Former Socialist Prime Minister Mario Soares was elected Portugal’s first civilian President in 60 years today. According to virtually complete returns, Mr. Soares won 51 percent of the vote. His opponent, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, a Christian Democrat, won 49 percent. It was a remarkable comeback for Mr. Soares, a three-time former Prime Minister who was overwhelmingly voted out of Government just four months ago after being blamed for the national recession.
French officials said today that they had abandoned an attempt to expel the deposed Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier to the United States after the Reagan Administration refused to give him refuge. He had been booked on a flight to New York from Paris this afternoon. In Washington, the State Department confirmed it had barred his entry, saying that United States officials had concluded that they could not guarantee Mr. Duvalier’s safety and that his presence would be a major irritant in relations between the United States and the new Haitian Government. Seen But according to diplomats in Paris, Mr. Duvalier’s continued presence in France and the embarrassment it is causing the government in Paris also risk becoming a serious cause of political tension between Paris and Washington..
Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, now in internal exile in the city of Gorky, could be freed in May or June, a West German magazine reported. Der Spiegel said the information came from unnamed experts close to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In another development, a report from Moscow said the Soviets have approved a three-month extension of the visa of Sakharov’s wife, Yelena Bonner, who is undergoing medical treatment in the United States.
Anatoly B. Shcharansky expressed doubt today that his release from a Soviet prison camp last week indicated Moscow was about to liberalize overall policies on Jewish emigration or human rights. On the contrary, he said, past patterns showed a hardening of domestic oppression might be expected after a conciliatory gesture such as his release. Last week, Mr. Shcharansky was part of an East-West prisoner exchange at the border of East Germany and West Berlin that ended nine years of imprisonment for him. In the mid-1970’s, after being refused an exit visa to emigrate to Israel, he became an activist in the Jewish emigration movement and a member of a dissidents’ committee monitoring Soviet human rights violations.
Senior Reagan Administration officials say the Soviet Union apparently played a central role in persuading the Palestine Liberation Organization to frustrate American efforts to organize Middle East peace talks between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. In interviews in recent days, the officials said the Soviet moves came earlier this month as King Hussein of Jordan was trying to gain the agreement of Yasir Arafat, the P.L.O. leader, on a set of statements that could have produced a breakthrough on the peace talks. The Hussein-Arafat talks ended inconclusively in Amman after more than a week of meetings. “There is no doubt that things have moved less rapidly than we would have wished,” a State Department spokesman said late Friday, when asked for an evaluation of the diplomatic situation. “It’s more than a year now since King Hussein challenged the Palestinians to join him in negotiations with Israel. Unfortunately, they have yet to meet that challenge.”
The severely bruised body of a Lebanese Jewish kidnap victim was found in mostly Muslim West Beirut, shortly after a Muslim extremist group said it had killed him, charging that he was a spy for Israel. Police said that the victim, Ibrahim Benesti, in his 50s, had been shot in the head and apparently tortured. The Muslim fundamentalist group called the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth said in a statement that it had killed Benesti, a merchant, as an example for “other agents” of Israel. The Christian radio station Voice of Lebanon quoted the coroner, who was not identified, as saying that Mr. Benesti had been tortured, beaten and shot twice before he was strangled. Next to Mr. Benesti’s body, the police found a copy of a statement issued Saturday by the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth saying that the man was “a prominent agent” of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad.
Ground, air and sea battles raged near the Persian Gulf’s northern tip today as Iraq tried to recapture a port that controls its access to the gulf, according to military communiques from both Iraq and Iran. The combatants’ assertions could not be verified independently. The Baghdad radio said Iraqi forces had killed 457 Iranians today in an offensive to flush the enemy from the stategic port Fao, near Kuwait. But the official Iranian press agency said Iran’s forces had “liberated” more land in the area and immobilized the Iraqi Navy at the Umm al Qasr naval base. The agency, monitored in Nicosia, said 2,500 Iraqi soldiers had died in the battles Saturday night and today.
Six months after an accord designed to end the killings in Punjab State, a bitter confrontation between moderate and radical Sikhs threatens to plunge the state into new violence and topple the state government, dominated by Sikh moderates. The latest dispute erupted three weeks ago when several hundred extremists armed with rifles, swords and spears seized control of the Sikh religion’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar. They then proceeded to demolish a key building in the temple compound. The crisis atmosphere deepened today as more than 100,000 Sikhs gathered in this farming village 150 miles from Amritsar to back the moderate Sikh leaders in their demand that the radicals leave the temple.
Tamil rebels said today that their guerrillas had ambushed an army convoy in northern Sri Lanka, killing 55 soldiers and destroying three trucks with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons. The report, which did not mention rebel casualties, could not be immediately confirmed. The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, one of several rebel organizations based in southern India, said the ambush began at 4:15 AM on an island, about 30 miles from Jaffna city. The Tamil rebels are fighting for a separate homeland. Other Tamil rebels announced in Madras today that they would free a kidnapped British woman on Monday after the Sri Lanka Government agreed to let the Red Cross take part in the release.
A U.S.-Laotian team will begin excavations today in the jungle foothills of southern Laos in a search for the remains of 14 U.S. airmen missing since the Vietnam War, the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, said. An Air Force AC-130 gunship was shot down in the area March 29, 1972. One of the crewmen aboard was identified as Captain Richard Conroy Halpin of San Diego. In an earlier such excavation, the remains of 13 U.S. airmen were found.
South Korean dissident leader Kim Young Sam was again placed under house arrest, his supporters said, as President Chun Doo Hwan I continued a crackdown. About 50 members of the New Korea Democratic Party and the Council for the Promotion of Democracy were taken into custody, opposition sources said. Chun’s crackdown started after opposition leaders launched a campaign calling for a constitutional amendment to provide for direct presidential elections. Kim Young Sam was put under house arrest briefly last week, and another dissident leader, Kim Dae Jung, remained under house arrest.
A China Airlines Boeing 737 carrying six passengers and seven crew members was reported missing today on a flight from Taipei to the offshore island of Penghu, airline officials said. The officials said the jet left the Sungshan Airport here at 6:09 PM and was scheduled to arrive in Penghu, 240 miles to the southwest, in 40 minutes. The Defense Ministry said an air and sea search had begun for the missing plane.
Corazon C. Aquino claimed victory in the Philippine presidential election and announced a program of strikes and boycotts that she said would be the start of a nonviolent campaign to bring down the Government of President Ferdinand E. Marcos. Mr. Marcos, speaking a day after the National Assembly declared him the election winner, said he expected his opponent’s protests to “die on the vine.” At a news conference held while Mrs. Aquino was addressing a rally of hundreds of thousands of people, Mr. Marcos announced that he had accepted the resignation of the armed forces Chief of Staff, General Fabian C. Ver, whose removal had been urged by the United States. “I am the President,” he said. “They are not going to drive me out, because the people are behind me.” Mrs. Aquino’s announcement, which came a day before President Reagan’s special envoy, Philip C. Habib, is to meet with her and with Mr. Marcos, was more moderate than many of her supporters had expected. She outlined a seven-part program of resistance to Mr. Marcos’s Government, a program that she said would grow “if Goliath refuses to yield.”
Authoritative Administration officials said today that they expected high-level resignations from the Philippine Cabinet and financial institutions to increase pressure on President Ferdinand E. Marcos to seek accommodations with the opposition. The officials insisted that the Administration was not promoting desertions from the Marcos camp, but was expecting them based on mounting unhappiness among Marcos supporters. No names were mentioned. The officials also said Mr. Marcos’s acceptance today of General Fabian C. Ver’s resignation as armed forces chief of staff was not enough to quell the dissatisfaction. They said their impression was that General Ver would remain head of intelligence and security. But they said Washington wanted the general out of power entirely.
Pope John Paul II appealed today for a peace in the Philippines after the Vatican expressed its full support for the country’s Roman Catholic bishops, who have denounced President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s re-election as fraudulent. “I pray ardently that the Lord may help that dear nation find the peaceful and just way, without violence from any side, as is required for the true good of the entire Philippine communtity,” the Pope declared in his Sunday address. Speaking from the window of his apartments overlooking St. Peter’s Square, John Paul said, “In these moments of tension, I am particularly close to the church in the Philippines as well as to all the Philippine people.” The Pope’s declaration followed a Vatican statement supporting the Philippine Bishops’ Conference, which denounced fraud in the elections and called for “nonviolent struggle for justice.”
A Soviet luxury liner sank off New Zealand’s South Island. The ship, the Mikhail Lermontov, was thought to be carrying 400 passengers, most of them elderly Australians. Twenty crew members were feared drowned, and as many as 70 people were reported missing. The liner slammed into rocks in the area between Tasman Bay and Cook Strait. Describing the shipwreck as they arrived in Wellington on two rescue vessels, passengers, mostly Australians, said the 20,352-ton liner, the Mikhail Lermontov, struck a reef off Port Gore in the Marlborough Sounds at the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.
Salvadoran police units are being trained by the United States, despite charges that the units torture prisoners, U.S. Embassy sources and military observers said. The $4.8 million program, begun last week, trains the National Guard, the National Police and the notorious Treasury Police in ways to combat urban terrorism, the sources said. Human rights groups say the three forces have routinely tortured prisoners.
Diplomats and American officials say they believe that the Panamanian military, which for years has exercised important political power, is becoming entrenched and may not be willing to withdraw from government any time soon. American relations with Panama have considerably cooled since September, when military officers led by General Manuel Antonio Noriega, commander of the National Defense Force, ousted the civilian President, Nicolas Ardito Barletta. But the United States, which has 10,000 troops stationed in Panama, is anxious not to disrupt its friendship with the military, according to diplomats and political activists. “You Americans are in a bit of a dilemma,” a European Ambassador said. “You’d like to see a return to democracy here, but the question is how. Noriega knows there are vital interests here that have to be protected, and he’s using a bit of blackmail.”
The French air force bombs Ouadi Doum airport in Chad. French Air Force planes today bombarded an airfield that was a hub for supplying Libyan-supported rebels in northern Chad, Defense Minister Paul Quiles said. Mr. Quiles said the French planes had hit the runway of the airfield at Ouadi Doum, deep inside territory controlled by the rebel groups fighting the Government of Hissen Habre. After the bombing raid, 200 French Air Force commandos arrived in Chad’s capital, Ndjamena, to defend the airport there, officials said. There have been no French troops in Chad since France withdrew its forces from the country 15 months ago.
Tons of American supplies destined for African famine relief have been diverted onto the South African market, where white businessmen are selling the goods for half the price paid by the U.S. government, the Johannesburg Sunday Times reported. A spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, which distributes food aid, said in neighboring Botswana that after the newspaper’s report appeared, the agency audited its supplies. The audit showed the organization about 400 tons short on emergency supplies shipped to Botswana in December and January, the spokesman said.
South Africa’s largest black union elected jailed black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela its honorary life president and vowed to march on his prison and deliver a union membership card. About 20,000 members of the National Union of Mineworkers met at a sports stadium in Soweto township near Johannesburg to hear union leaders announce policy decisions. No date was set for the march on Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town, where Mandela is held.
A Presidential commission’s request that NASA exclude key personnel from its investigation of the Challenger explosion aroused uncertainty at the agency today, but should not disrupt the investigation, sources at the commission and the agency say. The request Saturday by William P. Rogers, the chairman of the Presidential commission investigating the space shuttle explosion, was not expected by the the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Mr. Rogers called Dr. William R. Graham, the acting director of NASA, to advise him that the commission believed the decision-making process leading up to the launching “may have been flawed.” In a statement made public late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Rogers said that Dr. Graham had been asked “not to include on the internal investigating teams at NASA persons involved in that process.” Today, spokesmen for NASA said they were uncertain what effect the request would have on the agency’s own investigation, which involves hundreds of technical experts, analysts and decision-makers from agency headquarters and field installations. “It hit us like a ton of bricks,” said David W. Garrett, the chief of the news and information branch. “We don’t know if five people or hundreds of people will have to be excluded from the investigation. It will probably take a couple of days to figure out what the commission’s request means.”
Critical points in the space shuttle booster rockets were put under increased stress because of structural changes in the boosters ordered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 1983, according to public documents and former officials of the space agency. The structural changes, which were made so that the shuttles could lift heavier payloads into space at lower costs, included using thinner casings on the boosters, each of which was made lighter by 4,000 pounds, while making the booster engines more powerful. The changes put greater stress on the joints between the segments of the booster rockets, which already had a history of problems, aerospace experts said today. “With the high-performance motor you have greater stresses, heats and pressures,” said a former NASA official at the Kennedy Space Center who spoke on the condition he not be identified. “The agency should have looked at how that related to the shuttle system as a whole, but somehow they missed it.”
A small manned submarine today found what appears to be wreckage of the booster rocket that has been implicated in the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger and its crew of seven astronauts Jan. 28, space agency officials say. The officials said the finding at mid-morning of the right-hand booster rocket, in 1,200 feet of water 40 miles off the Florida coast, could not be confirmed until photographs and videotapes taken by the crew of the submarine, the Johnson Sea Link 2, were analyzed by space agency engineers familiar with the rocket’s dimensions and appearance. “They have photographed it, and we will compare that to pre-launch pictures,” said George H. Diller, a spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center here.
Conservation groups attacked President Reagan’s signing of an executive order Friday keeping intact the current hotly debated fees for ranchers whose cattle graze on federal lands in the West. They said Mr. Reagan’s decision was a political giveaway to Western livestock interests at a time when most other federal programs were being slashed to reduce the budget deficit. The conservationists also said the intent of the executive order was contrary to the Administration’s policy of increasing user fees for access to public lands and facilities.
President Reagan speaks with the First Lady who is in Beverly Hills, California.
AIDS has struck prison populations at a rate up to 16 times greater than the general population because infected convicts bring in the disease through intravenous drug use, a government study showed. The report, conducted by the Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice, said that in prison populations, the 1985 rate of acquired immune deficiency syndrome ranges from 5 to 50 for every 100,000 people. In the general population, the rate is 3.4 cases to every 100,000. Prisons and jails in the mid-Atlantic region, including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, carry more than 75% of the AIDS cases, the study said.
Todd Shuttleworth had been a Broward County budget analyst for 15 months when it became known that he had AIDS. He was first placed on sick leave, and then, he recalled in an interview, “When I came to pick up my paycheck a couple of weeks later, I was told that I was fired.” He fought that move as discriminatory, and won the first round of his case before the Florida Human Relations Commission. But appeals by Broward County, which acknowledges that the dismissal was based on Mr. Shuttleworth’s illness, could mean months before a decision on damages would be reached. Mr. Shuttleworth is one of a growing number of people around the country, from telephone repairmen to teachers to flight attendants, who say they have lost their jobs or otherwise been discriminated against because they have — or because some people think they have — AIDS.
A 39-year-old businessman kept alive by an artificial heart for nearly two weeks was in critical condition in Pittsburgh after receiving a human heart. After waiting nine days for the transplant, Joseph Burello of New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, received the heart in a 7 ½-hour operation that ended early in the morning, said David Lash, administrative assistant at Presbyterian-University Hospital. Burello received a Jarvik-7 mechanical pump in a five-hour operation that ended February 3, and was placed on the waiting list for a heart transplant on February 6 after his condition stabilized.
The Food and Drug Administration announced a nationwide recall of four brands of Brie cheese contaminated with bacteria that can cause a “mild flu-like illness” The cheese, made in Sorcy, France, and distributed nationwide contains the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, which can bring on a “flu-like illness in healthy people, stillbirth in pregnant women and serious illness or death in people under cancer therapy or those who have AIDS,” a spokesman said. The brands being pulled from East Coast store shelves are Rue Lepic, Prestige and J. Lincet. Louis XIV is the cheese stocked in San Francisco. All four brands of the soft, white cheese bear the lot code number 351. Last week, the FDA warned against consumption of Brie with the brand names Esprit Nouveau, code number 351, and Joan of Arc, code number 323.
Local union presidents representing 12,300 members of the United Steelworkers voted unanimously to authorize a strike at about 100 can and container plants after talks with four manufacturers stalled, a union spokesman said in Bal Harbor, Florida. The union has been negotiating with the can companies since January 20, the spokesman said. However, a spokesman for American Can Co., said negotiations were continuing.
Despite major defeats on automatic cuts in federal spending and a bill to make companies notify workers before closing plants, congressional support for labor-backed legislation is increasing, the nation’s top labor leader said in Bal Harbor, Florida. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate voted with labor 5% more last year than in 1984 and support for union positions increased 6% among House Democrats, said AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Only among the 182 House Republicans did overall support for the 13-million-member federation’s legislative agenda decline, from 22% in 1984 to 21% in 1985.
Benjamin L. Hooks, the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Saturday that the organization was stronger than ever, and called for a oil company boycott. Mr. Hooks said at the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual meeting that the group had a $2 million budget surplus and had made “historic gains” in 1985.
Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, arrives Monday to offer best wishes to a republic that lasted only nine years more than a century ago. The Republic of Texas is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its independence from Mexico this year. Michael Green, a state archivist, said: “We were not independent very long, but we take all this business pretty seriously.” On his weeklong visit, Prince Charles is to raise at least a dozen toasts, visit scores of businesses, bestow awards and talk with Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan. On Tuesday Charles will visit the Dallas City Hall for a luncheon sponsored by trade groups. At a black-tie dinner attended by Nancy Reagan, will give the Winston Churchill Foundation Award to H. Ross Perot, a billionaire and computer executive.
A new network of radio towers designed to send warning information and retaliatory orders to United States nuclear forces is the focus of a dispute among experts over whether it could survive the opening minutes of a nuclear war. Donald C. Latham, the senior Pentagon official in charge of command and communications programs, said in an interview that he believed the system could survive and should be expanded beyond current Air Force plans, to help the United States direct nuclear weapons in a war that could last days, weeks or longer. He said that more of the towers should be built in the United States and that consideration was being given to extending the network into Alaska and Canada to communicate with bases for aircraft that intercept bombers. But other Pentagon officials and some non-Governmental experts questioned the need for a large network, saying that both the radio system and the bases and command facilities linked to it would be among the first targets struck in a nuclear attack.
Gale-force winds roared over the city of Hilo on Hawaii Island early in the morning, ripping the roofs off homes, blocking roads with debris and leaving the city without power. Winds gusting up to 70 mph battered the northeast side of the island 200 miles from Honolulu before dawn, the state Civil Defense Department said. “There’s lots of damage,” a police spokesman said. No major injuries or deaths were reported. A high wind warning remained in effect for the island and the weather service advised residents to remain indoors.
The recent discovery of Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide has raised considerable doubt among drug industry analysts and marketing experts about the future use of capsules for over-the-counter drugs. In addition, marketers and analysts suggest that growing consumer resistance to capsules might compel Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Tylenol, and other manufacturers to sell their capsuled products in another form, such as the so-called caplet, a tablet whose shape is similar to that of a capsule. Although Tylenol is the current target of tampering, the public has become increasingly aware that any product in capsule form is susceptible, marketing experts and analysts noted. “This certainly does significantly affect all capsule products,” said a professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School, John A. Quelch.
Maurice Hines’ musical “Uptown… It’s Hot!” closes at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, NYC, after 24 performances.
Senior PGA Championship, PGA National GC: South African Gary Player wins first of 6 Senior Tour major titles with a 2 stroke victory over runner-up Lee Elder.
Dutch speed skater Hein Vergeer becomes World Allround champion for the second time.
28th Daytona 500: Geoff Bodine wins on fuel mileage after Dale Earnhardt forced to pit for gas with 3 laps to go, then blows engine leaving the pits.
Born:
Shawne Williams, NBA small forward, power forward, and shooting guard (Indiana Pacers, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, New Jersey Nets, Los Angeles lakers, Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons), in Memphis, Tennessee.
Victor Harris, NFL safety (Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins), in Highland Springs, Virginia.
Died:
Howard Da Silva [Silverblatt], American actor (“1776”, “The Lost Weekend”, “The Blue Dahlia”), from lymphoma.
History Diaries 