The National Aeronautics and Space Administration tonight released videotape and still photographs showing what it described as an “unusual plume” forming on the right-side booster rocket of the space shuttle Challenger about 14 seconds before the craft exploded. In a statement released here by NASA’s interim investigation team, the space agency cautioned against drawing any conclusions about the cause of the shuttle’s explosion from the photographs. Hugh Harris, a spokesman for NASA, refused to say what might have caused the plume, which appears in still photographs as a bright orange spot near the lower end of the booster, or even to say whether the “plume” was a flame. Despite NASA’s refusal to interpret the meaning of the plume, the photographs were significant because they revealed for the first time an angle of the shuttle’s ascent that offered a stunningly clear view of the right-side solid-fuel booster rocket, which had been obscured in pictures that have been shown repeatedly on television.
The computers and sensors guiding the space shuttle Challenger’s flight appear not to have been programmed to detect flames burning through the side of a solid-fuel booster rocket, experts said. There were further indications that the booster was beginning to fail as long as 10 seconds before the shuttle exploded. Even if sensors had picked up the first signs of fire, safety measures built into the system to protect the astronauts would have prevented an automatic shedding of the giant fuel tanks that exploded. That command, the only step that investigators say might have saved the crew, could have come only from the pilot, and officials said they doubted even that could have saved the crew. Experts who have studied the shuttle’s computer system say it was not programmed to separate the orbiter automatically from its fuel supply in part because of fears that faulty sensor readings could cause the computers to abort a mission unnecessarily, risking the lives of the crew. Still, the possibility that there were signs of trouble as long as 10 seconds before the explosion raised questions yesterday about the limits of the enormously complex equipment that guides the shuttle. Experts say it also reflects the fact that, in preparing for emergency landings, NASA never planned for a catastrophe as fast-moving as the one that struck the Challenger in one of the most vulnerable stages in a shuttle’s ascent.
Space agency officials said today that the Challenger’s pilots made no attempt to separate their orbiter from the flaming rockets that exploded after liftoff Tuesday, killing all seven people aboard. The officials said they had reached this conclusion based on the recovery today of unfired explosive power packs that were salvaged from the nose cone of one of the ship’s two solid-fuel booster rockets. “This is our first clue that they really never tried to get away,” said Jim Mizell, a spokesman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Kennedy Space Center here. According to a source close to the official inquiry, 10 seconds elapsed between the first signs of trouble and the fiery destruction of the Challenger. In that critical period, could the astronauts have known about the danger? And if so, what could they have done to avert catastrophe?
A helicopter dropped a floral wreath into the sea off the Kennedy Space Center today, not far from where search ships continued to sweep for wreckage from the space shuttle Challenger. The ceremony at sea was part of a memorial service here for the seven crew members killed in the disaster. About a minute after the wreath fell to the ocean, a group of dolphins suddenly broke the green surface, leaping from the waters in near unison only yards from where the wreath bobbed slowly. More than 3,000 employees of the Kennedy Space Center and their families attended the half-hour service, sitting in the same grandstand where guests of the astronauts and schoolchildren watched in disbelief and horror Tuesday as the shuttle disappeared in a ball of fire far above their heads.
Morton Thiokol Inc., the manufacturer of the main segments of the space shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets, said yesterday that it had no indication from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that the investigation of Tuesday’s explosion had focused on parts of the shuttle for which it is responsible. “We are participating with NASA in the investigation as it applies to the parts of the shuttle that involve us,” said Gilbert Moore, a spokesman for the Chicago-based company’s facility at Brigham City, Utah, where the booster’s motors are manufactured. “We don’t know what other things they are looking at. We are unaware as to what NASA believes is the focus of the investigation. We have been asked not to speculate as to what caused the accident and we won’t.”
The Soviet Union announced today that it would name two craters on Venus for the two women among the seven astronauts who died Tuesday when the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Tass, the official Soviet press agency, said the decision had been made by Soviet cartographers who have made the first maps of the planet. Soviet citizens have been especially struck by the deaths of the two women, Christa McAuliffe, the 37-year-old high school teacher who would have been the first ordinary citizen in space, and Judith Resnik, 36, who had made a previous space flight. According to The Associated Press, the Soviet newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya said the mappers of the planet had decided to name its features only for women, in keeping with the myth of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. The Soviet Union has given special emphasis to exploration of Venus with unmanned space vehicles.
American children, although pained by the space shuttle explosion that killed a teacher who reminded them of one of their own, seem resiliently enthusiastic about the space program, according to a New York Times/ CBS News Poll. Two-thirds of the children who were asked said they would like to travel in space, as against only half their parents. More children than adults want to go on sending civilians into space, the poll indicates, and even those children who say the accident has made them think worse of the shuttle program overwhelmingly favor continuing it. Adult enthusiasm was also clear. Among the 1,120 adults interviewed, 80 percent said the shuttle program should continue, although only 46 percent said they would be willing to pay more in taxes if that proved necessary to keep it going.
East Germany has taken the unusual step of denying that it eliminated a top West German agent reportedly betrayed by a West German official who defected last year. The East German Government’s press agency denied Friday that the agent, who has not been identified, had been killed as a result of information supplied by the defector, Hans Joachim Tiedge, a West German internal security official. The agency was responding to testimony last week in a West German parliamentary inquiry by the former chief of the West German internal security agency, Heribert Hellenbroich.
Keith Joseph, Britain’s education minister and a man often described as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s political guru, said he will retire from politics at the next general election. Joseph, 68, a rightist, is credited with persuading Thatcher to run for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1975. He will remain in the House of Commons, representing a constituency from the city of Leeds until the election, expected to be held in 1987 or 1988. Thatcher is then expected to give him a peerage and a seat in the House of Lords.
A Rumanian Foreign Trade Ministry official, who slipped away from colleagues while they were visiting the Acropolis, has asked the United States Embassy for asylum, Greek sources said today. They said the official, Gheorghe Giobasu, disappeared on January 24, a day after arriving with two colleagues to examine the Greek steel market.
The third-worst flood tide of the century swamped Venice today on the eve of the opening of its carnival. Winds combined with three days of rains whipped Venice’s waters to more than five feet above normal high tide. Only in 1966 and in 1979 has the water been higher this century, officials said. A storm system has been generating record rains in Italy and abundant amounts of snow in the Alps. In Venice, water engulfed St. Mark’s Square and shops, restaurants and homes in low-lying districts. Garbage filled the smaller canals. Army troops in amphibious vehicles ferried families to safety from several lagoon islands, and tried to shore up walls shielding the lagoon.
Yelena G. Bonner has received Soviet permission to extend her stay in the United States for medical treatment, her family said today. Miss Bonner spoke for half an hour today by telephone with her husband, Andrei D. Sakharov, in Gorky discussing her recovery from heart surgery, but the call faded when controversial topics were raised, the relatives said. They said Miss Bonner did not discuss the exit visa extension with her husband because she wanted to wait until she learned the exact length of her stay. The original visa would have expired at the end of this month. She received a phone call from the Soviet Embassy a few days ago informing her that an extension of her exit visa had been granted, her son-in-law, Efrem Yankelevich, said. He said the family was waiting for the embassy to return her passport to learn how much longer she could stay. Miss Bonner, a 62-year-old pediatrician, underwent a heart bypass operation January 13. She is now recuperating.
The economic sanctions ordered by President Reagan against Libya formally went into full effect today, with American oil companies and oil-related businesses still uncertain about how the United States plans to carry them out. Business sources here said the Reagan Administration was expected to publish on Monday a decision on whether to permit American oil companies and oil-related businesses to receive some income from Libya by transferring their activities here to foreign-based subsidiaries. In recent interviews, however, businessmen and diplomats agreed that whatever the Administration decided, the drop in the world price of oil was likely to be far more damaging to Libya’s economy than the American economic boycott. These businessmen and diplomats expressed dismay at the sanctions and said they had been ill conceived.
The Pope began his 10-day India visit proclaiming his respect for all the country’s religions and offered a stirring tribute to Mohandas K. Gandhi, the independence leader and apostle of nonviolence, at the Gandhi memorial in New Delhi. In a subdued afternoon ceremony, the Pope placed a wreath at the memorial to the independence leader and apostle of nonviolence and spoke of all humanity’s debt to “this man so marked by his noble devotion to God and his respect for every living being.” “It is entirely fitting that this pilgrimage should begin here,” the Pope said of the Gandhi memorial on the bank of the Jumna River. “Today we hear him still pleading with the world: ‘Conquer hate by love, untruth by truth, violence by suffering.’ ” The crowds were sparse on a mild and sunny day as the Pope sped through the broad, green avenues of the capital for meetings with Indian leaders and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Hundreds of radical Sikhs, brandishing swords and spears, have been carrying out a sit-in for the last week at the Golden Temple at Amritsar, India, posing a problem for Punjab’s moderate state leaders. The moderate Sikhs challenge the right of the young radicals to occupy the shrine and demand that they leave, but have so far made no moves. Paramilitary police forces have been increased around the temple, but the army has not been brought in. The new government of Sikh moderates was elected in the state after having promised to deal with violence.
Vietnamese boat people, fearing pirate attacks in Thai waters, say they are increasingly trying to sail their small vessels to Indonesia, Malaysia or the international shipping lanes leading to Singapore. So regular are the crossings of the South China Sea that Indonesian officials are beginning to fear that a trade in human cargo is springing up among Vietnamese boat owners. In 1985, diplomats and refugee officials said, 3,332 Vietnamese reached Thailand by boat. In the same year, 7,394 Vietnamese arrived in Malaysia, 6,239 in Indonesia and 891 in Singapore.
The campaign for the presidency of the Philippines sharpened in its final week as Ferdinand E. Marcos denied opposition charges that his two decades of rule had been rife with corruption and deceit. At a news conference, he said critical disclosures and allegations about his war exploits and personal wealth were being orchestrated through the foreign press by aides to his opponent, Corazon C. Aquino. “What do you call it in the United States?” he said, seated in a gilded chair at the presidential palace. “Part of the dirty tricks department.” Mrs. Aquino, who has been saying the President is rigging an unfair election next Friday, vowed to prevail as she campaigned in Manila. “There is no way Marcos will deprive me of the victory that is already mine,” she said. The final days have this nation vibrant with a sense of critical turning, with provincial rice farmers and metropolitan business leaders equally caught up in the stakes.
Demonstrations in Haiti were reported continuing and medical workers declared that 14 people had been killed and more than 70 wounded in the last two days of anti-Government protests. Seven of the deaths and most of the injuries occurred in Port-au-Prince, the capital, in demonstrations after unfounded reports that President Jean-Claude Duvalier had fled the country. The latest deaths bring to at least 20 the number of people killed in the protests, which began last Sunday in Cap-Haitien, on the north coast. The Government has been under pressure for the last two months to resign. On Friday, Mr. Duvalier declared a 30-day state of siege, formally suspending certain civil liberties granted by the Constitution but often ignored in practice. The declaration was evidently intended to underscore Mr. Duvalier’s determination to respond firmly to the protests. Haiti, which has been ruled by the Duvalier family for nearly 30 years, is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with a per capita income of less than $300 a year. Malnutrition and disease are widespread, and about 90 percent of the nation’s 6 million people are illiterate. Foreign diplomats reported demonstrations today in Gonaives and in Cap-Haitien, where a memorial service for three people killed last Sunday was scheduled. There were also reports of protests in St. Marc, 50 miles northwest of here, and in Leogane, 25 miles west.
Leftist Salvadoran rebels damaged power facilities, blacking out the capital and half the country to protest the government’s new austerity measures, authorities said. It was the third time this year that the insurgents had cut electricity to half the nation. Television and radio stations, banks and other businesses were forced to close when the rebel sabotage paralyzed commerce in San Salvador. The austerity moves include a 50% hike in gasoline prices, a currency devaluation and emergency taxes to fund the war effort.
The discovery of the bodies of eight prisoners in the wreckage of a building destroyed in the earthquakes here in September, and widespread allegations that they had been tortured by the police, has set off a campaign to end the official use of torture in Mexico. A bill providing prison terms for police officers who torture people has been passed by the Senate and will be considered in April by the Chamber of Deputies. Because it is sponsored by the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, it is considered certain to pass and become law. A new Mexico City Attorney General has been named by President Miguel de la Madrid and instructed to end to the use of torture by the Attorney General’s agents, under whose jurisdiction the prisoners were being detained when the earthquakes struck.
Nicaragua has devalued its currency and eliminated a two-tier exchange rate in an attempt to bolster its debt-ridden economy. President Daniel Ortega Saavedra said Friday that the moves were meant to “bring us closer to the fiscal reality of the country.” Nicaragua has a $5 billion foreign debt, and its economy has been damaged by the war against American-supported insurgents. The Nicaraguan cordoba will now be fixed at 70 to the dollar for all transactions. It had been fixed at 28 for goods classed as essential imports and at 50 for luxury goods. The Government said the cordoba had been overvalued. The dollar is traded at 1,000 cordobas on the black market.
Honduran armed forces chief General Walter Lopez Reyes, a staunch U.S. ally, resigned “in irrevocable form” one day after he took back an earlier decision to step down, the military announced. Colonel Efrain Gonzalez Munoz will temporarily assume the post until the Honduran Congress chooses a successor from a list of candidates provided by the 48-member armed forces Superior Council. No explanation was offered for the indecision of the 45-year-old Lopez, but unconfirmed reports mentioned pressures from within the military and other sources.
In a race too close to call, Costa Rican presidential candidates face the voters Sunday after a yearlong campaign that has concentrated on the failing economy and bitter criticism of Nicaragua as a Marxist dictatorship. The election comes at a troubled time for Costa Rica, the only established democracy in Central America and by far the most affluent, least violent and best educated society in the region. A $4.5 billion foreign debt incurred from financing inefficient public agencies has crippled the economy and forced small currency devaluations every few months. In addition, each of the last three Governments has engaged in large-scale corruption, prompting growing public mistrust of state officials.
In the worst rebel attack this year, Peruvian Maoist guerrillas killed 12 villagers who refused to join their “people’s war,” authorities said. The Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) rebels beheaded many of the bullet-riddled corpses of the Indian peasant vigilantes after accusing them of collaborating with the army in a jungle town near the city of Ayacucho. The military recently has organized self-defense groups armed with spears and knives in 400 villages in the state of Ayacucho.
A Bolivian congressional panel summoned 10 former military leaders to return within 15 days to defend themselves against charges of human rights abuses. The summons cited former right-wing General Luis Garcia Meza, chief of Bolivia’s military government in 1980 and 1981, and nine collaborators accused of organizing death squads during his regime.
Angola rejected an offer from South African President Pieter W. Botha to free jailed black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela. in exchange for Angola’s release of a South African army officer held in Angola and the Soviet release of dissidents Andrei D. Sakharov and Anatoly Shcharansky. The Angolan Foreign Ministry proposed instead that the officer be freed in exchange for the return of several Angolans and a Cuban being held in South Africa. There has been no response from the Soviet Union to Botha’s proposal, made in speech to the opening session of Parliament.
Yoweri Museveni, the new Ugandan President, swore in a political council and Cabinet today to run “a Government of freedom fighters.” The swearing-in ceremony for the 12 Cabinet ministers and 22 members of the National Resistance Council was held on the steps of Parliament, where Mr. Museveni was inaugurated as President on Wednesday. Mr. Museveni has promised a broad-based democratic government, but the Cabinet and the council, which will function as the country’s legislative body, are dominated by members of his National Resistance Army guerrilla movement from southern Uganda. Only one member of the all-male cabinet, Finance Minister Ponsiano Mulema, was not part of the guerrilla group. Only one council member is from northern Uganda, the tribal homeland of most of the ousted military government’s leaders.
At least 39 people were killed and 71 were wounded in the collision of two passenger trains outside the South African city of Durban, officials said. The crash occurred when a train packed with evening commuters going from Durban to the nearby black township of Kwamashu slammed into a stationary train on the same track. Willie Mitchell, railways director for Natal Province, declined to speculate on the cause of the crash and said a board of inquiry would investigate.
Lesotho’s new military Government was reported today to have seized 50 more South African political fugitives and told them they would be deported. The arrests Friday conflicted with statements from the ruling military council that ousted Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan on January 20 that Lesotho, an independent, black-ruled kingdom surrounded by South Africa, would remain a haven for refugees. In South Africa, meanwhile, the police said they had shot dead two blacks in racial protests that continued despite President P. W. Botha’s announcement Friday of limited political changes, including the replacement of the so-called pass laws with a policy called “orderly urbanization.” The pass laws restrict black access to segregated townships near white-run cities, and millions of blacks have been arrested for violating them.
Development of a small missile should be pressed by the United States, a special Pentagon advisory council has concluded. The council, made up of scientists and strategic weapons experts, plans to say in a report to the Pentagon that the intercontinental missile, the Midgetman, under study since 1983, would make American nuclear forces more capable of surviving a Soviet attack, whether or not the United States and the Soviet Union agree on arms control. The small, single-warhead missile, under serious study since 1983, would be deployed on armored launching trucks on military bases in the Western states. In a crisis, the vehicles would be dispersed to scattered sites inside the sprawling bases. The report, to be delivered to senior Pentagon officials late this month, is by a study group of scientists and experts on strategic weapons headed by John M. Deutch, provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is expected to lend major support to the missile’s prospects when the program to develop it is under attack. The Midgetman has encountered critics in Congress and at the Pentagon who say it would be too costly or would not be an effective deterrent to a Soviet attack. In an interview this week, Under Secretary of Defense Donald A. Hicks, the senior Pentagon official for new weapons development who requested the Deutch panel’s study, said he believed the Midgetman “is not the most efficient way to do the job.”
When President Reagan took office five years ago, he vowed to shrink the size and scope of government as part of an agenda that conservatives called the Reagan revolution. But despite some notable victories in limiting domestic programs, total Federal spending has continued to climb. In fact, as the Administration prepares to unveil a 1987 budget next week with spending of just under $1 trillion, Mr. Reagan finds he has presided not over a contraction in Federal outlays but over growth that is considerably faster than the inflation rate and, according to one study, faster even than would have occurred had President Carter’s policies been continued. Government spending is now substantially higher as a percentage of the gross national product, the total value of the nation’s goods and services, than the 22 ½ percent that prevailed in 1980. In February 1981, Mr. Reagan projected that by this year his policies would reduce Federal spending to 19 percent of the G.N.P. In fact, last year it exceeded 25 percent and is expected to be more than 24 percent in the current fiscal year.
President Reagan, concerned that Congress might “gut” his military spending program, is planning a campaign on the theme that any such “retreat” would threaten the United States position in arms control talks and in resolving regional disputes, White House officials said today. The officials, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said that Mr. Reagan would try to persuade the public that his military buildup must be allowed to continue. The campaign is to be waged with speeches, including one that might be nationally televised. An indication of how it will be conducted came in Mr. Reagan’s weekly radio address to the nation today.
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on the 1987 Budget of the United States. Mr. Reagan, in the radio address, said that he would insist on “modest but steady growth” in military spending in the new fiscal year, which begins October 1. “The Soviets want nothing more than to see America flinch and forsake the rebuilding program we’ve worked so hard to get started,” he said. “We spent five years making our military more competitive, and America is secure again. We must not permit this vital work to become undone in the second term.” As he has done in recent weeks, he also attempted to lay out what he is willing to accept and what he is not willing to accept in the anticipated budget battle. He said he would not try to cut “essential programs” for people who need assistance and would not accept any reduction in payments to Social Security recipients. As he has done in recent weeks. Mr. Reagan today reaffirmed his opposition to a tax increase. “Let me make it plain,” Mr. Reagan said today, “that our budget will not increase taxes on the American people, because any tax increase the Congress sends me will be D.O.A. — dead on arrival. We haven’t built 37 months of economic expansion and created over nine million jobs by raising taxes On the people. We’ve done it by increasing opportunity.”
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Hanna and Her Sisters.”
The division of General Dynamics that makes cruise missiles is losing its Government security clearance because it did not adequately protect classified documents and hardware, according to two company memorandums. The Government’s withdrawal of the security clearance at the Convair division, which employs 9,400 people in several San Diego plants, is another setback for a giant military contractor that has been plagued by security problems and allegations of fraud. It also raises questions about security in one of the nation’s most secret military projects. The memorandums, distributed to managers Friday and made available early today by a Convair employee, say the lack of security clearance means that no new contracts can be awarded to Convair and that requests for individual security clearances will not be processed.
A cut in the deduction taxpayers can make on federal income tax returns for state and local taxes is proposed by Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee. Senator Long said in an interview that the Senate, in its revision of the federal income tax system, should vote to allow state and local taxes to be deductible only to the extent they exceed a certain percentage, perhaps 3 percent, of a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income.
Congress has ordered the Pentagon to award contracts for work in Alaska only to contractors who agree to hire Alaska residents for the job. The directive, sponsored by Senator Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska), is believed to be the first such order ever approved by Congress imposing a residency requirement on defense contractors. In a brief floor debate in the Senate last spring, Murkowski said he found it “unconscionable that when the (Alaskan) unemployment rate is high, out-of-state workers on federal contract are brought in to take limited jobs.”
A sailor has been convicted by court-martial in the fatal stabbing of a superior officer, and he is expected to testify during the penalty phase of his trial this week. Petty Officer 3rd Class Mitchell Garraway, 21, of Suitland, Maryland, could become the first Navy serviceman executed since before the Civil War. An eight-member jury in Newport, Rhode Island, found Garraway guilty of premeditated murder in the stabbing death of Lt. James Sterner, 35, of Woodbridge, New Jersey, aboard the Navy frigate USS Miller in the western Atlantic.
Mary Lund, who lived for 45 days with an artificial heart beating in her chest, was alert and smiling today after receiving a human heart transplant and had a chance for “a near-normal life,” her doctors said. The human heart donated by a Montana teen-ager who drowned was transplanted Friday into Mrs. Lund, a 40-year-old secretary from Kensington, Minnesota. On December 18 she became the first woman to receive an artificial heart; her own’s heart’s pumping ability was destroyed by a virus. Dr. Robert Van Tassel, a spokesman for the surgical team at the Minneapolis Heart Institute here, said today that Mrs. Lund “was recovering very well from her surgery.”
Two black politicians led in early returns to succeed New Orleans’ first black mayor, Ernest Morial, who narrowly trailed in his race for a council seat. In the mayoral race, with 268 of 456 precincts reporting, or 59%, unofficial returns showed state Senator William Jefferson with 33,146 or 39% and City Council member Sidney Barthelemy with 28,918 votes or 34%. Four others divided the remainder. In Morial’s race, with 81 of 92 precincts reporting, or 89%, unofficial returns showed incumbent council member Lambert Boissiere with 13,646 or 47.3% and Morial with 12,459 or 43.2%.
About 100 of the 22,000 physicians practicing in Massachusetts stopped accepting new patients and scaled down their emergency room duties to protest the cost of malpractice insurance. Most of the doctors joining the action are affiliated with small community hospitals recently hit by insurance rate increases, and larger hospitals were expected to receive more patients as a result. Barbara Rockett, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, said that the protest was designed to send a message to state and insurance officials, not to deprive patients of needed care.
An attorney who represented convicted Tennessee banker Jake Butcher fatally shot himself in the head with a shotgun only hours before he was to report to a prison to begin serving a 20-year sentence for tax fraud, police said. George W. Ridenour Jr., who was found dead in his car on Interstate 75 north of Knoxville, had been Butcher’s personal attorney and general counsel of Butcher’s United American Bank of Knoxville, which failed in 1983. Butcher is serving a 20-year sentence for income tax fraud and defrauding $17 million from banks.
American steel companies and the United Steelworkers of America are quietly beginning contract negotiations of major importance to the future of the domestic steel industry and to the jobs of tens of thousands of its workers. The union has begun talks here with the LTV Steel Company and the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and in Hollywood, Fla., with the National Steel Corporation. Negotiations are scheduled to begin soon in Pittsburgh between the union and Armco Inc. and in Chicago between the union and the Inland Steel Company. Already some indications of goodwill between the parties has emerged.
Some 2,250 members of the United Automobile Workers went on strike today in a contract dispute at five Champion Spark Plug Company plants in the United States and Canada. The union members walked off their jobs shortly after midnight Friday and set up picket lines when their three-year contract expired at plants in Toledo and Cambridge, Ohio, Detroit, Burlington, Iowa, and Windsor, Ontario. None of the plants were operating today, but the Iowa plant is normally closed on weekends. Contract talks, which began November 1, ended Friday when the union rejected Champion’s latest offer. No talks are scheduled. Strikers said most issues in the dispute were economic, including the company’s insistence on mandatory overtime, which the union members said would result in layoffs. The company said its position was based on an unfavorable business climate in the automotive replacement parts industry.
For decades “the city couldn’t decide what to do” about the downtown, as one proponent of redevelopment put it. Now, Seattle has made up its mind. The city has reached an agreement with the Rouse Company of Maryland for a redevelopment project that is to start next year. The project calls for transforming the rundown Westlake Triangle into a plush Westlake Mall, as well as preserving the World’s Fair legacies from 1962: the Seattle Center, the Space Needle and the Seattle monorail.
Buoyed by the success of protests last spring against South Africa’s policy of racial separation, students at colleges and universities around the nation have increased pressure on their schools to divest themselves of holdings in companies that do business in that country. In recent weeks, students at various institutions have staged demonstrations, occupied administrative offices, constructed shantytowns symbolic of black South African ghettos and faced arrests and suspensions in an attempt to force their schools toward total divestiture. In two recent examples, students at the University of Pennsylvania have maintained a round-the-clock sit-in at the office of President Sheldon Hackney since January 16, and student protests at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., grew into a confrontations not only with school administrators but also between opposing student groups. The student vigil at the University of Pennsylvania came after the board of trustees voted to wait at least 18 months before deciding whether to withdraw any of its $92 million in holdings in companies that do business in South Africa. The board’s decision came three days after a visit to the campus by Bishop Desmond M. Tutu of South Africa, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner who is a leading opponent of his government’s policies.
Several companies are working on a new generation of AIDS screening tests that would reveal if a person has been exposed to the AIDS virus without producing the false alarms that mar the current test. A half-dozen or so companies are using gene-splicing techniques to develop new AIDS tests that they hope will supplement or replace the current version.
Freezing rain and snow iced the upper Midwest, snapping power lines and sending cars skidding into ditches. At least five people died in traffic accidents on slick roads. Freezing rain forced the Detroit Metropolitan Airport to suspend flights for several hours. Two Illinois residents were killed in icy road accidents. In Wisconsin, two people died in a two-car crash on a snow-covered road. The freezing rain glazed power lines and caused scattered power outages in the Milwaukee area.
Punxsutawney Phil, napping inside his burrow on Gobbler’s Knob, is oblivious to it all, but this town of 7,800 people is about to go groundhog-wild. Sunday is Groundhog Day, when as many as 2,500 people will be on hand as Phil, the town’s famous weather-forecasting groundhog, emerges from his den to make his annual predictions on the coming of spring. Phil is expected to scout around for his shadow: If he sees it, the way the story goes, there will be six more weeks of winter weather.
Born:
Jorrit Bergsma, Dutch speed skater (Olympic gold medal, 10,000m, 2014; World Single Distance C’ship 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019), in Oldeboorn, Netherlands.
Ladislav Šmíd, Czech National Team and NHL defenseman (Olympics, 2014; Edmonton Oilers, Calgary Flames), in Frýdlant, Czechoslovakia.
Kristopher Negrón, MLB outfielder, third baseman, and second baseman (Cincinnati Reds, Arizona Diamondbacks, Seattle Mariners, Los Angeles Dodgers), in Willingboro, New Jersey.
Justin Sellers, MLB shortstop, second baseman, and third baseman (Los Angeles Dodgers, Cleveland Indians), in Bellflower, California.
Lauren Conrad, American fashion designer and television personality (“The Hills”), in Laguna Beach, California.
Died:
Alva Myrdal, 84, Swedish sociologist, diplomat and leader of the disarmament movement (Nobel Peace Prize, 1982).
Dick James [Leon Vapnick], 65, British dance band vocalist and Beatles’ music publisher (“Northern Songs”), of a heart attack.
John Lawrence Seymour, 93, American composer (“Hollywood Madness”; “From the Far-off Hills”), and playwright.
History Diaries 