Funeral services are held for murdered Swedish PM Olaf Palme. With the unsolved mystery of his killing still hanging heavily over Sweden, Olof Palme was eulogized today as a world citizen and champion of peace at a secular funeral designed to reaffirm his political values. The two-hour ceremony combined personal reminiscences, muted renditions of black spirituals and political themes such as a call for a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons testing. It was attended by presidents and prime ministers, schoolchildren and activists in the governing Social Democratic Party, royalty and the slain Prime Minister’s widow and three sons. The call for the test ban was sounded by one of the nine eulogists, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, who drew a parallel between the assassination of his mother, Indira, and the shooting just over two weeks ago of Mr. Palme as he walked home from a movie with his wife.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz met in Stockholm today with Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov of the Soviet Union in what was characterized as a review of relations between the two countries since the summit meeting in November. The two men were here for the funeral of Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was slain two weeks ago, and met after the funeral at the Soviet Embassy for an hour and 45 minutes. Mr. Shultz said later that “neither of us” was satisfied with developments since the Geneva talks between Mikhail S. Gorbachev and President Reagan. He said dates for a possible visit to the United States this year by Mr. Gorbachev and been discussed, and that the discussions would continue.
France’s parliamentary elections today are expected to give a majority to a rightist coalition, ending five years of Socialist legislative rule. A rightist victory has been indicated by virtually all polls. The latest poll gave the coalition a majority of 20 to 40 seats in the 577-member Parliament. A modest rise in the ratings by the Socialists in the final weeks, apparently a result of squabbling among the rightists and to the active campaign role of President Francois Mitterrand, have introduced a note of uncertainty. If the right wins control of Parliament, an unusual situation would arise.
Leaders of the world’s 65 million Anglicans have urged the U.S. Episcopal church to delay any move to name women bishops until wider study is made of the potentially divisive matter. Primates of 28 self-governing Anglican churches, meeting in Toronto, asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert A.K. Runcie, to appoint a working group to canvas reaction from all sectors of the Anglican Communion on the issue and implicitly urged that the matter be deferred until the next conference of the world’s Anglican bishops in 1988.
The new United States Ambassador to West Germany has been busy making headlines, but this one was special. “Bad Boy Burt,” said the counter-cultural Tageszeitung in English over a photograph of Richard R. Burt, the United States Ambassador, who was shown crooning into a microphone with a shaggy-haired member of a nostalgia rock group called the Subtones. The newspaper recounted that the Ambassador, 39 years old, had sought out the Subtones in West Berlin’s rundown Kreuzberg section and had joined them in singing “the hits of his vanished youth,” including “Teen-Ager in Love” and “Tell Me.” Before being dragged off by his wife, Gahl, the newspaper said, the Ambassador confided over a beer that he did not really like the Beatles when they first started because they were too nice. He added, “I loved the Rolling Stones in the early days, when they were real bad boys.”
An Arab oil minister predicted that world oil prices may fall “far below” $10 a barrel if an emergency meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries today in Geneva fails to agree on production limits. Mana Said Oteiba of the United Arab Emirates confirmed that OPEC has lost business since December, when it embarked on a strategy of boosting its share of the world market by abandoning its restrictions on production. Oteiba told reporters that the conflict between OPEC and non-OPEC oil producers is “the biggest problem” the cartel has faced in its 25-year history.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization proposed a series of measures to improve the security of food supplies in the Muslim world. The report, delivered to a meeting in Istanbul of agricultural ministers from the Organization of the Islamic Conference, suggested ways to increase crop yields such as improved seeds, fertilizers and pesticides. It also urged production incentives to farmers, methods to improve access to food by the poor and monitoring systems to forewarn of crop shortfalls. FAO Director General Eduard Sauma said that agricultural progress is possible in the Islamic world despite wars, civil unrest and natural disasters.
A British official said today that Britain would extend military help to Kuwait if asked in the event that the Iraq-Iran war spills over into Kuwait. The official, Timothy Renton, Foreign Office Minister of State, said at a news conference, “Kuwait knows that were she to ask for specific military equipment or military assistance we would consider such a request quickly and sympathetically.”
The Tehran radio said today that Iranian forces killed or wounded hundreds of Iraqi troops in two days of heavy fighting on the mountainous northern war front. An Iraqi commander said Friday that Iraq had pushed Iranian forces out of “the last inch” of captured territory northeast of Sulaimaniyah, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, 170 miles northeast of Baghdad. Iran said it won control of 140 square miles of the snow-capped mountains.
After years of relative immunity to the trade in hard drugs, India has become a major transit point for narcotics shipments to the United States and Europe, according to American and Indian officials. To the alarm of the Indian Government, heroin addiction has also begun spreading in India itself, particularly among young people in the emerging urban middle class. There are now believed to be 100,000 heroin addicts in India, with the number growing by 15,000 a year. In interviews, investigators said heroin produced in Pakistan and Afghanistan that used to be sent directly to the West was being smuggled into India and sent out on planes and boats leaving Indian ports and cities.
A six-story hotel in Singapore collapsed today, trapping 300 people in the rubble, the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation reported. The state-owned station quoted the police as saying the chances of survival for those trapped in the 67-room Hotel New World were slim. There was no immediate official report of any deaths or injuries. The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation said that eight people had been rescued, and that rescue operations were continuing. It said the cause of the collapse was not immediately known. Hope faded today for about 100 people still thought to be missing under a huge mound of rubble, 15 hours after rescue operations began. Four people were confirmed dead. Nine injured people were pulled from the wreckage of the 67-room Hotel New World after it collapsed at 11:20 AM Saturday, said Lim Siam Kim, director of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Soviet First Deputy Premier Ivan V. Arkhipov arrived in China for discussions on what he termed the enormous potential for cooperation between Moscow and Peking. He refused, however, to say if he would discuss the political issues that have chilled Soviet-Chinese relations in recent years. Arkhipov came to Peking to attend the first meeting of the Chinese-Soviet Commission on Economic, Trade, Scientific and Technological Cooperation, set up last year. He also will meet Chinese Vice Premier Yao Yilin, who visited Moscow last July and signed a $14-billion, five-year trade agreement with the Soviets. Arkhipov and Yao agreed to meet annually.
Ferdinand E. Marcos, reportedly unhappy with his reception in Hawaii, has asked the United States to help him find a safe haven in Spain or some other country, Administration officials said today. “I think that if he finds a respectable place to go with reasonable housing and other arrangements, he will leave the United States,” a senior Administration official said. “In my opinion that would be the most rational thing for him to do.” The official added that the former Philippine President had been assured, as have foreign governments, that he could always come back to the United States. His top choices are Spain, Mexico and Panama, in that order, an Administration official said.
A more complete picture of the financial empire of Ferdinand E. Marcos is slowly emerging, with some estimates placing its worth at more than $5 billion. The Philippine commission investigating his hidden wealth has uncovered large bank deposits in Switzerland and hundreds of corporations and foundations run by his associates, according to commission members, investigators and documents. The head of the commission looking into the Marcos money, Jovito R. Salonga, who is in the United States, said in an interview that “the greatest bulk of his holdings are in Switzerland,” under various bank accounts held by trusts and foundations. A great deal of information about the former President’s empire is unknown. Many of the reports from investigators from the new Government cannot be fully confirmed independently. But the investigators say they have culled through scores of documents left behind in Manila, and other documents have been uncovered over the years in other places, including the United States.
Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney says he thinks most Americans, though not President Reagan, take Canada for granted. Good neighbors do not make good news, the Prime Minister said. “But a good little revolutionary who has particularly venomous remarks to make about the United States can usually do a lot better in terms of publicity,” he said. Mr. Mulroney’s view has not stopped him from being the most visibly pro-American Prime Minister in Canada’s history. On Monday, he will fly to Washington to meet President Reagan and press his message that good neighbors should be cherished.
Nine Republican congressmen returned to Washington after a two-day mission to Nicaragua and El Salvador, saying the trip reinforced their support for President Reagan’s $100-million aid package for Nicaraguan rebels. The delegation met briefly with Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte on regional issues. California Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-California) said he was alarmed by Nicaragua’s “massive prison system,” adding, “Human rights violations, including torture, are five to 10 times worse than under (ousted dictator Anastasio) Somoza.”
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said today that the Administration should provide money to the Nicaraguan insurgents, but withhold military aid if the Sandinistas agree to a series of internal changes. Offering the Administration what amounted to a compromise in its uphill battle in Congress for a $100 million aid request, the chairman, Senator Richard G. Lugar, said alternatives that would delay the financing in the hope of achieving negotiations would be counterproductive. “Adding all kinds of strings and certifications will only hinder the effectiveness of the United States to act,” the Indiana Republican said. The support of Mr. Lugar was viewed by White House officials as critical in the Congressional vote scheduled for next week on Mr. Reagan’s request for $70 million in military aid and $30 million in so-called humanitarian help.
President Reagan places a call to Marianne Siles, a Nicaraguan refugee.
As many as 20,000 backers of the Government of El Salvador’s President Jose Napoleon Duarte marched through the streets of the capital today in the latest stage of a battle for support of peasant and labor unions. The march, organized by Government and Christian Democratic Party officials, was held in response to anti-Government criticism among centrist and leftist labor unions. The critics shocked Mr. Duarte last month by holding a large demonstration of their own at which grim economic conditions and lack of progress in ending the six-year-old civil war were condemned.
Peruvian peasants, reportedly exasperated by harassment from Maoist guerrillas of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) group, have killed more than 50 guerrillas in northern Peru, a newspaper in Lima reported. The peasants killed the rebels in surprise raids last month on the towns of Churo and Gran Bretan in San Martin state, about 500 miles north of Lima, the capital, the newspaper El Commercio reported. Policemen in Tarapato, a town near the attack sites, confirmed the peasant raid but could provide no additional information.
Leaders of Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church were briefed by the Vatican today on a new document on liberation theology that is designed to combat left-wing versions of the teaching, which has divided the church in Latin America and other parts of the world. The new document, called “Christian Freedom and Liberation,” seeks to link the church’s concern for the poor to explicitly religious themes and to de-emphasize a political interpretation of the Christian message. The document was outlined to the Brazilian bishops by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the final closed session today of an unusual meeting intended in part to bring the progressive Brazilian church under tighter Vatican control. Although not made public, the document was described in some detail by Vatican officials. The paper, expected to be made public within a few weeks, is meant to complement a sharp criticism of liberation theology issued by Cardinal Ratzinger in the fall of 1984.
Extradition proceedings have begun for Jose Lopez Rega, the mysterious and powerful former official of the Argentine Government who was arrested in Miami this week and is being sought by Argentina to face charges of corruption. Mr. Lopez Rega, 69 years old, was frequently described as the power behind former President Isabel Martinez de Peron and has been linked to right-wing terrorist groups that killed hundreds of Argentine civilians in the 1970’s. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said its agents arrested Mr. Lopez Rega on Thursday at Miami International Airport, where he surrendered after returning from a stay in the Bahamas. Officials said it appeared that Mr. Lopez Rega, who fled Argentina 11 years ago and went into hiding, had lived in the United States for a time.
The Ugandan Government will set up an international commission to investigate atrocities committed by past administrations since independence in 1962, the official Ugandan radio said today. It did not indicate when the commission would be established, but quoted Prime Minister Samson Kisekka as saying Friday that the Administration would pursue former officials responsible for past atrocities against civilians in the same relentless manner as Israel pursues Nazi war criminals. President Yoweri Museveni has vowed to seek the extradition of two former Ugandan leaders, Idi Amin, who is in Saudi Arabia, and Milton Obote, who is in Zambia.
Thousands of mourners at the funeral for seven blacks killed in a police raid shouted and sang support for the outlawed African National Congress today, defying official restrictions on the service and attacking the Government in speeches. “The black has become like an angry elephant,” a Methodist priest, Wesley Mabuza, told the cheering crowd in a sports stadium in Guguletu township outside Cape Town. “Our patience is exhausted. We have been waiting too long. We are being killed every day.” The police kept watch on the gathering from a helicopter, and armored personnel carriers stood ready at nearby police stations. The seven dead were killed by the police in an ambush in Guguletu on March 3. The Government described the men as armed terrorists who were about to attack a police van, but relatives of the victims denied this.
Two Soviet astronauts today boarded the new Soviet space station that is expected to become the first permanently manned orbiting laboratory. Tass, the Government press agency, announced that the spaceship Soyuz T-15 carrying Col. Leonid D. Kizim and Vladimir A. Solovyev, the flight engineer, docked at 4:38 P.M. with the Mir station, whose name means peace in Russian. The evening television news program showed the two astronauts laughing and frolicking in the spacious cabin of the Mir soon after boarding, and proudly showing off its trappings with a hand-held television camera. As the telecast opened, Colonel Kizim seemed to be doing a somersault, while a laughing Mr. Solovyev told the mission controllers, “So, are you convinced now that we’re here?” The interview continued with a gaiety and lightness unusual for Soviet space broadcasts, and the astronauts appeared to be genuinely excited about the new station. Colonel Kizim and Mr. Solovyev, along with another astronaut, Dr. Oleg Atkov, had spent a record of 238 days in space aboard the Salyut-7 orbiting lab, a station considerably more cramped than the Mir.
Although most Americans are benefiting from the nation’s robust economic recovery, economists say that at least 10 million to 15 million are receiving little direct gain. In his State of the Union Message last month, President Reagan described the recent experience of the United States as an “economic miracle.” The economy has grown for 40 consecutive months, adding more than nine million jobs and raising total employment to 110.3 million. The inflation rate plunged from more than 12 percent in 1980 to 3.8 percent in 1985, and a sharp decline in oil prices this year seems to guarantee continued low inflation. But Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, regional commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in New York, said, “Even in this period of rapid economic growth, there are still people who have been left out of it, who are not in the mainstream, who are not even in the minor eddies of the economy.
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Woman of the Year.”
A new Labor Department study shows that nearly half of all American women with children less than a year old worked outside the home last year, with the number of married mothers who worked more than doubling since 1970. The study, by the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed what it called “profound” changes in the number of employed mothers, particularly those with infants. Of married women with children less than a year old, the report said, 49.4 percent were working outside the home in March 1985, up from 39 percent five years earlier, and more than double the rate in 1970. Because single mothers who head households are often the sole support of themselves and their children, they are even more likely to be working than married mothers, the report said. The proportion of families headed by single mothers employed full time ranged from 38 percent of those with children under a year old, to 79 percent of those with children under 3, to 84 percent of those whose youngest child was 6 to 17.
The director of the Kennedy Space Center said today that the space program could be “permanently damaged” because investigators of the Challenger disaster questioned the integrity of NASA officials before they understood what caused the shuttle to explode. Richard G. Smith, the chief space agency official here, said that by doing its job “backwards,” the Presidential commission studying the explosion might instigate an exodus of key personnel from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Speaking in an interview in his home, Mr. Smith said news organizations contributed to the problem by searching for quick answers to the January 28 explosion, which killed the seven astronauts aboard.
Deeply held “fears and prejudices” have delayed the response of the 9.1-million-member United Methodist Church to the AIDS crisis, the church’s Board of Discipleship said today. In a statement adopted at its February 28 meeting in Nashville, the board pledges the church’s support for those suffering from acquired immune deficiency syndrome. The statement said that “we as a church have not always responded lovingly in the midst of this epidemic, in part because of deeply held fears and prejudices,” and adds, “We ask God’s forgiveness in this regard.”
The Pentagon has delayed the $2.1-billion purchase of 474 observation helicopters because the Army failed to conduct realistic tests of the aircraft, Defense Department documents show. Deputy Defense Secretary William Taft said in a recent letter he would decide whether to allow purchase of Advanced Scout helicopters, each costing $4.5 million, upon the Army’s completion of more valid testing. An audit by the inspector general said the Army withheld information from the Defense Department about an equipment defect in the helicopters and offered flawed cost estimates.
Striking meatpackers maintained pickets outside Geo. A. Hormel & Co.’s Austin, Minnesota, plant but ripped the international union affiliation from their placards to express anger with the parent union’s decision to end support of their walkout. The local appealed to the international’s executive board to reconsider a decision cutting off $40 weekly strike benefits and ordering leaders of the local to end the seven-month strike. A rank-and-file meeting was scheduled today to discuss the parent union’s action.
The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a House subcommittee Friday that an Oklahoma accident suggested the Government was not concerned enough about chemical safety problems at nuclear facilities. Before the official, Nunzio J. Palladino, testified, the subcommittee’s chairman announced that workers had again overfilled a cylinder at the Kerr-McGee fuel processing plant that was the subject of the hearing Friday. The accident that occurred there in January began when an overfilled tank was heated to remove excess material. That procedure, which violated plant rules, ruptured the tank, releasing a toxic cloud that killed a worker and sent 130 people to hospitals.
The toxic pesticide found in Arkansas dairy products has entered the milk of some nursing mothers, a Little Rock newspaper reported, as health inspectors continued screening dairies where contaminated cattle feed may have been used. Tom Butler of the state Health Department said that 82 farms have been quarantined as sources of foods tainted with heptachlor, an insecticide banned as a carcinogen. He said that about 1,200 dairies remain to be inspected. Meanwhile, the Arkansas Democrat quoted a University of Kansas toxicologist as saying that levels of heptachlor up to the maximum allowed by federal consumer standards were found in the milk of women in the Eureka Springs area. State officials acknowledged the finding but did not recommend suspension of breastfeeding.
Roger Dunn squatted beside a gleaming stainless-steel storage tank, turned a tap and released a sudden flood of fresh milk. The foaming stream flowed across a concrete floor, down a drain and into an outdoor trench where, as Mr. Dunn’s wife, Valoria, his brother, Mike, and Mike’s wife, Gloria, looked on, their shaggy dog Wookie greedily lapped at the unaccustomed largess. “Our livelihoods could be going down the drain too,” Gloria Dunn said as the two couples looked out across their dairy farm at cattle whose milk has been banned for human consumption because the cows had eaten feed containing a cancer-causing chemical. The Dunns are among the clearest victims of a regional chemical disaster that has shut down nearly 100 dairy farms in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and resulted in the recall of several brands of milk, involving tens of thousands of gallons, from grocery stores across an eight-state area. The Dunn families are losing more than $500 a day in milk revenue and face continuing losses for perhaps a year or more. Many face still greater losses and their numbers are expected to increase as herd tests continue.
District of Columbia Deputy Mayor Alphonse Hill resigned amid allegations that he accepted kickbacks, the latest in a series of problems for officials of Mayor Marion Barry’s Administration. It was disclosed last week that Hill had accepted $3,000 in payments from an auditing contractor who heads a firm that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in city business. A federal grand jury is investigating. Hill’s resignation is effective at the end of the month. Barry had no comment on the resignation. The deputy mayor said he was not forced out by Barry but quit to ensure the integrity of the city’s financial system, which he helped design.
The United Steelworkers reached a tentative agreement in Pittsburgh with LTV Steel Co. that calls for cuts in wages and benefits in exchange for stock and profit sharing for 30,500 workers in seven states, the union said. The union’s negotiating committee voted 32 to 6 to accept a package that would mean an hourly wage cut of $1.14, the loss of three paid holidays and the loss of an average of one week vacation over a 40-month period. The agreement must be approved by the union’s executive board before it is sent to the rank and file for ratification by mail.
The Minnesota House passed and sent to Governor Rudy Perpich a bill raising the drinking age from 19 to 21. The change in age would go into effect September 1, but people who are 19 before that time could continue to drink under a “grandfather” phase-in provision. Supporters of the bill said it would save lives and could gain up to $133 million in federal highway money for Minnesota in the next two years. But opponents called it “federal blackmail” and said teenagers would drive to Wisconsin to drink.
Smiling and waving to well-wishers, Murray Haydon, the recipient of an artificial heart, visited his home today for the first time in 13 months. Accompanied by his wife, a son and two medical aides, the 59-year-old patient spent a few minutes with a neighbor and then watched basketball on television at his suburban home near Louisville, Kentucky.
A member of the West Hollywood City Council who was the first avowed lesbian Mayor of an American city was found guilty Friday of embezzling $9,000 intended for the poor. The 32-year-old Council member and former Mayor, Valerie Terrigno, was convicted of 12 counts of embezzling $9,000 from Crossroads Counseling, an agency for the poor, when she was executive director of the agency from 1982 to 1984.
A state appellate court in California has ordered a judge to set aside his rejection of a request by a cerebral palsy victim to stop a hospital from force-feeding her. The Second District Court of Appeal ordered Judge Warren Deering of Superior Court Friday to vacate his February 21 ruling or appear before it March 24 to explain why his decision should be left standing. The order was requested by attorneys of the American Civil Liberties Union representing Elizabeth Bouvia, a 28-year-old quadriplegic who made an unsuccessful court battle in 1983 to starve in a hospital in Riverside, Calif. The appellate court did not comment on the merits of the case. Miss Bouvia, who has been force-fed at High Desert Hospital since January 16, had asked Judge Deering to order the hospital to remove a feeding tube.
The American Medical Association said today that it would be ethical for doctors to withhold “all means of life prolonging medical treatment,” including food and water, from patients in irreversible comas even if death was not imminent. The withholding of such therapy should occur only when a patient’s coma “is beyond doubt irreversible and there are adequate safeguards to confirm the accuracy of the diagnosis,” the association’s judicial council said. The opinion could affect at least 10,000 Americans who are in irreversible comas, according to Dr. Nancy W. Dickey, chairman of the council. The council’s opinion, which in effect bears the approval of the medical organization, was issued at a meeting on ethics and medicine, co-sponsored by the American Medical Association and the Hastings Center, a research and education institute at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. Under the association’s bylaws, the judicial council’s opinions cannot be overruled by the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates or its officers and can only be changed by the council itself, according to Toba Cohen, a spokesman for the Chicago-based organization.
Advances in treating schizophrenia are being made, but the new insights into the shattering mental illness bring bad news as well as good. Never before in American history have so many schizophrenics been seen on the streets of American cities, screaming aloud to voices only they can hear, proclaiming themselves God, warning passers-by that the Central Intelligence Agency has bugged their brains, or simply sitting, mute and withdrawn, sunk in an apathy so deep that no emotion crosses their faces. But street people are only a part of the problem. Far more victims of this shattering disease are now in the homes of their families, in the nation’s hospitals, in nursing homes, halfway houses or seedy hotels — either forgotten or given care that, health experts agree, has brought only limited relief of their suffering.
A team of Stanford University researchers recently reported breaking through a critical biological barrier and brought significantly closer the day when the world’s major crops can be custom-designed. The team, led by Dr. Virginia Walbot, a 39-year-old plant biologist, said it had combined the technology of electricity with that of altering genes to yield a technique that enables scientists to move hereditary material more easily from unrelated species into important food plants. Dr. Walbot’s work, reported in the March 5 issue of Nature, a British science journal, is viewed by leading plant scientists as one of the important technical achievements of the period of biotechnology that began with the first gene-splicing experiments in the San Francisco Bay area 14 years ago. Experts said that Dr. Walbot’s research would speed the development of improved crop varieties and would give credence to decade-old predictions about the power and promise of genetic engineering in agriculture.
Born:
Jannik Hansen, Danish NHL left wing and right wing (Vancouver Canucks, San Jose Sharks), in Rodovre, Denmark.
Chilo Rachal, NFL guard (San Francisco 49ers, Chicago Bears), in Compton, California.
Darell Scott, NFL defensive tackle (St. Louis Rams), in Columbia, South Carolina.
Joey LaRocque, NFL linebacker (Chicago Bears), in Valencia, California.
History Diaries 