NASA’s chief explained for the first time why the Challenger’s solid-fuel rockets were not equipped with sensors that could have warned of trouble. Dr. William R. Graham, acting director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said the booster rockets were considered “not susceptible to failure.” He also said that, if there had been some warning, the seven-member crew might have had time to attempt an emergency landing. But shuttle officials have said that such a procedure would have been extremely risky. The right-side booster rocket is the prime suspect in the explosion Tuesday that destroyed the craft and killed the seven astronauts aboard. Dr. Graham said the solid-fuel booster rockets were “some of the sturdiest parts of the entire shuttle system.” An analysis of photographs made public by NASA Saturday night showed an abnormal plume of fire and smoke erupting from the shuttle’s right solid-fuel rocket at least 13.5 seconds before the explosion cut off all communications with the Challenger. From what can be determined so far, the crew had no signal that anything was wrong. Even if they had, according to previous official statements, the crew probably could not have escaped.
Faulty seams, flawed casings and poorly packed fuel are among the flaws that could explain a rupture in a solid-fuel booster rocket on the space shuttle Challenger, which is viewed by many as the cause of the explosion Tuesday that destroyed the Challenger. On Saturday night the National Aeronautics and Space Administration made public a videotape of the flight showing what it called an “unusual plume” on the right-hand rocket. NASA spokesmen have refused to speculate about the significance of the plume or whether it indicated that the wall of the booster rocket was ruptured. On the videotape the plume appeared to be a spreading, feathery orange light. But sources close to NASA’s investigation of the accident and many independent aerospace experts say they believe that a rupture of the rocket’s wall emitted flames that ignited the adjacent external fuel tank of the shuttle, causing the explosion that destroyed the external tank and the Challenger. Today Dr. William R. Graham, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said a great many possible flaws were being considered by investigators looking for the cause of the plume. He also acknowledged that it was conceivable that two or more unusual factors may have combined to produce the plume. For many years rockets employing solid fuel, though simple and efficient, were considered too dangerous to be used for manned space flight because of their construction. They are like big firecrackers: Once started, they cannot be stopped. In contrast, rocket engines that run on liquid fuels can be throttled back and even stopped.
The effort to find sunken wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger was expanded today after soundings from searchers located what were termed at least three large unidentified objects on the ocean floor near Cape Canaveral, Florida. A third National Aeronautics and Space Administration recovery vessel, which will deploy a remote-controlled robot submersible with cameras, was to arrive in Florida Monday to join efforts to identify two large objects found in shallow water, at an unspecified site about 16 miles off the coast. In addition, NASA reported today that it had located another large object, resting in water 800 to 1,200 feet deep, about 40 miles offshore, where exploration efforts by two other NASA ships were hampered Saturday by strong Gulf Stream currents. So far, more than 10 tons of floating wreckage have been recovered by Coast Guard and Navy ships in the six days since the Challenger exploded over the ocean, killing all seven astronauts and showering debris over a wide area of the surface.
Representative Robert G. Torricelli, a member of the House subcommittee that oversees NASA, said that he plans to introduce on Monday a supplemental appropriation bill that would provide more than $2 billion for construction of a new shuttle orbiter. Representative Toricelli said that a new orbiter could be largely assembled from the spare parts NASA has on hand. But he said it would nonetheless take more than a year to assemble the craft. He said the $2 billion would be needed to underwrite the costs of construction and replenish the stocks of parts. Reagan Administration officials have not committed themselves to construction of a new orbiter. Studies of the shuttle program have concluded that it could not meet its schedule of military and commercial missions with only three orbiters.
Of all the space shuttle contractors, the company now facing the closest scrutiny, and the one with possibly the most to lose in terms of profits, is Morton Thiokol Inc. The Chicago-based company manufactures the twin solid rocket boosters that have been at the center of speculation about what caused the explosion of the Challenger on Tuesday. Morton Thiokol (pronounced THY-o-call), which sells specialty chemicals and salt in addition to propulsion systems for the shuttle and strategic missiles, has been reeling since the Challenger disaster. Its stock has lost one-sixth of its value, falling to $31.25 at week’s end from $37.50 on Tuesday.
Release of Anatoly B. Shcharansky, the Soviet dissident, to the West will be part of a prisoner exchange agreement reportedly reached by American and Soviet negotiators. Reagan Administration officials confirmed and elaborated on a report that is to be published today by the West German daily Bild, which cited information from “Moscow Kremlin circles.” The American officials cautioned that details were still being worked out for Mr. Shcharansky’s release and three or four Western intelligence operatives now held by the Russians in exchange for the freeing of an equal number of Eastern-bloc agents jailed in the West. A total of 8 to 10 people will be involved in the exchange, an official said.
Across Western Europe, Communist parties that were born seven decades ago in the early enthusiasm of the Russian Revolution are in varying conditions of stagnation and decline, according to Western European politicians and political commentators. While Communist parties have faced challenges in the past — notably during the Nazi occupation of Europe — these sources say the problems facing a number of parties may reduce them to little more than sects. “There have been ups and downs of Communism,” said Jean Ellenstein, a former French Communist Party intellectual, commenting on the state of an organization that has dramatically lost support in recent years. “But this is not that — it is an irreversible regression. There can be remission, but this is a fatal cancer.” The parties in France and Spain seem to be in the most trouble.
The eight-month-old trial of seven men accused of conspiring to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981 has moved into its decisive stage, presenting the court with an array of difficult decisions. Using interpreters, the court of two judges and six jurors has cross-examined witnesses and defendants in at least five languages and traveled to six countries, including Bulgaria, to question others. But in the view of courtroom observers, the prosecution’s case has been severely weakened by the often contradictory testimony of its chief witness, Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Pope’s convicted assailant. What little credibility he had, the observers say, was largely shattered by his bizarre public declarations, particularly his repeated assertions that he is Jesus Christ.
Women voted for the first time in the tiny Alpine principality of Liechtenstein and helped return a conservative coalition to power in the 15-member Parliament, officials said. One woman, Emma Eigenmann-Schaedler, was elected. However, the slate of the new Green party of environmentalists, including four women, failed to obtain the 8% of the vote needed for a single seat, officials said. Women were granted the right to vote in 1984.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in effect rejected Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s call for a stronger European role in Mideast peace talks. “Europe cannot be a substitute for the United States,” Peres was quoted as telling the weekly Cabinet meeting. Instead, he suggested that European nations could contribute to the Arab-Israeli peace process “by creating a positive atmosphere and by granting economic aid for the development of the area,” Cabinet secretary Yossi Beilin said.
The Israeli Government is becoming seriously concerned about its increasingly cold state of relations with Egypt, senior officials said today. The Israeli officials say they are baffled and frustrated by the reluctance of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to meet with Prime Minister Shimon Peres and to work out a way to improve contacts between the two countries. Some officials predict that unless the situation improves soon, Israeli participation in Middle East peace efforts could be curtailed. That would have a major impact on domestic Israeli politics and Mr. Peres’s political future.
Soviet Jewish mathematician Yasha Gorodetski and his family arrived in Israel after a six-year struggle to leave the Soviet Union. Gorodetski said he did not know why he had suddenly been allowed out, or if his departure signaled a change in the Kremlin’s policy toward Jewish emigration. He said he first applied for an exit visa in 1980.
Bombs blasted supporters of Christian President Amin Gemayel, raising fears of fresh Christian feuding over a Syrian-brokered pact to end Lebanon’s civil strife. At least four people were injured and several trapped in a five-story building in Christian East Beirut by the bombs, which exploded in residential and shopping districts near offices of Gemayel’s Falangist Party. The Falangists have opposed the Syrian-arranged agreement, signed by another Christian leader, the now-exiled Elie Hobeika.
An anonymous telephone caller who said he represented the kidnappers of a South Korean diplomat in Beirut asked today for a $10 million ransom for the diplomat’s return, raising the possibility that the frequent abduction of foreigners in Lebanon is acquiring a new dimension. Until now the captors’ most frequent demand has been the release of prisoners by the hostages’ governments, or by allies of those governments. The caller told a Western news agency that if the South Korean Government failed to pay the money, the hostage would be killed and other South Koreans would be kidnapped. He said he was speaking for a previously unknown faction calling itself the Green Brigades. The diplomat, Do Chae Sung, a second secretary at the South Korean Embassy, was seized at gunpoint on Friday in Moslem West Beirut.
The Reagan Administration has ordered two aircraft carrier battle groups to resume military maneuvers in the area of the Gulf of Sidra off the Libyan coast, a senior Government official said today. The official said the aircraft carriers Coral Sea and the Saratoga and their support vessels, which are now on liberty in Italian ports, would arrive in the gulf region in about a week. The two carrier groups were sent to the region last month for a week of exercises that American officials said were designed to assert a right to operate in the area. Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, has claimed the entire Gulf of Sidra as his country’s territorial waters. But the United States and most other Western countries refuse to recognize his claim to all of the Gulf of Sidra up to 32 degrees 30 minutes north latitude. The United States and most other countries recognize only a 12-mile-wide coastal strip as under Libyan jurisdiction. The exercises last month began after tensions rose between Libya and the United States. Washington asserted that Tripoli was a major supporter of international terrorism and played a key role in the terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports December 27, in which 20 people were killed.
A longtime Arab-American activist, M.T. Mehdi defied President Reagan’s order banning travel to, and commerce with Libya and flew there on a lecture tour. Saying that the few Americans remaining in Libya in defiance of Reagan’s order are preparing a U.S. court appeal, Mehdi, head of the American Arab Relations Committee, asserted that Reagan’s order is unconstitutional and has only “offered Kadafi unprecedented prestige throughout the Afro-Asian world.”
Southern Yemen urged the Soviet Union today to let its engineers and advisers return here to work on joint economic projects that were halted last week by fighting between rival Muslim factions, the Aden radio reported. The appeal was made by two Deputy Agriculture Ministers at a meeting with a Soviet economic adviser, the radio said. Moscow is estimated to have evacuated 4,000 Soviet nationals in the fighting last month, which led to the ouster of President Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani. The Soviet Union has a major naval base in Southern Yemen and is involved in agricultural and industrial development projects.
The Dalai Lama meets Pope John Paul II in India. Pope John Paul II, unruffled when a young man tossed a firecracker in his direction at the end of a mass here, met today with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, and urged the world to look to the spirituality of the East in its search for genuine liberation. The Pope also used guarded language to criticize the Indian caste system, praising Mohandas K. Gandhi as a man who helped break down social barriers and divisions. John Paul’s meeting with the Dalai Lama at the papal nunciature, or embassy, lasted 20 minutes and appeared to be part of the Pope’s effort to bring together the world’s spiritual leaders for a period of retreat and reflection. The Pope called for such a gathering two weeks ago. Several times today, he spoke of the need for people of all religious traditions to seek common ground in the struggle against war, poverty and a loss of spiritual values.
In an apparent heightening of the confrontation between President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the Roman Catholic Church, the Government election commission has ordered the country’s clergy not to offer political guidance to parishioners for the presidential election on Friday. The directive was issued in the form of a resolution from the commission that the chairman, Victorino A. Savellano, said included possible prison terms for violation. The order, phrased in the cause of the separation of church and state, came amid strong pressure by Catholic prelates for policy changes by the Marcos Government as well as active support by priests in some areas for the opposition candidate, Corazon C. Aquino.
Tension remained high in Haiti and the Government imposed a six-hour curfew in the second largest city, Cap-Haitien. but for the first time in a week most of the country was quiet. Heavily armed members of the special security unit known as the Tontons Macoutes as well as soldiers continued to patrol Port-au-Prince, the capital. The Government told foreign journalists that they should not leave the capital without permission from the Minister of the Interior and ordered all ham radio operators to register their equipment and locations with local security officials. For the first time in a week, most of the country was quiet, but about 1,000 people marched against President Jean-Claude Duvalier in the town of St. Marc, about 45 miles northwest of the capital. The state of siege formally abrogates civil liberties that had been guaranteed in the Constitution but in practice had been widely ignored by security forces here. Among other things, the state of siege empowers the Government to deny the right of assembly and to impose curfews.
Oscar Arias Sanchez is elected president of Costa Rica. With more than half the vote officially counted, the governing National Liberation Party took a commanding lead in the presidential election here today, and its candidate claimed victory tonight before a crowd of cheering supporters. Unofficial projections offered by leading television stations showed that the governing party candidate, Oscar Arias Sanchez, was ahead with nearly 53 percent of the vote, against about 46 percent for his main opponent, Rafael Angel Calderon Fournier of the Social Christian Unity Party. A handful of smaller parties took the remaining 1 percent of the vote. Calling his almost certain victory a “triumph of our democracy,” Mr. Arias, 44 years old, appealed for support in solving the country’s economic and political difficulties.
General Walter Lopez Reyes left Honduras today for the United States after his ouster as commander of the armed forces. The 45-year-old general, who was to join his family in Houston, wept as hundreds of friends and supporters said goodbye at the airport. General Lopez announced on Thursday that he was resigning his position for personal reasons, but said the next day that he had withdrawn the resignation. However, the 48-member military council, which includes the commanders of the three armed forces, announced Saturday that it had accepted the resignation. A Government statement on Saturday said a military delegation had visited President Jose Azcona Hoyo, who took office last week, and pledged support for the civilian administration. Military sources said General Lopez had been pressed into resigning after a power struggle with fellow officers who were irritated by his independence in policy decisions. General Lopez denied a radio report that the military council had asked him to leave the country indefinitely. He said he would return after several weeks of vacation and might resign from the military to work for farm and labor groups.
President P. W. Botha of South Africa, seeking to change his image among blacks, placed two-page advertisements in newspapers today, committing himself to sharing power and declaring, “From my heart, I ask you to share in the future.” After 17 months of racial violence that has claimed almost 1,100 lives, the advertisements seemed to offer an acknowledgment that the authorities’ limited overtures toward the black majority thus far had failed to gain significant support for a policy of cautious political change. In a harsh counterpoint, the police reported killing three blacks overnight in the nation’s continuing conflict. The deaths brought to seven the number of blacks slain by the police since Mr. Botha opened Parliament here on Friday with a promise of racial change.
Budget cuts mandated by Congress and the determination of President Reagan to protect his space defense program threaten to seriously disrupt other military research projects, ranging from underground nuclear weapons testing to artificial intelligence, Pentagon officials say. Agencies researching military projects other than space defense are reeling from budget cuts being carried out under a new deficit-reduction law, said the officials, who are in charge of military research. They said they were considering asking Congress to reallocate money appropriated for non-research military spending to restore cuts in the research budget. The senior Pentagon officials in charge of the research projects said they supported Mr. Reagan’s decision that the cuts in the military research budget mandated by Congress should not come out of the space defense program.
The President and First Lady return to the White House from a trip to Camp David.
Dozens of tax changes in 1985 returns will touch every taxpayer and alter some of the most familiar landscape in the tax code including the treatment of fringe benefits, the deduction for charitable contributions, and business write-offs for cars and real estate. Following a tumultuous filing season last year, Internal Revenue Service officials hope this season will be devoid of the refund delays and other snarls that occurred after the agency installed its new computer system.
House Democrats, adjourning an upbeat weekend retreat in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, attacked President Reagan’s opposition to raising taxes as a method of reducing budget deficits, saying that Reagan’s position is dangerous and out of touch with economic reality. The Democrats said, however, that it would be folly for them to take the lead on the tax issue so long as the President maintains his opposition. House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Texas) deplored the President’s view that tax increases aren’t necessary. “I think the President’s engaging in the greatest and most dangerous example of fantasy that I have ever seen engaged in by anyone in the White House,” Wright told reporters.
Agriculture Department investigators covered up evidence that senior officials toned down reports of contamination of meat and poultry, including one that processed beef was covered with feces, hair and flies, a former meat-inspection reviewer has charged. An official with the department’s inspector general’s office vigorously denied the allegation, which was outlined in an appeal to be filed with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel. The office investigates complaints of federal personnel abuses.
The names of 96 Vietnam veterans who died outside the war’s official combat zone will be inscribed on the Vietnam Memorial in Washington this spring, Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, said. The 96 were not among the original 57,939 names on the memorial because their names were not on the Defense Department’s official list of war casualties. They were killed outside the war zone while taking part in missions directly related to combat, Scruggs said.
Striking Hormel meatpackers rejected pleas that they vote a third time on a proposed settlement with the company, and Governor Rudy Perpich today considered whether to return National Guard troops to the plant to protect people crossing picket lines. Also today, the State Agriculture Department said it was investigating “fairly widespread” tampering with Hormel meat products in some supermarkets in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Department officials said razor blades were found in two packages of hot dogs Thursday, and that inspectors had found instances of punctured cans and ripped packages. Members of Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, on strike against the Geo. A. Hormel & Company for five and a half months, rejected a plea from Governor Perpich and decided Saturday night against voting a third time on a Federal mediator’s proposal. A woman who answered the phone tonight at the union hall said the union did not condone the package tampering and was not involved. Guard troops stationed at the plant since Jan. 21 were moved last week, but the Governor indicated the troops might be returned Monday.
Surgeons began an operation in Pittsburgh to implant a temporary Jarvik-7 artificial heart into a 39-year-old man with a deteriorating heart, hospital officials said. The identity and hometown of the western Pennsylvania man was withheld at the request of his family, said Tom Chakurda, a spokesman for Presbyterian-University Hospital. “Obviously, if someone needs a Jarvik, he’s critically ill and hours within death,” said hospital spokeswoman Ann Metzger. She would not say how long the man had been hospitalized. Chakurda said the man had suffered a major heart attack two weeks ago and was in a “life-threatening situation.”
The ringing of alarm bells during a routine Union Carbide fire drill at Institute, West Virginia, prompted scores of telephone calls to the plant and some residents complained of choking odors, plant officials said. Union Carbide holds monthly tests of its fire alarm, and there was no emergency, said shift supervisor Bill Brabbin. In August, six workers and 129 residents were hospitalized after two toxic chemicals leaked at the plant.
The building housing the reactor at the Perry nuclear power plant in Ohio was not damaged by an earthquake Friday, but it was not yet known whether hairline cracks in walls and floors of some buildings at the site were caused by the earthquake or already existed, Murray R. Edelman, nuclear vice president of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, said today. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors have checked the uncompleted plant for possible damage after the earthquake shook Ohio and eight other states. The plant reactor had not yet been loaded with uranium fuel, a spokesman for the utility said.
Defenders of a group of Roman Catholic nuns who have been under fire from the Vatican for signing an abortion-related ad in 1984 said that they will publish a new statement next month declaring solidarity with the nuns. “It was a difficult decision for the committee, but we are deeply concerned by the growing repression of dissent in the church,” Frances Kissling, executive director of Catholics for a Free Choice, said in Washington.
Expenditures on law enforcement and the sizes of many police departments in major U.S. cities have leveled off in recent years, the Bureau of Justice Statistics said in a new report. Inflation-adjusted police expenditures for 88 cities with populations of more than 100,000 rose from $190 million in 1938 to more than $1 billion in 1982, the latest period for which figures are available, the study concluded.
Ethics of toy-based TV programs are disputed by critics who say the programs unfairly exploit children. The critics include the American Academy of Pediatrics, a Congressional committee chairman, and a consumer group. Once banned by Federal regulations, the extremely popular and profitable programs feature heroes and villains drawn from the toy-store shelf or developed in conjunction with the toy market.
The naked, poisonous mountain that has come to be called “the Volcano” by people living in its shadow in Joliett, Pennsylvania has stood for nearly half a century as a symbol of the destruction that coal mining has wrought in this region. Like others that scar and pollute this otherwise breathtaking area, this 300-foot-tall, 9-million-ton bank of culm, a waste byproduct of coal mining, was built on the backs of donkeys and men who carried the sandy waste, pound by pound, step by step to its top. But now the jet-black mountain, which poisons downstream waters and anything that tries to grow on its sliding slopes, may be of help to this depressed region’s drive to clean up the environment while spurring new prosperity. By burning the low-sulfur culm, it is possible to make cheap electricity and steam. In the last two years, developers have signed contracts or announced plans to build 20 power plants fueled by culm. At least six of the plants are to be built in Schuylkill County.
In Maine, the Great Northern Paper Company won a state permit to build a dam that would eliminate a popular stretch of wild river by arguing that the electricity it would produce was needed to modernize the mills and save nearly 1,700 jobs. But now construction of the dam is in doubt because the company, Maine’s second-largest industrial employer, has refused to commit itself to the modernization and to guarantee that the jobs would be saved. An announcement of layoff plans last week is sure to complicate the issue further. The project, the biggest environmental issue in years in a state closely tuned to the environment, also faces complex legal hurdles involving application of Federal water standards.
A lawyer for the Bellevue Stratford Hotel have announced that the Philadelphia landmark building, which had been scheduled to close today, would stay open at least until April 2. The lawyer told Judge Charles Mirachi Jr. of Common Pleas Court of the decision Saturday. Judge Mirachi was hearing testimony in two suits seeking to block the closing of the 82-year-old hotel. The hotel closed in 1976 for three years after the first outbreak of Legionnaires disease occurred there, in which 29 people died.
Concern for the homeless by local governments is inadequate, about half of all adult Americans believe, according to a New York Times/CBS News Poll. The belief is especially strong among people who say they see the homeless personally and do not know of them only from television and newspapers.
“Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood” closes at Ritz NYC after 13 performances.
NFL Pro Bowl, Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, Hawaii: NFC beats AFC, 28–24; MVP: Phil Simms, NY Giants, quarterback.
Born:
Franz Rogowski, German award-winning actor (“Passages”, “Great Freedom”), in Frieberg, West Germany.
Gemma Atherton, English actress and producer (“Quantum of Solace”), in Gravesend, England, United Kingdom.
Trevard Lindley, NFL cornerback (Philadelphia Eagles), in Litha Springs, Georgia.
Quinn Porter, NFL running back (St. Louis Rams), in Quartz Hill, California.
History Diaries 