 84.
A top New York official admitted he lied when he told police near-fatal cuts to his wrist and ankle were inflicted by kidnapers. He said he concocted the tale because he felt embarrassed and disgraced about slashing himself. Queens Borough President Donald Manes was found wounded when police stopped his weaving car in Queens early January 10.
A military court convicted the Navy commander who recruited Navy doctor Donal Billig of dereliction of duty, lying and perjury, the Navy said. Commander Reginald Newman, 57, faces a maximum of 20 years and six months in prison, dismissal from the Navy and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. He has been in the Navy for 35 ½ years. Billig, who is charged with manslaughter in the deaths of five patients, is on trial at a separate court-martial charged with five counts of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths.
Elizabeth Bouvia, a quadriplegic who sought court permission in 1983 to starve to death, filed suit today against a hospital she says is force-feeding her. Miss Bouvia, 28 years old, contends in the Superior Court suit that doctors at Los Angeles County’s High Desert Hospital in Lancaster ignored her objections and inserted a feeding tube through her nose last Thursday. At a hearing today Miss Bouvia’s lawyer, Jacqueline Scheck, insisted that Miss Bouvia was not trying to end her life at High Desert Hospital. Miss Bouvia attracted national attention in 1983 when she went to court to be allowed to die at Riverside General Hospital. She contended that her pain-ridden body was useless but that her physical disabilities prevented her from taking her own life. A judge refused her request. Doctors at High Desert said they believed her real intent was to starve herself, saying that her weight had dropped to 68 pounds from 90.
School buses rolled in Boston for the first time since January 2, when 600 unionized drivers launched a walkout that stranded 27,000 students and left a bitter rift between the mayor and the school board. Drivers overwhelmingly ratified a new 18-month contract, with the Boston School Committee unanimously agreeing to accept the settlement several hours later.
Eighteen percent of people who are single, divorced or separated have changed their sexual behavior for fear of AIDS, according to a nationwide NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll released yesterday, while just 3 percent of married people have changed their practices. Half of those who changed said they relied more heavily on condoms, and more than 90 percent spoke of carefully choosing partners or avoiding promiscuity. Three-quarters of those polled said they believed that acquired immune deficiency syndrome would spread beyond the groups the fatal illness has hit hardest: homosexual men and intravenous drug users. This finding spanned divisions by age, race or sex.
Wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” a teen-ager whose classmate donated his heart to save her life was released from a hospital there. Donna Ashlock, 14, carried two teddy bears and a bouquet of party balloons as she left Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in excellent condition, hospital spokeswoman Nancy Millhouse said. “She just wants to get back to Patterson, see her friends and get back to school,” Millhouse said. The high school freshman should be back in school in six to eight weeks, she said. Donna’s parents will take her home to the small farming community of Patterson, about 75 miles southeast of San Francisco. Donna’s school friend, Felipe Garza, 15, died unexpectedly after a blood vessel burst in his head, and after telling his parents that he wanted his heart to go to Donna if he died.
Allison J. Brown, 17, of Edmund, Oklahoma, is crowned the 4th Miss Teen USA.
Singer Luther Vandross will be charged today with one count of misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter and another count of reckless driving stemming from a January 12 car crash in Studio City that left one man dead and five others injured. Deputy Los Angeles City Attorney Martin Vranicar said the charges will be filed in Van Nuys Municipal Court and Vandross will be scheduled for arraignment within about three weeks. If convicted, the 34-year-old singer could face a maximum sentence of one year in Los Angeles County Jail on the manslaughter charge and an additional six months for the reckless driving count, Vranicar said.
Czech tennis star Ivan Lendl defeats Boris Becker of Germany 6–2, 7–6, 6–3 to claim the season-ending ATP Masters Grand Prix title for a third time at Madison Square Garden, New York.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1514.45 (-14.68)
Born:
Jonathan Quick, NHL goaltender (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Kings, 2012, 2014; NHL All-Star, 2012, 2016; Los Angeles Kings, Vegas Golden Knights, New York Rangers).
Peyton Hillis, NFL running back (Denver Broncos, Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Giants), in Conway, Arkansas.
Phil Loadholt, NFL tackle (Minnesota Vikings), in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Brandon Miller, NFL defensive end (Seattle Seahawks), in Colquitt, Georgia.
Mike Taylor, NBA point guard (Los Angeles Clippers), in Chicago, Illinois.
“Coffin” Joe [Spurgeon], British rock drummer (The Horrors), in Clare, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Jos Panhuysen, 85, Dutch author (“Don’t Walk in Water”, “Life Alone is Not Enough”).
History Diaries 