Mikhail S. Gorbachev, in a message to the United Nations, today renewed his call for a roundtable conference of the leaders of the five permanent members of the Security Council to ease international tension. Repeating an appeal first made in his keynote speech at the recent Soviet party congress, Mr. Gorbachev said that the five powers — the Soviet Union, the United States, China, Britain and France — had a special responsibility to insure international stability. “This is why the Soviet Union suggests that the five powers gather at a roundtable to discuss what can and should be done to strengthen peace and, especially, to do away with nuclear weapons,” he said. Mr. Gorbachev also called on world leaders not to let 1986, declared an International Year of Peace by the United Nations, pass without concrete disarmament agreements. “The vital cause of insuring peace must not be allowed to drown in endless verbiage,” he said. “People are waiting for all current talks to become effective and productive.” He stressed the need for a complete ban on nuclear tests, but gave no indication as to the Soviet response to last week’s United States test. Earlier this month, he extended a seven-month-old Soviet test halt until the United States had conducted its next test.
American Jewish leaders, frustrated because fewer Jews are being allowed to leave the Soviet Union, began a campaign of protests to accelerate efforts to free them. “The patterns of oppression are deepening” in the Soviet Union, despite the recent release of human rights activist Anatoly Shcharansky, said Rabbi Alexander M. Shapiro of South Orange, New Jersey, president of the Rabbinical Assembly. Shapiro spoke at a Washington news conference where he was joined by leaders of five other national Jewish congregational and rabbinic institutions. Later, some of the group were arrested for demonstrating within 500 feet of the Soviet Embassy.
A former U.S. Navy commander accused of passing secrets to Soviet KGB agents was released on $29,000 bail in London after surrendering his passport and travel documents to police. An attorney for James Bothwell, 59, said Soviet agents had approached his client but that Bothwell gave them only information he obtained from London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper and Newsweek magazine. Bothwell retired as a U.S. Navy commander 22 years ago and was working as a negotiator of commercial contracts between South Africa and the Soviet Union when he was arrested last month.
Kurt Waldheim says in an interview published today by a Belgrade daily that the publication of documents asserting that he joined in Nazi war crimes in Yugoslavia was part of an “almost incomprehensible conspiracy.” The former United Nations Secretary General, who is a conservative-backed candidate for the Austrian presidency, told the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti that his political opponents were behind what he called a “slander campaign.” In a recent autobiography, Mr. Waldheim discussed only his early military service with the German forces on the Soviet front in 1941, passing over his subsequent World War II activities in the Balkans with a German Army group that conducted brutal campaigns against Yugoslav partisans and their civilian supporters. Since information about the Balkan phase of his military service first became public earlier this month, Mr. Waldheim has said that his duties were those of a German-Italian interpreter on the staff of the commander of Army Group E, Gen. Alexander Lohr. The general was tried in Belgrade as a war criminal in 1947 and was executed.
The United States and Greece failed today to agree on the future of American military bases in Greece after the current agreement expires in 1988. But Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou and Secretary of State George P. Shultz described their talks in glowing terms, holding out prospects for major improvement. Mr. Shultz said there had been “a real turn” in relations. The two men said a “serious discussion” would be held “well before” the expiration of the defense pact on December 31, 1988. This would allow Washington time to make plans for moving the bases to other countries if Mr. Papandreou carries out an earlier pledge to terminate the accord when it expires. Even though there was no breakthrough on the bases, American officials said they hoped the marked improvement in Greek-American relations would culminate in Mr. Papandreou’s deciding to renew the bases agreement.
Rosario Spatola, a convicted Mafia member linked to the poisoned financier Michele Sindona, has disappeared and may have fled to the United States, police sources said today. They said an international arrest warrant had been issued for Mr. Spatola, 44 years old, who was free on his own recognizance while awaiting the result of an appeal against a jail sentence. Mr. Spatola was sentenced in 1983 to 13 years in prison for associating with the Mafia and drug trafficking. The police and magistrates say Mr. Spatola hid Mr. Sindona in Sicily in 1979 when the financier pretended to have been kidnapped by left-wing guerrillas. Mr. Sindona died last Saturday of cyanide poisoning, four days after being jailed for life for ordering the killing of Giorgio Ambrosoli, liquidator of his financial empire. The circumstances of Mr. Sindona’s death are a mystery, and it is not known whether he was killed or committed suicide.
A rocket struck a town in northern Israel today, and hours later Israeli Air Force planes attacked Palestinian targets around the Lebanese port city of Sidon. The police said 15 people were killed and 25 wounded in two raids on buildings outside Mieh Mieh, a Palestinian refugee quarter near Sidon. [ Four Israelis were reported slightly wounded in the rocket attack on the town of Qiryat Shemona. [ An Israeli Army spokesman said two of the targets of the Israeli planes were a six-story headquarters building in Mieh Mieh, and a training base between Mieh Mieh and Ain Khilweh, a nearby refugee quarter.
The Reagan Administration announced today that Navy ships and planes had completed their exercise in the Gulf of Sidra and had moved north of the gulf region. During the operation, American ships had operated in the gulf, south of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi’s “line of death,” the northern boundry of the gulf, for 75 hours and Navy planes flew 188 sorties in the gulf area, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said today. Administration officials said the three American aircraft carriers and the 27 ships accompanying them were taking up new positions in the Mediterranean Sea north of the gulf. The carrier battle groups are expected to stay in the region for at least several days so that they would be in position to counter Libya should Colonel Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, order reprisal attacks or military raids, officials said.
President Reagan calls Vice Admiral Frank Kelso to congratulate the Commander, the officers, and the men of the U.S. Sixth fleet for their performance in the Gulf of Sidra.
In its air attacks on Libyan missile sites and naval craft, the Navy has used new tactics that military analysts in and out of Government said today had enhanced the safety of its pilots without reducing the effectiveness of its firepower. In the clashes around the Gulf of Sidra, the analysts said, the Navy used “standoff” tactics, with pilots staying away from their targets and firing guided missiles at military installations. They also depended more on electronics to pinpoint these targets than the Navy had in the past. The tactics had been developed in the wake of criticism of the performance of Navy fighter planes in Lebanon in 1983 from people within and outside Navy aviation, including Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman, himself a reserve aviator. In Lebanon, Navy aircraft flew to their targets and dove to drop bombs on enemy forces near civilian areas. The tactics were like those used more than a decade before in Vietnam.
Arab and Western diplomats here said today that now that the United States Sixth Fleet has ended its maneuvers in the Gulf of Sidra, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi can be expected to claim victory for what he has called a “brave repulsion of American aggression.” The diplomats said they believe the confrontation with the United States may ultimately help the Libyan leader improve his declining political stature in the Arab world. The United States has said it destroyed two Libyan patrol boats and twice attacked a radar-guided missile installation on shore after the Libyans fired six antiaircraft missiles at American planes Monday. For the last three days, the Libyans have been reporting that they shot down three American planes and that the United States attacked a civilian ship. The United States reported losing no planes. There has been no mention here of any Libyan casualties.
Iraq said its warplanes destroyed a 16-vessel Iranian military convoy. Iraqi communiques said seven Iranian cargo vessels and nine escorting gunboats were spotted heading toward the entrance to the Shatt al Arab waterway that forms the southern border between the two countries. Iraqi planes attacked, destroying the vessels “one after another, and sinking them in an air epic,” Baghdad radio said. Tehran television claimed that the supply ships got through to their destination-Iranian forces on Iraq’s Faw Peninsula.
Three homemade rockets were fired at the headquarters of the Osaka State Police Department today, and a van that may have been used to launch them burned up, Japanese news agencies reported. The Japan Broadcasting Corporation and the Kyodo news agency said two projectiles landed on the roof of the headquarters building and another in the yard, but apparently caused no damage. Officials of the Osaka police public relations office said by telephone that the reports could not be immediately confirmed. No projectiles were found, one officer said. One officer confirmed, however, that a van exploded and burned on the road near the Osaka Municipal Gymnasium.
New contract demands were presented to U.S. authorities by leaders of 24,000 workers on strike at American bases in the Philippines. Both sides expressed hopes of ending the six-day-old walkout soon. Rear Admiral Edwin Kohn, commander of U.S. forces in the Philippines, said he hopes a third round of negotiations today will end the deadlock. “Perhaps Good Friday will bring a good message for both our employees and for ourselves,” he said. Meanwhile, pickets continued to block entrances to Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base.
A car bomb exploded today in front of police headquarters, wounding 11 police officers and 10 passers-by, officials said. The police ruled out political motives and said they were looking for a psychopath. “Even terrorists usually give some warning or claim credit,” said Mick Miller, chief of the Victoria state police. “We believe it was the work of a psychopath.” “Even terrorists usually give some warning or claim credit,” said Mick Miller, chief of the Victoria state police. “We believe it was the work of a psychopath.” The police said five smaller blasts followed within minutes, apparently caused by detonators or exploding tanks of gasoline from parked cars. There was no immediate assertion of responsibility for the blasts.
After several days of new political turbulence, many of Haiti’s most prominent civilian leaders have begun urging restraint in public protests, saying Lieut. Gen. Henri Namphy should be given time to fulfill his promises of constitutional changes and early elections. The politicians, who had cautiously but persistently opposed the Duvalier dictactorship, as well as many in Haiti’s small middle and upper classes, have been disturbed by a growing public clamor for General Namphy to hand over power to a civilian and by a shift in protest tactics late Monday in which there was scattered violence. “We need the military in the Government to give us peace and stability,” Hubert De Ronceray, a sociologist who is one of many Haitians preparing to run for president, said in an interview with reporters on Wednesday. Earlier, Mr. De Ronceray and several other presidential hopefuls appealed over radio and television for patience and tolerance toward General Namphy.
The Senate tonight narrowly approved President Reagan’s request to send $100 million to the rebels trying to depose the Nicaraguan Government. The vote was 53 to 47, as 42 Republicans and 11 Democrats supported the President in what he has called one of the major foreign policy tests of his second term. The request was opposed by 36 Democrats and 11 Republicans. Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, said the Senate had adopted a “new corollary to the Reagan doctrine” that would increase pressure on the Sandinistas to negotiate with the insurgents and respect the rights of their neighbors. But Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, a leading Democratic spokesman, sharply disagreed, saying of today’s vote: “I think it takes us farther down the road to the intervention of American military forces. It signals the abandonment of the last effort at a negotiated settlement.”
Nicaragua’s two most controversial Roman Catholic clerics exchanged insults Wednesday night and today, using some of the strongest language yet heard in the continuing conflict between the Nicaraguan Government and Roman Catholic bishops. The Foreign Minister, the Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockman, said that the Catholic Primate, Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, was betraying his country and his church by refusing to condemn the rebel insurgency. Cardinal Obando, in turn, suggested that Father d’Escoto was a devil sent to divide Nicaraguan Catholics. The question of religious freedom in Nicaragua has been heatedly debated in the United States in recent days as Congress considers an Administration request to send $100 million in military and nonmilitary aid to Nicaraguan rebels.
Eight Honduran peasants told today of heavy fighting near this area close to the border with Nicaragua and Honduran soldiers showed reporters five bodies that they said were Nicaraguan soldiers killed inside Honduras. The peasants’ accounts and the bodies were the first evidence that journalists have been able to gather to support official reports that a large Sandinista force attacked Nicaraguan guerrilla bases near here five days ago. Journalists were not allowed, however, to go to the scene of the reported fighting and did not interview witnesses to the actual combat. It may not prove possible to confirm official accounts of as many as 200 Sandinistas and 40 Nicaraguan guerrillas dead in heavy fighting 10 miles inside Honduras. It was not clear why, if there were so many dead, more bodies were not shown to reporters; one official said the dead were scattered in rough terrain.
The Reagan Administration said today that so long as Honduran troops stayed near their border with Nicaragua, United States Army helicopters would remain at their disposal to fly in weapons, ammunition, food and other supplies. The helicopters, piloted by American crews, began ferrying a 600-man detachment of Honduran soldiers to the border Wednesday to counter what the State Department characterized as an invasion by about 1,500 Nicaraguan troops. Nicaragua denied that its forces had crossed the frontier, which runs, largely unmarked, through remote, sparsely populated terrain. According to reports from Honduras, the Nicaraguans attacked rebel bases, not Honduran targets. There have been numerous other such Nicaraguan attacks on the United States-backed rebels in the past.
President Reagan said today that the reported Nicaraguan drive against rebel camps in Honduras was “a slap in the face” to members of Congress who voted against his plan to send $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan insurgents. At the same time, Mr. Reagan, speaking in New Orleans en route to Santa Barbara, insisted that the White House had not overestimated the size or seriousness of the Nicaraguan drive against the rebel camps. Asked at New Orleans International Airport if the Administration had overestimated the number of Nicaraguan troops who struck at rebel base camps in Honduras, Mr. Reagan replied: “All that I can understand is that we knew there were two battalions. Now, you’re talking of rough numbers of a battalion. Maybe those battalions were under strength or over strength. But there were two battalions, which could number about 1,500.”
United States and Brazilian scientists announced today that newly discovered dental records provided definitive proof that a skeleton exhumed in Sao Paulo last year was that of Josef Mengele, the Nazi war criminal. In a statement, they said the remains that were linked to Dr. Mengele “with reasonable scientific certainty” in June 1985 may now be identified “with absolute certainty.” Dr. Lowell J. Levine, a consultant with the New York State Police, who signed the statement with Dr. Carlos F. Valerio, a Brazilian forensic expert, said the dental records matched X-rays taken last year of the teeth of Dr. Mengele’s remains. The records were discovered when the United States consul general in Sao Paulo, Stephen F. Dachi, and a vice consul, Fred Kaplan, were able to track down Dr. Mengele’s dentist from obscure references in his diary.
Four associates of the former Sudanese President, Gaafar al-Nimeiry, went on trial today on charges of rebellion. The four were members of the 10-man Revolutionary Command Council that had carried out a military coup in May 1969. The prosecutor, Mohammed Said Badr, accused the four — Aboul-Gassem Mohammed Ibrahim, Zein al-Abdin Mohammed Ahmed, Khaled Hassan Abbas and Mamoun Awad Abou Zeid, who were junior army officers at the time — of rebelling against the authorities and inciting members of the armed forces to mutiny. Mr. Nimeiry and two other council members, Aboul-Gassem Hashem and Babikr Awadallah, are all in exile in Egypt and will probably be tried in their absence.
A French fighter plane crashed into a school in Bangui, Central African Republic, killing 22 people — many of them children — and touching off a violent anti-French demonstration in the former French colony. Thirty people were injured when the Jaguar jet came down in a heavily populated neighborhood near the airport. The pilot ejected safely after the plane developed problems after taking off on a training flight. It was one of four Jaguars based at Bangui. As rescue workers searched through the wrecked school, angry crowds threw rocks at cars driven by Europeans. In Paris, French officials announced that families of the victims will be compensated.
Uganda’s new government has seized control of the northwestern town of Arua, the last outpost to fall to National Resistance Army guerrillas who took power in Kampala in late January, officials said. President Yoweri Museveni plans to fly to Arua, capital of West Nile province, over the weekend to formally declare the new government’s control over the entire country, they said. The officials added that all soldiers of the short-lived government of General Tito Okello, who was ousted by the National Resistance Army, have surrendered.
Two more blacks were reported slain by the police in ambiguous circumstances today, and a newspaper accused the police of ambushing black protesters from behind. The newest deaths followed a day of slayings on Wednesday in which at least 30 people died in one of the worst 24-hour periods of racial violence in this country in a year. Almost 1,400 people, the bulk of them black, have died in 19 months of protest and turmoil focused on the nation’s segregated black townships. Referring to the killings Wednesday as “a mark of a highly abnormal society,” Johannesburg’s evening newspaper, The Star, said in an editorial today: “We are no nearer a solution, no nearer public recognition that violence begets violence, no closer to the kind of national soul searching that ought to follow the killing of one person, let alone hundreds.”
The gaping deficit in the nation’s foreign trade shrank by $4 billion, to $12.5 billion, in February, the Commerce Department reported today. Analysts cautioned against reading too much into a single month’s data for one of the Government’s most revision-prone reports. But they said the rising deficits that have dogged the economy since the start of the Reagan Administration have probably peaked. “We have reason to think that we have seen the worst of the deficit,” said Robert Ortner, chief economist at the Commerce Department.
President Reagan attends a fundraising luncheon for Representative Moore, Republican candidate for Senator of Louisiana.
The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation to allow doctors, lawyers, local governments, hospitals and other businesses to form self-insurance groups for general-liability coverage. The bill, sponsored by Senator Bob Kasten (R-Wisconsin), would extend a 1981 law authorizing group purchases of product-liability insurance to include general-liability coverage as well. It is one of a number of measures offered in Congress in response to complaints about soaring premiums and limited availability of liability coverage.
Prospective airline pilots would be more rigorously scrutinized for heart disease and its associated risk factors, such as smoking and obesity, under a set of medical standards released by the American Medical Association in Chicago. The new standards, the first major revision of medical standards for civilian pilots since 1959, also called for relaxing vision requirements. The changes are subject to approval by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Striking flight attendants, citing a case involving a flight from St. Louis to Boston, accused TWA of jeopardizing safety by employing inexperienced replacements. In a meeting with staff members of a House transportation subcommittee, Victoria Frankovich, head of the Independent Federation of Flight Attendants, said rookie flight attendants acted improperly on the Wednesday night flight when the plane’s cabin filled with smoke. She said they delayed notifying the pilot of the smoke and did not know how to operate emergency exit doors. The strike began three weeks ago in a dispute involving wages and work rules.
Continental Airlines has paid the government $402,000 for violations involving maintenance practices, training and record keeping, the Federal Aviation Administration said. FAA spokesman Bob Buckhorn said the carrier had sent the money “in full settlement of enforcement actions associated with violations of FAA regulations. Continental, in settling the issue, said that “safety was never compromised by any of the alleged violations, most of which involve record keeping, oversights and similar technical infringements.”
Adlai E. Stevenson 3d will seek to run for Governor of Illinois on an independent ticket in the November election, he announced. In the March 18 primary, Mr. Stevenson easily won renomination as the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, but his two chosen aspirants for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State were defeated by two politically unknown backers of an ultraconservative, Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. In what was billed as a Democratic Party unity statement, the former Senator issued a statement with several other prominent state Democrats, including Senator Alan J. Dixon. They said they had agreed on a political and legal strategy that involved creating separate independent candidacies for three statewide offices: Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. The statement said that Mr. Stevenson would run for governor and that the independent candidates for the two other posts would be announced soon.
A longtime Navy friend of Jerry A. Whitworth, who is accused of spying for the Soviet Union, testified today that he could not understand the friendship between the defendant and John A. Walker Jr., who has pleaded guilty to espionage charges in the same case. The witness, Michael O’Connor, a retired Navy radioman who is now a photographer in Oregon, said he knew both men when they were stationed in San Diego from 1971 to 1973. Mr. O’Connor testified that he was surprised that “someone of Jerry’s knowledge, attitude, education — a cut above the average person on the street — why he would associate with such a ding-dong as Mr. Walker.”
Reputed Chicago organized crime boss Joseph J. Aiuppa, convicted in a Las Vegas casino skimming conspiracy that prosecutors say netted the mob $2 million, was sentenced to 28 ½ years in prison. However, U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Stevens, agreeing with a defense motion, ordered the sentence be served under a statute giving a parole board discretion to release Aiuppa, 78, from prison for health reasons. Aiuppa was ordered to pay $143,364 in fines, restitution to the state of Nevada and court costs for his Kansas City trial.
Police in Arizona held a Phoenix man in the death of a woman believed to have drunk cyanide-laced water from an office cooler. Julie Williams, 46, drank the water Monday at TransAmerica Title Insurance Co., where she worked, and died Wednesday night. Roger Clay of the Tempe police said the suspect, Lewis Allen Harry Jr., 32, is a community college employee whose wife also works at TransAmerica. Harry was jailed in lieu of $1.37-million bond. No other employee at the office became ill from the water.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who shot Senator Robert F. Kennedy to death in 1968, was denied parole for the eighth time today. Mr. Sirhan, now 42 years old, seemed to be weeping as the ruling was announced and the board called for him to undergo intensive psychiatric testing and therapy and be transferred from the prison here to the state medical facility at Vacaville. Senator Kennedy, a New York Democrat, was appearing at a Los Angeles hotel in his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination on the night of June 5, 1968, when he was shot.
The Vatican is seeking comments from educators on proposed rules designed to give the church greater control over what is taught and who teaches it in Roman Catholic colleges and universities around the world. The responses from American Catholic educators was near-unanimous opposition to many of the proposals, especially those dealing with faculty hiring and promotion.
The Bethlehem Steel Corporation and the National Steel Corporation today recessed talks with the United Steelworkers of America for the Easter weekend and set a new deadline, April 7, for contract agreements. National Steel had set April 8 as its deadline, as did Armco Inc. The deadlines will come after membership balloting is concluded on a tentative 40-month contract with the LTV Steel Company. The Inland Steel Company is expected to propose a settlement date for early April. Contracts covering 145,000 steelworkers expire July 31. All major producers except the industry leader, the United States Steel Corporation, opened early negotiations in hopes of a quick settlement.
George Stewart, who is white, has been convicted of violating the civil rights of a black family for playing a role in setting afire the home of the family that had fled because of racially motivated incidents. Mr. Stewart, 23 years old, was convicted Wednesday in Federal District Court in Philadelphia of an arson-related charge in the fire December 12. Two other men, Vincent Callahan, 20, and Thomas O’Donnell, 22, pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Mr. Stewart, saying they set the fire to keep minorities from moving into the predominantly white neighborhood. A fourth defendant is to be tried as a juvenile. Louis Ruch, Mr. Stewart’s attorney, suggested that Mr. Callahan and Mr. O’Donnel testified to win lenient sentences, said he doubted that they were sober at the time, and noted that they had changed their testimony several times. Mr. Stewart could face up to 20 years in prison and $20,000 in fines.
A cheese company, now out of business, and its president were charged today with criminal violations of state agriculture, health and safety laws after an investigation of tainted cheese that killed 39 people. Another executive of the company, Jalisco Mexican Products Inc., pleaded no contest in Los Angeles County Municipal Court today to misdemeanor charges, as part of a plea bargain. Each of the charges, which are all misdemeanors, calls for a maximum term of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. Cheese tainted with Listeria monocytogenes bacteria was produced at the Jalisco plant in Artesia. None of the charges are directly linked to any of the deaths, said Roger Rosen, the lawyer who represents the company and its president, Gary McPherson. The prosecution agreed. Jose Luis Medina, who was in charge of pasteurization at the plant, pleaded no contest to manufacturing and selling adulterated food, operating an unsanitary food establishment and improperly hooking up fluid lines.
Scientists have made the AIDS virus harmless by inactivating one of its genes in laboratory experiments, according to two new reports. They called the achievement a step toward developing drugs or a vaccine against the deadly disease.
Alaska’s Augustine volcano pumped smoke and ash more than nine miles into the air, and winds carried the cloud of ash north toward Anchorage, Alaska’s major population center. A score of airliners were diverted from Anchorage, and the Air Force quickly removed several of its fighter jets from Elmendorf Air Force Base because of the corrosive ash. Authorities in Anchorage issued a health alert urging people to stay home and avoid exercise. It was the first time the volcano had erupted since 1976.
An unusually potent and dangerous new form of Mexican heroin is being spread rapidly across the United States, Federal drug enforcement officials say. They say it has led to dozens, perhaps hundreds, of deaths by overdose, as well as to thousands of injuries in the last year. The new heroin, which users call black tar because it resembles roofing tar in color and consistency, is increasingly dominating the nation’s heroin markets. It is now sold in 27 states, up from four in 1983, according to officials of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration.
Cass Canfield died of heart disease at the age of 88. Mr. Canfield, a leading publisher, brought out books whose authors included a notable number of Pulitzer Prize winners and major figures ranging from James Thurber to Adlai E. Stevenson.
Disney-MGM Studio Tour groundbreaking.
Major league baseball’s Rules Committee votes to change the DH rule for the WS, allowing a DH to be used in all games played in the American League club’s home park. Since 1976, the DH had been used in all games in alternating years.
Three players eligible for the National Football League draft next month, one of them a projected first-round pick, tested positively for cocaine use at a recent camp for the top college seniors in the country, according to N.F.L. sources familiar with the test results. It was the first time in the five years in which the camp had been held that any player tested positively for cocaine. The tests also revealed that more than 50 other players tested positively for marijuana, including two with first-round potential. Also, the total number of players with illegal drugs in their system was nearly three times what it was last year, the highest increase in any year the tests have been given. In the first year the camp was held, seven players tested positively. The names of those who tested positively are known by each of the 28 N.F.L. clubs and the league office. The players themselves were not informed of the results. The information in the clubs’ possession could dramatically affect the round in which the players might be drafted — if at all — and their subsequent earning power. About one-third of the total, sources familiar with the names said, were players who are potential selections in the first half of the draft.
The stock market improved again yesterday, despite some afternoon profit taking, as investors continued to react favorably to declining interest rates. “Bond prices were strong and the feeling is that interest rates are definitely coming down,” said Chester Pado, a market analyst with Jefferies & Company in Los Angeles. The Dow Jones industrial average, which rose 32 points on Wednesday, gained an additional 11.02 points yesterday to finish the week at a record 1,821.72. The stock market is closed tomorrow for Good Friday.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1821.72 (+11.02)
Born:
Baby M [Melissa Stern], American surrogate baby who was the subject of the first contested surrogacy case, in New Jersey.
Titus Brown, NFL defensive end (Cleveland Browns), in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Johnny Monell, MLB pinch hitter and catcher (San Francisco Giants, New York Mets), in the Bronx, New York, New York.
Died:
Cass Canfield, 88, U.S. publisher.
History Diaries 