Easter Sunday. Pope John Paul II, in a passionate but somber Easter message assailing human callousness, declared today that man “has often made death the method of his existence on earth.” Denouncing terrorism, torture, war and abortion, John Paul told a crowd of 200,000 people in St. Peter’s Square that “man unfortunately resigns himself to death and not only accepts it but inflicts it.” “Men continually inflict death upon others,” he said, “people who are often unknown, innocent people, people not yet born.”
Secrecy in U.S.-Soviet relations is necessary, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that “we’re not going anywhere” in Soviet-American relations until Moscow and Washington agree to stop conducting their diplomacy in public. He called on both sides to resume regular, secret contacts. He expressed dismay about the recent pattern of Soviet-American public statements, including the latest exchange on Saturday in which Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, proposed a summit meeting in Europe to negotiate a ban on nuclear tests, which was immediately rejected by the White House. “We will get somewhere in our relationship with the Soviets when we’re able to have some discussions that are relatively quiet and direct,” he said. In a news conference aboard his Air Force plane as he returned to Washington after a 10-day trip to France, Greece, Turkey and Italy, he said it was “a measure of the kind of lack of progress lately” in relations that “all the action is through press statements of one kind or another.” Mr. Shultz said he would use his influence in Washington to try to persuade the Russians as well to agree to “conversations that are directed between the Soviets and ourselves rather than on a public basis.” “I don’t say there isn’t always a public diplomacy aspect to this relationship, but there has to be more than that if we are going to get any place,” he said.
Mr. Shultz noted that his meeting two weeks ago in Stockholm with the Soviet Prime Minister, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, accomplished little because the private message he was carrying from Mr. Reagan to discuss with the Soviet official had already been divulged by the White House and rejected by Tass, the Soviet press agency, the day before he arrived in Stockholm. In that letter, Mr. Reagan renewed his invitation to Mr. Gorbachev to send experts to monitor an American underground nuclear explosion in Nevada in the third week of April and to observe a new American verification system called Corrtex. Mr. Reagan said progress on verification of nuclear testing could lead to American ratification of two treaties signed in the 1970’s on limiting underground nuclear explosions to 150 kilotons, the force of 150,000 tons of TNT. The Russians rejected that proposal because, they said, their objective was to ban all tests not to observe them. “When I handed Ryzhkov a letter with the President’s recent testing proposal in Stockholm, the contents of the letter had already been briefed and responded to in Tass,” Mr. Shultz said. “We’re never going to get anywhere doing things that way. I’m saying that there is a pattern now.”
On Saturday Mr. Gorbachev said on Soviet television that he was ready to meet President Reagan in Rome, London or any other European capital to negotiate a ban on all nuclear tests. The White House quickly rejected the latest effort by Moscow to stop nuclear testing. The United States says it needs to continue testing to maintain the efficiency of its nuclear arsenal. Mr. Shultz also expressed annoyance with the Soviet leader’s call for a summit meeting limited to the test ban issue in a European capital, rather than in the United States. At last November’s meeting with President Reagan in Geneva, Mr. Gorbachev agreed to come to the United States in 1986 and for Mr. Reagan to go to the Soviet Union in 1987. “Mr. Gorbachev agreed to a meeting, and has been invited to the United States,” Mr. Shultz said. He was referring to the formal invitation sent by Washington last December for a meeting in late June of this year.
Abandoning the second strategic arms treaty (“SALT II”) would enable the Soviet Union to add more weapons to its arsenal than the United States by 1990, according to an analysis by Representative Les Aspin, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. The analysis states that if the accord’s limits are dropped, the Soviet Union will be able to produce nuclear weapon systems at a greater rate than the United States because the Soviet Union has more production lines for strategic weapons that are currently in operation. The Reagan Administration is currently deliberating over whether the United States should continue to abide by the terms of the treaty, which was signed in 1979 but never approved by the Senate.
The father of Josef Stalin’s granddaughter said he knows nothing of a British report that the 18-year-old girl has returned to the United States from the Soviet Union. Arizona architect William Wesley Peters said that if the report by the Sunday Times of London is true-that his American-born daughter, Olga, has returned as a result of a secret U.S.-Soviet agreement-“I would know about it.” Olga’s mother, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Stalin’s only daughter, reportedly wants to return to the West. Alliluyeva defected to the West in 1967 but returned to the Soviet Union with her daughter in 1984.
An Italian court’s decision on Saturday to acquit three Bulgarians “for lack of proof” leaves unresolved the question of whether they conspired to assassinate Pope John Paul II. Few people were surprised by the verdict since the public prosecutor, in an unusual plea last month, admitted his lack of conclusive evidence for a “Bulgarian connection” to the 1981 attack on the Pope and asked for the Bulgarians’ acquittal. The decision by the prosecutor, Antonio Marini, was in part a declaration of despair, for the formula “for lack of proof” implies that evidence exists supporting both the guilt and the innocence of the defendants, and that the court is powerless to reach a conclusive decision. Under Italian law, criminal cases can end with any of three verdicts. A defendant can be declared guilty, not guilty, or, if the evidence is ambiguous, acquitted for lack of proof.
A British soldier was shot and seriously wounded in Londonderry today as violence flared between security forces and Roman Catholics opposed to British rule, the police said. The soldier was hit in the face by a sniper’s bullet shortly after Catholics held a ceremony commemorating the 1916 Easter Rising against the British.
The United States has quietly reopened negotiations with Spain in an effort to find a haven for former President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines, Administration officials said today. Although Spain appeared two weeks ago to have rejected efforts by the United States to move Mr. Marcos and his family there, Administration officials in Santa Barbara and in Washington said today that talks had resumed. They said Spain, at this point, was “the most viable option.” A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokesman, reached in Madrid, said that Spain had “discarded the possibility of receiving Mr. Marcos” and that he was not aware of any discussions on the subject between American and Spanish officials in recent days.
Seven Arabs were injured, one seriously, when a bomb exploded at the offices of a German-Arabian friendship organization in West Berlin, police said. Officers said there were no suspects in the blast, apparently caused by a time bomb, at the German-Arabian Society in the district of Kreuzberg, where many foreign workers live. No group claimed responsibility for the blast or for apparently unrelated fire-bombings at a tourist agency and at a police training grounds.
Pro-Libyan Lebanese fired a rocket at a West Beirut building containing offices of the American Life Insurance Co. and hurled a bomb at a British Airways ticket office, but there were no injuries, Beirut police reported. In Britain, police said they were investigating reports that Libyan pilots being training at a private British flying school have volunteered to form “suicide squads against America.” The offer was made in a phone call to a Tripoli radio station, according to the British Broadcasting Corp., which monitors the world’s airwaves. About 20 Libyans are enrolled at the Oxford Air Training School, Europe’s largest private air school.
For the third day, Palestinian guerrillas and Shiite militiamen battled today around two Palestinian centers in southern Beirut. The police said eight people had been killed and 35 wounded in the fighting at the outskirts of the Sabra and Shatila districts. Tension was also reported to be rising at a third district, Burj al Brajneh, two miles away. Local radio stations reported that the two sides used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns as efforts by a coordination committee failed to check the violence. The committee was formed last July after 30 days of pitched battles around the Palestinian quarters between militiamen of the Shiite Amal movement and the Palestinians. More than 500 people were killed and 2,000 wounded in that outbreak.
Administration officials acknowledged in television interviews that the U.S. Navy’s confrontation with Libya last week may not discourage Colonel Muammar Qaddafi from further support of terrorism. Under Secretary of State Michael H. Armacost said of Qaddafi, “I would hesitate to make predictions about a guy who’s a kind of a screwball,” but the message behind the encounter is that “when our interests are engaged, we will protect them.” Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy said that “we very likely will see” a terrorist attack inspired by Qaddafi, who is blamed by Washington for terror raids on the Rome and Vienna airports last December.
An Iranian helicopter attacked and set fire to a Panamanian-registered oil tanker in the Persian Gulf, shipping sources in the region reported. The 103,178-ton Stelios, with no oil aboard, was struck about 70 miles east of Qatar, but the damage was not serious, the sources said. Within the last two days, Iranian copters also attacked a Norwegian tanker, the Berge King, and Iraqi warplanes hit the Liberian tanker Hawaii. The attacks are the latest in the so-called tanker war, an offshoot of the Persian Gulf conflict between Iran and Iraq.
A huge South Korean demonstration in Kwangju proceeded peacefully until evening, when a small band of students burned placards and threw stones at riot policemen. Earlier, tens of thousands of people gathered on Kwangju’s main thoroughfare as opposition leaders staged their third rally in recent weeks. The rally appeared to be the largest anti-government gathering in Kwangju since troops killed several hundred protesters there in May 1980. Rally organizers said more than 100,000 people took part today, but government officials put the figure at 20,000 to 30,000. Independent observers gave estimates of 50,000 to 60,000. The crowds spilled out of a meeting hall and stretched 500 yards down the street to the provincial capital’s office building, where demonstrators battled with the police six years ago. Throughout the rally, the crowds were festive, squatting on the asphalt and applauding hours of anti-government speeches. Unarmed policemen stood at the edge of the crowd, while 35 buses of riot policemen — some from as far away as Seoul — stayed hidden in alleys and police stations.
About 3,000 people, mostly leftists, protested today against the expansion of Tokyo’s Narita International Airport and vowed to disrupt the Tokyo economic summit meeting in May. The demonstrators, including 1,800 white-helmeted members of the Chukakuha, or Core Faction, leftist group, held a rally in a field that officials plan to use in expanding the airport. The police said they arrested four people but no other incidents were reported. About 9,500 policemen guarded the airport. Chukakuha handed out leaflets at the rally claiming responsibility for an attack Friday on Osaka police headquarters. Another left-wing group, Senkiha, or Battle Flag, has said it fired homemade rockets at the Imperial Palace and the American Embassy in Tokyo last Tuesday.
Filipinos celebrated Easter as a vibrant symbol of their political rebirth. Resurrection was the theme of sermons across the devoutly Roman Catholic archipelago, with many worshipers equating Christianity’s most glorious day with the Philippines’ own redemption. Perhaps no sermon in the Philippines had a more unvarnished political past than one delivered before thousands of worshipers by Jaime Cardinal Sin, the Roman Catholic Primate and spiritual architect of events that culminated last month in the flight of Ferdinand E. Marcos and the ascension of Corazon E. Aquino. “This year,” Cardinal Sin said, “the verities of this great Christian feast have come to life in a way we never dreamed possible and in a manner which leaves us gasping and incredulous.”
Ferdinand E. Marcos, breaking a monthlong silence, said today that he still considered himself President of the Philippines and denounced the Government of Corazon C. Aquino as “a plain and simple dictatorship.” His comments were made in a brief, impromptu news conference after an Easter mass for him and his wife, Imelda, at their rented beachfront house on the outskirts of Honolulu. Asked if he still thought of himself as President of the Philippines, Mr. Marcos responded, “Of course.” But he said his lawyers had asked him not to comment on the matter because of possible legal action.
Filipino bar girls broke through a civilian picket line and reopened the gates of Clark Air Base. Shouting and throwing rocks, hundreds of women succeeded in freeing the servicemen from a weeklong restriction at the base. The bar girls said they were innocent victims of the labor dispute between the United States armed forces and private service contractors over severance pay. American officials are demanding that the bases reopen before the issue is settled. The workers, who depend on U.S. servicemen for their living, cleared about 75 pickets from the main gate at Clark, allowing traffic to flow in and out for the first time since last Wednesday. Filipino soldiers later fired into the air to keep 500 strikers from regaining control of the gate. Barricades remained at Subic Bay Naval Base and at six smaller U.S. military installations.
[Ed: Don’t laugh. One does not take an angry Filipina girl lightly…]
A train engine hit a truck at a railroad crossing north of Mexico City, killing 30 teen-agers on their way to Easter weekend religious celebrations and injuring 27 others, Red Cross officials said today. The accident took place early Saturday on a highway near the central city of Irapuato, 270 miles north of Mexico City, when the driver of the truck tried to cross the tracks ahead of two coupled train engines. “Twenty-eight were dead at the scene of the accident and two died later,” said Antonio Lopez, a Red Crossspokesman.
South African students were urged to remain in their classes at a conference of parents and teachers in Durban seeking to avert widespread school boycotts. But after an all-night debate among more than 1,000 delegates, the National Education Crisis Committee urged a general strike and other protest actions later in the year to support student grievances against inferior education in segregated schools and the wider woes of apartheid. The opening of the conference on Saturday was marred by street fighting between opponents and supporters of the committee; two people were killed. Widening Split in Opposition The committee said Inkatha, an organization led by the Zulu leader, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, attacked its supporters Saturday. In a new sign of a deep and bitter division in black opposition politics, the committee called the million-member Inkatha “an enemy of the people and wholly in league” with the white authorities.
President Reagan has endorsed the recommendations of an Administration task force on the liability insurance crisis and will announce this week that he plans to submit legislation to Congress, White House officials told the Washington Post. Among the recommendations Reagan has accepted are limits on attorneys’ fees and restrictions on damages and damage awards for “pain and suffering.” Changes in injury liability law are being made by many states to make it more difficult for accident victims to recover vast sums. The revisions aim at reducing the burden of litigation — and soaring insurance premiums — faced by cities, bus companies, doctors and others who are frequently sued. Nearly every state legislature that has met in 1986 considered bills to change aspects of its civil liability system, and many took significant actions.
The President and First Lady enjoy a horseback ride together during their California vacation.
President Reagan spends most of the day chopping firewood and clearing brush.
Acting NASA Administrator William R. Graham directed an agency task force to draft a proposal for replacing the shuttle Challenger with a new orbiter that would be financed and owned by private industry and leased to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, agency officials told the Washington Post. The idea was advanced recently by General Space Corp., a Pittsburgh-based firm whose vice chairman is James C. Fletcher, President Reagan’s choice to be the new NASA administrator. The firm, a subsidiary of Astrotech International Corp., has offered to privately raise the $1.5 billion to $2 billion needed.
Searchers have recovered a large piece of one of the space shuttle Challenger’s two booster rockets, but the salvage team did not know from which booster the chunk came, officials said today. The Seward Johnson, a salvage ship, reported the finding of the 10-by-15-foot piece of the booster. The Seward Johnson, a salvage ship, reported the finding of the 10-by-15-foot piece of the booster. The aft portion of the shuttle’s right booster is being sought by the salvage team because a joint in the segment is the prime suspect in the shuttle’s explosion, which killed the crew of seven January 28. The rest of the recovery expedition was hampered by swells of up to 16 feet. Eight ships, two small submarines and two robot submersibles were at work in the 480-square-mile search area northeast of here.
Uncle Sam spent about $3,250 for every man, woman and child in America last year. Alaskans topped the list overall at $4,858 per resident, Hawaiians received the highest federal pay and Florida led in individual aid. Overall, the federal government spent $788.5 billion in fiscal 1985, the Census Bureau reported, including $349 billion as direct aid to individuals, such as Social Security, Medicare and food stamps, up 7%; $194 billion in purchasing for various agencies, including the Pentagon, up 10%; $115.5 billion in salaries and wages for federal employees, up 6%, and $105.5 billion in grants to state and local governments, up 8.5%.
Members of an Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union local voted 275 to 65 to accept a contract offer and end their 102-month-old strike against Nuclear Fuel Services, the Navy’s sole supplier of fuel for atomic-powered submarines. Two days of negotiations with a federal mediator produced agreement on the terms over the weekend, and the uranium plant at Erwin, Tenn., was scheduled to reopen immediately.
Mississippi’s black leaders rallied to help an impoverished former newspaper publisher who took a strong stand for blacks in Mississippi in the decade of the civil rights revolution. Hazel Brannon Smith, now 72 years old, published a weekly newspaper and won a Pulitzer Prize for her editorial courage, but an advertisers’ boycott led to her paper’s collapse and her bankruptcy. An organized effort among blacks to help Mrs. Smith is led by Rose Embly McCoy, widow of the Dr. A. H. McCoy, who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Mississippi.
Santa Barbara’s homeless held a candlelight vigil in City Hall Park and slept overnight, defying an ordinance banning sleeping in public places. This time, the police took no action, in part, said Colleen Duncan, the group’s coordinator, because the city gave them a permit to stay overnight. “But not to sleep,” she said. Miss Duncan said the vigil was held to alert President Reagan who was at his ranch in the Santa Ynez mountains, 25 miles away, of the need for Federal aid to help the nation’s needy.
Houston’s oil bust has sent the city’s jobless rate up to 15.7 percent, putting thousands of workers who managed to climb into the middle class back on the brink of poverty. The oil boom moved per capita income in Texas up to 21st in the nation from 35th. In the context of the boom that transformed the state, the current problems are particularly poignant. “People thought it would go on forever,” said 55-year-old Robert Murff, who lost a good job in the oil equipment business, and has now enrolled in a truck-driving school.
Spurred by widespread difficulties in obtaining liability insurance, many states are modifying their civil justice systems to make it more difficult for victims of accidents to recover large sums in personal injury cases. The aim is to reduce the burdens of litigation and soaring insurance premiums faced by cities, bus companies, doctors and others who are frequently sued. Advocates say that only drastic changes can alleviate the situation, which has made it virtually impossible for many ice rink operators, obstetricians, company directors and others to obtain insurance against huge jury awards in liability lawsuits. Nearly every state legislature that has met in 1986 considered bills to change its civil liability system, and many took significant action. In many other states, bills are pending and the outcome is uncertain. Curbing of Rights Seen Critics, including lawyers and some labor and consumer groups, contend that changes in the laws of liability, or torts, will deprive innocent victims of their rights to damages when they are injured.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell said a “financial crisis” is forcing him to lay off about 225 of his ministry’s 2,300 employees. Moreover, he plans to change his toll-free line to a regular number because, he said, his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” TV show has been getting about 50,000 harassing calls a month at a cost of $2 million over the last 15 months. Falwell said he planned also to raise fees at his schools. He said the cost-cutting measures were needed because his ministry, which has a $100-million annual budget, had spent $14 million in the last two years on construction at Liberty University at Lynchburg, Virginia.
Washington State’s cigarette and tobacco taxes become the highest in the nation at midnight Tuesday, with an 8-cent-a-pack increase raising the tax to 31 cents a pack. The increase is expected to produce $35 million to $36 million a year for water quality programs in Puget Sound and some inland waterways. Oregon’s tobacco tax is the nation’s third highest, at 27 cents, and Maine’s is second at 28 cents. The state tax is in addition to the Federal tax; that had been 16 cents a pack, but dropped to 8 cents March 15.
While the downtown area of Palm Springs remained active with vacationing students milling around parks and streets, the revelry of recent days appeared to have quieted down, officials reported. Arrests for the Easter weekend totaled 528, Palm Springs police said, compared to 347 a year ago. In the wake of the well-publicized student rampage, “It seems everyone is recuperating or laying around,” Sgt. Dave Goodwin said, “getting sun and taking a whole lot of aspirin.” Hotel managers such as Jim Davis of the Ocotillo Lodge said the trouble stemmed from those students without hotel reservations who wandered around looking for a party or place to stay. But he added of those with rooms: “They party hearty, but a majority of them are pretty good.” Police and hotel managers said they would maintain increased security and patrols, as even more students are expected this week.
Forest fires, aggravated by warm, dry weather and high winds, destroyed thousands of acres in the Midwest and South, and no rain was expected before Tuesday in many of the burning areas. In West Virginia, fire crews were in their 14th day of fighting a rash of blazes, and, in Virginia, forestry officials said that about 500 acres of hardwood trees were destroyed in one day. “Our biggest concern is our manpower,” assistant state forester, Jerry Atkins said. “They’re stretched pretty thin and they’re awfully tired.”
Alaska’s Augustine Volcano kept erupting and spewing ash, but strong polar winds cleared Anchorage of the gritty, gray clouds of ash that for three days had severely curtailed air service and prompted a health alert. Airlines that had been mostly grounded for three days resumed some flights and were besieged by stranded travelers seeking to leave Anchorage. “It was a continuous low to moderate eruption with a plume rising to 15,000 feet,” the U.S. Geological Survey said of the activity in the 4,025-foot volcano on uninhabited Augustine Island 180 miles southwest of Anchorage.
James Cagney, the cocky and pugnacious film star who set the standard for gangster roles in “The Public Enemy” and won an Academy Award for his portrayal of George M. Cohan in “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” died yesterday at his Dutchess County farm in upstate New York. He was 86 years old. Mr. Cagney had been hospitalized earlier this month at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. But his wife of 64 years, known as Willie, took him back to the familiar surroundings of his home just over a week ago. Mr. Cagney had an explosive energy and a two-fisted vitality that made him one of the great film personalities of Hollywood’s golden age.
“Tango Argentino” closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 198 performances.
5th NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship: Texas beats USC, 97–81; Longhorns’ Clarissa Davis MOP award; complete first undefeated season (34-0).
PGA Tournament Players Championship, TPC at Sawgrass: John Mahaffey wins by 1 stroke ahead of runner-up Larry Mize.
Danny Cox, who was 18–9 for the National League champion Cardinals last season, injures his ankle jumping off a sea wall while fishing and will be placed on the disabled list. He’ll be on the DL till April 29th.
Born:
Micheal Haley, Canadian NHL centre (New York Islanders, New York Rangers, San Jose Sharks, Florida Panthers, Ottawa Senators), in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Barry Enright, MLB pitcher (Arizona Diamondbacks, Los Angeles Angels), in Stockton, California.
Beni [Arashiro], Japanese-American R&B singer (“Kiss, Kiss, Kiss”), in Okinawa, Japan.
Died:
James Cagney, 86, American actor (“The Public Enemy”, “Angels with Dirty Faces”, “The Roaring Twenties”, “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, “White Heat”), of a heart attack.
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