A United States ended an episode that began last August when the Reagan Administration announced that the Russians were suspected of using carcinogenic agents to track Americans in Moscow. In a statement issued today in Washington and Moscow, the United States said that the chemical, which became known as “spy dust,” had been used against only a few diplomats and that it “does not pose a health hazard.” The statement, issued by the State Department and by the United States Embassy in Moscow, seemed to end an episode in which the Reagan Administration announced with great fanfare that the Soviet Union was suspected of using a carcinogenic agent against Americans in Moscow. The chemical agent, nitrophenylpentadienal, or NPPD, quickly became known as “spy dust.” Many Americans in Moscow became alarmed because at the time of the public disclosure about the chemical last August, the State Department suggested that the agent might cause cancer.
While rejoicing crowds surrounded Anatoly B. Shcharansky on his arrival in Israel on Tuesday, Yuri F. Orlov was probably alone, according to his wife, stoking up his drafty wood stove in a remote, frozen settlement in Siberia. Mr. Orlov’s wife, Irina, returned recently from a monthlong visit to Kobyai, the Yakutian village of 2,000 in northern Siberia where he is in forced residence after serving seven years in a labor camp. The temperature was 40 below zero while she was there, and even with constant stoking, the house was freezing by morning. The toilet was an outhouse, and water came from blocks of ice cut from a lake.
President Francois Mitterrand said today that Jean-Claude Duvalier’s human rights record as President of Haiti precluded his being granted political asylum in France. Asked about Mr. Duvalier’s request Thursday to stay on in France as a political exile, President Mitterrand replied that “the Constitution says political asylum should be given to people who fought for freedom.” But he added, “I don’t know whether this person is really the best symbol of human rights in the world.” Prime Minister Laurent Fabius said the Government was still sticking to its original decision to let Mr. Duvalier stay only eight days in France, a period that ends on Saturday. “We do not want him to stay longer, and we are actively seeking another country to shelter him,” the Prime Minister said.
A court fined Britain’s second largest printers’ union today for defying an injunction in its battle with a newspaper company owned by Rupert Murdoch. The union, the National Graphical Association, was fined $:25,000, roughly $35,000, after it admitted defying the injunction. The union had been barred from disrupting production of publications owned by Mr. Murdoch that are not involved in a dispute over the introduction of new printing technology at four Murdoch newspapers.
President Chaim Herzog has granted clemency to two Jews who were convicted of taking part in a conspiracy to blow up two Muslim shrines in Jerusalem, a spokesman said today. The two men, Yaacov Heinman and his nephew Boaz Heinman, were sentenced July 10. Court documents said they helped gather arms and explosives for a plan to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The planned attacks were not carried out. Twenty-three other Jews were convicted of offenses ranging from murder to illegal possession of arms. Fourteen of the 25 defendants remain in jail. Ami Gluska, the spokesman for President Herzog, told the Israeli Army radio that clemency had been granted on the recommendation of Justice Minister Moshe Nissim.
Iraq said it retook parts of Majnoon Island from Iran today and struck “decisive” blows against Iranian forces in southern Iraq, but Iran said it had repelled the southern attacks. With Iran’s attention focused on the attack it began Sunday across the Shatt al Arab waterway, which forms part of the border between the two countries, Iraq said it mounted a dawn attack on Majnoon Island, 125 miles to the north. Iraq said it had eliminated Iranian troops in parts of the island and repulsed seven counterattacks. Iran, which took the Iraqi island in 1984, did not mention fighting there today. Conflicting claims made it difficult to gauge exactly how far Iran had advanced into Iraqi territory in the extreme southeast of the country, across the Shatt al Arab. But statements from both sides indicated that thousands of Iranians had crossed the waterway, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and were dug in.
United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar today voiced “grave concern” to the Security Council over the escalation of the Iran-Iraq war and urged “a cessation of hostilities in order to facilitate efforts to promote a just and peaceful resolution of this conflict.” In a statement released after a closed meeting of the Council convened at his request, the Secretary General said that ending the fighting would allow an investigation of allegations that chemical weapons have been widely used on the battlefield.
State Department officials said today that South Korean authorities had apparently started a crackdown on opposition political leaders, an action that the department said was “inconsistent with basic democratic principles.” In recent days, department officials said that Kim Dae Jung, a prominent opposition figure, his wife and four of his staff had been put under house arrest on the anniversary of his return from exile in the United States. Kim Young Sam, another opposition leader, has also been put under house arrest. The two Kims, each a potential presidential candidate in the 1988 elections, are co-chairmen of the Council for the Promotion of Democracy, a group closely identified with the New Korea Democratic Party, the principal opposition political grouping.
Philippine bishops scorned the election. The Roman Catholic bishops described the presidential election as “unparalleled” in its fraud and endorsed nonviolent resistance to the expected outcome. With 97 percent of the vote counted, the National Assembly, which is controlled by supporters of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, was on the verge of proclaiming him the winner, giving him a lead of 54 percent as against 46 percent for Corazon C. Aquino. The Assembly was due to resume counting Saturday, but it was not clear how soon it would make its expected proclamation of a Marcos victory. Those who cite fraud, including American observers who monitored the election, point to a host of abuses, including widespread violence, stealing of ballot boxes by soldiers and incidents of Government computer workers walking off the job, saying their tallies were being tampered with. In an interview tonight on American television, Mr. Marcos responded angrily to the bishops’ statement, blaming “priests and nuns” for the violence, fraud and intimidation of which his followers have been accused. “So now it turns out that if there was any fraud, it was committed by them,” he said.
The bodies of 10 opposition party supporters have been found mutilated and decapitated in Quirino Province in recent days in continuing election-related violence, opposition party officials said today. The opposition called for help from Lieutenant General Fidel V. Ramos, commander of the national constabulary, who has a reputation as a professional military man who does not always go along with the wishes of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. On Thursday, General Ramos ordered the arrest of the commander of a military constabulary in Antique Province on Panay Island in connection with the killing of Evelio Javier, a leader of the presidential campaign of Corazon C. Aquino. There was no immediate response to the plea to General Ramos, although President Marcos charged in an interview that it was his opponents, particularly the Roman Catholic clergy and Communist guerrillas, who were killing and terrorizing his supporters.
The International Monetary Fund has postponed indefinitely an economic inspection team’s visit to the Philippines, where a dispute rages over the winner of the Presidential election, Philippine and I.M.F. sources reported today. The mission had been scheduled to leave Washington today and begin work in Manila on Monday. The postponement could jeopardize the last $225 million installment of a $630 million loan program agreed to by the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos and the fund in December 1984. Also affected could be a final $350 million drawdown under a $930 million loan agreement with commercial banks agreed to last May. The banks have linked disbursement of their loans to the satisfying of I.M.F. conditions. One international monetary official said that the fund’s managing director, Jacques de Larosiere, ordered the postponement because conditions in the Philippines were “too chaotic.” Another said that there was no point in a mission in Manila until there is certainty about who will be in control.
President Reagan places a call to Prime Minister Mulroney of Canada.
The crew of the jetliner that crashed in Newfoundland in December, killing all 256 people aboard, underestimated the weight of the 248 United States servicemen and their carry-on baggage by at least six tons, a Canadian interim report on the disaster said today. According to the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, the combined weight of each passenger with carry-on baggage had been computed at 170 pounds, an estimate that is used for civilian passengers on many scheduled commercial flights. But Canadian investigators concluded that the actual weight, including carry-on baggage, of the soldiers was at least 220 pounds, which is much closer to the figure that the United States Army uses when transporting infantrymen. The soldiers were returning home with personal gear and souvenirs collected during five months of peacekeeping duty in the Middle East. The plane, an Arrow Air DC-8 flying from Egypt to Kentucky, was making a refueling stop in Gander. The Canadian Aviation Safety Board said that the plane did not exceed the maximum allowable takeoff weight at the Gander International Airport and that the runway was long enough for the higher takeoff weight. The board has yet to announce the cause of the crash, which is Canada’s worst aviation disaster.
A land dispute that has smoldered since 1941 between two villages in the Mexican state of Oaxaca erupted into violence Wednesday, leaving 17 police officers and two farmers dead, Government officials said today. State officials said today that the violence occurred after the police were sent into the area to protect the residents of the village of San Nicolas Yaxe, who had been under attack by residents of San Baltazar Chichicapan, which is three miles away. The two villages have been feuding for 45 years over a 1,000-acre parcel of semiarid land suitable mainly for grazing sheep.
After a legal process that American diplomats strongly criticized, two policemen were convicted here Thursday night of the machine-gun murders of two American land redistribution experts and the head of the Salvadoran land redistribution agency five years ago. Citing evidence against two army officers and a rightist business official who are believed to have overseen the killings, American diplomats today expressed dismay at a judicial process that has, they said, properly imprisoned the two gunmen, but left free those who ordered them to kill. “We believe they acted on orders of another person and that still another provided the weapons,” an embassy spokesman, Donald Hamilton, said. “We want the intellectual authors and accomplices prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
French troops stationed in central Africa have been put on alert as attacks by Libyan-supported rebels against the Government in Chad have threatened a year-old equilibrium between warring Chadian factions, French officials said today. The French Defense Minister, Paul Quiles, went to the Central African Republic today to visit troops that France has vowed would be called into Chad if Libya moved against the Government of Hissen Habre, which is supported by France. Mr. Quiles met with Mr. Habre in Chad on Thursday. The Chadian Ambassador to France, Ahmad Allam-Mi, said today that Chad had formally asked France to send troops to meet the new attacks. French officials said no decision would be made until Mr. Quiles returned to Paris on Saturday.
Witnesses said South African police officers swinging whips and firing tear gas broke up a crowd of 2,000 black women gathered for an anti-apartheid march today in Atteridgeville, a small black township west of Pretoria. Outdoor demonstrations are illegal in South Africa. Witnesses said the police had told the crowd to disperse within five minutes. But before the five minutes elapsed, witnesses said, the police stormed groups of the women, who screamed and fled. The witnesses said about 25 people appeared to have been injured. The women had reportedly planned to march to Atteridgeville’s police station to ask authorities to remove the army from black areas and end the emergency decree that gives the police unlimited rights to make arrests without charges.
Producer prices, one of the Government’s main inflation gauges, tumbled seven-tenths of 1 percent in January as oil prices dropped sharply, the Labor Department reported today. The surprisingly large decline in the Producer Price Index for Finished Goods, those ready for sale by retailers, was the biggest in three years and reversed a sizable advance that occurred in the final three months of 1985. Lower heating oil and gasoline prices have been showing up at the retail level for weeks. With oil prices still falling, economists said that there was little danger of revived inflation and that the Consumer Price Index would reflect this. Gasoline is already available for less than $1 a gallon in some parts of the country.
Space agency officials tonight released a precise chronology of strange, rapid-fire events leading up to the last fiery seconds of the space shuttle Challenger. The chronology, compiled from photographs and sensors transmitting data from the spacecraft, paints a terrifying picture of a space flight that began to go awry less than half a second after the ignition of the shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets. Then, like a sputtering fuse, signs of impending disaster appear and disappear until a cascade of events culminates in the giant fireball that consumed the Challenger and its seven crew members. Perhaps the most mysterious new finding of the study, compiled by space agency investigators over the last two weeks, is the sudden appearance of a whitish cloud alongside the external fuel tank 73.175 seconds into flight.
Engineers at Morton Thiokol, Inc., are working on new designs to correct a technical flaw in the seams that connected segments of booster rocket of the space shuttle Challenger. Although company officials conceded that the booster joint has had a long history of problems on shuttle flights, they emphasize that it has not been proved to have been the cause of the Challenger explosion, which killed all seven crew members. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration decided several months ago that there were problems with the seams but that they would not threaten the safety of the shuttles. The problems involve O rings, seals that are meant to stop flames and hot gasses from escaping the side of the booster rocket.
President Reagan speaks with his Army Aide, Major Robert R. Ivany.
A man doused himself with gasoline and set himself ablaze tonight in front of the White House gates. Another man raced across a street and extinguished the flames in the incident, which occurred about 9:50 PM. The unidentified man suffered burns over 80 percent of his body and was in critical condition at Washington Hospital Center, according to officials there. The United States Park Police estimated the man was 35 years old, but had no further identification or information on the reason for his action. William Corbett, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the authorities believed that there was no connection between the incident and a demonstration earlier in the day in which protesters splattered blood on the White House gates to focus attention on the problems of the homeless. Mr. Corbett added that while there have been incidents in the past of gate crashing at the White House, this was believed to be the first time anyone had set themself afire there. Jim Collier, 46 years old, who put out the flames, said, “I dove on him and rolled over the flames.” The rescuer was not seriously hurt but he suffered blisters on both hands.
John R. Block ended five tumultuous years as Secretary of Agriculture today and announced he was becoming president of the National-American Wholesale Grocers’ Association, a trade group representing 400 food distributors. In making the switch from government to industry, Mr. Block said he was looking forward to influencing the nation’s farm policy from another perspective.
The American Farm Bureau Federation complained today that the Reagan Administration might be hurting many Middle Western farmers’ chances of gaining loans for spring planting by delaying aid to the financially distressed Farm Credit System. On December 23, President Reagan signed into law a package of measures to reorganize and aid the Farm Credit System, a nationwide farmer-owned lending network. The system is the nation’s biggest lender to farmers, holding $60 billion of the nation’s $209 billion farm debt, according to a Federal Reserve Board estimate. Many of the farm bill’s measures, however, cannot go into effect until the President appoints a new three-member board of directors for the Farm Credit Administration, an independent Government agency that regulates the Farm Credit System. The Administration has not made the appointments.
Joseph Paul Franklin, who is already serving a prison term for killing two blacks in Utah, was convicted today in the deaths of an interracial couple that a prosecutor said were close to “killing for sport.” Mr. Franklin was charged with shooting Alphonse Manning Jr. and Toni Schwenn in a parking lot in Madison, Wisconsin on Aug. 7, 1977. Mr. Manning was black and Miss Schwenn was white. Both were 23 years old. The jury in Dane County Circuit Court deliberated about two hours before finding Mr. Franklin guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Judge William D. Byrne immediately sentenced Mr. Franklin to two consecutive life terms.
Three balky witnesses must testify against 11 religious leaders accused of providing sanctuary to Salvadorans and other Central Americans, a judge ruled today. After half a day of legal arguments, Federal District Judge Earl H. Carroll refused a motion to quash subpoenas against three lay workers. Donald M. Reno Jr., an assistant United States Attorney, described the three, Kay Kelly of Tucson, Mary Ann Lundy of New York and the Rev. George Lockwood of Tucson, as key prosecution witnesses. Defense attorneys said compelling the three to testify would violate their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. Each has refused to take the stand despite grants of immunity. The government has accused the 11 defendants of smuggling Central Americans into the United States.
A military jury weighing the death penalty for a sailor who murdered an officer was prohibited today from reading a plea from the victim’s stepbrother that the sailor be sentenced to life in prison. Judge John Studer issued the ruling shortly before both the prosecution and defense rested in the sentencing phase of the court-martial of Petty Officer 3d Class Mitchell T. Garraway Jr. The judge then recessed proceedings until next Tuesday, when summations and jury deliberations are expected. The judge said he planned to work on the language of his instructions to jurors concerning whether the slain Navy lieutenant was killed “in the execution” of his office last June.
As in any strike, the six-month struggle at the Geo. A. Hormel & Company plant in Austin, Minnesota, pits workers against employers, but the labor dispute has at times been almost overshadowed by an extremely bitter fight between strikers and their parent union, the United Food and Commercial Workers. The union dispute centers on how the issue of concessions should be handled. The international says it must focus attention on raising wages at the low end of the scale and establishing a strong industry wage rate. While the local union agrees that its parent union should pursue those goals, its leaders believe that wages at the high end, like those at Austin, should be raised and that Hormel can afford to pay it.
A federal district judge refused today to set bail for the former personal secretary of the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. The former aide was extradited from West Germany last week on federal charges of immigration fraud and state charges of conspiring to kill Mr. Rajneesh’s physician. The judge, Edward M. Leavy, said he would not set bail for the former secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, 36 years old, in view of the seriousness of the charges against her. Miss Sheela has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges but has not appeared in court on the state charges. She was extradited along with two former Rajneeshee leaders, Catherine Jane Elsea and Dianne Y. Onang. Both women, like Miss Sheela, are charged with assault, conspiracy and the attempted murder of Dr. Swami Devaraj last July. Their bail has been set at $10 million each.
To the consternation of prosecutors, a Superior Court judge in Washington who is hearing a case involving nine people arrested in an anti-abortion protest has acknowledged that he took part in the protest. Just after the first witness began testifying Thursday, the judge, Michael Hannon, said he participated in the annual March for Life demonstration Jan. 22 at the Supreme Court to mark the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.
Record ski season prospects are accompanied by growing concern among ski area operators that the stability of their industry is being threatened. Dramatic increases in rates for liability insurance since last season and a decrease in the number of agencies willing to underwrite ski areas have cut deeply into the profit margin of many operations. Some areas are operating without insurance, others are insuring themselves through investments, and some are going out of business.
The Standing Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Church said today that fear of AIDS should not cause the denomination’s churches to stop using the common cup in holy communion. The statement was prompted by reports that some churches have stopped using the common cup or have begun dipping the communion wafer in wine as an alternate form of celebrating holy communion. “This practice undermines a principal symbol of Christian and Anglican worship,” the statement said, referring to the common cup, and “acts out of a lack of scientific data” on the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Two sudden deaths restored 10 lives through rapidly advancing technology that has made organ transplants an everyday, every hour medical routine around the country. How medical technology linked the lives, deaths and bodies of these complete strangers began with a car crash in upstate New York. It is a tale of two healthy women who died unexpectedly and the grieving families left behind, and of 10 average people who now lead new lives, with parts of those women inside their bodies. Once organ transplants were considered a medical marvel. Now, without much public awareness, transplanting organs from one person into another has become an everyday, every-hour medical routine around the country. Complicated heart transplants occur almost daily. Kidneys are transplanted every 75 minutes, corneas every 22.
Federal investigators announced yesterday that they were giving the “highest priority” to the case of a woman who died in Yonkers, New York after taking Extra-Strength Tylenol laced with cyanide. At the same time, Johnson & Johnson, the pharmaceutical company that makes the pain remedy, said it had suspended production of the drug in capsule form. The case “is extremely hot,” said the chief spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington, Milt Ahlerich, referring to the emphasis the bureau is placing on the events of the last seven days — the death of 23-year-old Diane Elsroth, the subsequent discovery Thursday of a second bottle of tainted capsules and the urging of public-health officials nationwide to avoid taking the drug. Mr. Ahlerich added that this, the most recent incident of apparent random murder by an unseen hand, had prompted the bureau to assemble a team of agents that is culling records in the Chicago area, where seven people died in 1982 after taking Tylenol capsules adulterated with cyanide. Meanwhile, 14 states — including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut — had banned the sale of Tylenol capsules by late last night, and Johnson & Johnson asked retailers to remove Tylenol capsules from their shelves. Health inspectors and police officers in New York City were canvassing stores yesterday to make sure the state’s ban on sales was enforced.
Governor Mario Cuomo of New York engaged in a lively sparring match today with a group of Washington reporters who tried without much success to clear up their puzzlement about his personality and his political ambitions. Mr. Cuomo, at a luncheon meeting with more than two dozen reporters and columnists in the capital, delivered a finger-wagging lecture to the group when someone suggested there was a growing perception of him as a “thin-skinned” and “arrogant” politician. The Governor said that reporters who used such adjectives to describe him simply did not know what they were talking about. When he first entered politics 11 years ago, he said, “I was called professorial, Hamlet-like, too philosophical, too intellectual, not political enough.”
Dwight Gooden, just three months past his 21st birthday, became the youngest million-dollar player in baseball history yesterday when he agreed to a one-year contract with the Mets for $1.32 million. “I never dreamed of making this kind of money,” Gooden said with the same stoic sense he shows over strikeout records. “It never crossed my mind. What’s the first thing I’ll do with it? Probably turn some over to my mom and pop.”
A sharp drop in an inflation measure in January, as well as institutional buying programs, sent stock prices soaring again yesterday, bringing the week’s gain in the record-setting Dow Jones industrial average to more than 50 points. For weeks, the financial community has been celebrating falling oil prices that might mean a decline in inflation and lower interest rates. In recent days, market analysts said, there have been real signs of both consequences. In the credit markets yesterday, yields on Treasury bonds plunged to their lowest levels since August 1979, as investors rushed to lock up current long-term yields before they sink any further. The Dow climbed 19.38 points yesterday, to a record 1,664.45. For the week, it rose 51.03 points, after climbing 42.43 points the week before.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1664.45 (+19.38)
Born:
Michael Ammermüller, German auto racer (Porsche Supercup 2017, 2018, 2019 Walter Lechner Racing), in Pocking, Germany.
Rich Ohrnberger, NFL guard and center (New England Patriots, Arizona Cardinals, San Diego Chargers), in East Meadow, New York.
Jason Phillips, NFL linebacker (Baltimore Ravens, Carolina Panthers), in Waller, Texas.
Boris Valábik, Slovak NHL defenseman (Atlanta Thrashers), in Nitra, Czechoslovakia.
Tiffany Thornton, American actress (“Sonny With a Chance”), in College Station, Texas.
Roxanne Guinoo, Filipina actress (“Family Matters”, “Can This Be Love”), in Cavite, Philippines.
History Diaries 