The Communist Party daily Pravda said today that a test by the United States of a nuclear device showed “great contempt for world public opinion” and that Washington bore responsibility for the consequences of “this shortsighted step.” The bomb-like device was detonated Saturday at a test site in Nevada despite protests by more than 60 members of Congress and many Soviet appeals to the United States to join a test moratorium. The Soviet Union began a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear tests last August. It expires March 31, but the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev said March 13 that the moratorium would continue until the United States conducted another test. “Showing great contempt for world public opinion and disregarding the demands of its own people, the U.S. Administration sanctioned the test of a nuclear device,” Pravda said.
Hopes for a quick renewal of American military base rights in Turkey appeared to falter today as Turkey insisted on linking the renewal to major trade concessions by the United States. The new linkage, which seemed to have caught American officials off guard, provoked heated words this afternoon from Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who complained that the Turks had “sandbagged” him and accused them of “beating me over the head about it.” “I have been brought here in order to have a nice luncheon and instead get hit behind the ear,” he said at a luncheon here in his honor. The gathering was silent as he spoke. Despite the harsh words between the two North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, officials said there was no danger that the United States would be asked to give up the bases, which it continues to use during negotiations on a renewal of the existing accord. American officials would like to conclude the negotiations soon, and there had been some hope that major progress could be accomplished during Mr. Shultz’s trip, which continues in Ankara, the capital, on Monday.
A West German newspaper said it has obtained recent, secretly taken film of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov that shows him to be “obviously healthy.” The mass circulation daily Bild — which has obtained four other films of Sakharov in the last two years — said the 15-minute color videotape shows Sakharov speaking on the telephone with his wife, Yelena Bonner, who is currently receiving medical treatment in the United States. American relatives indicated they thought that the film was intended to counter a Sakharov letter telling of confinement and force-feeding while he was on a hunger strike.
In 1974 when the Arab oil-exporting states were just reaching the pinnacle of their economic and political power, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin prophesied that Israel was headed for seven lean years. But reversing Joseph’s warning in the Bible, Mr. Rabin added that the seven lean years would be followed by seven fat years — if Israel could just weather the oil price storm. Mr. Rabin was off by a few years, but his instincts proved correct. Israel had to weather a decade of lean years, during which its gasoline prices reached $3 a gallon, its hostile Arab neighbors increased their wealth astronomically and its diplomats and business executives were kept at arm’s length by would-be friends in Europe and Africa who were afraid of offending the Arab oil powers. But the oil-lean years appear to be over for Israel, at least for now. The drop in oil prices and the decline of the power of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is proving a diplomatic, strategic and economic bonanza for Israel, and Israeli officials say they believe the situation will only continue to improve. Signs of the new times abound. Israel’s domestic energy prices are coming down; its Arab neighbors are being forced to trim their budgets; countries such as Spain, Poland and the Ivory Coast — which for years wanted to establish diplomatic ties but were afraid to do so for fear of Arab retaliation — have shown a new openness toward Jerusalem. And for the first time several non-Arab OPEC members have quietly ignored the organization’s longstanding boycott and asked Israel’s Minister of Energy whether he would buy some of their crude oil.
OPEC ministers emerged from an eighth weary day of talks here today unable to come up with any specific agreement to stop the plunge of oil prices. In what one delegate described as “acrimonious discussions,” ministers from numerous countries apparently rejected out of hand a complicated system of individual national quotas under an overall production ceiling of 14 million barrels of crude oil a day. A spokesman, James Audu, said the ministers would set forth their discussions Monday. Reflecting the gloom and exhaustion gradually surrounding the talks, ministers of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries avoided reporters or said little as they emerged from discussions.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres vigorously rejected pressure today from his Labor party to break a 1984 agreement with the Likud bloc to rotate offices with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir. The switch is to take place in October, at the midway point in the Parliament’s four-year term. The Labor Party and the right-wing Likud agreed to share power on the basis of an agreement after the 1984 elections created a situation where neither could form a government capable of mustering a vote of confidence without the support of the other. Mr. Peres addressed his party’s 1,100-member central committee, which convened here to consider a motion by 104 members to dissolve the so-called national unity Government and advance the elections due in the fall of 1986.
Lebanese Christian ties with Israel have been resumed after they were abandoned 10 months ago, according to Muslim leaders and news accounts in Beirut. Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s leading Shiite politician, said in speech in Muslim West Beirut on Saturday that Israeli weapons and military personnel had been sent to Christian districts to assist the militia forces in their confrontation with the Muslims. Mr. Berri is president of Amal, the mainstream Shiite Moslem movement, and is also the Cabinet minister responsible for southern Lebanon. He was addressing a diplomatic reception marking Amal’s 12th anniversary.
President Reagan orders U.S. Navy maneuvers to commence off the coast of Libya.
Shouting “Zia is a dog” and “Down with the Americans,” about 60,000 demonstrators marched through Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in protest against President Zia ul-Haq’s government. At a rally to commemorate Pakistan’s independence day, speakers asserted that Zia’s military-backed regime will soon fall for lack of support. The United States was repeatedly criticized for backing Zia. The rally, held by the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, an alliance of 11 opposition parties, was one of the biggest since martial law was lifted December 30.
Tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Pusan today and cheered the dissident leader Kim Young Sam in the biggest anti-Government rally since President Chun Doo Hwan assumed power in 1980. Mr. Kim said in a speech that the overthrow of President Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Philippines last month “gave us a good lesson,” and that he hoped Mr. Chun had paid heed and “will not be a second Marcos.” The New Korea Democratic Party, the main opposition group, called the rally to begin a petition drive in the Pusan area to change the Constitution. Similar rallies are scheduled in Kwangju on March 30, in Taegu, north of Pusan, on April 5, and in Inchon, west of Seoul, on April 20.
A spring snowstorm that dumped up to 20 inches of snow on the Tokyo area left six people dead, seven crew members from three ships missing at sea south of Tokyo and at least 294 injured, most in a train crash, the police said today. The bodies of four crewmen from an abandoned Japanese freighter were found today. Three others were missing from that ship, three from another Japanese freighter and one from a Chinese freighter. In Tokyo’s suburbs, officials reported a man killed when he was struck by a snow-covered awning that collapsed and a firefighter electrocuted when he touched a fallen power line as he cleared snow from fire hydrants. At Tanashi, northwest of Tokyo, 204 people were injured when a commuter train apparently slipped on snowy tracks and crashed into the rear of a train that had stopped for repairs to an electrical line, the police said. In addition, 81 people were hurt in falls and 9 in auto accidents, officials said.
Just once in her first three weeks of leadership, people in the corridor outside the President’s office have heard Corazon C. Aquino raise her voice, and the story is being told and retold with excitement among her aides and Cabinet ministers. Nobody seems quite sure what it was that made her angry, but the question of how the usually soft-spoken new President exercises her power is a subject of intense interest here. By all accounts, this neophyte politician is firmly in charge of the goverment, relying on her own instincts to set its policy directions and leaving the details to her subordinates. Asked whether she relied on one key aide or a group of advisers, one of her closest associates, Finance Minister Jaime Ongpin, said, “Just one: Cory Aquino.”
United States Navy officials and local labor leaders disputed one another today over allegations that American servicemen had stabbed picketing Filipino workers who walked off their jobs this weekend at the Subic Bay Naval Base here. Representatives of the striking Filipinos renewed charges that five of their pickets had been wounded by sailors or marines wielding knives late Friday night outside the main gate of the base. A lawyer for the workers’ union, Isagani Jungco, produced written statements that he said had been signed by four wounded men, attesting that they had been stabbed by servicemen returning from a night in Olongapo.
Former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos has said he felt like committing suicide after he gave up power but rejected the idea because of his Roman Catholic religion, a Japanese lawmaker reported. Toshio Yamaguchi, a member of Parliament, told reporters in Honolulu that he met with Marcos and his wife, Imelda, at their Hickam Air Force Base guest quarters over the weekend. “You Japanese can commit hara-kiri, but we’re Catholic and cannot commit suicide. But I felt I would like to commit hara-kiri,” Yamaguchi said Marcos told him. Marcos, his wife and a number of relatives and aides have been at Hickam since Feb. 26.
Conservatives strengthened their slim majority in the French National Assembly with the reelection of Benjamin Brial, the representative from the South Pacific territorial islands of Wallis and Futuna. Brial is a member of Premier Jacques Chirac’s neo-Gaullist party, the Rally for the Republic. A coalition of conservative parties now holds 291 seats in the 577-seat assembly as a result of March 16 parliamentary elections, two more than needed for a majority. One seat remains undecided, that from St. Pierre and Miquelon, islands off eastern Canada.
Protests in Haiti will continue until its new leaders begin making basic changes, a human rights activist said. Gerard Gourgue, the popular human rights activist who resigned in protest from the interim Haitian Government three days ago, described his country today as “an angry nation” crying out for social and economic justice. In his first interview with reporters since leaving office, Mr. Gourgue, a 60-year-old lawyer and director of a secondary school, said the anger seen in sporadic street protests since the fall of the Duvalier dynasty six weeks ago is unlikely to subside until the country’s new leaders begin making fundamental changes. He said he did not believe Haiti’s huge problems could be solved overnight. “But,” he said, “actions must be undertaken now. The Government has to make clear its determination to confront the basic problems.”
Four Democratic congressmen left Nicaragua after a weekend fact-finding trip, agreeing that the situation is grim in the leftist nation but still divided about whether to vote for aid for the contras. “There is no such thing as saying if we don’t do something this will be another Cuba; this already is another Cuba,” Rep. Kenneth J. Gray of Illinois, who voted against the aid measure last week, said. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he is confident the rebels could become an effective force with U.S. arms and assistance.
El Salvador’s armed forces have rejected a guerrilla offer of an Easter season truce, prompting sharp criticism from Roman Catholic Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas. “One would have thought that for Christian conviction — at least on Good Friday — there would have been a cease-fire,” said the prelate, who as an intermediary has brokered previous truces. General Adolfo Blandon, the Salvadoran chief of staff, rejected a truce because of “repeated violations by the terrorists,” a reference to the leftist rebels seeking to topple President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s government.
The Coca-Cola Company is providing an initial gift of $10 million to establish new foundations in South Africa to open up opportunities in business, housing and education for black South Africans. The foundations, called Equal Opportunity Funds, are to be administered by a board of prominent South Africans that includes Bishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Coca-Cola is also setting up a nonprofit organization in Atlanta to raise more money for the foundations.
In an important shift, the space agency is planning to devote most space shuttle flights to military missions once launchings resume, senior officials say. Even before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has fully identified and corrected the problem that caused the space shuttle Challenger to explode, officials are planning an ambitious series of missions next year. Senior agency officials said in interviews that up to nine shuttle launchings are tentatively scheduled, including one from a military base in California. Five to seven of the flights are devoted to the military, depending on how particular payloads are defined. Officials emphasized that there would be no shuttle launchings until the problem that destroyed the Challenger and killed its seven crew members had been discovered and fixed.
A presidential panel is proposing a long-range, $700-billion space program that would put manned settlements on the moon in 30 years and that envisions an eventual 1 million space travelers a day, a published report said. The National Commission on Space, appointed by President Reagan a year ago, is to present the White House next month with a report setting forth an ambitious 50-year space program, Aviation Week & Space Technology reports in today’s edition. Under the commission’s plan, new spacecraft would place settlements on the moon and Mars, where they would be sustained by interplanetary factories and permanent spaceport supply depots, said Aviation Week, which obtained a final draft of the panel’s report. The report, “Pioneering the Space Frontier: Our Next 50 Years in Space,” is dedicated to the seven-member crew of the Challenger, killed when the space shuttle exploded January 28.
For a third day, salvage ships involved in the search for wreckage from the space shuttle Challenger remained in port today, waiting out strong winds and 14-foot seas off the Florida coast. The poor weather is setting back efforts to retrieve key wreckage from the Challenger. Investigators looking for the cause of the explosion that killed the seven astronauts January 28 believe this debris will add to their understanding of what went wrong. The Presidential commission investigating the explosion has asked the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to wrap up its preliminary collection and analysis of data relating to the disaster, including the recovery of debris, by April 18.
The President and First Lady enjoy lunch together in the White House Solarium.
Not since the Truman era has the proud and powerful Federal Reserve experienced the drama, consternation and internal hostilities of the sort that shook it during the past four weeks. At the end of last week Paul A. Volcker, who heads the nation’s central bank, allowed that he had had “enough excitement” to last him many years. The turmoil at the normally collegial institution, which often exerts more influence over the nation’s economy than even the White House or Congress, appears to have waned. Mr. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board for nearly seven years, has survived a rare and embarrassing situation in which he lost a vote last month on a critical issue — reducing interest rates — to the Reagan-appointed governors on a board he had previously dominated. At one point during the episode, he considered resigning.
Sales of airport slots for arriving and departing flights would be prevented by a Senate bill, but a filibuster over another transportation measure has stalled the bill. The “buy-sell” bill would void a new Federal regulation allowing airlines serving four major airports to sell their arrival and departure slots privately.
State government initiatives to help the urban poor are increasing while the Federal aid they had depended on for social programs is declining. “In the last three years the states have emerged as new engines of innovation” in many areas, said Denis P. Doyle and Terry W. Hartle, who have been tracking state initiatives in education at the American Enterprise Institute, a private research organization in Washington.
Federal housing for farm workers in Holyoke, Massachusetts, has raised strong opposition led by the Board of Aldermen. The aldermen voted to seize the housing site by eminent domain. The Mayor, although opposed to the project, blocked the action, fearful that the city would be accused of discrimination and lose state and Federal revenues. The housing is intended for the harvesters of vegetables and tobacco in the Connecticut Valley.
Consumer calls seeking information about three drugs laced with rat poison tailed off as the manufacturer concentrated on coordinating the return of thousands of capsules from stores nationwide. The six poisoned Contac, two Teldrin and one Dietac capsules all came from drugs removed from the shelves of stores in Orlando, Fla., and were recalled by SmithKline Beckman Corp. of Philadelphia, the manufacturer, after tests revealed traces of warfarin, the active ingredient of rat poison, in several capsules. SmithKline said the quantity of the warfarin found in the capsules would not harm humans.
Surgeons implanted a Jarvik-7 artificial heart into a 43-year-old factory foreman in an attempt to keep him alive until a human donor heart becomes available, hospital employees said in Pittsburgh. Gary Blake of East Liverpool, Ohio, was in critical condition after the five-hour “uncomplicated” operation, which ended just before midnight, said Tom Chakurda, spokesman for Presbyterian-University Hospital.
The spring rerun of Louisiana Governor Edwin W. Edwards’ fraud and racketeering trial involving a $10-million hospital venture begins in New Orleans today. The first trial lasted 14 weeks and ended December 18 with a hung jury. Edwards called it a victory because only one or two of the 12 jurors voted to convict him on any count. The number of charges have been reduced going into the retrial but the basic allegation remains the same: that. Edwards, his brother Marion and three others used their political influence to gain state certification for hospital and nursing home construction projects in which they held interests.
A chain of supermarkets has recalled all containers of its house brand and generic ice cream, ice milk and sherbet from 463 stores in three states after consumers reported finding shards of glass. Lucky Stores first recalled cartons of some flavors after receiving reports of glass being found in San Ramon, Sacramento and Fresno. The chain announced the expanded recall of its Lady Lee and generic brands Saturday after new reports from Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday and Bakersfield on Saturday. The company said the recall involves its 335 stores in California, 35 in Arizona, and 13 in Nevada, plus grocery departments in 80 Gemco Stores. The company asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to look into the matter.
Doctors from Jo Ellen Smith Medical Center in New Orleans have complained that a critically burned 2-year-old was turned away Thursday from West Jefferson General Hospital because his mother’s health insurance could not immediately be verified. The child, Deon Rivers, was burned over 30 percent of his body after tipping over a skillet of hot grease. Deon was flown from New Orleans to the Shriners’ Burn Hospital in Galveston, Texas, where he remained in critical but stable condition Saturday. In a statement Friday, the hospital said it may close its burn unit altogether. Burn units are “high cost programs, and we’re looking at anything to reduce costs,” said David Smith, the hospital’s administrator.
Four military jets narrowly missed a Trans World Airline plane carrying 141 passengers from Columbus, Ohio, to St. Louis, a report by the pilot of the Boeing 727 charges. The jets came within 200 feet of T.W.A. Flight 489 Saturday, which was under the direction of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Route Traffic Control Center at Indianapolis International Airport. The incident occurred about 50 miles northeast of Cincinnati, as the aircraft headed toward St. Louis, Mort Edelstein, an F.A.A. spokesman, said in Chicago.
A ban on all cigarette advertising and ads for smokeless tobacco, is proposed by the American Cancer Society. The ban would end cigarette company sponsorship of events that attract young audiences, Dr. Charles A. LeMaistre, the society’s president, told a seminar for science writers in Daytona Beach, Florida.
For-profit hospitals are a “growing danger to our health care system” that fail to measure up to the standards of their nonprofit brethren, the National Council of Senior Citizens charged. A council report accused investor-owned hospitals of charging more money but providing inferior care and shortchanging the public by failing to serve the poor or contribute to medical education and research. “Profit maximizing should not be the governing factor controlling the scope and availability of essential human services such as health care,” the council said.
The Sugarloaf Mountain Corporation, the parent company of the Sugarloaf USA ski resort, today filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Federal bankruptcy laws, a spokesman said. Sugarloaf’s board chairman, H. King Cummings, said in a statement that the corporation has had “a severe liquidity problem” since last summer.
Scientists probing the rocks of a mountain range in Antarctica have found 225-million-year-old fossils of reptiles and amphibians, which they say may broaden the range of time researchers believe the animals lived on the now-frozen continent. A team of scientists working along the transantarctic mountain range during the recently ended Antarctic summer found more than 350 vertebrate fossils, including bones belonging to four new species of amphibians and reptiles, the National Science Foundation announced in Washington.
6th Golden Raspberry Awards: “Rambo: First Blood Part II” wins.
First of 2 WTA Tour Championships of the year; change of tennis schedule; Martina Navratilova wins 4th straight and 7th overall title 6–2, 6–0, 3–6, 6–1 against Hana Mandlíková in New York.
Born:
Steven Strait, American actor (“Sky High”, “The Expanse”), in New York, New York.
Patrick Bordeleau, Canadian NHL left wing (Colorado Avalanche), in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Pannel Egboh, NFL defensive end (Tennessee Titans), in Mesquite, Texas.
History Diaries 