Anatoly B. Shcharansky provided descriptions of life in Soviet prisons and labor camps and answered reporters’ questions for 90 minutes. He detailed ways of psychological and physical pressure used to force political prisoners to inform on others or confess to fictitious crimes. For an hour and a half, he answered questions at his first news conference since being released Tuesday after nine years of imprisonment. He said recalcitrant inmates were placed in isolation cells and exposed to cold and hunger. Prisoners of different ethnic groups are turned against one another, he said. And he gave a formula for maintaining mental balance: focusing on fond memories of people, places and events of the past. Mr. Shcharansky seemed fit and relaxed after two days of rest and medical examinations. He was found to have a slight heart defect, which was not further defined, and a tremor in one hand that was attributed to a nervous disorder brought on by malnutrition. During a hunger strike to protest a cutoff in communications with relatives, his weight had dropped to 81 pounds. But Dr. Mervyn Gottesman of the Hadassah Medical Center said his medical problems were not serious. “Shcharansky needs no special treatment except rest,” the physician said. “Only a person originally very strong physically and psychologically could have come through so well.”
France may ask the United States to provide a home for the ousted Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier if Liberia refuses to accept him, according to Government officials. Meanwhile, Mr. Duvalier began a legal battle against possible expulsion to Liberia or the United States by formally applying for registration in France as a political refugee. Today the Foreign Ministry said it had formally asked the Liberian Government of President Samuel K. Doe to give permanent asylum to Haiti’s former ruler, who has been granted temporary refuge in a heavily guarded hotel here. Mr. Duvalier and an entourage of 22 people were flown out of Haiti aboard a United States Air Force plane last Friday. Liberia, an English-speaking country in West Africa that was founded by freed American slaves, appeared at first to be the only country in the world willing to take in Mr. Duvalier.
An 86-year-old Croat described as the highest-ranking Nazi war criminal to enter the United States is to stand trial in Zagreb on charges of committing war crimes against civilians and war prisoners, a Yugoslav justice official said today. The accused man, Andrija Artukovic, could be sentenced to death if convicted. He was flown Wednesday from Washington to Yugoslavia to face the charges, and was carried off the plane on a stretcher. The justice official, Predrag Matovic, Assistant Federal Secretary of Justice, said, that “his health condition permits conducting of the proceedings.”
Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald announced a major reorganization of his coalition government today in an apparent effort to revive lagging support. Mr. FitzGerald announced that 9 of his 15 ministers would switch jobs Friday and two departments would be restructured. Among the key ministers to move is Finance Minister Alan Dukes, who will replace Justice Minister Michael Noonan. John Bruton, who was in charge of industry, trade and tourism, will take over as Finance Minister.
Fighter planes from the carriers USS Coral Sea and USS Saratoga, engaged in exercises off Libya’s coast in the central Mediterranean, moved to intercept about 35 Libyan warplanes, but the Libyan jets turned back toward home without making any threatening gestures, Pentagon officials said. The current exercises, scheduled to end tonight, are — like those last month — conducted as a “show of resolve” to Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, who has branded them an “aggressive provocation.” United States Navy carrier jets resumed operations north of Libya today after stormy weather halted flights Wednesday night, and Pentagon officials reported more interceptions of Libyan fighters to make sure they posed no threat to American ships. A Pentagon official said the Libyans had displayed no hostile intent.
Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami said the government will crack down in Muslim West Beirut to stop a rash of kidnappings, killings and holdups. “A new security plan has been concluded and will be implemented within hours,” the Sunni Muslim leader told reporters after a two-hour meeting with army and militia commanders and Syrian military observers. Military sources said army units will be empowered to raid militia offices, arrest troublemakers and confiscate weapons.
Iran said today that its soldiers were advancing north along the highway from the Persian Gulf oil port of Fao to Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. Each side accused the other of using chemical weapons. Arab foreign ministers meeting in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, requested an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss “Iran’s new extensive military aggression” against Iraq. Iran said its soldiers, on the fourth day of a major thrust into southeast Iraq, were near Kuwait. Iran said in a military communique that about 10,000 Iraqi troops had been killed or wounded and 1,400 taken prisoner. The official Iraqi press agency, in a dispatch from Basra, said Iran’s forces were surrounded, cut off from supply lines and “at the mercy of Iraqi strikes” from the air. Iraq said it had killed 2,400 Iranians. In Paris, the Iranian leftist opposition group known as the People’s Mujahedeen issued a statement saying that at least 7,000 people had been killed and 14,000 wounded in the latest fighting. The group, quoting what it said were “wholly reliable reports” from Iran, said the bulk of the casualties were schoolchildren and teenagers. The conflicting claims could not be verified independently because the combatants do not routinely allow journalists near the fighting.
Iran’s official Islamic press agency, monitored in Nicosia, said 17 Iranian soldiers had died from chemical poisoning, adding that “unconfirmed reports say that 1,500 more” had been injured. The Iraqi Information Minister, Latif Nasif Jassem, denied that his country had used chemical weapons, and he asserted that Iran used chemical weapons late Wednesday and early today. Iran denied the assertion and said Iraqi warplanes had dropped chemical bombs on Iraqi troops by mistake because of the proximity of the rival forces. Ali Akbar Velayati, the Iranian Foreign Minister, criticized the United Nations and Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar for their “inaction vis-a-vis the deployment of chemical weapons by Iraq,” the Iranian press agency said. The agency quoted a separate Foreign Ministry statement as saying the United Nations was asked to dispatch a team to the battlefront to establish whether chemical weapons were being used.
Laos will permit a U.S. team to enter next week to excavate the site where an Air Force plane crashed during the Vietnam War, the Pentagon announced. An 11-member team will spend about two weeks in Savannakhet province in southern Laos, where an AC-130 plane with a crew of 14 crashed March 19, 1972. The excavation will be the second permitted by Laos within the last year.
South Korean police sealed off the headquarters of two opposition groups in Seoul, apparently in an effort to stop petitions calling for direct presidential elections. About 50 police with warrants entered the offices of the New Korea Democratic Party in search of documents, witnesses said. Another 20 reportedly went on a similar mission into the offices of the Council for the Promotion of Democracy. Kim Young Sam, co-chairman of the council, was barred from entering his office and eventually bundled into a car by plainclothes police and driven home. They also sealed off the home of one of its leaders, Kim Dae Jung, who has been under house arrest since Wednesday night. The action was taken a day after an announcement that signatures were being collected on petitions for constitutional changes to permit a direct, popular presidential election. The government says that only the President or a majority of legislators have the right to take action seeking amendments to the Constitution.
Philip C. Habib flew to Manila on a fact-finding mission for President Reagan as Senate criticism erupted over Mr. Reagan’s handling of the fraud issue in the election there. Key Senators in both parties said Washington should cut off American aid to the Philippines if President Ferdinand E. Marcos is re-elected through fraud. Both Senators Bob Dole, the Republican majority leader, and Sam Nunn, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the United States should not feel bound to keep the key air and naval bases in the Philippines if Mr. Marcos wins. The most outspoken reaction was from Mr. Nunn of Georgia. He said in a letter to Mr. Reagan that Mr. Marcos’s challenger in the election, Corazon C. Aquino, should be the winner on the basis of the actual vote, but that Mr. Marcos and his allies “are in the process of making an all-out effort to steal the election by massive fraud, intimidation and murder.”
Corazon C. Aquino warned that the Philippines faced a “prolonged political crisis.” Mrs. Aquino indicated that the opposition was weighing direct action to make “the will of the people heard.” In a statement, Mrs. Aquino, the opponent of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the unresolved presidential election, said the crisis “will probably at this stage only be resolved by a wider political exercise that enables democracy to be heard.” She did not say what tactics the opposition might use, but her supporters said they had been considering calling for demonstrations or possibly even acts of civil disobedience to try to force the hand of President Marcos. Meanwhile, the National Assembly began tabulating returns from the election last Friday. Mrs. Aquino said she did not believe the Assembly’s vote count would reflect the will of the people. Mr. Marcos said he would abide by the results of the count and appealed for calm and national reconciliation.
A throng stood at a mourning mass for Evelio Javier, a politician and teacher considered by some of his friends as too optimistic to survive in the lethal world of Filipino politics. On Tuesday Mr. Javier was shot to death after six masked gunmen chased him through the streets of San Jose. Corazon C. Aquino, hailed by the congregation as the “President-elect,” joined the packed church in singing “The Impossible Dream,” a song to which Mr. Javier often referred in his campaigns. The bullet-riddled body of Mr. Javier, one of her campaign leaders, rested in a white coffin open before the altar.
Japan, as the dominant economic force in Southeast Asia, has followed the Philippine election with concern but with no sense of how to deal with charges of fraud. Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said this week that policies toward the Philippines, including economic aid, would not change. The $2.5 billion in loans over the years was intended for the “welfare of the people,” he said. Despite his remarks, Japan postponed a ceremony scheduled for Wednesday in which it was to sign $260 million in new loans authorized in December. Mr. Nakasone has not publicly addressed the question of whether he would stick to his announced policy should it be determined that President Ferdinand E. Marcos had manipulated the vote to stay in power.
Five Americans — a military officer and four civilians — were caught in a rebel attack in El Salvador but escaped injury, the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador said. The attack was filmed by the world television service Visnews, which has footage of what appears to be five Americans wearing camouflage uniforms. Two were carrying M-16 automatic rifles, but the film did not show them firing. The embassy said the officer did not violate the rule barring American advisers from combat. The civilians were described by an embassy spokesman as “action journalists from Soldier of Fortune magazine.”
The C.I.A. aided Honduran forces that the agency knew to be responsible for the slaying of people they had detained for political reasons from 1981 to 1984, according to two American officers and a Honduran military officer. The C.I.A. agents did not directly take part in actions by the Honduran Government units, the two American officials said. The help they provided included training and advice in intelligence collection as part of a program to cut off arms shipments from Nicaragua to leftist rebels in Honduras and El Salvador. “The C.I.A. had nothing to do with picking people up,” said one of the American officials, who has intimate knowledge of American policy in Honduras. “But they knew about it and when some people disappeared, they looked the other way.”
The Reagan Administration plans to proceed with a request for renewed military aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, despite lukewarm support in Congress and adamant opposition from leaders of some other Governments in the region, senior officials said today. The White House “wants to make the members vote in the great white light of public attention on this issue,” a senior official said, echoing the Administration’s words just before its last request for aid to the rebels, last year. This time the Administration will contend that the rebels cannot survive as a fighting force without renewed military aid, officials said.
Chad said today that it had asked France and other friendly countries for military assistance to help it repel a four-day Libyan attack on a string of government positions. Foreign Minister Gouara Lassou told a rally in the capital that the Government had approached its traditional allies some time ago, in anticipation of the offensive. Chad reported that it pushed Libyan-backed rebels out of Koro Toro, a town 370 miles north of N’Djamena, the capital, but two other towns came under attack during the fourth day of a rebel offensive. France, calling the fighting “very serious,” sent Defense Minister Paul Quiles to its former colony and said it will step up arms shipments. Chadian officials charged that Libyan troops are fighting alongside the rebels.
South African police raided a church center near Johannesburg and wounded at least three children who were among dozens seeking refuge from racial violence, center officials said. The raid, at Wilgespruit Ecumenical Center, west of Johannesburg, offered a harsh counterpoint to the white authorities’ promises of racial policy changes, and it seemed to suggest that the Government’s response to its foes will continue to be uncompromising. In a township outside Pretoria, meanwhile, about 2,000 young blacks gathered in a church, and 30,000 others around the capital boycotted classes in segregated black schools, to commemorate the death two years ago today of Emma Sathekge, a 15-year-old girl run over by a police truck during a student protest. Meanwhile, white opposition lawmaker Alex Boraine, saying he is “horrified at the deep divisions” in the country, announced that he will leave Parliament at the end of the month.
New photographs of the Challenger show dark smoke shooting out of the shuttle’s right booster rocket only 1 and four tenths of a second after launching. The photographs mark the first sign that the booster may have begun to fail immediately after the two rockets were ignited on January 28. They were shown this morning to the Presidential commission investigating the shuttle explosion after members arrived here from Washington to question Kennedy Space Center employees and tour the launching site. In the pictures, the puffy cloud of smoke appears about a quarter of the way up the rocket, at or just below a seam that has emerged as a chief suspect in the shuttle’s explosion 73 seconds after launching, that killed seven astronauts.
The analyst who warned last year of a possible space shuttle catastrophe said today that a “gung-ho, can-do” ethic at the space agency made it difficult to raise concerns about safety seals on the space shuttle’s booster rockets. In his first major interview since publication of his internal memorandum warning that rocket seals might leak and destroy the shuttle, the budget analyst, Richard C. Cook, said that propulsion engineers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration “whispered” in his ear ever since he arrived last July that the seals were unsafe and even “held their breath” when earlier shuttles were launched. But he said such concerns got submerged because the “whole culture of the place” calls for “a can-do attitude that NASA can do whatever it tries to do, can solve any problem that comes up” as it “roars ahead toward 24 shuttle flights a year.” That contention has been sharply disputed by space agency leaders who have stated in sworn testimony and at news conferences that engineers and administrators far more experienced than Mr. Cook had repeatedly evaluated potential problems with the rocket seals and judged them safe enough to keep flying. Investigators have not thus far pinpointed the cause of the explosion that occurred January 28, but the seals are a major suspect.
Shock, confusion and a lapse of self-confidence seemed to lead the space agency to ignore its own contingency plans for giving the public all the known facts in the first hours and days after the explosion of the space shuttle. Officials are now beginning to assess the damage this has done to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s reputation as one of the most open and image-conscious Government agencies. Two years ago NASA was concerned about how to provide information to the public in the event of a shuttle disaster and asked a few journalists on the beat for their advice. Shuttle officials were also consulted. Out of this emerged a document that emphasized the importance of “a full flow of accurate, timely and factual information to the news media.”
President Reagan speaks with entertainer, Frank Sinatra.
President Reagan places a call Mrs. Carol Kleemann, mother of Captain Henrey Kleemann, USN.
Tennessee Valley Authority director Richard Freeman, citing unspecified “personal reasons,” resigned from the board of the federal utility with more than a year remaining of his term. Freeman, the only Democrat on the TVA’s three-member board, said in a letter to President Reagan that his resignation was effective today. TVA Chairman Charles Dean said Freeman’s resignation both “surprised and saddened” him.
A black sailor seeking to avoid the death penalty testified he was abused as a child, faced racial harassment in the military and said of the day he murdered a white officer, “I just snapped.” The sailor, Petty Officer 3rd Class Mitchell T. Garraway Jr., was convicted January 30 of premeditated murder in the stabbing of Lieutenant James K. Sterner. “It just happened so fast,” the defendant, Petty Officer 3d Class Mitchell T. Garraway Jr., told a military jury. “I just came back and I grabbed him, and that’s when I stabbed him.”
A county medical officer ruled today that a 14-year-old victim of AIDS posed no health threat to his fellow classmates and teachers and should be allowed to return to school. Dr. Alan J. Alder, chief medical officer for Howard County, made the ruling after examining the teen-ager, Ryan White. Officials of Western Middle School banned Ryan from his seventh-grade classes more than a year ago after he was diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency syndrome, an incurable disease that renders the body’s immune system incapable of fighting disease. Ryan, a hemophiliac, contracted the disease from tainted blood products, his mother said.
The CIA will no longer require university researchers sponsored by the agency to keep its support secret, unless the work involves classified information, a CIA official said in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He said participants in CIA-backed conferences will be told ahead of time about the agency connections. However, Robert Gates, CIA deputy director, in a speech at Harvard, accused the school of threatening academic freedom and said it “steps on precarious ground… by restricting what organizations a scholar may talk to.” Harvard official Joseph S. Nye Jr. praised Gates’ speech.
The number of American military personnel who use drugs declined again last year and has now fallen by two-thirds during the past five years, the Pentagon said. The results of the confidential survey showed that 9% of the respondents had used drugs in the 30 days before the survey was taken. That compares with 19% who had taken drugs in the most recent survey in 1982 and 27% during a 1980 study, the Pentagon said. Officials said marijuana was by far the most-used drug. The report was based on survey answers from more than 20,000 men and women from all services.
The first successful human pulmonary valve transplant in the United States was completed on a 9-year-old Polish boy at a Brown Mills, New Jersey, hospital, hospital officials said. The pulmonary valve in the heart opens to admit blood to the main artery to the lungs and closes to prevent blood from flowing back into the heart. When valve replacements are needed in humans, they are usually constructed with pig valves. Doctors used a human valve because it was available, hospital spokesman Sylvia Guarino said. The boy, Tomasz Pytel, who suffers from congenital heart disease, is completely recovered.
A member of the Daughters of the American Revolution filed a $3-million lawsuit in the District of Columbia against the group, saying it illegally reprimanded her for publicly criticizing a DAR proposal she considered racist. Faith K. Tiberio of Sherborn, Massachusetts, and another member were disciplined last October for their statements at an April 4, 1984, news conference condemning a proposed amendment to DAR bylaws. The proposal would have required members of the organization to demonstrate that they were “legitimately” descended from Revolutionary War veterans.
A man described by federal prosecutors as the “banker” for The Order was sentenced in Seattle to five years in prison for his role in the white supremacist group’s crime campaign. U.S. District Judge Walter McGovern sentenced Ken Loff one week after he sentenced 10 Order members to prison terms of as much as 100 years for their part in the racketeering conspiracy.
Federal aviation officials today grounded an American Airlines pilot and his flight crew who had to abort three attempts to land a Boeing 727 with 125 passengers aboard. The Federal Aviation Administration said it had taken the action against the three-man crew for operating the aircraft in a “reckless manner.”
The chairman of Eastern Airlines, Frank Borman, today criticized the disclosure that dozens of Eastern baggage handlers were the target of a Federal inquiry on cocaine smuggling, calling it “unfortunate.” Mr. Borman said top officials of Eastern had been cooperating with agents of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration for months “with extraordinary discipline and confidentiality” before the head of the drug enforcement agency, John C. Lawn, disclosed the inquiry’s existence in California on Tuesday. Law-enforcement officials in Washington confirmed Wednesday that up to 50 Eastern baggage handlers faced indictment by a Federal grand jury in Miami that is hearing evidence in the case.
Lee A. Iacocca, chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, and Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel angrily exchanged charges today over Mr. Hodel’s dismissal of Mr. Iacocca from a federal advisory commission on the future of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The extraordinary public dispute between the auto executive and the Reagan Administration official came as they held separate news conferences. Mr. Hodel dismissed Mr. Iacocca on Wednesday from the commission “to avoid any question of conflict” of interest arising from Mr. Iacocca’s simultaneous service as head of a private foundation that has raised $233 million for restoration of the statue and Ellis Island. The foundation also awards contracts for the restoration work. At his news conference at the Chrysler headquarters in Highland Park, Michigan, Mr. Iacocca said the real reason for his dismissal was that he opposed construction on part of Ellis Island of a luxury hotel that would be financed with bonds that would provide “tax breaks for the rich.”
Fire swept through a three-room house in El Campo, Texas whose back door and windows had been nailed shut, killing seven children from two families early today, officials said. Police Chief J. C. Elliott said firefighters arrived about 12:30 AM, too late to save any of the children. The children, who ranged in age from 2 months to 8 years, apparently had been left alone, officials said. Garland Myers, the fire marshal in this town of 12,000 people about 70 miles southwest of Houston, said the children had no escape route because the windows and back door had been nailed shut and the fire appeared to have started near the front door. The Police Chief said witnesses told him that Jacqueline Williams, who lived at the house with her five children, and Marsha Owens of nearby Glen Flora, whose two children were visiting, were 25 miles away, in Bay City, when the fire started. They returned about 3 AM, officials said.
David P. Twomey, a former federal prosecutor, was convicted in Boston of passing critical information to a marijuana smuggler he was assigned to investigate in return for $210,000 and a 30-foot speedboat. “You let me down. You let us all down,” Twomey, a former member of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud the Government, fraud and two counts of obstruction of justice. U.S. District Judge Andrew A. Caffrey told the attorney. Caffrey revoked Twomey’s $100,000 bail and ordered him taken into custody.
Texas has a fiscal crisis because of tumbling oil prices, according to the state Controller, Bob Bullock, who said its current budget would be $1.3 billion short. Mr. Bullock, whose office reported a $2 billion surplus in 1979, told legislative leaders that the financial problem would probably last for years. He said a 1988-1989 state budget with the same rate of growth as the current one would create a $6.2 billion shortage. “I don’t look for the situation to get much better,” he said. “It’s possible it might get much worse.” His report was perhaps the most dramatic evidence to date of a new era in Texas politics and life that could be far different than the boom years of the 1970’s.
When the 69-year-old man entered the hospital in Rochester, New York recently he thought he had only a back problem. When he left for home six days later he had chosen to die. In between, he learned he had a fatal illness and had to make the decision confronting a growing number of aging Americans: whether to prolong his life aggressively with medical machines and modern technology or surrender to the natural dying process very soon. The patient — call him Robert Anderson, although that is not his real name — chose to give up. “I want to go home,” he told Dr. Richard B. Freeman, a specialist he had met only recently. Dr. Freeman leaned over the bed and asked, “You understand what this decision means?” Mr. Anderson nodded, and then smiled. Dr. Freeman patted his patient’s hands. And in a moment the two said farewell. Decisions like Mr. Anderson’s, once left to fate, have become commonplace in a rapidly changing era of medicine where machines can prolong life, often beyond the will to live it. These situations pose delicate ethical and moral questions for families and for the doctors who must lead them, honestly but sympathetically, through this emotional and painful time.
Federal officials said yesterday that they had found a second bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide that had been seized from a store in Westchester County, New York. The discovery came five days after a woman died in Yonkers from a Tylenol capsule that contained the poison. In addition, a Federal official said a third bottle had been found in Westchester that had a single capsule contaminated with a minute amount of a substance “that most likely is not cyanide.” The Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Frank E. Young, said the amount of the substance -possibly an industrial cleaner — was so minute that the capsule had been shipped to a lab in Cincinnati for a more definitive analysis. A spokesman for the F.D.A. in Rockville, Md., said last night that the bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol that definitely contained the poison contained five capsules filled with potassium cyanide, the same substance that killed the woman, 23-year-old Diane Elsroth, on Saturday.
Coaches must remain seated nearly all the time during games under a new rule governing high school basketball. The rule has provoked a kind of theatrical defiance. A coach in Indiana has himself tied to his chair with heavy rope, and a coach in Atlanta had a seat belt bolted to his metal chair at courtside.
Keep the uniforms? Two months after being traded from the Yankees to the White Sox, catcher Ron Hassey is traded back to the Yankees along with 3 minor leaguers in exchange for pitcher Neil Allen, catcher Scott Bradley, and minor leaguer Glen Braxton. But Hassey will again go back to the White Sox on July 30th.
A flurry of buying in the last hour of trading sent the stock market sharply higher yesterday and the Dow Jones industrial average to its fifth record close in the last six sessions. The Dow moved in a narrow range most of the day, and was only fractionally higher with only 60 minutes of trading remaining. But it closed 15.14 points higher at a record 1,645.07. Traders said the market’s stubborness yesterday apparently broke down the resistance of those reluctant investors who were determined to wait for a correction before resuming stock purchases.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1645.07 (+15.14)
Born:
Aqib Talib, NFL cornerback (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 50-Broncos, 2015; Pro Bowl, 2013–2017; Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Raiders), in Cleveland, Ohio.
Jamie Murray, Scottish tennis player (Australian Open, US Open doubles 2016; 5 x Grand Slam mixed doubles; Davis Cup 2015), in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Aneika Henry-Morello, WNBA forward and center (Atlanta Dream, Connecticut Sun
History Diaries 