Secretary of State George P. Shultz returned to Washington early this morning after a meeting with the Soviet Prime Minister that apparently failed to advance prospects for the next Soviet-American summit meeting or produce progress on other major issues. Reporters accompanying Mr. Shultz on his flight home from Stockholm after his meeting with the Prime Minister, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, said he seemed very tired after his grueling 31-hour round trip for the funeral of Prime Minister Olof Palme of Sweden. One reporter said Mr. Shultz’s comments on the plane also indicated disappointment with the continued Soviet unwillingness to set a date either for the next meeting between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, or between himself and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze to make preliminary plans for the summit meeting. Mr. Shultz has said that until a date for the meeting is set, it is difficult to focus high-level and bureaucratic attention on important Soviet-American issues. Mr. Gorbachev and some other Soviet officials have publicly linked the timing of the summit meeting to agreements on some arms control issues, such as a ban on all nuclear testing, a proposal that Mr. Gorbachev has been vigorously promoting but that Mr. Reagan has rejected.
Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev plans to visit West Germany by June, the West German news magazine Der Spiegel said. It attributed its information to unnamed high-ranking sources in the East German Communist Party. The Bonn government’s chief spokesman, Friedhelm Ost, said authorities have no knowledge of such a visit and “will not participate in these speculations.”
French conservatives are leading in legislative elections and appeared to have defeated the Socialists who have governed France for five years. An alliance of two major conservative parties was headed for a slender majority in the National Assembly, according to computer projections of the vote count. The conservative majority, if confirmed by the final count, was far smaller than had been predicted. With the Socialists no longer in control of Parliament, President Francois Mitterrand, whose term still has two years to run, is expected to have to appoint a Prime Minister from the ranks of his opponents. The situation is unprecedented in the Fifth Republic.
The Champagne — 1,800 bottles of France’s most festive wine — flowed freely tonight at the headquarters of the far-right National Front. Across town at L’Humanite, the Communist Party’s daily newspaper, a few bottles of wine were opened, but no one was celebrating. The National Front and the Communist Party had emerged from the national legislative campaign tonight with roughly the same percentage of votes — about 10 percent. For the National Front, headed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, that margin was a great victory. Not only had the party won its first seats in the National Assembly, it had also emerged with more support in critical cities than virtually all polls had predicted.
Secretary of State George P. Shultz and the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, are scheduled to visit Greece this month, and diplomats say they believe the visits are a result of an easing in the anti-Western statements that dominated Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou’s earlier years in office. Diplomats and Greek commentators say both visits are aimed at drawing Greece closer to the Western groupings from which Mr. Papandreou has estranged it since becoming the coutry’s first Socialist Prime Minister. For the United States, the most concrete form of rapprochement would be an assurance that American military bases can remain here after 1988, when the agreement on them expires.
The prices of bread, milk, sugar and alcohol were raised today as the Polish Government sought to reduce food subsidies before it is admitted to the International Monetary Fund. Rumors of food price increases spread on Saturday, and huge lines formed as shoppers stocked up on available staples. At one store, customers peeled off one line to form another at a liquor delivery truck, seeking to buy bottles from the driver.
Swiss voters today rejected by a 3-to-1 margin their government’s plan to join the United Nations. The vote was one of the worst referendum defeats of a Government-sponsored proposal in Switzerland. The final vote was 1,591,428, or 75.7 percent, against joining the 159-member United Nations and 511,548, or 24.3 percent, in favor. The turnout of 50 percent exceeded the 35 percent average for such referendums and underscored the emotional and hard-fought nature of the campaign.
Ariel Sharon took on the role of mediator today in the bitter struggle between Yitzhak Shamir and David Levy for the leadership of the right-wing Herut Party. Mr. Sharon, the Minister of Industry and Trade, conferred with Mr. Levy, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Mr. Shamir, the present party leader. Mr. Shamir, who is also Foreign Minister, is scheduled to switch jobs in October with Prime Minister Shimon Peres, leader of the Labor Party, under a rotation agreement. But that agreement is dependent on Mr. Shamir’s retaining the Herut leadership.
The Arab League added 22 companies to the list of firms blacklisted because of their dealings with Israel and removed 12 others from the list. Among those added by the Arab Boycott’s Damascus headquarters were the Luxembourg-based International Metals S.A., which the Arabs accuse of supplying Israel with uranium residue, and four Egyptian firms. The league absolved 28 companies of dealings with Israel, after they submitted documentation. Among them were Italy’s Fiat and U.S.-based E.I. du Pont de Nemours.
Hundreds of people attended a church service today in honor of six Americans kidnapped in Lebanon, who were described by the Rev. Jesse Jackson as “victims of a faceless war.” The 90-minute service of hymns, psalms and prayers marked the second year in captivity for William Buckley, and the first for Terry A. Anderson. “I have had a great sense of comfort today,” said Peggy Say, 45 years old, Mr. Anderson’s sister. The anniversary “could have been a real downer,” but the outpouring of hope expressed in the service buoyed her spirits, she said.
The wife of former Beirut hostage Jeremy Levin said she will return to the Mideast on a “woman-to-woman” peace mission because “the American people… have not been given the facts” about the remaining American captives. Lucille Levin said she will be accompanied by Patsy Collins, chairman of King Broadcasting Co., and two others and that they will meet with Arab and Israeli women. Muslim militants are believed to hold six Americans. Levin, a Cable News Network correspondent, fled his captors early last year.
Saudi Arabia declared today that it would come to the defense of Kuwait if the Kuwaitis were attacked by Iran. The declaration was made by Crown Prince Abdullah, who said any aggression against Kuwait would be regarded as aggression against his country. The Prince spoke to Arab editors in Riyadh, according to the Saudi state radio, monitored here. Although Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a military and economic alliance, this was the first time a high-ranking Saudi official had publicly voiced such a commitment.
A land mine in Pakistan Saturday destroyed two pickup trucks filled with Afghan refugees on their way to a wedding, killing 18 women and a man, guerrillas and newspaper reports said today. Eight people were wounded in the explosion in the remote Gamo area near the town of Parachinar, close to the Afghan frontier, Afghan guerrilla officials said. Guerrilla officials said the trucks set off an antitank mine on the road near an Afghan refugee camp.
A notorious Indian convict who is wanted in Thailand on murder charges escaped from a New Delhi prison after drugging guards with dope-laced sweets, officials there said. It was the second jailbreak by Charles Sobhraj, 41, a martial arts expert who has been dubbed the “bikini killer” because the bodies of several of his alleged 1976 victims were found floating in the Gulf of Thailand, clad in bikinis. Sobhraj and six others fled from a rear gate of the prison in an automobile.
Rescue workers in Singapore pulled two men from the rubble of a six-story hotel and were tunneling toward more people believed still alive in the ruins. The two survivors, who were entombed for 36 hours after the New World Hotel collapsed, were taken to hospitals. Their condition was not immediately known. The confirmed death toll rose to 10 as more bodies were recovered, and 61 people were still missing. The dramatic rescue came as hundreds of soldiers, firefighters and volunteer civil defense brigades sifted through a mountain of concrete, twisted iron, tiles and furniture, spurred on by faint voices. Rescuers hoped to free at least seven more people believed to be still alive in the demolished building. From the sound of his voice, one of them appeared to be a little boy.
Korean film director Shin Sang Ok and his actress wife, Choi Bun Hui, have sought political asylum at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Japan’s Kyodo news service reported. The embassy would not comment. Originally from South Korea, the two disappeared from Hong Kong in separate incidents in 1978, with Seoul officials charging that they were abducted by North Korean agents. They reappeared in Yugoslavia in 1984, saying they had defected to North Korea. Shin won international film awards while in South Korea, and Choi was a popular actress there.
President Corazon C. Aquino and the leaders of the revolt that took her to power last month appealed to the public today for donations to repair the transmitters of a radio station that played a key role in the ouster of Ferdinand E. Marcos. In a daylong telethon on the Government television station, Mrs. Aquino, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and the Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, called on Filipinos to pledge 50 million pesos (about $2.3 million) to help repair damage to the station, Radio Veritas, which was caused by supporters of Mr. Marcos in his final days in power. One of Mrs. Aquino’s staff members also telephoned the offices of American newspapers in Manila asking whether their readers would want to join in the “people power,” which is given credit for having taken her to victory in the election and on which the Government is now calling for help in restoring the radio station. Radio Veritas, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Church, broadcast messages from Mr. Enrile and Gen. Fidel V. Ramos during their revolt against Mr. Marcos, as well as appeals from Mrs. Aquino and Cardinal Sin calling on Filipinos to mass in the streets to protect the rebellious troops.
A spokesman for the Spanish Foreign Ministry, responding to reports that Ferdinand E. Marcos had expressed a wish to live in Spain, said tonight that the ousted Philippine President would not be offered a haven here. Reagan Administration officials were quoted in an article in The New York Times today as saying Mr. Marcos was seeking American intervention to help him move from Hawaii and settle in Spain, Mexico or Panama. Spain was said to be his first choice. Inocencio Arias, the spokesman for the Foreign Ministry here, cited comments made by Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez three weeks ago. Mr. Gonzalez, in response to a question at a news conference, said Spain would not permit Mr. Marcos to live in exile here.
President Reagan makes an address to the Nation on Nicaragua. The President condemned Nicaragua as a “cancer” that posed a direct threat to the United States, and said that stopping Communism and international terrorism there would serve as a historic test of his Presidency. In a bluntly worded television speech that lasted about 20 minutes, Mr. Reagan called on the American people to demand that Congress endorse the Administration’s $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan rebels. The alternative, he said, was to face a growing Soviet beachhead in Central and South America, increased terrorism in the region and a tide of “desperate Latin peoples by the millions” fleeing into the southern United States. “For our own security, the United States must deny the Soviet Union a beachhead in North America,” he said.
The Democrats tonight drew a distinctly different picture of the strategic threat posed by the situation in Nicaragua than President Reagan, and they said the President should use diplomatic methods, not military ones, to halt the spread of Communism in Central America. In the official Democratic response to the President’s speech, Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee said the Democrats shared the President’s condemnation of Sandinista policies and his goal of preventing the spread of Communism. “Our disagreement is with the means the President has used to achieve these goals,” Senator Sasser said. “This disagreement is shared by a majority of Americans and a majority of the Congress.”
Democrats disagreed with Mr. Reagan about the strategic threat to the region posed by the situation in Nicaragua, and they said he should use diplomatic methods, not military ones, to halt the spread of Communism in Central America. Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee said the Democrats shared his condemnation of Sandinista policies and his goal of preventing the spread of Communism. “Our disagreement is with the means the President has used to achieve these goals.”
Tribal fighting left seven blacks dead at a South African gold mine, and two blacks were killed by police gunfire in the township of Jouberton, southwest of Johannesburg, authorities reported. The seven blacks were killed and 67 wounded in a lengthy battle between Xhosa and Sotho miners wielding sticks and homemade metal weapons at the Vaal Reefs gold mine, a spokesman for the owners said. The Jouberton deaths occurred when police fired shotguns into a crowd that had firebombed the officers’ vehicle.
Morale has fallen at the space center responsible for supervising the design and manufacture of solid-fuel booster rockets, one of which is believed to have caused the Challenger explosion January 28, killing the seven astronauts aboard. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is bustling with investigative zeal and proclaiming its confidence in the future of the space program. But it is also seething with resentment, hostility, depression and exhaustion in the wake of the shuttle catastrophe. Marshall officials also certified the Challenger’s rockets as safe for launching despite protests from engineers the night before that cold weather could cause critical seals in the rockets to fail. Marshall, inside a huge Army missile arsenal along the Tennessee River, has long been one of the most secretive and authoritarian of the field installations run by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Challenger explosion has driven the center even further into its shell, some officials there acknowledge.
A 3,250-pound chunk of booster rocket was raised from the ocean floor today as efforts to recover Challenger debris, including the space shuttle’s damaged crew compartment, resumed after two days of storms and rough seas. “The weather has calmed sufficiently for salvage,” said Lieutenant Commander Deborah A. Burnette of the Navy, the spokesman here for recovery operations. Navy divers from the U.S.S. Preserver, working in water so murky that visibility was cut to less than five feet, tried to recover debris of Challenger’s crew cabin, which was located a week ago in 100 feet of water 17 miles off the Florida coast. It had rested undetected on the sea floor for nearly six weeks after Challenger exploded, killing all seven crew members. On Wednesday in a solemn ceremony in which sailors stood in dress blues, the Preserver brought to port large pieces of wreckage of the crew cabin and some of its contents, according to Navy officials. The contents reportedly included some remains of the seven astronauts, an assertion the space agency and Navy have refused to confirm or deny.
Backers of a proposed California statewide ballot initiative to have AIDS declared a communicable disease subject to quarantine say they have collected almost 40% of the signatures needed to qualify the initiative for the November election. The Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee has gathered 120,000 to 150,000 of the 393,385 signatures required by May 24, according to Brian Lantz, a candidate in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary. The measure would make it illegal for people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome to engage in activities that would spread the fatal disease, which has been diagnosed primarily in homosexuals and in some blood transfusion recipients. State and federal health officials say the initiative is unnecessary and an attempt by some politicians to capitalize on public fear.
During the first two months of this year, many economists became steadily more upbeat about the outlook for the nation’s economy. Their growth estimates rose as the dollar and oil prices fell, until their consensus neared the Reagan Administration’s optimistic projection that the economy would expand at a healthy rate of 4 percent. In the past few weeks, however, the doubts many economists harbored earlier have been resurrected by gloomy unemployment and production statistics, dismal trade figures, weak reports of retail sales and discouraging news from such blue-chip companies as the General Motors Corporation and the International Business Machines Corporation. “There’s no concrete sign of recession, but you can say that there are an awful lot of troubling elements out there,” said Rudolph Oswald, the chief economist in Washington for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. “You can’t let the financial markets fool you,” said one of the more pessimistic economists, Samuel Nakagama of the New York consulting firm of Nakagama & Wallace Inc., referring to soaring stock prices. On Friday the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 39.03 points, to a record 1,792.74. It capped a rise for the week of 92.91 points, making it the largest gain ever achieved in a five-day period.
The federal government agreed to give $5 million and a decrepit building used as a homeless shelter to the District of Columbia, ending a 32-day-old hunger strike by Mitch Snyder and 12 other activists for the homeless, Mayor Marion Barry announced. The agreement also winds down the federal role in a dispute that grew from President Reagan’s 1984 election-eve promise — made after Snyder fasted for 51 days — to turn the 900-bed facility operated by the Community for Creative Non-Violence into a “model physical shelter.” Denny Brisley, an assistant White House press secretary, said: “We hope that the Congress will pass enabling legislation as soon as possible so that Mayor Barry may implement this agreement.”
About 300 determined hikers resumed their “Great Peace March” for nuclear disarmament today, walking along a dirt road in the Mojave Desert to continue the trek to Washington that was interrupted when organizers ran out of money. They were marching 10 miles toward a campsite in Barstow, where they planned to seek donations. The group, which numbered 1,200 at the outset March 1, had been stuck at a remote camp since Monday night, bogged down first by logistical problems and then by the collapse of PRO-Peace, which organized the planned 3,235-mile trek. Steve Perkins, an official of the organization, said bankruptcy papers would be filed Monday.
The American Medical Association announced a major change in its principles regarding the treatment of terminally ill and permanently incapacitated patients, maintaining that a doctor remains obligated to sustain life, not prolong it. The announcement came during a two-day symposium in New Orleans titled, “A New Ethic for the New Medicine.” Dr. Nancy Dickey said the code of ethics has been revised to make it permissible to withhold food and water under some conditions from terminally ill patients and those in irreversible comas.
Arkansas health officials ordered the recall of several thousand gallons of milk and cottage cheese in Arkansas and Oklahoma, based on tests indicating that dairy animals were fed contaminated feed. The recalls are the latest in a series that began more than a week ago, when Arkansas Health Department officials learned that dairy cattle in northwest Arkansas had been given feed contaminated with the pesticide heptachlor, which has caused cancer in test rats. A U.S. Department of Agriculture task force formed to study the contamination in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri is scheduled to begin work Tuesday in Arkansas.
Philadelphia buses, trolleys and subways stopped running as thousands of mass-transit workers went on strike, shutting down public transportation for 440,000 daily riders in the nation’s fifth-largest city. About 5,100 operators, cashiers and maintenance workers, whose contract had expired at midnight Friday, walked out after weekend-long negotiations over wages and work conditions with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority failed.
A union local on strike for seven months against the Geo. A. Hormel & Co. meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota, has voted to file suit against its parent union, which has withdrawn its sanction of the walkout and cut off strike benefits, a local official said. “We’re planning a suit based on the irreparable harm the international has done to the union,” said Pete Winkels, business agent for Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers union. The plan to file suit was developed in weekend meetings of P-9’s executive board and endorsed by voice vote during a meeting of about 800 rank-and-file members, Winkels said.
A new dispute between Trans World Airlines and its striking flight attendants has erupted over the adequacy of training of replacement attendants. The union has charged that the airline was using flight attendants with less than the required amount of flight time and that a Federal inspector had told T.W.A. to “cease using unqualified crew members as of March 11.” The airline denied that there had been any contact with the Federal Aviation Administration. A spokesman for the agency, Fred Farrar, said Saturday in Washington that T.W.A. had been warned before the strike that it was giving its new flight attendants only half the training required. He said the airline had misinterpreted the regulations and complied immediately. The Independent Federation of Flight Attendants struck March 7 because a company contract called for pay cuts and increased flying time.
Professional farm management has increased rapidly as the number of farm failures has risen. Since 1981, when the farm depression began, the number of farms overseen by 1,000 farm management companies has increased by almost 60 percent, to 110,000, agricultural experts estimate. The number of acres these companies manage has grown from 48 million to nearly 59 million, an area roughly the size of Colorado. Historically, such management companies, composed of production specialists and marketing analysts, operated farms primarily for retired couples who did not want to sell their land and for those who inherited farms but did not want to manage them. But public and private lenders, through acquisitions and foreclosures, and investors who saw a good opportunity for profit and tax savings, now own thousands of failed family farms. They have turned to management companies to operate or sell the farms.
Hundreds of Texas oil wells owned by independent producers in the Panhandle have been closed by state and Federal officials in a dispute over rights to natural gas. The independent producers said the abundant gas they extracted was a byproduct of their oil production, but major oil companies, which own most of the gas rights, said the gas field was being illegally depleted. The closings have dealt an economic blow to small oil producers and to hundreds of oilfield service companies and other small businesses, investors and royalty owners, and have raised a major political issue.
Thomas P. O’Neill broke into song while sitting for his portrait for St. Patrick’s Day. The House speaker held a blackthorn stick presented by the Irish Prime Minister, Garrett FitzGerald, who will join him for corned beef, Boston variety, at lunch in Washington.
About 30,000 people marched in a winter Los Angeles downpour today in support of a woman’s right to a legal abortion. “What do we want? Free choice! When do we want it? Now!” the demonstrators chanted as they trudged through a heavy rain that turned some streets into rivers. The demonstrators, about 30 percent of them men, began the two-mile march outside the Century Plaza Hotel, using its plush facade as a counterpoint to what they said was a Reagan Administration policy that would return abortions to back streets.
A commission investigating New York state’s liability-insurance crisis plans to recommend tighter state control of the insurance industry and limits on the size of some court awards to injured people, the panel’s executive director said today. The executive director, Orin S. Kramer, said skyrocketing premiums for liability insurance in the last year were partly the fault of the insurance companies, which he said had kept rates artificially low for years because of fierce competition. But he also said that they were partly a result of rising costs beyond the companies’ control, such as larger legal settlements. Mr. Kramer and some commission members added that the panel would recommend a $250,000 limit on settlements for pain and suffering in cases against municipalities. That limit and other changes affecting settlements would be tied to a requirement that insurance companies file lower rates, which would be subject to the approval of the State Insurance Superintendent.
Violent thunderstorms menaced Florida, and two tornadoes touched down along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Severe weather warnings were issued in east-central Florida as the band of thunderstorms swept inland, bringing hail, heavy rain, lightning and 25-mph wind gusts. In Wimauma, about 15 miles south of Tampa, a tornado toppled a metal shed in a strawberry field, killing a 41-year-old man who was running for cover from the rain, authorities said. A second tornado struck near Inverness, Florida, but no injuries were reported.
Most schizophrenics live at home with their families, an indication of a profound shift in the way the nation cares for its severest mentally sick. The families, health officials have only recently concluded, are forgotten victims of this baffling disorder that disables one of every 100 Americans. “The families have become the doctors, the nurses and the social workers,” a psychiatrist said. Nearly one million families are caring for a schizophrenic member. Parents and siblings of schizophrenics say they are racked by demands that would overtax a Mother Theresa. They describe themselves as bitter, despairing and wrung out. Between the excruciating turbulence at home and the limited services they receive from public agencies, families become “lost in a process that is hideously engulfing,” as one woman with a schizophrenic niece described it.
Born:
Alexandra Daddario, American actress (“Percy Jackson” films; “White Lotus”; “Mayfair Witches”), in New York, New York.
Toney Douglas, NBA point guard and shooting guard (New York Knicks, Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors, Miami Heat, New Orleans Pelicans, Memphis Grizzlies), in Jonesboro, Georgia.
Zoltan Mesko, Romanian NFL punter (New England Patriots, Cincinnati Bengals, Pittsburgh Steelers), in Timisoara, Romania.
Mickey Storey, MLB pitcher (Houston Astros, Toronto Blue Jays), in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Kenn Doane, American professional wrestler also known as “Kenny Dykstra” (“WWE Raw”, “WWE Smackdown!”), in Worcester, Massachusetts.
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