Troops loyal to Ferdinand Marcos attacked the garrison in Manila held by two former government officials, but the assault ended quickly amid evidence that some of the attackers and a growing number of military officials had joined the rebels. The attack followed a tense night of threats and counter threats between the two sides. The fast-moving events left the ultimate outcome of three-day standoff unclear.
President Marcos declared a state of emergency in a broadcast today that was interrupted when the television pictures suddenly went blank. Rebel troops had seized control of the Government television studios in Quezon City near here after a brief gunfight. The rebels began broadcasting after several hours in which the station was off the air. The rebels announced that what they called the era of using the station for Marcos propaganda was at an end. The one known fatality of the day occurred when a soldier was shot accidentally in the head during the confrontation over the station. The rebels at the station had troops in place to protect against a counterattack. Mr. Marcos may be able arrange access to one of the non-government stations but there was no immediate sign that he was trying to.
At dawn, Sunday, government troops arrived at Radio Veritas and destroyed its main 50-kilowatt transmitter, cutting off broadcasts to people in the nearby provinces. The station switched to a 10-kilowatt standby transmitter with a limited range of broadcast. The station was targeted because it had proven to be a valuable communications tool for the people supporting the rebels, keeping them informed of government troop movements and relaying requests for food, medicine, and supplies.
Still, people came to EDSA until it swelled to hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians. The mood in the street was very festive, with many bringing whole families. Performers entertained the crowds, nuns and priests led prayer vigils, and people set up barricades and makeshift sandbags, trees, and vehicles in several places along EDSA and intersecting streets such as Santolan and Ortigas Avenue. Everywhere, people listened to Radio Veritas on their radios. A photo taken by Pete Reyes of Srs. Porferia Ocariza and Teresita Burias leading the rosary in front of soldiers has since become an iconic picture of the revolution. Several groups sang Bayan Ko (My Homeland), which, since 1980, had become a patriotic anthem of the opposition. People frequently flashed the ‘LABAN’ sign, which is an “L” formed with their thumb and index finger. ‘laban’ is the Filipino word for ‘fight’, but also the abbreviation of Lakas ng Bayan, Ninoy Aquino’s party. After lunch on February 23, Enrile and Ramos decided to consolidate their positions. Enrile crossed EDSA from Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Crame amidst cheers from the crowd.
In the mid-afternoon, Radio Veritas relayed reports of Marines massing near the camps in the east and LVT-5 tanks approaching from the north and south. A contingent of Marines with tanks and armored vans, led by Brigadier General Artemio Tadiar, was stopped along Ortigas Avenue, about two kilometers from the camps, by tens of thousands of people. Nuns holding rosaries knelt in front of the tanks and men and women linked arms together to block the troops. Tadiar asked the crowds to make a clearing for them, but they did not budge. In the end, the troops retreated with no shots fired.
By evening, the standby transmitter of Radio Veritas failed, although the stations of the Far East Broadcasting Company also took up the task of broadcasting information to the crowds, calling them in particular to protect Gate 2 of Camp Aguinaldo. Shortly after midnight, the Radio Veritas staff led by Father James Reuter were able to move to the transmitter of DZRJ-AM so they could begin broadcasting again. To help keep their location a secret, they took up the moniker “Radyo Bandido” (Bandit Radio) as a callsign. June Keithley, with her husband Angelo Castro Jr., was the radio broadcaster who continued Radio Veritas’ program throughout the night and in the ensuing days.
President Reagan threatened President Ferdinand E. Marcos today with an immediate cutoff of American military aid unless he avoided the use of force against Filipinos calling for his resignation. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said Mr. Reagan had sent a message to Mr. Marcos urging him “to avoid an attack against other elements of the Philippine armed forces.” But as reports came in that such an attack had begun, Mr. Speakes said the United States “cannot continue our existing military assistance if the Government uses that aid against other elements of the Philippine military that enjoy popular backing.” He said Mr. Reagan was ready to suspend the multimillion-dollar aid program as early as tonight if Mr. Marcos did not heed the warning. Mr. Reagan returned to the White House from the Presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland, a few hours earlier than planned to meet with Philip C. Habib, his special envoy, who reported to him and other senior national security advisers on his weeklong mission to the Philippines. Administration officials said a major topic of the nearly 90-minute session was how to encourage a peaceful change of leadership in the Philippines. Mr. Speakes said Mr. Habib would probably return to the Philippines to continue discussions with Philippine leaders.
With the Philippines caught up in a military and political crisis, the Communist New People’s Army in the countryside and their radical allies in the cities have remained largely on the sidelines, putting many of their followers in an uncomfortable position. As the confusion and uncertainty continued today, Bayan, an umbrella organization of leftist political groups and unions, called for a general strike to begin immediately. Leaders of the left say their decision to boycott the election February 7 between President Ferdinand E. Marcos and Corazon C. Aquino has been proved correct, since Mr. Marcos has remained in office despite widespread signs of fraud and voter intimidation. But a number of moderate Filipinos and diplomats here believe the boycott cost the Communists a chance to increase their power by linking themselves to the popular Mrs. Aquino.
In less than a year in power, Mikhail S. Gorbachev has achieved a shake-up of the top ranks of the Soviet leadership that has been more thorough than any of his predecessors managed in so short a time. Many diplomats rank the mass replacement of officials from the Politburo down through the party apparatus, the ministries and the republic and regional organizations as probably the most impressive achievement of the new leadership so far. The Communist Party Congress that begins here Tuesday is expected to consolidate the changes by naming a central committee with a sizable block of new members — as many as half, according to some projections. The committee’s 300 or so members set the policies of the party between congresses and make up the primary pool from which top national leaders are drawn. More than 30 percent of the 319 members named at the last party congress in 1981 have died, retired or lost the positions that entitled them to a seat on the Central Committee, and many more are likely to be removed to make room for Mr. Gorbachev’s people.
The shake-up began almost as soon as Mr. Gorbachev was appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party on March 11, and it quickened in the weeks before the party congress. Among the most recent victims was Viktor V. Grishin, the former Moscow party chief, who was dropped from the Politburo last week. Mr. Grishin was the third full member removed under Mr. Gorbachev, joining the former Leningrad party chief, Grigory V. Romanov, and the former Prime Minister, Nikolai A. Tikhonov. In their stead, Mr. Gorbachev has promoted his own men, including Yegor K. Ligachev, his second-in-command and chief ideologist; Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, the new Prime Minister; Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze; Nikolai V. Talyzin, the new head of Gosplan, the economic planning agency, and Boris N. Yeltsin, head of the Moscow party organization. What has impressed diplomats more than the changes at the top, where Mr. Gorbachev would be expected to bring in his own men, has been the shake-up of the vast machinery of state below. It is there, in the central party apparatus, in the many ministries, in far-flung republics, cities, oblasts and other subdivisions of the Soviet state that the ambitions of the leadership can be stymied or advanced, and it was there that Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Ligachev staged their major offensive.
Dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, 64, signed away his right to leave the Soviet Union in exchange for official permission for his wife, Yelena Bonner, to visit the United States for medical care, according to U.S. News & World Report. The magazine published letters attributed to Sakharov that it said were smuggled from the Soviet Union. One of these letters said, “I accept the Soviet authorities’ right to refuse me permission to travel beyond the country’s borders, since I did in the past have access to especially important secret material of a military nature, some of which might be of significance even now.”
A Soviet spy satellite, possibly powered by an atomic reactor, is out of control and could plunge to Earth between March 21 and March 25, the West German newspaper Bild reported. Quoting space experts, the newspaper said the steering mechanism on the satellite, Cosmos 1714, has failed. Bild said the Soviets launched Cosmos 1714 on December 28. It has highly advanced listening devices on board that are capable of tracking submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific, Bild said.
French Premier Laurent Fabius branded as “not correct” a U.S. refusal to take ousted Haitian President Jean-Claude Duvalier off France’s hands. Giving the clearest signal yet of Paris’ irritation with Washington over Duvalier’s status after he fled Haiti on February 7, Fabius said, “They (the Americans) did not want to take him back, which was not correct on their part.” A number of countries have refused to take the Haitian dictator, and he and his family remain in a luxury hotel in the French Alps. “We have no intention of keeping him,” Fabius said. “The sooner he goes, the better…. But we still need to find a country that will take him in.”
Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through Madrid today to express opposition to membership in NATO, an issue scheduled for a referendum next month. There was no immediate official estimate on the number of marchers. The state-run television said “hundreds of thousands” took part. The organizers put the number at 750,000. Spain has belonged to the Atlantic alliance since 1982, but is not integrated into its military structure. More than 150 pacifist, ecologist and leftist political groups that organized the demonstration said 25,000 people from around the country had converged on Madrid.
A remote-controlled bomb exploded today near a police car, wounding an officer hours after an army patrol killed an Irish Republican Army rebel and captured his comrade. A police spokesman said the army patrol spotted the guerrillas Saturday night after they had fired about 20 shots at a police station in Londonderry and were fleeing in a stolen car. The outlawed Irish Republican Army, which is fighting British rule in Northern Ireland, said the dead man, identified as Patrick Tony Gough, 24 years old, was one of its volunteers. The policeman suffered an eye injury when the bomb exploded near a passing police car in Armagh, 55 miles southeast of Londonderry, the spokesman said. Two others required treatment for shock, the spokesman said.
Jordan’s King Hussein challenged Yasser Arafat’s leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization, calling on Palestinians to decide who should lead them. Hussein told the New York Times that he would respect a decision that the PLO is their “sole legitimate representative” but added that Jordan would also welcome another group to fill the same role. Hussein’s statement followed the collapse last week of the most recent round of Mideast peace efforts after the PLO refused to accept U.N. resolutions that recognize Israel’s right to exist.
The Jews of Lebanon face imminent danger from extremist Islamic groups and should leave the country, leading French Jews said. The appeal at a conference in Paris followed the announced executions of four Jews in Lebanon and the abduction of three Jews by an Islamic group in West Beirut. Since December, the extremists have announced the executions of four Jews in Lebanon and the abduction of three.
Christian villages in the eastern and northeastern mountains came under artillery and rocket attack today, and a senior Christian leader accused Syrian troops of taking part in the bombardment and asked for their withdrawal from Lebanon. The Christian radio, Voice of Lebanon, said that shells and rockets had struck Christian villages in the Upper Maten and Kesrouan hills and that a number of people had been wounded. It was the second round of violence in those areas in the last few days. On Thursday the ancestral home of President Amin Gemayel in Bikfeiya, in the Upper Maten 12 miles east of here, was badly damaged when it was hit by several rockets fired from positions of Syrian-backed militiamen in Dhur Shueir, a few miles away.
Iraqi forces fighting to retake the southern tip of the Faw Peninsula from occupying Iranian troops recaptured an important communications junction, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. The agency said the Iranians struck at the advancing Iraqi southern and central columns, but the central column mounted a new attack and seized the junction after fierce fighting that left Iranian corpses “filling the battleground.” Tehran radio said the Iraqis suffered 500 casualties in the fighting and that 59 prisoners were taken. Iran denied that it had lost any territory on the peninsula. Independent confirmation of the combatants’ claims was not possible. Meanwhile, with Iranian forces near its border, Kuwait said it would not balk at the possibility of going to war if the Iranians should “violate Kuwaiti territory.”
Also in Tehran, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party said that pro-Iranian Kurds had mounted an offensive in northern Iraq, attacking army bases and traffic on the key Iraq-Turkey highway with mortar and artillery fire. The spokesman said that on Saturday Kurdish guerrillas attacked a major Iraqi army base at Zakho and the heavily defended highway nearby.
Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq said today that he hoped talks set for next month in Geneva could lead to the withdrawal of some 115,000 Soviet military personnel from Afghanistan. Some three million Afghan refugees have entered Pakistan and 1.8 million have fled to Iran since Soviet soldiers were sent into Afghanistan in December 1979 to help the pro-Moscow Government battle Islamic rebels.
Also today, the state-owned Kabul radio reported that the Afghan President, Babrak Karmal, traveled to Moscow. In a newscast monitored here, the radio said that while in Moscow, Mr. Karmal would attend the 27th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. The United Nations is overseeing the Geneva talks on the Afghan war. Since 1982, there have been six rounds of the talks, with the most recent in December 1985.
South Korean police released dissident leader Kim Dae Jung from house arrest, 11 days after a petition campaign demanding direct presidential elections sparked a government crackdown on opposition politicians. About 300 riot police posted around Kim’s house were removed, along with barricades on nearby streets, an aide said. The government of President Chun Doo Hwan has struck at the campaign by blockading the New Korea Democratic Party’s headquarters, arresting several of its leaders and interrogating others. The government contends that the petition is illegal.
Palauans overwhelmingly endorsed a new political relationship with the United States that could bring the Western Pacific island nation self-government and a large amount of economic aid. In a plebiscite Friday, the islanders approved a 50-year Compact of Free Association by nearly 3 to 1, according to unofficial returns. Palau, a republic of 14,000 people, is the westernmost of four political entities in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, mandated at the end of World War II by the United Nations.
When Haiti’s absolute ruler, Jean-Claude Duvalier, boarded a United States Air Force plane two weeks ago and headed for exile, many Haitians hoped that revolutionary changes would somehow follow. Those hopes may have been impossibly high. Many Haitians are complaining that the newly appointed rulers remain secretive and that the interim Government is a nest of inertia, confusion and recriminations. Student activists and business people say the Government, composed largely of former officials under Mr. Duvalier, has taken actions that are mostly symbolic and has given little indication of its political and economic plans.
Some middle-level space agency officials and outside engineers apparently suspected within minutes of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger that the cause was faulty seals in a booster rocket, according to interviews with engineers and documents released by the agency. Nonetheless, their suspicions seemed not to have reached top officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for more than a week after the disaster. Those top officials were also shocked to learn nearly two weeks after the explosion of a near rebellion the night before the launching among engineers who opposed going ahead because of concern about low temperatures, sources familiar with the investigation said. The officials first heard of the dispute at a closed session of the Presidential commission that is investigating the accident. “No one was lying,” one source familiar with the investigation said yesterday. “But no one was in a hurry to talk about the criticality of the objections that took place the night of the launch.” The question of why senior space agency officials were apparently kept in the dark so long about the best clues to the cause of the disaster that destroyed the shuttle and killed its seven crew members is only the latest element in what one investigator last week called “the deep mystery of why the launch happened.” Many involved say the first concrete answers may come Tuesday when the Presidential commission, in its first open session in more than a week, interrogates mid-level NASA officials and engineers from Morton Thiokol Inc., the manufacturer of the booster rockets.
The destruction of the space shuttle Challenger has left the Pentagon uncertain about its ability to maintain and upgrade military satellites that monitor Soviet military actions and control United States nuclear forces. Because United States satellites have a record of good reliability and much longer service life than the Soviet models, no immediate crisis is foreseen, Pentagon officials said last week. Serious problems could arise, however, if what caused the disaster cannot be corrected quickly enough to resume an ambitious schedule of six launchings a year for each of the remaining three space shuttles. With a delay of a only few months, the Defense Department could use its priority on shuttle flights to get “the most critical payloads” into space over two and a half years, according to the officials, who declined to be identified.
The President and First Lady return to the White House from their stay at Camp David.
The President and First Lady host a dinner for the Governors of the States and Territories and their spouses.
Some of the nation’s governors meeting in Washington today expressed concern that the Federal deficit reduction act would lead to neglect of critical social needs while allowing some nonessential programs to continue. These concerns were expressed to Senator Pete V. Domenici, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, in a session of the executive committee of the National Governors’ Association. whose winter meeting here ends Tuesday. The new law sets deficit ceilings for each year to balance the budget by 1991. If Congress and the President fail to agree on a budget that meets the deficit ceiling, the law mandates automatic cuts in almost all spending programs.
Federal officials said tests showed there was no poison in a suspicious bottle of Panadol capsules found in a community near the New York suburb where a woman died from cyanide-tainted Tylenol. The discovery of Panadol with damaged capsules — apparently due to a manufacturing error — was reported Saturday in Nanuet, New York, a suburb near Westchester County, where Diane Elsroth died February 8 of cyanide poisoning after taking two Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules. There were no new leads in the death of Elsroth, 23. Food and Drug Administration spokesman Bill Grigg said tests on the Panadol “turned up negative for cyanide.” He said the problem appears to be “a manufacturing error.”
Procedures used by the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography have been so biased and irresponsible that its final report should not be taken seriously, the American Civil Liberties Union said. The ACLU issued a 30-page report examining the work of the 11-member commission, appointed last May by Attorney General Edwin Meese III. The commission is scheduled to meet this week in Scottsdale, Arizona, to make decisions and recommendations for its final report, to be released in June.
The gap between Democratic and Republican votes on consumer issues in Congress widened in the Senate in 1985 and narrowed in the House, the Consumer Federation of America said. The organization said the Senate’s 47 Democrats had an average pro-consumer score of 71%, compared to 25% for the 53 Republicans. “The 46-point gap between Democrats and Republicans is the largest in the 15-year history of the CFA voting record and is more than triple the 1984 gap of 14%,” a federation spokesman said. The House’s 253 Democrats had an average of 67% and the 182 Republicans averaged 34%. That 33-point gap was the smallest since 1981, the spokesman said.
A new study by the National Academy of Sciences calls for much stronger Federal regulation of nursing homes and emphatically opposes efforts by the Reagan Administration to reduce such regulation. “A stronger Federal role is essential” to protect patients’ rights and to improve the quality of care, says a confidential draft of the 300-page report, which was commissioned by the Federal Government. In many nursing homes certified by the Government, the report said, patients “receive very inadequate — sometimes shockingly inadequate — care that is likely to hasten the deterioration of their physical, mental, emotional and health status.” The report added, “There is a broad consensus that government regulation of nursing homes, as it now functions, is not satisfactory because it allows too many marginal or substandard nursing homes to continue in operation.” It also said patients in many homes that receive Federal Medicaid and Medicare funds “have their rights ignored or violated, and may even be subject to physical abuse.” Thus, the report said, “A reduction in regulation is inappropriate.”
New state programs under which welfare recipients agree to work at public service jobs in return for their benefits are helping some participants find private employment, according to a national study. The study, made public today by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a research group in New York City, also reported that in some cases the programs that combine welfare payments and work, or “workfare,” reduce the cost of welfare to taxpayers. The findings indicated that more of those enrolled in workfare programs found employment elsewhere than those welfare recipients who did not participate. Also, the study indicated, the programs had the greatest benefits for those considered hardest to place in jobs.
A security guard was wounded by gunfire before dawn today at the Sequoyah Fuels Corporation’s uranium processing plant in Oklahoma, the site of a toxic leak that killed one worker and sent more than 100 people to hospitals January 4, officials said. The guard, Nina Dale, suffered a minor arm wound from one of three shots fired by a man who entered and left the plant grounds through a cut in a fence, a company spokesman said. She was released after treatment at a Muskogee hospital. Rick Pereles, director of communications for the Kerr McGee Corporation, which owns the plant, said he was “not aware of any threats” against the plant, which processes uranium for use as nuclear fuels. “We don’t have any suspects or anything like that yet,” Mr. Pereles said.
Law officers on both sides of the Mexican border searched today for three suspected drug smugglers who the authorities believe killed a United States Customs official in southern Arizona on Friday. Officials said a $100,000 award has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers. The agent, Glenn Robert Miles Sr., 42 years old, was found shot to death late Friday along a dirt road, 25 miles south of Sells and a mile and a half from the remote San Miguel border-crossing into Mexico. Charles Conroy, a spokesman for the Customs Service, said Mr. Miles had advised his Tucson office Friday night that he was pursuing three men on foot on the Papago Indian Reservation. Dispatchers became concerned when the agent did not check back, and they sent other officers, who found his body. Mr. Miles, a Papago tribe member who lived on the reservation in Sells, had been a Customs agent since September 1976.
A young Missouri farmer survived a year whose outcome had often been in doubt. Sales of livestock and crops gave Lawrence B. Gladbach, who farms in Mendon, a victory in “the crapshoot” of farming, as the livestock buyer put it. Mr. Gladbach’s prize is the chance to continue a struggle against weather, debts and market prices.
California residents who fled floods began returning to clean up as the Yuba River started to subside . They were hampered by traffic jams and a lack of utilities. Levees on other channels were being repaired or watched closely for leaks.
Maryland officials, failing to reach a voluntary recall agreement with Gerber, formally banned the sale of Gerber strained peaches because the product may be “injurious to health if consumed.” A health official signed an order requiring retail outlets to remove all Gerber baby food strained peaches from Maryland stores. Maryland is the only state that has ordered the withdrawal of any Gerber products since a rash of consumer complaints about glass fragments in the company’s baby foods began last week and spread to at least 10 states. The Federal Drug Administration in Atlanta reported it had checked more than 6,000 unopened jars of Gerber baby food and had found no glass.
About 500 Vietnam War veterans rallying in New York outside the Vietnamese Mission to the United Nations demanded the release of American soldiers believed to be still alive in Southeast Asia or “we’ll come after them.” Speakers staged a 51-day fast to draw attention to the issue and urged the U.S. and Vietnamese governments to bring Americans home. Among signs at the rally were “Hanoi Take Jane Fonda. Give Us Our Men Back,” referring to a visit by the actress to Hanoi in 1972. Police estimated about 500 people attended the rally.
Despite losing his arbitration case, Boston’s Wade Boggs receives the largest salary ever awarded through that process, $1.35 million.
Nelli Fiere-Cooman runs world record 60 m indoor (7.00 seconds) at European Indoor Championships in Madrid, Spain.
Born:
Jerod Mayo, NFL linebacker (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 49-Patriots, 2014; Pro Bowl, 2010, 2012; New England Patriots), in Hampton, Virginia.
Bear Pascoe, NFL tight end (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 46-Giants, 2011; New York Giants, Atlanta Falcons, Detroit Lions), in Kern County, California.
Kazuya Kamenashi, Japanese pop star (KAT-TUN), in Tokyo, Japan.
Prudence Mabhena, Zimbabwean singer (life depicted in documentary “Music by Prudence”), in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.
Skylar Grey [Holly Brook], American songwriter, and singer, in Mazomanie, Wisconsin.
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