The Swedish police found the bullet that killed Prime Minister Olof Palme, and they said they had found two witnesses who had seen the gunman escape. The investigators said they were inclined to believe that the killing was a carefully planned assassination rather than the act of a psychopath. But they said they had no leads pointing to any particular individual or group as a likely suspect in a crime that would have been regarded as highly unusual in Sweden even if the victim had not been the Prime Minister. Hans Wranghalt, the head of the criminal investigation division of the Stockholm police, estimated that there are only 20 to 25 murders in Stockholm a year, of which no more than five or six involve the use of handguns. The officer said he could not recall a previous case in which someone had been shot on the street.
Mr. Palme, Sweden’s Prime Minister since 1982 and its dominant political figure for almost two decades, was shot from behind at close range Friday night on a main street as he and his wife walked home from a movie. The bullet, which passed through his body, was recovered after police officers collected snow from the area and melted it, Police Commissioner Hans Holmer said at a news conference today. It matched a bullet found earlier that had passed through Mrs. Palme’s clothing, grazing her skin, as she turned toward her husband, who had been walking a pace or so behind her. Earlier reports said Mr. Palme had been hit by two bullets. Mr. Holmer described the copper-tipped lead bullet as highly unusual for Sweden, saying it matched none of the 500 to 600 bullets in his department’s collection. He said foreign police and security services had been asked to cooperate in tracing the bullet’s origin. Ballistics experts said the bullet was designed to pierce metal and would have penetrated a bulletproof vest.
A senior Defense Department official said today that NATO should reconsider its strategy for defending against a Soviet attack. The official, Fred C. Ikle, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said that “the good bureaucrats of our alliance” had prevented NATO from adopting some useful defense ideas. Mr. Ikle made his remarks at the annual Wehrkunde Conference, a meeting of senior Western European and American military experts. The remarks drew criticism from some senior NATO generals, who took exception to some of Mr. Ikle’s suggestions and said that others were already being put into effect. Mr. Ikle said NATO should reconsider its stated policy of maintaining a defensive posture early in a conflict and not mounting a counter-invasion. “Should we assure Soviet planners that they do not need to worry about a counter-invasion?” Mr. Ikle asked. He proposed that NATO adopt a strategy that would encourage Eastern European nations not to support Soviet forces in a conflict. The NATO commander, General Bernard Rogers, said NATO forces might cross into East Germany to help NATO regain ground lost in the early fighting. But he said that large-scale moves of troops toward Warsaw and Prague were not part of NATO’s strategy. He also said NATO already had plans to help Eastern Europeans who might rebel against Soviet forces in a European conflict.
West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union sustained heavy losses in the first of a series of electoral tests preceding Kohl’s bid for reelection next January. Results from municipal elections in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein showed the party’s vote dropping to 44.2% from 50.1% in 1982 — its worst showing there since 1962. The opposition Social Democratic Party increased its share to 40.3% from 34.6% and ousted the Christian Democrats from control of the four biggest cities, including Kiel, the state capital.
U.S. Army units in Western Europe diverted thousands of dollars in community relations funds to host private parties for American generals, the Army Audit Agency in Washington disclosed. Among the parties was a “holiday reception” that cost $2,112. It was hosted by a brigadier general with community relations funds at the 7th Corps regional finance and accounting office in Stuttgart, the auditors reported. The funds are supposed to be used to “foster mutual acceptance, respect and cooperation” between American soldiers and European host nations, an Army spokesman said.
Protestant leaders today called on the public to support a general strike on Monday to protest the British-Irish agreement that gives the Irish Republic a say in the affairs of Northern Ireland. The strike organizers are hoping to disrupt power supplies, stop traffic and shut down stores and factories throughout the British province to show the dissatisfaction of the largely Protestant population with the pact between London and Dublin signed last November.
Rock-throwing Protestants battled police and blocked roads in the Belfast area at the start of a 24-hour general strike aimed at destroying the Anglo-Irish agreement that gives Dublin a consultative role in British-ruled Northern Ireland. Police said they clashed with about 50 rock-throwing men who tried to set up a roadblock at the entry to Ballymena, 30 miles north of Belfast. Protestants parked their cars on a major highway 15 miles north of Belfast and also blocked roads near two power stations.
Protesters try to stop the sale of the Land Rover Motor Co. to a U.S. owner.
A West Bank Mayor was shot dead as he was walking from his home to City Hall. A spokesman for the Israeli Civil Administration in the occupied territories said Mayor Zafer el-Masri of Nablus, a Palestinian appointed by Israel who was regarded as an alternative to the slogans of the Palestine Liberation Organization, had been killed by a single assailant. The central area of Nablus was under curfew, and access to the city was blocked by the Israeli army. Al-Masri was shot to death by Mu’ayyad Abdul Samad as he stepped from his car near the Nablus City Hall. Al-Masri was shot several times in the heart. He was taken to Rashadiye Hospital and died on the operating table. Almost 50,000 Palestinians took part in his funeral on 3 March 1986. It is widely believed he was killed by Abdul Samad by the orders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). PFLP had accused him of “collaboration with Israel”. Abdul Samad was arrested and indicted for the murder receiving life imprisonment for his act. Although another group, the Fatah – Revolutionary Council, a Palestinian splinter group led by Abu Nidal, also claimed responsibility initially for the attack, this latter claim has been refuted with responsibility of PFLP clearly established. Al-Masri was the third Palestinian mayor or ex-mayor to fall victim to an assassin in little more than two years.
Palestinians in Israel-occupied land say they have been stunned, dismayed, and frightened by the rupture in the yearlong effort by King Hussein and Yasser Arafat to devise a joint position on Middle East talks. Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip say they were even more disconcerted by King Hussein’s call on them last week to decide who should lead them. The call was widely interpreted there as a challenge to the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization and to its chairman, Yasser Arafat, in particular. “The vast majority of West Bankers watched the King’s speech with fear and apprehension,” said Elias Freij, the Mayor of Bethlehem, who is known for his pragmatic, nonideological approach to governing under occupation and for his good relations with King Hussein. “There is no way to choose. Jordan and the P.L.O. are partners in this very tragic situation.”
A Ukrainian immigrant to the United States who was extradited to Israel to be tried for war crimes denied in court here today that he had ever been at the Treblinka death camp or collaborated with the Nazis. John Demjanjuk, a 65-year-old retired auto worker from Cleveland, was formally accused in the Magistrate’s Court of having taken part in “the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians — men, women and children” at the Nazi death camp in Poland in 1942 and 1943. M. Dennis Gouldman, representing the State Attorney, charged that Mr. Demjanjuk had habitually forced victims into the death chambers and operated the engine that killed them by carbon monoxide fumes. In addition, he said, Mr. Demjanjuk “killed with his own hands Jews from amongst the work parties that labored in the camp.”
Egyptian Government troops consolidated their control over Cairo today and the streets were returning to normal after a rebellion last week by paramilitary policemen. An around-the-clock curfew was lifted from dawn to dusk again today, as it had been Saturday. The government encouraged people in this city of 12 million to return to work. There were huge traffic jams throughout the morning, but by nightfall the city was quiet again.
The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, during ceremonies marking Women’s Day in Iran, called for military training for women. Only those who are fit should be trained in weapons use, and it should be done “in a sound and Islamic atmosphere,” the nation’s supreme leader told an audience of women. Some militant Iranian women are already training with light weapons, but none have been ordered to the front in the war with Iraq.
Heavy ground fighting was reported today in the Iran-Iraq war, and Iranian television showed Iranian soldiers in sight of a large mountain settlement it said was Chwarta, some nine miles inside northern Iraq. The Tehran radio said Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas made an overnight attack in support of Iran’s offensive on the road between Chwarta and Sulaimaniya, capital of Iraq’s Kurdish Sulaimaniya province, a strategic target 170 miles northeast of Baghdad. The Iranian press agency said the Kurds captured 40 Iraqi soldiers, while Iranian troops shelled an Iraqi garrison, killing 150 Iraqis. A communique issued by Baghdad said 800 Iranian soldiers were killed in battles near Chwarta and Penjwin. Gulf shipping officials said a Turkish tanker heading for Saudi Arabia was bombed today by five warplanes, killing the ship’s chief officer and wounding a crew member. They said the attack appeared to be a retaliation from Iran for four strikes by Iraq on tankers using Iranian ports.
Lieutenant General H. M. Ershad, the head of state of Bangladesh, said today that he was calling elections for the last week of April to end four years of military rule. He said he would drop from his Cabinet all ministers who declare their candidacies in the elections, remove the civilian responsibilities of military commanders and wind up all military courts to create conditions for a clean vote. The Election Commission, responsible for conducting the polls, said voting for the 300 parliamentary seats would take place on April 26. Three previous efforts to hold elections were abandoned after opposition parties refused to take part, asserting the elections were calculated to legitimize military rule.
In her first public declaration as President of the Philippines, Corazon C. Aquino today issued what she called Proclamation No. 1 restoring full protections against arrest without charges. She said the writ of habeas corpus, a symbol of human rights, was being restored because “the Filipino people have established a new government bound to the ideals of genuine liberty and freedom for all.” Addressing hundreds of thousands of people at a rally, Mrs. Aquino called for the mobilization of what has become known here as “people power” into what would be in effect a new branch of government, raising issues and monitoring the performance of officials. She said new government structures would be formed to hear and act on recommendations and complaints of citizens, whose mass support provides the power base for a President who faces a potentially hostile legislature, court system and bureaucracy. “I say to you, the holders of people power, if anyone in government does not listen to what you have to say, bring it to my attention through structures that will be set up for that purpose,” she said.
They streamed along boulevards and back streets today, bearing balloons and icons, guitars and firecrackers -hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of jubilant Filipinos heading for a park on the shores of Manila Bay to join in a mass of thanksgiving. But the unprecedented public outpouring of joy became something more, something new: a celebration of a week in which this nation believes it showed the world the meaning of democracy. “When they write and talk about these events,” President Corazon C. Aquino said of the revolution that brought an end to the 20-year rule of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, “you can proudly say, I was there. I heeded the call to protect the friendly rebel forces. I put my bare hands on the tanks. I faced bayonet-wielding and tear gas-throwing troops.”
Queen Elizabeth II abolished the last vestiges of Australia’s constitutional links with Britain, its onetime colonial ruler. Arriving from New Zealand, the British monarch-who is also titular head of state of many Commonwealth countries-signed the proclamation of the Australia Act 1986. It abolishes Australians’ judicial appeal to Britain’s Privy Council and ends a number of anachronistic controls of the British Parliament over Australian state law. Australia remains in the Commonwealth.
Prime Minister David Lange of New Zealand has accused France of blocking food imports from New Zealand in a bid to obtain the release of two French secret agents jailed for their role in sinking the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior. In an interview last week with Le Monde, Mr. Lange said France was “exercising commercial pressure” on New Zealand by erecting new barriers against imports of New Zealand goods. He described the action as “a very strange way of trying to obtain the liberty of the two guilty people.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz says that if the United States fails to provide military aid quickly to the Nicaraguan rebels, Sandinista rule will be consolidated, the guerrilla resistance will be crushed and Washington will have to contend with a dangerous “Soviet and Cuban base on the mainland of Latin America.” In the text of a speech he is scheduled to deliver Monday, Mr. Shultz says the resistance now stands “at a critical juncture” and warns that although the number of rebels has continued to rise, an unassisted resistance will not be able to withstand the superior Nicaraguan military force indefinitely. The speech, part of an Administration campaign for $100 million in aid to the contras, is to be delivered to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Washington on the same day that President Reagan is to receive rebel leaders in the Oval Office. The State Department made the text public today.
In a continuing expansion of military centers in Honduras, United States Army units will begin on Monday to build an airfield, according to an American Army spokesman. It will be the sixth airfield to be built by such units here in the last three years. The new airfield is one of several indications that the Reagan Administration may be planning a more extensive and lengthy American military presence in Honduras than Administration officials have yet to acknowledge.
Panamanian President Eric A. Delvalle accused the United States of not fulfilling its part in the Panama Canal treaties. He vowed to press for strict U.S. compliance with the 1977 treaties, under which Panama is to assume full control of the waterway in the year 2000. He was particularly critical of a U.S. law that sets ground rules for interpretation of the accords and contradicts certain aspects of them.
A cut in Brazil’s interest rate on nearly a third of the country’s foreign debt was agreed on by a group of international banks which made $31 billion in loans. The agreement was reached Saturday night after about a month of negotiations and a day after President Jose Sarney ordered sweeping economic changes to combat Brazil’s soaring inflation.
Ethiopia, under pressure from Western aid donors, has temporarily halted mass resettlement of more than 1.2 million famine victims from the drought-ravaged north to more fertile lands. The U.S. government has been the most vocal critic of the program, saying some were forced to move at gunpoint. Since the program was begun in October, 1984, about 600,000 people have been moved to southern and western areas considered more fertile and relatively underpopulated.
No astronauts are planning to quit the shuttle program, the pilot of the last successful space mission said, despite recent disclosures of communications breakdowns in NASA management in the Challenger launching. Lieutenant Colonel Charles F. Bolden Jr. of the Marine Corps said he was not surprised by reports of problems with the joints of the Challenger’s solid-rocket fuel boosters, which are now suspected to have caused the explosion. “Even as we continue the investigation, the big thing is to keep people encouraged, to let them know that at least the guys in the program have no intention of quitting,” Colonel Bolden said in an interview. His comments came as the 95 full-time members of the nation’s astronaut corps began resuming public appearances after a monthlong self-imposed silence about the explosion January 28 of the Challenger, which killed seven of their colleagues. Colonel Bolden said he was not surprised by reports of problems with the joints of the shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets, which are suspected as a major cause of the explosion.
A presidential task force has concluded that U.S. policy on international terrorism is “pretty good” and requires no major change, according to a State Department official. The task force, formed after the Mideast hijacking of a TWA jetliner last year, recommends in its report that the United States continue its policy of retaliating against terrorists but refrain from acting against states harboring terrorists, said Robert B. Oakley, ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. Oakley said the report, to be released this week, “won’t be anything startling.” The commission, headed by Vice President George Bush, included Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.
The President and First Lady return to the White House from their trip to Camp David.
President Reagan spends most of the day catching up on homework.
The Reagan Administration is developing a proposal that would for the first time put a cap on the assistance poor people could receive from the federal government. The limit would be set roughly at the poverty level, currently $10,990 for a family of four, Administration officials told the New York Times. The proposal to put an upper limit on federal benefits poor people could receive is being prepared by President Reagan’s Domestic Policy Council, the newspaper said. The council, which consists of eight Cabinet officers, is conducting a comprehensive review of social welfare programs, the newspaper said.
A rewrite of affirmative action proposed by the White House has divided corporate America. The White House staff has prepared several new versions of the 1965 Executive Order that requires government contractors to hire and promote blacks, women and Hispanic people in proportion to to the number of available, qualified employment candidates The heart of an Administration controversy is that the revisions would remove the requirement that employers set numerical goals, while retaining a “good faith” hiring obligation.
A 2-to-1 majority of Americans believes that the threat of the death penalty dissuades some people from committing murder. In the latest Gallup Poll, 61% say they believe the death penalty serves as a murder deterrent, while 32% say it does not and 7% are undecided. In the current survey, 70% favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 22% are opposed. The survey also found that support for the death penalty would decline — from 70% to 55% — if life imprisonment without parole were an alternative to execution. A similar decline in support for capital punishment, from 70% to 56%, would occur, the survey found, if new evidence proved that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to murder.
Top Philadelphia officials were denounced by an investigative commission for their roles in the confrontation last May with the radical group Move in which six adults and five children died. The commission, appointed by Mayor W. Wilson Goode, said he and other top officials were “grossly negligent” and urged a grand jury investigation of the children’s deaths as possible “unjustified homicides.”
Lists of hospitals with death rates exceeding the national average are being sent by the Department of Health and Human Services to state agencies. The accompanying letters ask the agencies if corrective action is necessary. In some cases, the lists appear to show that patients are more than twice as likely to die when treated in certain hospitals when compared with others. But Federal officials caution that some of the data may be flawed.
Vice President George H.W. Bush rode a covered wagon in a parade to the Alamo today to help open celebrations of the 150th anniversary of Texas’s Declaration of Independence from Mexico. The document was signed March 2, 1836, and Texas remained an independent republic for nearly 10 years. “I’ve been all over the world, and let me tell you, all over the world, I’ve found that people understand what it means to be a Texan,” Mr. Bush told about 4,000 people in front of the aging stone shrine. In a later speech in Dallas, Mr. Bush told a crowd of 30,000 people, “Texas means being the biggest, the first and the best.”
What is being billed by prosecutors as one of the most important and complex espionage trials in decades is scheduled to begin this week in a Federal courtroom here. The defendant, Jerry A. Whitworth, a retired Navy communications specialist, is accused of providing the Soviet Union with the chance to break highly sensitive communications codes used by the American military. If the accusation is true, prosecutors say, Mr. Whitworth and his friend John A. Walker Jr. may have done more damage to national security than any spies caught in this country in 30 years. Mr. Whitworth has pleaded not guilty to a 13-count indictment charging him with espionage, conspiracy and tax evastion. The trial, which could last until May, is expected to disclose what a prosecutor has described as a “great detective story,” the “incredible, painstaking” nine-month investigation of the case. “We look forward to explaining how it was done,” he said.
New Orleans elected a new Mayor. Sidney Barthelemy, a political enemy of the outgoing Mayor, Ernest N. Dutch Morial, won a runoff election Saturday. Mr. Barthelemy received 93,054 votes. The runner-up, State Senator William Jefferson got 67,668 according to the final but unofficial count.
Smith College students ended their occupation of a campus administration building in Northampton, Mass., after gaining assurances that the school would review its investments in firms doing business in South Africa. After two days of negotiations, six student leaders reached the agreement with college President Mary Maples Dunn and celebrated the accord with a rally before leaving the building. About 200 students occupied College Hall last Tuesday.
Nearly 1,200 marchers packed up their traveling town this morning and set off on the second day of a coast-to-coast journey to urge nuclear disarmament. Late in the day the participants in “The Great Peace March” pitched their brightly colored tents near the Santa Fe Dam in Irwindale, California after a 16-mile march. The marchers will take nearly nine months to complete their winding 3,235-mile trek to Washington, walking an average of 15 miles a day.
Under a law passed late Friday night, the state of Indiana will take over a system of politically controlled motor vehicle license offices that have been criticized as one of the most profitable political patronage operations in the nation. The branches are now run by appointees of the governor’s political party. The bill calls for the state to take over operation of the 184 branches by July 1988. It also stops the use of most branch profits for political purposes. In 1984 some $600,000 in branch profits went to the Republican Party and $200,000 went to the Democratic Party.
The new luxury, high-performance model that the American Honda Motor Company will introduce later this month is likely to raise the eyebrows of current Honda owners used to more Spartan cars. It comes with a high-tech 151-horsepower V-6 engine, a racing style suspension, plush interior and a sticker price close to $20,000. It is not even called a Honda. The company’s new Acura line -which centers on the top-of-the-line V-6 Legend but will also include the smaller four-cylinder Integra — is the strongest indication yet that the Japanese auto makers are determined to push into the highly profitable and growing American market for luxury performance cars. With the Acura, a new 200-horsepower Toyota Supra, Mazda’s RX-7 Turbo and Nissan’s 300 ZX, the Japanese are going after the market now dominated by such European manufacturers as Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi, Porsche and Saab. The few American entries in this category include the Chevrolet Corvette and Lincoln Mark 7 LSC, although others are under development. “The Legend is a legitimate competitor for BMW,” said Ann C. Knight, an auto industry analyst with Paine Webber Inc. “The question is whether they can break through the cult-like loyalty to the German products. They probably can’t do it on price. The more Mercedes-Benz charges, the more people seem to like it.”
A cold front that sprinkled snow on Jacksonville, Florida, moved deep into the state, frosting strawberry fields and citrus groves and taking some of the fire out of Miami’s carnival fans. Temperatures dipped below freezing throughout the northern half of the state Saturday night. Tallahassee had a record low of 20, breaking the 1980 record by one degree. Tampa tied the 1980 record with 35. Spectators bundled in layers of sweaters and jackets sat shivering in the bleachers at the Grand Prix of Miami and in the Orange Bowl, where musicians and salsa dancers opened Carnival Miami.
Soaring bankruptcies among small service companies pushed the number of business failures up 9.6% last year, Dun & Bradstreet Corp. said. Hard times on the farm and in the oil fields also contributed to the rise, according to a study being released in New York by the business-information company. The study found that 57,067 businesses failed in 1985, compared to 52,078 in 1984. But the rate of increase was down sharply from the recession years like 1980, when D&B reported a 55.2% rise in failures.
Scientists at the National Cancer Institute say in a new study that there is little evidence that formaldehyde causes cancer among the 1.4 million workers who are exposed to the chemical. But the significance of these findings is questioned by some experts who would prefer to await more detailed analysis. The four-year study, which is to be made public Monday, said workers exposed to formaldehyde had experienced slight increases in certain types of lung and prostate cancer, but that exposure to the chemical “did not, however, show a consistently rising risk with level of exposure.” “These data,” the report concluded, “provide little evidence that mortality from cancer is associated with formaldehyde exposure at levels experienced by workers in this study.”
Qualifier Kenny Knox is the last player to score in the 80’s (R3 80) and still win a PGA Tour event, the Honda Classic at TPC Eagle Trace; total 287 is highest winning score in PGA tournament history.
First million-dollar purse for a handicap race won at Santa Anita. The first million dollar purse for a handicap race is won by British bred 5-year old Greinton with Laffit Pincay Jr. aboard taking out the $1,359,500 Santa Anita Handicap.
Edmonton’s Finnish right wing Jari Kurri scores 2 goals, including the overtime winner, to lead Oilers to a 2-1 win over Philadelphia; Kurri, 100 points for the 4th straight NHL season.
Born:
Ethan Peck, American actor (“10 Things I Hate About You”, TV series; Spock in “Discovery” and “Strange New Worlds”), in Los Angeles, California.
Jason Smith, NBA center and power forward (Philadelphia 76ers, New Orleans Hornets-Pelicans, New York Knicks, Orlando Magic, Washington Wizards, Milwaukee Bucks), in Greenley, Colorado.
Died:
Zafer Masri, 46, mayor of Nablus, murdered.
Marcel Liebman, 56, Belgian historian.
History Diaries 