On the morning of Tuesday, February 25, at around 7 AM, a minor clash occurred between loyal government troops and the reformists. Snipers stationed atop the crony-owned RPN-9 transmitter in Panay Avenue, near MBS-4, began shooting at the reformists. Many rebel soldiers surged to the station, and a rebel S-76 helicopter later shot the snipers at the broadcast tower. The troops later left after a V-150 was blocked by a crowd that assembled.
Later in the morning, Corazon Aquino was inaugurated as President of the Philippines in a simple ceremony at Club Filipino in Greenhills, San Juan, about a kilometer from Camp Crame. She was sworn in as president by Senior Associate Justice Claudio Teehankee, and Laurel as vice-president by Justice Vicente Abad Santos. The Bible on which Aquino swore her oath was held by her mother-in-law Aurora Aquino, the mother of Ninoy Aquino. Attending the ceremonies were Ramos, who was then promoted to General, Enrile, and many politicians. Outside Club Filipino, all the way to EDSA, hundreds of people cheered and celebrated. Bayan Ko (My Country, a popular folk song and the unofficial National Anthem of protest) was sung after Aquino’s oath-taking. Many people wore yellow, the color of Aquino’s presidential campaign.
An hour later, Marcos held the inauguration at Malacañang Palace. Loyalist civilians attended the ceremony, shouting “Marcos, Marcos, Marcos pa rin! (Marcos, Marcos, still Marcos!)”. On the Palace balcony, Marcos took the Oath of Office, aired on IBC-13 and RPN-9 (RPN-9 was going off-the-air during the broadcast of the inauguration, as its transmitter was captured by reformist soldiers) None of the invited foreign dignitaries attended the ceremony, for security reasons. The couple finally emerged on the balcony of the Palace before 3,000 KBL loyalists who were shouting, “Capture the snakes!” Rather tearfully, First Lady Imelda Marcos gave a farewell rendition of the couple’s theme song – the 1938 kundiman “Dahil Sa Iyo” (Because of You) – chanting the song’s entreaties in Tagalog:
Because of you, I became happy
Loving I shall offer you
If it is true I shall be enslaved by you
All of this because of you.
The broadcast of the event was interrupted as rebel troops successfully captured the other stations. It was the last time Marcos was seen in the Philippines. By this time, hundreds of people had amassed at the barricades along Mendiola, only a hundred meters away from Malacañang. They were prevented from storming the Palace by loyal government troops securing the area. The angry demonstrators were pacified by priests who warned them not to be violent.
Corazon C. Aquino began to exercise presidential power even before Ferdinand E. Marcos left the country, telling some of the country’s most powerful men what they would be doing in her Cabinet, and making a key decision about the nation’s top financial institution. She did so in the same quiet-spoken manner in which, as a self-described housewife, she had hovered in the background during the political career of her husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Her manner today, however, obscured a personal transformation that has been noted both by political analysts and by members of her own family, who say they have watched her grow in strength and confidence. In the four months since she decided to run for office, Mrs. Aquino, a genuinely reluctant candidate, has moved from being a symbol around which the nation could unite to being a leader. “It’s astonishing,” says a member of her husband’s family. “She was just a housewife. Her strength has astonished all of us. The transformation is amazing. It has even affected her children, who have grown as well.”
Mikhail S. Gorbachev criticized President Reagan’s latest arms-control message and said the timing of the next summit meeting could hinge on progress on that issue. The Soviet leader’s comments were included in a speech of five and a half hours on the state of the Soviet Union in the opening session of the 27th congress of the ruling party. Addressing 5,000 delegates and 152 foreign delegations, Mr. Gorbachev presented a sweeping overview of the problems facing the nation, most of which he blamed on stagnation under the 18-year rule of Leonid I. Brezhnev ending in 1982. Mr. Gorbachev said the key to the future was a qualitatively new approach to Soviet economic development. Two days ago, Mr. Reagan responded in a letter to a proposal made Jan. 15 by Mr. Gorbachev to eliminate nuclear arms by the year 2000 in a sequence of three stages. Mr. Reagan focused on the first of these stages, involving the elimination of medium-range nuclear missiles. Mr. Gorbachev said in his speech that he presumed the timing of the response was intended to solicit his reaction at the congress.
He said that Mr. Reagan’s proposal “seems to contain some reassuring opinions and theses,” but that these “are swamped in various reservations, ‘linkages’ and ‘conditions’ “. “To put it in a nutshell,” Mr. Gorbachev said, “it is hard to detect in the letter we have just received any serious readiness of the United States Administration to get down to solving the cardinal problems involved in eliminating the nuclear threat.” On the question of a summit meeting, Mr. Gorbachev essentially made any further planning contingent on progress in arms control. “There is no sense in holding empty talks,” he said. Mr. Gorbachev and Mr. Reagan had agreed last November in Geneva that the Soviet leader would visit the United States this year, but officials in Washington have been saying that Moscow has evaded setting a date. Mr. Gorbachev made clear that this had been deliberate. He said he would agree to any date if he were satisfied that the meeting would produce practical results in arms control.
Near the end of his 5 ½-hour speech to the Soviet Communist Party congress, Mikhail S. Gorbachev inadvertently skipped a page and faltered momentarily. Then he finessed the embarrassing moment with a grin and remarked, “I apparently skipped a section with the principal thoughts of Lenin.”
An out-of-control Soviet satellite is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere later this week, possibly on Thursday, West German experts said. A spokesman for the Technology Ministry said that Cosmos 1714 “will almost certainly burn up” in the atmosphere, but another West German, Ewald Andrews, representing the Interior Ministry, warned that major parts of the spacecraft could strike the Earth’s surface. Andrews said Cosmos 1714 is not nuclear powered. A nuclear-powered Cosmos scattered radioactive debris over a wide area of Canadian wilderness when it crashed in 1978.
Italy’s participation in “Star Wars” research is sought by Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, according to senior Government officials. They said that Mr. Craxi would ask Parliament to approve participation in research for a space-based missile defense but would stop short of endorsing any deployment of such a system.
American, British and French authorities in West Berlin barred four North Korean diplomats from the city today, apparently in an effort to halt the flow of combat helicopter parts through East Germany to North Korea. The diplomats, identified as Hong Sang Pom, Kim Sung Yun, Kwon Yong Nok and Yi Yong Nam, all stationed in East Berlin, were charged with conducting “illicit arms transactions” out of an office in West Berlin. A West Berlin television team recently filmed North Korean diplomats going daily for a month to Killewald Expo Trans, an export trading company, and speculated that they might be smuggling helicopter parts out of West Berlin in cars with diplomatic license plates. The Commerce Department last January banned the Killewald company, as well as a Hughes distributor in West Germany, Kurt Behrens, from exporting United States made or licensed goods after intelligence sources obtained information that the two had been among a group of traders selling North Korea American military aircraft identical to those sold South Korea by the United States.
Jean-Claude Duvalier and the owner of the luxury hotel where he is staying both filed lawsuits with identical objectives today: getting the deposed Haitian dictator out of the hotel. Mr. Duvalier and his family brought an action here against Foreign Minister Roland Dumas and Interior Minister Pierre Joxe, accusing them of violating the Duvaliers’ right to liberty by effectively holding them prisoner in the heavily guarded hotel at Talloires in the French Alps. They have been there ever since a United States Air Force C-141 cargo plane brought them to France from Haiti on February 7.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher extended an olive branch to leaders of Northern Ireland’s largely Protestant Unionist community, hoping to defuse growing tension and plans for a protest strike in the province Monday. After the London meeting, Unionist leaders appeared to draw back from a confrontation over the Anglo-Irish accord giving the Irish Republic a voice in Ulster affairs on behalf of minority Catholics. Britain responded favorably to a proposal by the Rev. Ian Paisley and other Unionists for a conference among the main Ulster parties to discuss limited home rule.
Thousands of Egyptian military police riot, destroy 2 luxury hotels. More than 2,000 paramilitary policemen, apparently enraged over a rumored extension of their tour of duty, went on a rampage Tuesday through four hotels near the Pyramids and fought gun battles through the night with military units sent in to stop the mutiny. The rampage reportedly began about 8 PM. Witnesses said the mutineers had entered hotel lobbies, smashing glass, looting and ransacking. Two of the hotels, the Jolie Ville and the Holiday Inn, were razed to the ground by fire, according to one witness, Colin Eastman, a British engineer who lives in the area. His account could not be confirmed. There were reports that the two other hotels, the Mena House and the Ramada Renaissance, had been set ablaze.
Iran said today that it had begun a new offensive against Iraq, capturing heights and villages overlooking a key northeastern Iraqi city. The latest drive, near Sulaimaniya. was seen as threatening Iraq’s oilfields around Kirkuk, 60 miles to the west. The start of the new northern offensive followed an announcement by Iran’s President, Ali Khamenei, that Iran had achieved its objectives in the Fao Peninsula, Iraq’s only outlet to the Persian Gulf. Iran said its forces were holding onto land taken on the Fao Peninsula in an attack that began February 9. Fao is on the western side of the Shatt al Arab, the waterway that forms the boundary between Iran and Iraq. Iran also rejected a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted late Monday night that called for a cease-fire in the five-and-a-half-year-old Persian Gulf war, saying it was unacceptable because it did not specifically name Iraq as the aggressor in the war.
Nearly 20 hours after the northern offensive began, Iraq’s war communiques made no mention of any fighting around Sulaimaniya. But the Baghdad radio and the official Iraqi News Agency, monitored in Nicosia, highlighted a warning by Iraq’s Air Force commander, Air Marshal Hamid Shaaban, that his forces were preparing to strike at targets “deep inside Iran.” Air Marshal Shaaban repeated the assertion that Iraqi forces had encircled the Iranians in a “deadly enclave” in Fao, and that their “total destruction was imminent.” There was no independent confirmation of Iranian or Iraqi claims.
Opposition party leaders in South Korea asserted today that President Chun Doo Hwan had not made any real political concessions to them, despite his unexpected move Monday to ease a crackdown on the opposition. Opposition politicians, who met today to assess the result of the meetings Monday between Mr. Chun and key opposition political leaders, vowed to continue the campaign that prompted the crackdown — a petition drive for an immediate constitutional amendment to permit direct presidential elections. Opposition leaders have said they believe their political survival depends on constitutional change in time for the 1988 presidential elections. Therefore, diplomats and opposition politicians said, the offer by Mr. Chun to discuss constitutional revision now but to wait to carry it out until after 1989 had left the issue open. “The Government decided to make a technical change, not a major change,” said Kim Dae Jung, a prominent critic of the Government who was under house arrest for 12 consecutive days.
The sixth test of a U.S. cruise missile over Canada ended in failure when the unarmed weapon crashed into the Beaufort Sea moments after it was launched from a B-52 bomber. “We’re not sure why it happened,” a U.S. Air Force spokesman said. The missile was to have flown to a target 1,550 miles away at the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range near Cold Lake. A Canadian spokesman said the missile’s engine apparently failed to start after launch and “it fell with the trajectory of a brick… onto the ice.” A cruise missile launched over Canada crashed January 22 near Cold Lake after it ran out of fuel in strong headwinds.
The U.S. Army announced that after 22 months of work, all 248 soldiers killed in a charter airplane crash in Gander, Newfoundland, have been identified and thus can be accorded proper burials. “All next-of-kin have been notified and disposition instructions for the remains still at Dover (Delaware) Air Force Base are expected soon,” the Army announced. The soldiers, all members of the 101st Airborne Division, were killed when a chartered DC-8 operated by Arrow Air of Miami crashed and exploded shortly after a refueling stop at Gander.
A rift has appeared in Haiti’s 18-day-old Government over the departure of the man who served during the Duvalier regime as head of the political police. Colonel Albert Pierre, was granted official permission to travel as a political exile to Brazil last Sunday. Since then, Gerard Gourgue, a member of the five-member ruling junta, has publicly protested the decision, calling it “shocking and offensive” for the Haitian people. Today, Mr. Gourgue did not appear at a ceremony at the Presidential Palace that was attended by all other senior members of the Government.
President Reagan signs a request for additional authority and assistance for the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance. President Reagan asked Congress to approve $100 million in military and other aid in the next 18 months for the rebels fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua. Under the request, which is expected to face strong opposition in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, $70 million would go for weapons and $30 million for what the Administration calls humanitarian aid, such as food and medical supplies. No new money would be appropriated. Instead, Mr. Reagan explained in his message, the funds would be transferred from the existing Pentagon budget and would be used to finance the contras — as the rebels are called — for 18 months beginning March 31, when the current appropriation of $27 million in nonlethal aid runs out. In a message to the House and Senate, Reagan said that roughly $27-million worth of non-lethal aid that Congress approved for the contras last year was insufficient. About 30 members of the House have asked Reagan not to seek renewal of direct military assistance to the rebels, and several of the lawmakers have predicted a prolonged debate.
Costa Rica has agreed to work with Nicaragua to establish “a permanent force of inspection and vigilance” charged with keeping peace along their border. In talks on Monday, the two countries agreed to hold another session on March 12 in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, to discuss the makeup and financing of a border patrol force. Relations between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which neared the breaking point last year, have been improving in recent weeks. The agreement concluded Monday appeared to be the most substantial step yet taken to reduce tensions in the border area.
President Hissen Habre today blamed what he said were Libya’s “expansionist aims” for the strife that has engulfed this African country. The Chadian leader, speaking to journalists for the first time since a Soviet-made supersonic bomber from Libya bombed the capital’s airport eight days ago, asserted that Libyan troops and aircraft were once again massing in northern Chad to renew their assault on the country’s southern region.
A Nigerian military tribunal sentenced 13 officers to death by firing squad for their part in a coup plot uncovered last December, the tribunal chairman said. General Charles Ndiomu said the officers included General Mamman Vatsa, a former minister and member of the Armed Forces Ruling Council. Two other officers were jailed for life, one was dismissed from the army and eight were cleared by the tribunal. The verdicts are subject to confirmation by the Ruling Council, and the convicts have the right of appeal to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
About 12,000 black miners walked off their jobs at the world’s biggest gold mine, 60 miles southwest of Johannesburg, South Africa. The strikers protested police detention of eight of the miners, who are being questioned in the murder of four black team leaders at the mine. Meanwhile, a judge in Johannesburg sentenced the first white South African ever prosecuted for military involvement with the outlawed African National Congress. Eric Pelser, 21, was ordered to serve seven years in prison after he admitted having been trained in the use of weapons and explosives by the black guerrilla group.
Rocket engineers testified today that pressure from the space agency to launch the space shuttle Challenger forced them to reverse their normal role — that instead of having to prove that the shuttle was ready to go, it was up to them to show that a launching would be unsafe. The engineers from Morton Thiokol Inc., which manufactured the shuttle’s booster rockets, described a series of tense meetings and telephone conferences on January 27, the day before the launching that resulted in an explosion that killed seven astronauts. They said that in those discussions they felt pressure from NASA officials to allow the launching to proceed unless they could prove beyond doubt that disaster would result. Meanwhile today, James M. Beggs resigned as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He had been on leave while facing fraud charges resulting from his tenure as an executive of the General Dynamics Corporation. The Thiokol engineers’ testimony came at a hearing of the Presidential commission that is investigating the Challenger accident. “I felt pressure,” said one of them, Brian Russell. “I felt we were in the position of having to prove it was unsafe instead of the other way around.”
He and other engineers from Thiokol, which manufactured the booster rockets, said the usual space agency practice had always been to emphasize safety first, with any doubts or worries having to be resolved before spacecraft were allowed to take off. Thiokol engineers told the commission they had unanimously recommended against launching the Challenger in weather any colder than the low 50’s because of fears that the cold might cause the synthetic rubber seals in the booster rockets to fail, causing a catastrophic explosion. The panel heard Allan J. McDonald, the company’s senior engineer at the Kennedy Space Center, recall: “I made the direct statement that if anything happened to this launch — I told them I sure wouldn’t want to be the person that had to stand in front of a board of inquiry” to explain why it had taken place in such conditions. But the recommendation against launching, made in a telephone conference call the night before, brought heated objections from NASA officials. Mr. McDonald testified that there were “strong comments” made by NASA officials over the telephone lines. He testified that George Hardy, deputy director of science and engineering at the Marshall Space Flight Center, the NASA installation in Huntsville, Ala., in charge of booster rockets, said he was “appalled at that recommendation” but that NASA would abide by it if Thiokol insisted.
Mr. McDonald added that Lawrence B. Mulloy, manager of the booster rockets project at Marshall, wondered aloud “when we’ll ever fly if we have to live with” a recommendation that launchings could occur only when the temperature was in the 50’s. Mr. Mulloy also said that NASA was trying to reach 24 shuttle launchings a year from bases in Florida and California where temperatures might often dip below the 50’s, Mr. McDonald said. “I took it as pressure,” Mr. McDonald said. When Mr. Hardy said he was “appalled at our recommendation,” Mr. McDonald added, “that was pressure to me.” The NASA officials are scheduled to testify before the commission on Wednesday. They were separated from the press by guards today, but Mr. Mulloy, in a brief conversation, declined to comment pending his full testimony. After the strong negative comments over the telephone lines from NASA centers, officials at Morton Thiokol’s plant in Brigham City, Utah, where the booster rockets are made, called a five-minute recess to discuss the issues, according to a chronology released by the commission. Thirty minutes later, Thiokol came back on the line and, after further discussion, reversed its earlier decision and recommended going ahead with the launching.
Meanwhile, two Thiokol engineers described a series of frustrating efforts to alert their top management to problems with the seals. Roger Boisjoly, the leading seal expert at the company, testified that he warned his superiors in a memorandum last July 31 that erosion problems with the seals, coupled with rotational forces that can dislodge a backup seal, could make it a “jump ball” as to whether the seals might fail. “The result could be a catastrophe of the highest order, loss of human life,” his memorandum warned. But unfortunately, a company task force that was supposed to solve the seal problems was given little support, his memorandum said, and “we stand in jeopardy of losing a flight.” Another engineer, Arnold Thompson, said he wrote a memorandum in August urging that all shuttle flights be stopped until certain actions to correct the seal problems were taken. But he never got a reply, and his recommendations were not carried out, he testified today. Mr. Boisjoly said his company had shunned a crash program to fix the seals and had stayed instead with “business as usual” because it was confident that NASA’s booster rocket contract was “ours for sure” so let “the customer be damned.” The customer, in this case, was NASA.
Democratic governors, who hold a 3-to-1 majority over the Republicans in the 50 states, today accused President Reagan of submitting “a budget of disinvestment,” one that “fails to make the critical investment in our nation’s future.” Despite their large majority, the Democrats made no effort to win approval of their statement by the National Governors’ Association, which ended its three-day winter meeting without any new statement on overall fiscal policy. The Democratic statement, approved at a breakfast meeting this morning, said in part: “The Congress has been forced to accept a budget-making process that can only be viewed as a price tag for a failed Republican fiscal policy. It is disheartening that we convene at a time when the Republican Administration has sent to Congress a budget which fails to make the critical investment in our nation’s future; a budget of disinvestment.”
To combat waning public support for military spending, President Reagan plans to argue in a televised speech that there is a link between a successful arms control agreement and continued increases in military spending, Administration officials said today. The speech, which is to be delivered Wednesday at 8 PM, is an Administration effort to convert the Mr. Reagan’s personal popularity into political influence on Capitol Hill and to shift the context of the current debate over the military budget. The leader of the Democratic majority in the House, Jim Wright of Texas, will deliver a televised reply to Mr. Reagan’s address, Democratic officials say. While critics of military spending increases have argued that Pentagon expenditures need to be reduced to help lower the Federal deficit, the Administration intends to draw a connection between support for the military and the prospect of avoiding conflicts with other nations.
President Reagan participates in a luncheon with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
In the strongest call for a tax increase made by a prominent Democrat since the 1984 presidential campaign, House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) told the nation’s governors that President Reagan must alter his frequently stated opposition to increasing taxes if the federal deficit is to be significantly reduced. “The President can have his way on taxes, the President can have his way on deficit reduction,” the congressman told the closing session of the National Governors Assn. winter conference in Washington, “but he cannot have his way on both.” Although many Democrats favor increasing revenue, they have been leery of saying so directly because of potential political repercussions.
Attorney General Edwin Meese III said that he has not withdrawn support from a bill to ease federal gun-control laws, although he refused to testify before a House committee considering the legislation. “There has been no hesitation from the Department of Justice about testifying,” said Meese, who has come under fire from police groups for his support of the measure, which would make it easier to buy, sell and transport firearms. Meese said that he told the House panel that he would not appear because the Treasury Department was taking the lead in the issue.
The U.S. Supreme Court, curbing sexually explicit films, held that local zoning officials have broad powers to restrict the sites of movie theaters that show such films. Extending a 1976 decision that allowed Detroit to prevent “skid row” concentrations of adult theaters by dispersing them around the city, the Court ruled that a town may limit such theaters to a small area away from homes, schools, churches and parks. The Justices announced several other decisions today, including their ruling that states cannot require utility companies to include in their billing envelopes the messages of groups with which they disagree.
Parents trying to keep a 14-year-old AIDS patient out of school must post a $12,000 bond within five days to cover potential damages in case their legal effort fails, a judge ruled in Kokomo, Indiana. Judge Alan Brubaker issued the restraining order that keeps Ryan White, who contracted AIDS from treatments for hemophilia, out of school. Brubaker will hear further evidence March 11 on whether the order should be extended.
Congress passed and sent to the White House today a bill to lift the ceiling on the amount of home mortgage loans the Veterans Administration can guarantee this year. The veterans agency said the ceiling, set by the new deficit-reducing law, would have forced it to end the loan program in April. The House voted, 386 to 0, to pass the bill, and the Senate approved it by voice vote several hours later. The bill would increase the ceiling to $18.2 billion. Without the increase, the ceiling would have been $11.5 billion because of the deficit-reducing law. Sponsors said the new ceiling would accommodate the increasing demand for the loans because of to lower home mortgage interest rates. Officials said the increase to a 18.2 billion ceiling was enough to carry the veterans home loan guarantee program through October, for the rest of the fiscal year. The legislation will not cost the Government money unless the homeowner defaults.
The Consumer Price Index rose by three-tenths of 1 percent in January, the smallest increase since September, the Labor Department said today. The slower inflation pace was mainly the result of slimmer rises in the energy and food components and was regarded as confirming earlier expectations that a modest overall price surge last autumn would prove temporary.
Gerber Products Co. lawyers agreed to delay legal action against Maryland until a health department hearing officer considers the validity of the state’s ban on sales of Gerber baby food. Gerber Products Co. filed a $150-million lawsuit against Governor Harry Hughes and other officials one day after the state ordered jars of Gerber strained peaches removed from store shelves, in response to several reports of glass fragments in the product.
The Supreme Court heard opposing arguments today in two cases involving affirmative action programs that used racial quotas to rectify past discrimination and provided preferential treatment to minority people who have not been victims of discrimination. William Bradford Reynolds, the Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, told the Court that Federal courts were enforcing affirmative action plans that had the effect of discrimination against whites. “The intent of the law is to insure that those who were victims are made whole,” Mr. Reynolds said. “But that you not discriminate against those who were innocent victims.”
Reports of child abuse and neglect, including sexual abuse, are increasing nationwide, with no weakening of substantiation for these sordid tales, a child welfare group said. Taking issue with suggestions that the problem has been exaggerated, the Child Welfare League of America said that the increasing numbers of such reports had led many state agencies to pay less attention to cases involving older children in order to concentrate on those “too young to run.” The problem is exacerbated by dwindling federal support for efforts to prevent child abuse, organization officials told reporters.
States may not require utilities to include in their billing envelopes the messages of groups with which they disagree, under a Supreme Court ruling. The 5-to-3 decision extended previous holdings that corporations have constitutionally protected rights of free speech.
A federal district judge in Texas today stayed the execution of a killer less than 12 hours before he was to die by injection for the shotgun slaying of a 72-year-old grocer. The killer, Bobby James Moore, 26, was to die before dawn Wednesday for the murder in 1980 of James McCarble in a Houston supermarket robbery. The judge, James De Anda, stayed the execution at the request of defense attorneys, who cited several unresolved issues in the case. Later today, Judge Woody Densen of Texas District Court withdrew the warrant of execution for another convicted killer who was to have died Thursday morning. The condemned man, Jeffery Allen Barney, 27, was sentenced to die for killing and raping a minister’s wife in 1981.
In Tallahassee, Florida, the State Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for Theodore Bundy, who is scheduled to die next Tuesday for the 1978 murders of two Florida State University sorority sisters. The court offered no explanation for its ruling.
The City Board of Ethics said Monday that Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode acted improperly by failing to report that he had received 14 suits at discount prices. Today the Mayor’s press secretary said he would comply with the board’s order that he formally report obtaining the suits through Nicholas DiPiero, a leader of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. “The Mayor reported all the suits he received in 1983 and 1984,” said Karen Warrington, Mr. Goode’s secretary. “He also plans to report the other suits” he received last year, she added. Mr. Goode said he received the suits at what he believed were “wholesale prices.” However, no money reportedly was paid for the garments until late last fall, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation began an investigation involving Mr. DiPiero.
Tom Bradley is seeking the governorship of California for the second time. Bradley officially declared today that “this farmer’s son and ex-cop is a candidate for Governor of California” for the second time. Mr. Bradley, who in 1973 became the first black American to win the top office of a major city with a white majority, opened his campaign in Sacramento after many months of an undeclared campaign against the incumbent Governor, George Deukmejian. Last week Mr. Deukmejian, a Republican who is a former State Attorney General and has gained wide popularity in a climate of state prosperity in his first term, formally declared his candidacy for re-election. The Democratic Mayor’s first contest against Mr. Deukmejian in 1982 ended in defeat by a narrow margin of 93,345 votes, or 1.2 percent of the total cast.
Nearly 200 Smith College students took over the school’s administration building today to protest a decision by the board of trustees to retain the college’s investments in companies doing business in South Africa. The students said they would keep workers out of the building until the trustees accepted a proposal made by a faculty and student group in October calling for the college to divest itself over two years of the $22.3 million in stocks it owns in 22 companies that do business in South Africa. The proposed sale was intended as a protest of South Africa’s policy of racial separation. The trustees voted Saturday to sell the college’s stock in the one company in the college’s portfolio that has not signed a set of guidelines designed to assure racial fairness in hiring by American companies in South Africa. The trustees said they would review what steps the other 21 companies could take to bring about change in South Africa’s racial system.
Night after night, Tyson Jolliffe, the federal official in charge of computer security at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, sat at the kitchen table in his home in Leesburg, Va., tapping at his small computer. Mr. Jolliffe was not just another computer enthusiast. Instead, Government investigators now know that he was using his agency’s computer in Washington to generate fraudulent immigration documents, which he then sold to illegal immigrants. They estimate that he and his confederates earned at least $800,000 before they were caught and sent to prison.
The General Foods Corporation is recalling all its one- and two-kilogram wheels of plain, unflavored Brie cheese, saying some lots might contain the same bacteria blamed for the deaths of at least 39 people in California last year. The company said it did not know how much cheese was involved or precisely how far it was distributed.
Record-high temperatures quickly melted snow in the Idaho mountains, causing a 100-foot mud slide that blocked a major highway linking northern and southern Idaho. Motorists were detoured through Washington, Oregon and Montana. The 15-foot-deep slide blocked U.S. Highway 95 near Lewiston.
28th Grammy Awards: “We Are the World”, Sade, Phil Collins win.
Micheal Ray Richardson, the New Jersey Nets’ playmaking guard whose personal problems have undermined his splendid athletic talent, was banned from the National Basketball Association yesterday after testing positive for cocaine use. A grim-faced David Stern, the league’s commissioner, made the announcement at a midtown hotel after the league received the results of the drug test late Monday night. The commissioner called it “a tragic day for Micheal Ray Richardson, nothing less than the destruction by cocaine of a once-flourishing career.” The action can be appealed after two years, and Richardson could be reinstated with the approval of the league and the National Basketball Players Association, the players’ union. Charles Grantham, Richardson’s agent and the executive vice president of the player’s union, said that his client had denied taking drugs.
Wall Street stock prices fell yesterday as investors, suddenly nervous over oil prices, decided to continue to take profits. Technology stocks, airlines and certain blue-chip issues were the heaviest hit. The Dow Jones industrial average, which briefly rose above the 1,700 level before the close on Monday, pulled back further from the milestone by falling 5.62 points, to 1,692.66.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1692.66 (-5.62)
Born:
Justin Berfield, American child actor (“Malcolm in the Middle”; “Unhappily Ever After”), and film producer, in Agoura Hills, California.
Jameela Jamil, British TV presenter and actress (“The Good Place”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
James and Oliver Phelps, British identical twin actors (“Harry Potter” films), in the Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom.
Danny Saucedo [Grzechowski], Swedish pop singer-songwriter (“Play It for the Girls”; E.M.D. — “Jennie Let Me Love You”), in Stockholm, Sweden.
Jeff Schultz, Canadian NHL defenseman (NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Kings, 2014; Washington Capitals, Los Angeles Kings), in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
James Starks, NFL running back (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 45-Packers, 2010; Green Bay Packers), in Niagara Falls, New York.
Pat White, NFL wide receiver and quarterback (Miami Dolphins), in Mobile, Alabama.
Matt Kroul, NFL defensive tackle (New York Jets), in Mount Vernon, Iowa.
Erik Cordier, MLB pitcher (San Francisco Giants, Miami Marlins), in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
History Diaries 