A key member of the Kremlin’s inner circle has left his post as a foreign policy adviser to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Andrei M. Alexandrov-Agentov, 67, retired and was replaced by Anatoly S. Chernyayev, 64, according to an aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), who visited Moscow last week. Alexandrov-Agentov assumed his post, roughly comparable to that of a White House national security adviser, under the late Leonid I. Brezhnev. He was kept on in the two short-lived regimes of Brezhnev’s successors, Yuri V. Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko, as well as by Gorbachev.
Handwritten letters attributed to Soviet dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov show he has been subjected to systematic torture by the Soviet KGB secret police, the Observer newspaper of London reported. The newspaper said the letters were mailed from a Western country “very recently” to Tatyana and Efrem Yankelevich, of Newton, Mass. They are the daughter and son-in-law of Sahkarov’s wife, Yelena Bonner. Efrem Yankelevich was quoted as saying that the family is convinced of the authenticity of the letters which indicate that Sakharov “has been subjected by the KGB to intermittent but systematic torture, including force-feeding, mental torture and physical violence.”
Three West German business executives held for about nine months in the Soviet Union on charges of bribing Soviet officials were released and flown home. They are Monika Schanzenbach, Pavel Arsner and Bodo Luetke who arrived in Frankfurt aboard a Lufthansa airliner. A West German Embassy spokesman in Moscow Isaid the move was apparently unconnected with a planned East-West spy swap Tuesday that is expected to bring freedom for jailed Soviet Jewish dissident Anatoly Shcharansky.
The largest criminal trial in Italian history is set to begin in Palermo Monday with 474 men accused of crimes ranging from political assassination to auto theft. Among the defendants are most of the men thought to be the bosses of the Sicilian Mafia. Yet the most important defendant is not a person, but the Mafia itself. The prosecution will try to prove how individual acts were part of a vast criminal conspiracy born centuries ago and now able to reach from Bangkok to Brooklyn. Much of this effort will rest on the first testimony in Italy by Mafia members who in confessions have detailed how a well-organized command structure runs the modern Mafia.
The prosecutor in the Rome trial of seven Bulgarians and Turks accused of conspiring to murder Pope John Paul II began his final plea this week, contending that there was enough evidence to prove there was a plot but that the state’s key witness had sought to torpedo the case by feigning madness. The prosecutor, Antonio Marini, had been expected to request the acquittal of the three Bulgarians, on the ground that there was not enough evidence to convict them. But Mr. Marini’s vigor in pursuing the case led defense lawyers to concede Thursday that it was premature to predict what he would seek when he finishes his plea next week. Indeed, on Tuesday Mr. Marini cited hearsay evidence, which is acceptable in an Italian court, that further implicated Bulgaria in a plot.
Yasser Arafat and a special American envoy have left Amman after two weeks of indirect negotiations between the American Government and the Palestinians, having failed to reach any agreement that would help rescue the stalled peace initiative sponsored by King Hussein. Jordanian officials, Western diplomats and political analysts here expressed disappointment over the collapse of the two-week negotiations. Indirect negotiations between Mr. Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Americans, which were carried out through the Jordanian Government and non-P.L.O. Palestinians, continued until the last minute. But by midnight on Thursday all movement had stopped, after it became clear that despite the different phrasing and paraphrasing of the formulas from each side that have circulated in Amman for the last week, both sides were determined to stand firmly by their positions.
Libya announced today that its navy, air force and air defense units had started a week of maneuvers with live ammunition within the Tripoli area. The announcement, broadcast on radio and television, said the maneuvers began at noon and might continue until February 16. No explanation was given. Diplomats said it was unusual for maneuvers to be conducted with live ammunition. The exercises appear meant to coincide with the expected return of the United States Sixth Fleet to waters off Libya some time next week. Pentagon officials said it was possible that two aircraft carriers, the Coral Sea and the Saratoga, might cross into the Gulf of Sidra, an embayment that Libya considers part of its territorial waters. The United States and most Western countries do not recognize that claim.
Authorities in South Yemen are digging up mass graves and finding other evidence that indicates both sides in last month’s brief war carried out mass killings, sources said. “Twenty bodies here, thirty there; it’s appalling, gruesome,” one source said. Despite claims by the new regime that most of the killings were carried out by forces loyal to the deposed government, evidence suggests that rebels also carried out “systematic killings.” Officials said that initial casualty figures putting the death toll at 12,000 were “grossly exaggerated,” but they admitted that the toll will likely be in the “thousands.”
An attempted political massacre in Southern Yemen on the morning of January 13 led to 12 days of street battles that shattered much of the capital, leaving thousands dead. It drove President Ali Nasser Mohammed al-Hassani, who planned the gangland-style slaying of his rivals, into exile, brought his hardline Communist opponents to power and left a host of unanswered questions for Southern Yemen, the Soviet Union’s strategic Middle East toehold. Tea was being served to the Politburo members from a thermos bottle by one of the President’s personal guards, Ali Salem al-Beedh recalled later, while another, as always, carried the leader’s Samsonite attaché case to the head chair. It was odd, Mr. Beedh thought, that the meeting was beginning almost on time — seven minutes after 10 — when there were still empty seats. Then the shooting began. “The guard with the Samsonite, Hassan was his name, suddenly began raking Ali Antar up and down his back with a machine pistol, a Skorpion, as he was opening his briefcase,” Mr. Beedh said, describing the death of Mr. Antar, the Vice President and former Defense Minister. “More came in from the side room with AK-47’s and began firing at us,” said Mr. Beedh, one of three Politburo members to make it out of the meeting alive.
Iraq said today that it had shot down two Iranian warplanes as they headed for targets in southern Iraq. The report could not be confirmed, and there was no comment from Iran. An Iraqi military spokesman said four Iranian planes, two F-14’s and two F-4’s, had tried to approach residential areas near the port of Basra. One was downed in a dogfight, the spokesman said, and antiaircraft fire brought down another. Both planes went down in flames inside Iranian territory, he said.
Pope John Paul II, winding up his tour of India’s Roman Catholic heartland, delivered a seaside sermon today at a sacred Hindu beach and urged the church to fight for social justice. Earlier, the Pope performed the first beatification ceremony in India, elevating a nun and a priest toward possible sainthood. “Brothers and sisters of the Catholic Church, you have the right and duty to contribute to the progress of the civic society to which you belong,” the Pope told up to 200,000 people on the Indian Ocean beach in Trivandrum.
The dissident leader Kim Dae Jung was placed under house arrest today for the eighth time since he returned to South Korea a year ago from self-imposed exile in the United States, an aide to Mr. Kim said. Mr. Kim had been scheduled to attend a luncheon celebrating the anniversary of his return after two years in the United States. A spokesman for the Council for the Promotion of Democracy said about 200 leading dissident figures had planned to attend the luncheon, which was canceled. Mr. Kim is a co-chairman of the council, which works with the militant opposition New Korea Democratic Party in pushing for greater freedom. Previous periods of house arrest lasted from one day to one month.
Deng Xiaoping made his first public appearance in 55 days today, visiting his native province of Sichuan for lunar New Year celebrations. The appearance dispelled rumors that he was ill. State-run television showed Mr. Deng, apparently healthy, smiling broadly as he shook hands with officials in Sichuan’s capital of Chengdu on the eve of the lunar New Year. It was the first public appearance for the Chinese leader, 81 years old, since December 14, when he met former Vice President Walter F. Mondale at the Great Hall of the People in Peking.
Corazon C. Aquino demanded that President Ferdinand E. Marcos concede defeat in Friday’s elections in the Philippines. Mr. Marcos said he had been considering the possibility of simply declaring the vote invalid. Mrs. Aquino was holding a slight early lead, according to sketchy returns published by the official Commission on Elections and an independent citizens commission. Mr. Marcos said his own figures indicated that was ahead by a wide margin. Vote counting came nearly to a standstill in several hotly contested municipalities as scores and sometimes hundreds of voters gathered in tense vigils outside Government buildings where they suspected that fraudulent tabulations might be under way. Senator Richard G. Lugar, who heads a delegation of American election observers, said he believed Mr. Marcos might be deliberately slowing the nationwide count as he planned a strategy of vote manipulation.
President Marcos accused the election monitors of “manipulating” vote figures against him and said they were violators of the law. During the election Friday and the vote tabulations afterward, monitors were shot at, beaten, intimidated and derided, some of them while clinging to ballot boxes, according to reports from news organizations and observer teams. But Mr. Marcos today denied those reports and said it was the members of the watchdog group, known by its acronym NAMFREL, who were responsible for the abuses at polling places.
Reagan Administration officials said today that Washington was extremely disturbed by what appeared to be widespread acts of fraud and intimidation in behalf of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippine vote count. Having involved themselves deeply in the election in an effort to reduce violence and corruption and to encourage stability, Administration officials expressed considerable disappointment, frustration and anger over the way the vote was being counted. One official said United States Government experts believed that the count supplied by the independent citizens’ poll-watching group, NAMFREL, was much more reliable than that of the official Philippine Commission on Elections. The official said that were it not for violence and “ballot-box stealing,” Corazon C. Aquino would have 60 to 70 percent of the vote counted so far, instead of the 55 percent credited to her by NAMFREL. The official said the American estimate was based on the extent of fraud and intimidation indicated in reports from various sources.
The United States has canceled Marine Corps exercises off Japan and placed the forces on standby to help evacuate Americans from the Philippines in the event of election-related violence, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported today. A Japan Defense Agency official, Yuichi Tazawa, told the paper that the exercises had been scheduled for February 1 to 7 off Iwo Jima, 660 miles south of Tokyo.
A Canadian passenger train collided with a 114-car freight train today in western Alberta, and a railroad spokesman said 30 to 40 people died in the heap of twisted, burning rail cars. An ambulance company reported 80 people injured; estimates of the total number of passengers ranged from 101 to 120. Of a total of 24 crew members on both trains, 7 were reported missing, A spokesman for Canadian National Railways, the country’s principal freight rail carrier, said the accident occurred at 8:40 A.M. mountain standard time, 10 miles east of Hinton, a pulp-mill town on the main Canadian National line. The freight train was westbound, he said, and the nine-car passenger train was heading east.
Cuba’s Communist Party reshuffled its Politburo, promoting a women to full membership for the first time and ousting four of President Fidel Castro’s revolutionary comrades. “We know the party has problems,” Mr. Castro said in his closing speech Friday to the 1,790 delegates to the party’s third congress. Mr. Castro, 59 years old, was reinstalled as the party’s First Secretary. His younger brother, Raul, 54, was renamed Second Secretary. Vilma Espina Guillois became the first woman to be named a full member of the Cuban Politburo. Those losing their posts were Blas Roca Calderio, nearly 80, and three men who were recently replaced in the Cabinet — the former Interior Minister, Ramiro Valdes, who had reportedly resisted the President’s steps toward detente with the Roman Catholic Church; the former Transportation Minister, Guillermo Garcia, and the former Health Minister, Sergio del Valle. Mr. Castro’s speech praised all four departing members, who were his comrades in the 1959 overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.
Mobs clamored in Haiti’s capital after the fall the Duvalier Government, and occasional violence was accompanied by many acts of vengeance. A special target were the Tontons Macoute, the secret police force of former President Jean-Claude Duvalier. Angry mobs clamored outside buildings where members of the Tontons Macoute special security force had taken refuge. One woman said she saw a crowd drag a Tonton Macoute from his house, cut off his head and parade through the streets with it on a stick. The international airport remained closed, and a 16-hour curfew was still being imposed. The leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Haiti, who many say played a critical role in bringing down President Jean-Claude Duvalier, appealed for calm Friday night over government radio and television. Under the Duvaliers, the church had been denied access to radio and television.
Panama has charged a U.S. congressman with meddling in its domestic affairs by linking funds for improvements in the Panama Canal to a guarantee of jobs for thousands of canal workers once it comes fully under Panamanian control in the year 2000. In a letter of protest to U.S. Ambassador Everett Briggs, Foreign Minister Jorge Abadia Arias said statements by Rep. Michael Lowry (D-Washington), chairman of a House subcommittee on Panama Canal affairs, during a recent visit to Panama, “contradict the letter and spirit of the pact between our two countries, but also represent meddling in Panama’s domestic affairs.”
Peruvian President Alan Garcia imposed a state of emergency on Lima and its port, ordering the military to quell the worst wave of violence in the capital in nearly six years of insurgency. The military command said a 1 AM-to-5 AM curfew will take effect Monday morning. It is the first curfew imposed in the capital since 1977. Garcia declared the state of emergency to combat extremists who have shaken Lima with 33 bomb attacks in less than three weeks.
Brazilian health authorities, alarmed by the growing number of AIDS cases, have distributed questionnaires asking visitors arriving here for Carnival this week to answer questions about their sexual preferences and possible contacts with the disease. But while Scandinavian, Portuguese and Dutch airlines have handed the forms to their passengers in recent days, the authorities said other airlines, including Pan American World Airways as well as Brazil’s Varig, had refused to do so for fear of offending their customers. “Some airlines are putting their commercial interests above public health concern,” said Jose Padilla de Castro, Director of Sanitary Control regarding foreigners. The Federal health authorities said they had printed 50,000 questionnaires and asked all airlines flying to Brazil from the United States, Canada and Europe to distribute them on board to passengers of both sexes over the age of 18. They said the forms would not be used to deny anyone entry to Brazil.
Winnie Mandela today denied any knowledge of a rumored South African Government decision to send her imprisoned husband, the black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela, into exile in Zambia. Mrs. Mandela’s lawyer, Ismael Ayob, said she was aware of a statement by the African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia, that said Mr. Mandela was expected in that country soon.”We think it will happen,” the lawyer said, “but it could be any time in the next few weeks or months.” Reports in recent months that Mr. Mandela was to be released have all proved to be false. But speculation was fueled on Thursday when Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha told reporters that the government had been in contact with Western governments about the possibility of releasing Mr. Mandela. Mr. Botha said further talks “might not even be necessary.”
The space agency was warned last year that seals on the space shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets might break and cause a catastrophic accident, according to documents from the agency’s files. The documents show that engineers at the headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., were concerned that leaks might occur where segments of the booster rockets are mated. Such leaks would allow hot gases and flames to escape through the side of the rocket instead of through the nozzle that channels the gases out the rear, possibly causing severe damage to the shuttle or an explosion, according to space experts. One NASA analyst warned in an internal memorandum last July that flight safety was “being compromised by potential failure of the seals.” He added: “Failure during launch would certainly be catastrophic.”
Two Challenger astronauts’ lives: Judith A. Resnik was a city girl who sought out challenge; the life of Ronald E. McNair began in the cotton and tobacco fields of the South. At Carnegie Mellon University, a plaque in Wean Hall bears the inscription, “My heart is in the work.” They are the words of the Pittsburgh school’s founder, Andrew Carnegie, but they could be an epitaph for one of the school’s most accomplished engineering graduates, Judith A. Resnik. “Judy was an astronaut’s astronaut,” said Henry Hartsfield, the commander of the 1984 Discovery mission on which she flew. “She was not satisfied with second best.” On that first mission, the fledgling astronaut conducted experiments with the shuttlecraft’s solar energy instruments. But Dr. Resnik’s reputation for hard work and professionalism did not reflect the full range of her complex personality, according to people who knew her. She captured the imagination not only because she excelled in a competitive profession, but also because she did not seem to match any popular notion of a NASA “type.” In the words of a stepsister, “She wasn’t all-American.” At Firestone High School in Akron, she was the valedictorian who made perfect scores on her college entrance exams, and who rolled her hair in small orange-juice cans to straighten the curls that annoyed her to no end. She was divorced, and continued to share milestones of life with her former husband. She was extremely close to her father, her friends said, and had little to do with her mother. She was musically gifted, a perfectionist, and private. And she joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said her former husband, Michael Oldak, because “the space program presented the ultimate challenge.”
In the harvest season, as a boy and as a young man, Ron McNair sweated his way down the lush green rows of the cotton and tobacco fields that begin just half a mile out of this quiet, back-country town. It is work of ancient and brutal rhythms, a Daguerrotype, almost, of traditional Southern black field labor. Beginning at daybreak, as the dew evaporated in the warming air, the men and women made their way down the rows, bending, plucking, shuffling forward, dragging their sacks, stooping and reaching under the high arc of the sun as the earth grew radiant and the fields shimmered with heat. “Your back felt like two razor blades meeting,” Joseph A. Wilson 2d recalls. It took strength. At $4 a day, it took endurance. One had to need the money in order to do that work. But in some cases, it helped make people strong. Here in Lake City, a doctor, a lawyer, an astronaut, a biologist, an entrepreneur and a computer analyst rose from those fields. Three of them were brothers, and the astronaut was Ronald E. McNair. He was a hero in this town and state, an example held up to young blacks everywhere, a man who was ready to come home to South Carolina, to rear his children and encourage black students; his ambitions were snuffed out by the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger. It was his second voyage, and the short arc of his career, a flight of determination that took him from the cotton fields to college, to a doctoral degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to research in laser physics and finally to the space program.
Navy divers joined the search for the Challenger wreckage today, making the first attempt to examine underwater fragments from the space shuttle and recover them for examination by engineers investigating the explosion. The first target for the divers was an object located by sonar and tentatively identified by space agency investigators as the rocket that had been attached to the Challenger’s primary payload, an advanced communication satellite. The inertial upper stage rocket was still fully fueled and was being treated as hazardous. Rain and choppy seas hampered the first day’s operations. The divers were prepared to remain for five days.
President Reagan pledged today that he would continue to try to end Federal budget deficits by 1991 despite a court ruling that a key portion of a new budget-balancing law was unconstitutional. Mr. Reagan, in his weekly radio speech, said the decision by the Federal District Court here Friday “does not invalidate” the law “nor does it diminish the determination of this Administration or the responsibility of Congress” to reduce the deficit. Mr. Reagan, speaking from the Oval Office, said deficit reduction would continue year by year “without undercutting the progress we’ve made in defense, without cutting Social Security or essential support programs and without raising your taxes.”
President Reagan meets with William A. Wilson, Ambassador of the U.S. to the Holy See.
The President and First Lady attend a private luncheon hosted by Mr. and Mrs. Armand S. Deutsch.
Most Americans believe the United States Government could be doing more to combat international terrorism, but they are divided and uncertain about the value of military action, a recent New York Times/CBS News Poll has shown. Considerable concern about the surge in terrorism emerged from telephone interviews with 1,581 adults from Jan. 19 through 23, as 57 percent said that because of the danger of such attacks they would not want friends to travel abroad this year. The poll revealed a sense of personal helplessness and a desire for greater government action. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they thought there was nothing that individuals could do to protect themselves against terrorism. The poll had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The charter airline whose December crash killed 248 American soldiers may not fly its 10 DC-8 jetliners until it replaces unapproved spare parts, the Federal Aviation Administration said yesterday. In a separate move, the Air Force announced it had suspended a contract with Arrow to fly military passengers, pending a review of an F.A.A. inspection of the Miami-based airline. An F.A.A. official estimated it could take three to six weeks to complete the inspection. The military suspension had been predicted by an Air Force official Thursday after a House subcommittee passed a nonbinding resolution urging such action. The panel, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Investigations, held two days of hearings on the December crash, which occurred just after an Arrow DC-8 took off from Gander, Newfoundland. At the hearings, lawmakers asked why the Defense Department had decided on Jan. 31 to award a $7.6-million contract to Arrow to carry military personnel for the rest of the current fiscal year.
Five neo-Nazis convicted of racketeering, including two who were responsible for the murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg, were given 40-year prison terms in Seattle. They were the second group of five members of The Order to be sentenced in two days. The racketeering charges against David Lane, 47, of Denver, and Jean Craig, 52, of Laramie, Wyoming, included allegations that they were part of a “hit team” that stalked and killed Berg, a Jew, outside his Denver home in June, 1984. The other three were Randall Evans, 30, and Frank Silva, 27, both of Los Angeles, and Ardie McBrearty, 57, of Gentry, Arkansas.
A woman who spent four days on a mini-Jarvik artificial heart underwent successful surgery for internal bleeding, hours after receiving a human heart transplant in Tucson. Bernadette Chayrez, 40, was in critical condition at the University Medical Center after the second operation, which lasted three hours. The Phoenix woman, whose own heart was damaged by a viral infection, was the second woman to be kept alive with a mini-Jarvik artificial heart. Dr. Jack Copeland headed the team of surgeons who replaced Chayrez’s artificial heart with the heart of a 19-year-old Texas accident victim.
The legal battling is far from over, but beginning tomorrow morning 100,000 railroad workers will be subject to drug tests that their unions argue violate their constitutional rights. The testing, part of a series of regulations promulgated by the Federal Railroad Administration, are to begin around the country despite a challenge by rail workers’ unions in Federal District Court in San Francisco. The decision to go forward with the tests of breath, urine and blood follows a ruling two weeks ago by the Supreme Court granting the Government’s request that the rules be carried out while the case continues in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
A jury today began deliberations in the trial of Federal District Judge Walter L. Nixon Jr., who is charged with influence peddling and perjury. The deliberations began about an hour after the prosecution and defense concluded their closing arguments this afternoon. The defense rested Friday after Judge Nixon, only the third Federal judge to be tried on criminal charges while on the bench, ended his testimony with a vigorous denial that he had ever used his office for financial benefit. He also denied charges that he lied three times to a Federal grand jury investigating official corruption in Mississippi.
Joseph Paul Franklin, a convicted murderer who has been a suspect in a series of racially motivated shootings from Pennsylvania to Utah, will go on trial here Monday for the 1977 slaying of an interracial couple in a shopping mall parking lot. Mr. Franklin, who recently asked the court to forbid reporters to call him a racist, confessed the parking lot slayings in a 1984 police interview, according to the criminal charges. Last month, Judge William D. Byrne of Dane County Court rejected Mr. Franklin’s request that his 1984 statements be suppressed. Mr. Franklin, 35 years old, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder charges, will be allowed to defend himself, though a lawyer has been appointed in case he requires aid. A drifter from Mobile, Alabama, Mr. Franklin has been described by law-enforcement officials as obsessed by hatred for blacks and Jews. He was convicted of killing two black Utah men who were jogging with white women in 1980 and is serving four life sentences for those convictions and Federal civil rights charges.
Searchers digging on a barren ranch near Stratton, Colorado, have found a third set of skeletal remains in a shallow grave amid reports the victims were Denver-area transients who may have been recruited in an auto-theft ring, officials said. Authorities would not confirm published reports that they were led to the remains by the son of Thomas R. McCormick, who once owned the ranch and has been charged with murder in an apparently unrelated case. Kit Carson County Sheriff Sharon Heinz has said that as many as six more bodies could be found.
Striking meatpackers said they will mount a protest outside the Geo. A. Hormel & Co. plant in Austin, Minnesota, when it resumes hog slaughtering Monday for the first time since the strike began in August. Hormel officials said they expect to have all the replacement workers they need by midweek. A spokesman for Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers said a group of people from Minneapolis and St. Paul will join pickets at the flagship plant.
A Mormon documents dealer charged with murder in the bombing deaths of two persons was released from the Salt Lake City Jail after his family helped raise a $120,000 bond, authorities said. Mark W. Hofmann, 31, a dealer in rare documents often relating to the Mormon church, was charged last week with two counts of first-degree murder and 26 other counts, including fraud. Hofmann still uses crutches after being injured by a bomb that detonated in his car October 16, a day after the blasts that killed stockbroker and documents collector Steven F. Christensen, 31, and Kathleen W. Sheets, 50, wife of Christensen’s former business associate, J. Gary Sheets.
Ma Anand Sheela, former personal secretary of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that she broke immigration laws by arranging sham marriages for the guru’s followers. No trial date was set by Federal District Judge Edward Leavy, who was asked by a Government prosecutor to order the 36-year-old woman held without bail.
The stabbing death of a Mardi Gras visitor marred the final weekend of the pre-Lenten Carnival season but did not discourage crowds from lining parade routes today. Hundreds of thousands of revelers jostled for beads and other trinkets thrown by paraders while others headed into the city’s French Quarter. The final week of Carnival, which ends with the Mardi Gras extravaganza Tuesday, was marred by the death of Carl Schexnayder, a Houston man whose body was found Friday in his French Quarter hotel room, the police said. He had been stabbed 10 times.
The Northeast dug out from a winter storm that dumped up to nine inches of snow and brought the region to a standstill, while a fast-moving snowstorm hit Salt Lake City. Ten people were injured as 55 cars crashed on a stretch of icy Interstate 15 in the Salt Lake Valley, the Utah Highway Patrol said. The Texas Panhandle had icy roads after its heaviest snowfall in three years. Parts of Texas got up to 14 inches of snow. The Northeast storm brought 4 ½ inches of snow to New York City and cost officials about $500,000 in overtime, authorities said. At least seven people have died nationwide in two separate winter storms in the Northeast and Southwest.
The minority teaching force is dwindling at a time when the percentage of black and Hispanic students in public schools is growing, according to estimates by education analysts, Education leaders fear that if the percentage of black and Hispanic teachers drops by half by the year 2000, as one analyst predicts, poor and minority students will be deprived of important role models and the general teacher shortage will worsen.
Jon Woo’s action film “A Better Tomorrow”, starring Chow Yun-fat, premieres in Hong Kong.
1984 Summer Olympics LAPD bomb squad chief Arleigh McCree, and his partner Officer Ronald Ball of the Firearms and explosives unit are killed while trying to dismantle two pipe bombs.
5’7″ Spud Webb of the Atlanta Hawks wins the NBA Slam Dunk Contest.
The U.S. male Figure Skating championship is won by Brian Boitano.
Born:
Matt Bush, MLB pitcher (Texas Rangers, Milwaukee Brewers), in San Diego, California.
Anderson Paak [Brandon Paak Anderson], American singer-songwriter and rapper (“Leave the Door Open”), in Oxnard, California.
History Diaries 