Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi claimed victory tonight in his confrontation with the United States over the Gulf of Sidra. In a rambling speech to a crowd of more than a thousand soldiers, sailors, boy scouts and party faithful bused in for the occasion, the Libyan leader repeatedly described the outcome of his showdown with the Sixth Fleet as “a triumph.” “America gave us a good chance to support the Arab countries,” he said at one point, claiming support from Syria, Algeria, the Sudan, Iran and other countries. In a bizarre climax to the rally, a black and white cow with President Reagan’s name painted in Arabic and English — “Reakn,” it was misspelled — was pulled into the center of the milling crowd and its throat slit. As policemen dragged American television crews forward to film the scene, demonstrators kicked and jumped on top of the dying animal and prodded it with the staffs of the green flags that are flown everywhere here as the symbol of Colonel Qaddafi’s “green revolution.”
In his speech, Colonel Qaddafi insisted that Libya had shot down three American fighter planes and that the Americans had sunk only a fishing boat. The United States has asserted that no planes were lost and that two Libyan naval patrol boats were sunk. “The Americans are lying,” he said. “They can’t believe a small country could shoot down three planes. We shot down three planes, and the six fliers are being eaten by the fish in the Gulf of Sidra. “America has gone mad in the past few days. They shot a fishing boat and claimed it was a warship.” A few minutes later, Colonel Qaddafi asserted that an American helicopter had been allowed to cross the “line of death” to pick up a wounded flier and a body. The colonel said that two American rockets had been fired at the Libyan missile site at Sidra but that one had failed to explode. He said it was being given to the Russians, “so they can learn its secrets.” He warned Spain and Italy that Libya would strike at their naval bases serving the Sixth Fleet if the confrontation with the United States should continue. “We will impose our sovereignty on the Gulf of Sidra with our blood,” he said, drawing ritual shouts and chants from the crowd. “If they fight us, we will fight back.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that the United States had disregarded the advice of several allied governments against using military force against Libya. Mr. Shultz said the advice had been disregarded because Washington wanted “to blow the whistle” on the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, for his “outrageous behavior.” Countries including Italy, Turkey, France and Greece — all of which Mr. Shultz has visited on a trip still in progress — have told him that action against Colonel Qaddafi only enhanced the Libyan leader’s prestige and therefore was probably counterproductive, an aide to Mr. Shultz said. The Secretary told reporters aboard his Air Force plane that other governments had argued against force because it might give Colonel Qaddafi more “visibility” and more sympathy abroad. This was the viewpoint of the Italian Government, which repeated its reservations to Mr. Shultz in talks today. On Saturday, Mr. Shultz is to have an audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
The United States, concerned about the possibility of Libyan acts of revenge against Americans abroad, has privately asked Western European and Middle East nations to increase their security for American diplomats, Administration officials said today. The statement came a day after several Western European governments, including Italy, Britain, West Germany and Austria, said they had already begun stepping up security around American Embassies and installations as well as airports. Meanwhile, the State Department asked legislators to “reassess” planned trips to the Middle East over Easter in view of the possible dangers there. United States military installations also increased security because of potential terrorist attacks.
A report commissioned by the Pentagon on the future of small land-based missiles concludes that the Air Force should develop and deploy a mobile, 37,000-pound version that would probably carry one warhead and decoys to fool Soviet defenses. In a memorandum to Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, two senior Pentagon officials questioned the assumptions behind the study. The memorandum, by Fred C. Ikle and Donald A. Hicks, the two Under Secretaries of Defense, said additional information was needed before key decisions on the program could be made. The report and the memorandum reflect sharp differences over the future of the program to develop the small missile, dubbed Midgetman. At one end of the spectrum are advocates of mobility, who emphasize the need to deploy systems that can survive attack even if they are very costly. At the other end are those who say the emphasis should be on increasing the United States arsenal of missile warheads, even if it means developing weapons that are less mobile and thus more vulnerable to attack.
Mr. Ikle and Mr. Hicks suggest that the Pentagon should still consider plans for a larger version of the missile, which could weigh 50,000 to 75,000 pounds. Because such a missile could carry two or three warheads, fewer would have to be built to provide a given number of warheads, and this would save money. The study said such larger missiles would be harder to move. Air Force testimony to Congress has supported this conclusion, but Mr. Ikle and Mr. Hicks questioned it. Members of Congress who seek development of a smaller version of the Midgetman said the study was a strong endorsement of their position. They say building a small missile, which could be highly mobile so as to elude attack, is preferable to buying more MX missiles and putting them in silos that are deemed vulnerable. In any event, these legislators say, Congress is unlikely to approve deployment of more than 50 of the huge MX missiles, each of which weighs 196,000 pounds and carries 10 warheads. By contrast, the weight of the Minuteman, the backbone of the current missile force, is 78,000 pounds. It carries one or three warheads.
Administration officials say President Reagan will resist any Soviet efforts to create conditions for the next summit meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev. A senior official who played a major role in the summit meeting last November in Geneva said the Russians were seeking to tie the next meeting to progress on such issues as arms control. The effort, he said, was intended to create a “precooked” agenda. In his comments, the official suggested the Soviet approach constituted the most divisive issue before the two nations in seeking to agree on a date for the next meeting. Suggesting that the Administration’s position was rigid, the official, a top expert on the Soviet Union, said the failure to hold a summit meeting this year “is not something that we would lose a lot of sleep over. It’s too bad, but we have never assumed that it was going to be onward and upward anyway. We’ve made clear what we would like it to be and the way that we can get there, but if the Soviets are unable to get their act together or have different concepts of the relationship, we will have to work that out in different ways.”
Three weeks after the killing of Prime Minister Olof Palme, the police investigation has not shed much light on the crime. Yet the press coverage of the investigation has brought to light not only the special rules controlling news reporting here but also the Swedish practices regarding the rights of suspects. The press handling of the Palme killing touched off a public debate that started when three Swedish newspapers printed the name of a suspect who prosecutors charged on March 17 was a “perpetrator” in the case — meaning he was either an accomplice or he fired the fatal shot. According to the code of ethics of the Swedish Press Council, a quasi-government organization, the names of suspects are never to be published, and those of even convicted criminals are not reported except in rare cases. The exceptions for convicted criminals include professional drug dealers and spies.
Lebanon’s main Christian leaders called today for Syrian disengagement from Lebanon and accused Syrian troops of bombarding Christian areas. The call came from the executive committee of the Lebanese Forces militia, the Phalange Party and the National Liberal Party. A spokesman for the Lebanese Forces said contacts were under way with Arab governments to convene a meeting of the Arab League to discuss stopping what he termed “Syrian aggression against the Lebanese.” The action came after two days of fierce artillery and rocket bombardment of the Christian heartland east and northeast of Beirut. As many as 65 villages and towns were reportedly pounded. A communique by the Lebanese Forces said a Syrian armored brigade stationed in the eastern mountains and in the Bekaa region had carried out the shelling.
Sikh extremists killed at least 13 Hindus and wounded 20 today in the Punjab city of Ludhiana, a city official reported. At least 80 people have been killed in attacks and clashes this month in the Punjab, the highest one-month toll since the summer of 1984, when the army routed hundreds of Sikh extremists. In the incidents at Ludhiana, the state’s largest industrial city, assailants armed with automatic weapons fired indiscriminately at groups of people exercising and playing in a public park, a city official said in a telephone interview. The victims included members of a fundamentalist Hindu group. At least one person was killed in a separate incident today in Nakodar when the police fired on a crowd that violated a curfew there.
Vietnam has agreed to turn over to the United States, on April 10 in Hanoi, at least 21 sets of remains thought to be those of American servicemen, Administration sources said today. Vietnamese and American officials have also agreed to hold another series of technical talks next month on the search for Americans missing since the Vietnam War, the sources said. American officials had said the Vietnamese disclosed in February that they had the remains of at least 21 people to turn over. Washington had proposed receiving them on April 1, but the Vietnamese did not accept that date, the sources said.
A group of scholars added their voices today to those calling on the South Korean Government to revise the nation’s Constitution. In a statement distributed today, 28 professors at Korea University urged the Government to revise the Constitution quickly and allow more democratic freedoms. Their move follows several other calls for constitutional reivison in past weeks by opposition politicians, Seoul’s Roman Catholic Primate and the National Council of Churches, which represents three million Protestants. The Government has pledged to consider constitutional revision in 1989, but the opposition and other groups want earlier action.
A weeklong strike by Philippine workers has undercut normal operations at the United States naval and air bases in this country, and a military commander warned today that labor troubles could last “quite a while.” After a burst of violence in the first few hours last Friday, the strike has generally been peaceful. But lingering tensions sparked several clashes today between American servicemen and Philippine pickets blockading the gates to Subic Bay Naval Base in Olongapo and Clark Air Base in Angeles. Before daybreak, the United States Air Force said, a bus carrying an unspecified number of military people was “attacked with rocks and sticks” as it went by Clark’s front gate. There were injuries, but none were serious, an official statement said. The assault seemed to have been ignited by anger among strikers over a scuffle half an hour earlier with an American serviceman who had forced his way past them to enter the base.
A growing body of evidence confirms that there was a large Sandinista attack on Nicaraguan rebel camps inside Honduras early this week, but Reagan Administration officials may have exaggerated the size of the force and the danger it posed for Honduras, according to diplomats and Honduran sources. A picture is emerging of a coordinated Sandinista assault specifically aimed at several rebel positions along the border. Dropping earlier denials, the Nicaraguan Government now acknowledges having attacked main rebel base camps on the border, and it reports heavy casualties on both sides. Sandinista units hit the main rebel bases inside Honduras just north of the towns of Arenales and Las Trojes and seized a rebel airstrip on the border 40 miles farther north during attacks this week, according to well-placed sources here with access to intelligence reports. In addition, there are unconfirmed reports of other Sandinista attacks in the last three days on Miskito Indian guerrilla bases even farther north, near the Caribbean coast.
Congress, although wrestling with the ghost of Vietnam, seems to be moving toward giving President Reagan the military aid he wants for the insurgents fighting to oust the Nicaraguan Government. The debate Thursday in the Senate resounded with echoes of Vietnam. Mr. Reagan’s nightmare of the domino theory — Central America’s falling like a row of dominoes unless Nicaragua was stopped from spreading revolution -was pitted against the critics’ nightmare of American servicemen fighting and dying for an uncertain and questionable cause. The Senate backed Mr. Reagan, 53 to 47. “That the President will get some military aid for the contras has been a foregone conclusion from the beginning,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a Congressional analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “Members of Congress ultimately want to protect their flanks while making their points.”
President Daniel Ortega Saavedra warned today that the use of American helicopters and possible deployment of American military advisers at rebel camps near the Honduran border could draw the United States more directly into Nicaragua’s battle against the insurgents. The Nicaraguan leader said American personnel and aircraft in the area would run “the same risks as the counterrevolutionaries,” a reference to the United States-backed rebels known as contras. At the same time, Mr. Ortega said Nicaraguan forces are justified in attacking rebel bases even if they are in Honduras. Mr. Ortega said, “The mercenary forces in Honduran territory, which are financed and advised by the United States Government, are the ones who crossed the border to kill our people and to destroy. Our forces are only defending themselves in the border area.” Mr. Ortega, who spoke at a news conference, refused to say whether Nicaraguan troops had crossed into Honduras in recent days, as has been charged by the Reagan Administration and the Honduran Government.
Nicaragua was an “aggressor state,” and therefore had no right to claim self-defense for its reported attacks this week against United States-backed Nicaraguan rebels in Honduras, the State Department asserted. A senior department official, offering the Reagan Administration’s legal reasoning for its recent actions in Central America as well as off the Libyan coast, indicated that Nicaragua could not argue a right to self-defense while acting aggressively toward neighbors.
A black policeman was killed and set afire and another black man was shot dead in anti-apartheid unrest reported today. Meanwhile, a passenger train carrying Easter weekend travelers derailed near Pretoria, killing 16 blacks and injuring about 40 others, officials said. A railway security official said preliminary investigations “exclude sabotage as a possibility.” The black policeman was killed and his body burned in Tembisa, a black township east of Johannesburg.
A European Ariane rocket, the world’s only commercial satellite launcher since the grounding of the space shuttle fleet, put two communication satellites into orbit today after a perfect launching from a new pad. The satellites belong to private companies from the United States and Brazil.
The government said yesterday that its index of future economic activity rose a sharp seven-tenths of 1 percent in February. The increase, along with an upward revision of January’s figure, gave economists renewed confidence that 1986 would be a year of healthy growth. Many analysts, while seeing long-term gains from lower interest rates and oil prices, have worried that the course of the economy has been spotty. Some signs of weakness, they say, have been a jump in unemployment in February and slow auto sales.
President Reagan enjoys a mid-morning horseback ride at the ranch near Santa Barbara, California.
The Justice Department today released numerous documents that it said were evidence that federal contractors had been required to meet illegal quotas in hiring women and members of minority groups. The documents were, in most cases, agreements and correspondence between construction companies and the Labor Department, which enforces the obligation of Government contractors to take affirmative action to hire and promote women and members of minorities. The obligations stem, in part, from a 1965 executive order that the Justice Department says should be amended to prohibit the use of quotas, a change opposed by the Labor Department. The Justice Department maintains that hiring quotas are illegal because they discriminate on the basis of race or sex.
Navy salvage ships today reported finding four more large pieces of the space shuttle Challenger, including possibly additional fragments of its crew compartment, according to ship radio communications monitored here. It was the third major discovery of shuttle wreckage made since the cabin was found March 7 on the ocean floor about 16 miles northeast of the Kennedy Space Center. The Challenger exploded after liftoff two months ago, killing the seven crew members. Navy officials said that, weather permitting, they intended to continue the 14-vessel salvage operation through the weekend and would not be returning to port with any of the wreckage until early next week. They are trying to recover as much as possible of the Challenger’s cabin and right-side booster rocket in time for space agency engineers to submit a report on the accident by April 18. Malfunctions associated with the right booster are considered the most likely cause of the disaster. Despite choppy water and winds of 15 miles an hour, the U.S.S. Preserver, the principal salvage ship, remained moored over the site of the cabin wreckage and sent divers to the bottom, about 100 feet down. In a radio conversation from the Preserver this morning, a crew member said, “We’ve got a diver on the bottom right now hooking into some wreckage.”
“Dear Mr. McAuliffe,” one child wrote to the husband of Christa McAuliffe, “I’m very sorry that you lost your wife. I was watching the news and I saw your children say, ‘Don’t go, Mom,’ and I’m sure they are very unhappy. I wish I could help you and your family. Sincerely yours, Mike Bonanno.” Mental health experts say this letter and thousands like it show that many children experienced the death of Christa McAuliffe, the schoolteacher-astronaut, as the symbolic loss of a mother and that they may have been more deeply disturbed by this loss than they let on otherwise. The very act of writing the letters was a way for many children to heal emotional wounds, the experts say.
When a small plane from Florida banked over the Licking River and landed in West Liberty, Kentucky, last November 20, as Federal investigators tell it, the Morgan County Judge-Executive was waiting, a machine gun at his side. Gene Allen, the county official, watched as a man he believed to be a drug smuggler hopped out of the plane carrying two kilograms of cocaine, according to Federal indictments. They drove to Mr. Allen’s house, where, the indictments charge, Mr. Allen’s 30-year-old son, Steve, tested the cocaine for purity. Investigators say the Allens did not know that the apparent smuggler, whom they knew as Harry McBride, was really Houston E. McNeal, an undercover officer for the Virginia state police. Nor did they know that he was taking part in a three-year Federal inquiry into political corruption, drug smuggling and a murder-for-hire scheme in eastern Kentucky.
For the first time since the breakup of the Bell Telephone System, negotiators for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and its unions are about to begin contract talks, with lifetime employment security the central issue. The Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, representing the majority of A.T.&.T. employees, are scheduled to begin contract talks here Wednesday. Their three-year contracts, which cover 196,000 workers nationwide, expire May 31. Together with talks between the unions and seven regional telephone companies, the negotiations are the largest set of labor talks to take place in the United States this year.
The United Automobile Workers’ suspension of its highly visible organizing drive at the Honda Motors plant at Marysville, Ohio, is a major setback for the union and seems to portend greater organizing difficulties. The union is placing the most favorable interpretation on the situation, saying there was a “poor climate” for a vote of the 3,300 hourly workers to see if they wished union representation. It said it would assign more organizers and ultimately organize the plant. But the U.A.W. has not organized a Japanese-owned automobile plant where a company has opposed union organization. And labor expects said that if the union had seen a chance of winning it would have gone ahead.
Hundreds of rampaging young people in Palm Springs, California hurled stones at the police, ripped clothing from women, and dumped water into open-top cars today, shutting down this desert resort’s main street in the worst outbreak of Easter weekend violence since 1969, the authorities said. The police department, which has 80 officers, called in about 75 officers from neighboring departments for assistance. Police closed Palm Canyon Drive to all incoming traffic, declared an illegal assembly and began sweeping the street. They also imposed a 10 PM curfew for anyone 18 and under. Thirty people were arrested, mostly for drunkenness, assaulting an officer and failure to disperse, the police said. There was no significant property damage in the resort, Police Lieutenant Bill Manger said. Young people filled the emergency room at Desert Hospital, but most were treated and released, a nursing supervisor said.
Antioch Law School, a 14-year-old branch of Antioch University of Yellow Springs, Ohio, found a new home Thursday when the trustees of the University of the District of Columbia voted to take it over. The board, by a vote of 10 to 2, agreed to acquire the school and rename it the University of District of Columbia Law School. A resolution passed by the board said the law school would enhance the mission of the university and that the board would move “with all deliberate speed” to acquire the school. Acquisition is expected in the next few months.
The eruption of Augustine Volcano in Alaska continued for a second day today, disrupting life in much of the Kenai Peninsula with businesses closed, mail deliveries halted and air travel disrupted. Hospitals were handing out gas masks to people as a protection against volcanic ash, which has now spread as far as 600 miles to the north. Augustine, a 4,025 feet volcano on an island in Cook Inlet about 175 miles southwest of here, began erupting Thursday for the first time in 10 years. The ash from today’s periodic blasts was expected to circle the Earth several times before settling out of the atmosphere, but no appreciable effect on climate was foreseen.
A woman who blamed an advanced X-ray test for loss of her psychic powers has been awarded more than $1 million by a jury, but a hospital attorney said today that the verdict would be appealed. The attorney, Richard Galli, representing Temple University Hospital, where the CAT scan test was performed, said, “If the verdict is allowed to stand, it’s an outrage and an example of why the American tort system has to be changed.” A jury in the Court of Common Pleas deliberated about 45 minutes Thursday before awarding Judith Richardson Haimes, 42 years old, a total of $1,018,000 in damages. Miss Haimes, of Clearwater, Florida, lived in New Castle, Delaware, at the time of the test. Miss Haimes had contended that as a result of the CAT scan she suffered severe headaches when she tried to concentrate to use her psychic powers. Her attorney, Joel Lieberman, said Miss Haimes previously earned her living as a psychic and was able to read people’s auras and help the police solve crimes. After the jury heard the case, Judge Leon Katz ruled that Miss Haimes had failed to prove her assertion that the CAT scan left her with headaches that made it impossible for her to use her psychic powers. He ordered the jury to consider only her testimony about the allergic reaction she had suffered from a dye injected in the test.
A few months ago, 46 people in northern Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia agreed to have their houses tested for radon gas, a substance that seeps out of natural uranium deposits in the soil and, if inhaled in sufficient quantity, is believed to cause lung cancer. But what began as simple cooperation in an experiment has turned up some surprising results. Half the homes were found to contain amounts of the gas up to three times the level at which the Environmental Protection Agency suggests remedial ventilation.
Academic programs in college-level science, mathematics and engineering have severely declined, posing “a grave long-term threat” to the nation, according to a report issued today by the National Science Board. The report by the board, which is the policymaking body of the National Science Foundation, a Federal agency, calls inadequate laboratory instruction, shortages of qualified faculty and out-of-date curriculums the most serious problems. “The deterioration of collegiate science, mathematics and engineering education is a grave long-term threat to the nation’s scientific and technical capacity, its industrial and economic competitiveness, and the strength of its national defense,” the report said. The 103-page report was prepared by the National Science Board’s Committee on Undergraduate Science and Engineering Education, headed by Dr. Homer A. Neal, provost of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The committee held four public hearings in late 1985 and heard testimony from academic, industry and government leaders.
John N. McMahon, ends term as deputy director of CIA.
The Yankees and Red Sox swap designated hitters: Mike Easler goes to New York for Don Baylor.
Four days before his 47th birthday, the Yankees waive pitcher Phil Niekro, 16–12 this past year. He will be signed by the Indians on April 3rd where he will go 18–22 before being traded next season.
Born:
Lady Gaga [Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta], American singer-songwriter and actress (“Poker Face”, “Bad Romance”; “A Star is Born”), in New York, New York.
Robert Bowdrie “Bowe” Bergdahl, American soldier held captive in Afghanistan, in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Barbora Strýcová, Czech tennis player (Wimbledon doubles, 2019; 6 x Federation Cup), in Plzeň, Czechoslovakia.
Dan LaCosta, Canadian NHL goaltender (Columbus Blue Jackers), in Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Steve Susdorf, MLB outfielder and pinch hitter (Philadelphia Phillies), in Valencia, California.
Brad Emaus, MLB second baseman (New York Mets), in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
J-Kwon [Jerrell Jones], American rapper (Tipsy), in St. Louis, Missouri.
Died:
J. Víctor López, 39, Cuban-American actor (“Falcon Crest”; “Man From Atlantis”), of AIDS.
Virginia Gilmore, 66, American actress (“Jennie”, “Western Union”).
History Diaries 