Two United States warships heavily equipped with electronic sensors entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea last week to test Soviet defenses, Pentagon officials said. The officials said that the exercise had been ordered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the name of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and that a similar exercise was planned in the Gulf of Sidra off Libya next week. The purpose of the exercises, the officials said, is to gather intelligence, to assert the right to innocent passage and, in the case of Libya, to assert the right to sail in international waters. The officials spoke after the Soviet Union, in a protest note, said the incident, off the southern Crimea, “was of a demonstrative, defiant nature and pursued clearly provocative aims.” The naval base of Sevastopol, headquarters of the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Fleet, is in the southern Crimea. Edward P. Djerejian, a White House spokesman, was asked whether the maneuver was provocative, in light of efforts to seek a summit meeting. “Absolutely not,” he said. “There is no intent for it to be provocative or defiant. It is simply an exercise of the right of innocent passage. This transit was, to the best of our knowledge, consistent with relevant Soviet law.”
Yelena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, is planning to return to the Soviet Union from the United States in May if her health permits, her son told a congressional hearing in Washington. Alexei Semyonov said that Bonner, who underwent heart bypass surgery in January, will begin a medical procedure starting Friday to clear up a clogged artery in her right leg.
A missing personal file of Kurt Waldheim, Austrian presidential candidate and former U.N. secretary general, has been found in an abandoned safe, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said in Vienna. A spokesman for Waldheim, 67, said it is unlikely the documents will be published, since they would “distract” from the presidential campaign. The file covers the period from 1945 to 1970, and newspapers suggest it might contain clues as to whether Waldheim belonged to Nazi groups, charges he denies.
Francois Mitterrand asked Jacques Chirac, the Mayor of Paris and a longtime political rival of France’s President, to form a new Government. Mr. Chirac held a two-hour meeting with President Mitterrand and said he would give him an answer shortly. Mr. Chirac did not say if he would accept the task. “I was called by the President of the Republic to a wide-ranging discussion on the formation of a new Government,” Mr. Chirac said upon returning to his office at the Paris City Hall this evening. “I told the President of the Republic that I would give him my answer within the shortest possible time.”
Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.
France’s unofficial mediator with the kidnappers of French hostages in Lebanon said he is abandoning his efforts after charges carried on French television that his mission had ruined the captives’ chances of release. Razah Raad, a Lebanese-born physician, had warned he would quit unless the French government cleared him of the accusations. Raad had sought to make contact with Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), a terrorist group that says it is holding three Frenchmen and has killed a fourth, Michel Seurat. Meantime, a driver for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was kidnapped in Beirut today, the agency’s headquarters in Vienna announced. The agency, which provides schools, housing and other aid for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, said in a statement that the driver, Zaki Hamadeh, was taken at gunpoint from a bus while on his way to work. Five gunmen, driving a car without license plates, stopped the United Nations agency’s bus and abducted Mr. Hamadeh, the agency said. Mr. Hamadeh, 49 years old, a Palestinian refugee, lives in the Burj al Brajneh district near Beirut.
Police were investigating a possible massacre after the discovery of 35 skeletons in a cave in southern Lebanon. They said the skeletons appeared to have been there at least 10 years but that pathologists will try to make a more precise estimate. The area, controlled by Palestinian fighters 10 years ago, came under Israeli control after the 1982 invasion and was subsequently held by Lebanese Christian militiamen until Muslim forces took over last year. The skeletons were found on a hill overlooking the ancient port of Sidon.
Rescuers saved a woman who survived three days in the rubble of a collapsed hotel in Singapore. Officials at first said they believed that the woman, identified as Chua Kim Choo, 30, was the last person left alive under the wreckage. But later, a tapping sound in the rubble indicated that there could be another survivor. Chua was the 17th survivor found since the six-story New World Hotel collapsed Saturday. Twelve bodies have been recovered, and officials fear that up to 45 more people may have died.
A new peace proposal by the Cambodian government-in-exile in Peking received support from Hu Yaobang, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who called it “generous and reasonable,” the New China News Agency said. The plan calls for a partnership with the Hanoi-backed regime of Heng Samrin and a phased withdrawal of Vietnamese troops.
Administration and Congressional officials said today that one of the documents brought to the United States by Ferdinand E. Marcos showed a plan to make payments to several American political candidates, including $50,000 each to Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The officials said the document was a one-page typewritten balance sheet that appeared to list campaign contributions of $500 to $50,000 with the names of 10 to 20 American candidates. Included on the list, in addition to Mr. Reagan and Mr. Carter, was Senator Alan Cranston, Democrat of California, the Senator said tonight. A source who has seen the document said it bore a handwritten notation by an unidentified person who acknowledged having received the money “for intelligence purposes by authority of the Chief of Staff.” The document did not name the official, the source said.
Prime Minister David Lange of New Zealand sought to put relations with France and the United States on a less antagonistic footing today, urging better ties with the new Government in Paris and a return to what he called a practical working relationship with Washington. But he emphasized that he would not retreat from his antinuclear policy in the South Pacific and ruled out a deal with France to free two of its intelligence agents jailed for sinking the Greenpeace protest ship Rainbow Warrior.
The United States and Canada announced today that they would extend a mutual air defense agreement for five years. Last month, a parliamentary committee in Ottawa recommended renewal of the pact, which has integrated the countries’ early warning and air defense systems since 1958. More recently, some Canadians have expressed fears that involvement in the pact could draw them into the space-based missile defense system proposed by the Reagan Administration. The announcement on the North American air defense agreement came on the first day of an official visit by the Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney. It was unexpected because only last week Canadian officials had expressed doubts that Canada’s response on a proposed renewal would be ready in time for the meeting between the Prime Minister and President Reagan.
President Reagan must persuade at least 10 more representatives to vote for his $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan rebels or face defeat in the House, according to both Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders. Vote counters on Capitol Hill say Mr. Reagan has apparently won over a handful of wavering legislators in recent days. Supporters of Mr. Reagan contend that, given the political leverage of the White House, he is within reach of the votes he needs. The House is scheduled to vote on the measure tomorrow. Publicly, the Administration has insisted that it will consider no compromise on its request of $70 million in military aid and $30 million for such nonmilitary purposes as food and medicine. But lawmakers in both parties reported that White House aides were quietly asking for recommendations that Mr. Reagan could include in a letter to Congress just before the vote. Some form of compromise solution appeals to moderates in both parties. “Many of us don’t view the Speaker, or the President, as having a policy in Central America,” Mr. McKernan said. “One wants all military aid, the other wants none. We feel we have to bring them together. We need a carrot and a stick.”
Reagan Administration officials said today that Nicaragua’s Soviet bloc allies were expected to supply the Sandinista Government with a number of aircraft and helicopters that would add substantially to the country’s air combat ability. Included are Czechoslovak-made L-39 jets that can be revamped to have ground attack ability and air-to-air missiles, the officials said. Delivery is expected sometime this year, possibly this summer, they said. Other aircraft and helicopters, some with combat ability, are due to arrive from Cuba before the end of March, they said. The officials made the disclosure two days before a House vote on President Reagan’s proposal for $100 million in aid to Nicaraguan rebels. The Administration says one of its principal reasons for seeking the aid is the fear that the Sandinistas will try to dominate their neighbors militarily. The Sandinistas have maintained their military buildup is designed solely for defense against United States-backed rebels.
The Drug Enforcement Administration today disputed an assertion by President Reagan that “top Nicaraguan Government officials are deeply involved in drug trafficking.” Mr. Reagan made the statement in a speech Sunday asking Americans to support his request for $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. In a statement, the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is the principal agency in drug-smuggling investigations, said it had no information implicating “the Minister of Interior or other Nicaraguan officials,” although it said that a Nicaraguan described by the United States as a junior aide to the Interior Minister was indicted in 1984 for cocaine trafficking. The agency said it receives “sporadic allegations concerning drug trafficking by Nicaraguan nationals,” allegations that it has been unable to confirm and that the Nicaraguan Government has denied.
For the second time in three weeks, Brazil has expressed surprise and puzzlement at being included by the Reagan Administration among countries in the Western Hemisphere potentially threatened by Nicaragua. On Monday evening, the Foreign Ministry formally asked the United States Embassy in Brasilia to clarify a statement by President Reagan on Sunday night that “radicals” from Brazil were among foreigners receiving military training in Nicaragua. Earlier this month, Brazil also asked for an explanation as to why a map displayed by Secretary of State George P. Shultz in Congressional testimony on February 27 showed Brazil colored red and identified as a target of what American officials said was Nicaraguan subversion.
Brazil arrested eight American and 10 Argentine self-declared mercenaries and seized six tons of weapons, uniforms and first-aid supplies, authorities reported. Police impounded the Panamanian flag carrier Nobistor near a beach 10 miles from Rio de Janeiro after residents reported undocumented sailors ashore. The crew said the ship was en route to the West African nation of Ghana, but Brazilian authorities suspected they may have been bound for Central America.
Liberian schoolchildren demanding their teachers be paid rioted today, smashing windows, stoning cars, beating other students and fighting with riot policemen who hurled tear-gas canisters at them. The demonstration, the second in a week, appeared to be the biggest protest against President Samuel K. Doe in more than two years. The demonstrators chanted slogans against General Doe and attacked a private school his children attend. Since March 1, state schools have been closed by a teachers’ strike over unclosed by a teachers’ strike over unpaid salaries, but private schools are not affected. The teachers have gone on strike saying they have not been paid for three months. Fighting between riot policemen and students armed with sticks raged all Calm later returned, and a government communique on the state radio ordered the closing of all schools until the end of the Easter recess.
Six miners died in factional fights today at the huge Vaal Reefs gold mine, bringing to 21 the death toll from fighting at South African mines in the last five days, the authorities said. Miners said the men battled in early morning darkness with knives, machetes and sharpened steel rods until security forces arrived and quelled the unrest with gunfire and tear gas. In Soweto, the huge township near Johannesburg, three blacks were stabbed to death and two houses were set afire, the police said today. They gave no details.
Space agency investigators hope to complete by next month their preliminary findings on what caused the Challenger explosion, even if key portions of the spaceship’s right-side booster rocket have not been recovered from the sea by then. James R. Thompson Jr., an official at the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said the investigating team established by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to assist the Presidential commission on the disaster planned to finish its work, including most of its undersea salvage, by April 18. “I think it’s doable, based on the progress I see today,” said Mr. Thompson. He said April 18 was the deadline set by the panel charged by President Reagan with overall responsibility for the investigation into the explosion January 28, which destroyed the space shuttle and killed all seven astronauts on board.
The U.S. Treasury Department announces plans to alter paper money The first key change in U.S. currency since 1929 is set, the Treasury announced. The new money will have a “security thread” that will be readable when a bill is held to a light but cannot be reproduced by a sophisticated copying machine and will include printing so tiny that it also cannot be copied but can be read with a seven-power magnifier. The announcement of the changes was made by Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d, but research actually started in 1978 when it became known that Xerox and other manufacturers of office copiers were nearing development of machines that could copy in color and in great detail. Mr. Baker’s announcement noted that widespread use of the new machines would invite “casual counterfeiters” to copy currency. “This ‘crime of opportunity’ involving small amounts of counterfeit notes in widely dispersed locations could seriously hamper the Secret Service’s enforcement efforts,” Mr. Baker said.
President Reagan meets with his Chief of Staff to discuss his upcoming speech at the annual Gridiron Club dinner.
Senate budget panel members are discussing a compromise that would give the Pentagon an increase of only about half the rate of inflation, several senators said. If Congress approved the compromise being discussed by Republicans and Democrats, it would mean a cut in Pentagon purchasing power. If Congress went along with such a budget, it would be the second major setback for the military in two years. The budget for the fiscal year 1986 reduces the Pentagon’s appropriation below its 1985 level. The compromise level for 1987, while higher than 1986, would leave the Pentagon budget below its 1985 level of purchasing power after accounting for inflation. That would force the Pentagon to make reductions in some programs to compensate for the increases in others resulting from inflation.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood (R-Oregon) proposed new standard deductions and income levels for various tax rates, filling in the last major pieces of his tax revision plan before the panel begins writing its proposal today. Packwood’s standard deduction would be $3,200 for single persons and $5,150 for joint returns. Currently, it is $2,390 for single taxpayers and $3,540 for joint returns. Also, under Packwood’s plan, married couples would not reach the top 35% tax bracket until they had $57,000 in taxable income. For single people, Packwood’s plan would have the 35% top rate begin at $35,000. To pay for these and some other changes, Packwood has suggested increases and adjustments to excise taxes.
An unusual coalition of major labor, business and environmental groups united today in opposing a Reagan Administration request that the Supreme Court reverse years of precedent by limiting organizations’ access to the courts. Eight groups, including such frequent adversaries as the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, urged the Court to uphold its previous rulings that organizations have legal standing to sue to defend the rights of their members. They filed their brief today in response to a little-noticed brief last month in which the Justice Department said, “We see no justification for the anomalous doctrine of representative standing.” Calling the doctrine “a creation of this Court,” Solicitor General Charles Fried and other department lawyers said, “We submit that it would be appropriate for the Court to reconsider the doctrine in light of the practical and analytical difficulties it presents.”
A witness refused to give a sample of urine for a drug test before he could give House testimony about making such tests mandatory for all Federal employees. The witness was Rodney Smith, deputy executive director of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime.
The Department of Transportation plans to ask Congress to transfer $115 million in the agency’s budget to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Coast Guard to help the two agencies avoid temporarily laying off thousands of workers in the coming months, sources in Congress and the department said today. The aviation agency would get $80 million and the Coast Guard $35 million from money appropriated for mass transit, Amtrak and the airport improvement program, the sources said. The programs from which the money would be taken have been unpopular with the Reagan Administration, which has repeatedly advocated the elimination Federal money for Amtrak and of operating subsidies for local transit systems. The proposal from the Department of Transportation is expected to be approved Wednesday by the White House Office of Management and Budget, after which it would go to Congress.
The U.A.W., in a setback, has halted a six-year effort to hold a union representation election at a Honda Motors Company plant in Ohio. The election sought by the United Automobile Workers union would have been the first referendum on union representation at a Japanese-owned auto plant in the United States.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has reduced by 86 percent the fines it proposed against the gust’s chemical leak in Institute, Union Carbide Corporation for the proposed fining the company $32,100 last October. At the time, it called three of the violations “willful,” thus warranting the maximum $10,000 penalty for each. The company contested the fines, arguing that the violations were inadvertent.
Lockheed Corp. marked down its price on a toilet seat cover for the Air Force C-5 jet transport to $1 from $317. A Lockheed spokesman said that the item, which Pentagon critics had publicized as a symbol of government waste, had been discounted to “take toilet seats out of the headlines.” But regulations require some payment. The agreed price was $1 each for 31 toilet seat covers.
A lottery will be used to distribute 40,000 free tickets to Americans wishing to attend the 100th anniversary celebration of the Statue of Liberty, the chairman of the extravaganza announced. David L. Wolper, Liberty Weekend executive producer and chairman, said that a total of 125,000 tickets for the festivities over the four-day weekend, July 3-6, will be available.
With the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty barely four months away, a New Jersey state judge, saying he did not have jurisdiction, dismissed a lawsuit that questioned whether the island on which the landmark rests belongs to New Jersey or New York. The lawsuit asked the court to declare invalid an 1833 compact between the two states that handed to New York the jurisdiction over Liberty and neighboring Ellis islands, both of which sit in the Hudson River, the states’ boundary.
Two condemned killers in Florida won stays of execution today, a day before they were to die in the electric chair, with the United States Supreme Court sparing one man and a Federal appeals court ruling for the other. The High Court, on a 5-to-4 vote, granted Davidson Joel James, 37 years old, a stay until it can hear his case or until April 7, whichever comes first. Later in the day, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta granted Roy Allen Harich an indefinite stay until it could hear arguments in his case. Mr. Harich was sentenced to die for murdering a teen-age hitchhiker in 1981, and Mr. James was convicted of killing a crippled woman in a 1981.
Mayor Harold Washington and his political rival charged that votes had been stolen at the polls today, as a Cook County judge ordered ballots impounded in three of seven wards in which City Council elections were held. In the afternoon, one judge had ordered polls to remain open an extra two hours in about 40 precincts in those three wards because the polls had opened late this morning. When that action was challenged, some ballots cast were ordered impounded. With results known in three of the remaining four wards where a majority of the precincts had reported, candidates supported by the Mayor in a bid to win control of the City Council trailed far behind candidates supported by his rival, Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak.
A lawyer who has been a leader of recent protests against the new, earlier closing hours for the Library of Congress said today that he had been banned by library officials until October. The lawyer, Russell Mokhiber, said he was handed a letter as he and other people prepared to begin another protest against the new hours by a man identifying himself as a library official. The man told him he would be arrested if he entered the building, he said. Mr. Mokhiber had been a leader of the Books Not Bombs Campaign, a group of library users who have informally banded together to protest the shorter library hours, which began March 10 in response to a new budget-balancing law.
The latest recipient of an artificial heart regained consciousness but experienced moderate bleeding and was in critical, unstable condition on his first full day of life with the Penn State heart. Robert F. Cresswell, who received the mechanical pump after his body rejected a transplanted human heart, was alert but could not talk because of tubes in his throat. He remains on a respirator. Cresswell, 48, received the one-pound air-driven pump during eight hours of surgery at the Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
Heavy thunderstorms rumbled across Louisiana, churning out 60 mph winds and at least one tornado that damaged mobile homes. The storms, moving east from Texas, dropped a tornado on Chatham, Louisiana, at mid-afternoon, uprooting trees, tearing tin roofs from barns, snapping power lines and leaving hundreds of homes and businesses without electricity and telephone service, Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Andy Brown said.
Stock prices rose sharply yesterday, with the Dow Jones industrial average briefly surmounting the 1,800 level for the first time. The Dow ended with a gain of 13.05 points, at 1,789.87, after reaching as high as 1,800.29. The average broke through the 1,700 level less than three weeks ago.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1789.87 (+13.05)
Born:
Eric Wood, NFL center and guard (Pro Bowl, 2015; Buffalo Bills), in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Jared Gaither, NFL tackle (Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers), in White Plains, Maryland.
Eugene Sims, NFL defensive end (St. Louis-Los Angeles Rams), in Mt. Olive, Mississippi.
Darius Butler, NFL cornerback and safety (New England Patriots, Carolina Panthers, Indianapolis Colts).
Cory Schneider, NHL goaltender (NHL All Star, 2016; Vancouver Canucks, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders).
Li Lykke [Zachrisson], Swedish pop-electronic singer-songwriter (“I Follow Rivers”), in Ystad, Sweden.
Died:
Bernard Malamud, 71, American novelist (“The Fixer”, “The Natural”, Pulitzer, 1967).
History Diaries 