Mikhail S. Gorbachev publicly discussed the Chernobyl disaster for the first time today, telling the Soviet people that the accident had shown the “sinister force” of nuclear energy gone out of control. Breaking an 18-day silence on the accident, Mr. Gorbachev also accused the West of using the disaster for an “unrestrained anti-Soviet campaign.” In a 25-minute television speech, he defended the handling of the accident, rejecting charges that Moscow had not provided adequate information. But he also offered a four-point program to hasten exchange of information in accidents like Chernobyl, suggesting at least indirectly that Western criticism had been justified. Mr. Gorbachev called for a strengthening of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body based in Vienna, and for a world conference to discuss an early-warning system on nuclear accidents.
He said he was extending a halt in nuclear tests until August 6, the anniversary of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. He renewed his offer to meet President Reagan to discuss a test ban, mentioning Hiroshima as a possible site. The Soviet Union halted its testing last August 6, but the United States has refused to join in or to hold a special summit meeting on the issue. In Washington, officials affirmed opposition to a test ban and to a special Gorbachev-Reagan meeting. They said the Russians were seeking to divert attention from Chernobyl and were extending the test ban offer for public relations purposes in full knowledge that it would be rejected again. “They seem to have decided that the best defense is a good offense,” one official said. Speaking in somber and sometimes halting cadences, Mr. Gorbachev touched on the themes that have been stressed in Soviet news coverage — the heroism of people, the purported malice of the West, and the need to draw lessons, notably for arms control.
For the last two weeks, Moscow Hospital No. 6, a nine-story brown-brick building on the outskirts of the city, has been the center of a desperate effort to treat the most seriously afflicted victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Soviet and American doctors and an Israeli specialist, using equipment and drugs airlifted from around the world, have raced against the killing effects of radiation exposure in an attempt to save the lives of 33 men and 2 women who spent the first hours after the April 26 accident within yards of the damaged reactor. One of the American physicians, Dr. Robert Peter Gale of the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles, said that as of Wednesday evening 7 of the 35 had died of radiation and 28 remained alive. Tonight, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said in a nationally televised address that the death toll had risen to 9 — 2 killed in the original explosion and 7 who have died since of radiation. He said that “as of today” 299 people had been hospitalized with radiation disease of varying degrees. That figure was 95 more than reported by Soviet officials last week.
The Reagan Administration rejected a renewed proposal today by Mikhail S. Gorbachev that the United States join in the Soviet Union’s moratorium on underground nuclear testing. The White House also again rejected a proposal by Mr. Gorbachev that the Soviet leader and Mr. Reagan meet on the testing issue. The White House said the United States had already proposed that United States and Soviet experts meet on the testing issue but had received no response from Moscow. The Administration sought the meeting so that the experts could discuss ways to improve the verification of the threshold test ban treaty of 1974, which sets a limit of 150 kilotons on the size of an underground test. The United States signed the treaty, but it has never been submitted to the Senate for approval. The Soviet Union has said that it will not consider additional verification procedures until the United States ratifies the agreement.
The Soviet Union announced today that it had expelled an American diplomat for espionage, saying that he had plotted with a Soviet citizen recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the second expulsion of an American diplomat in two months. An embassy spokesman, Jaroslav Verner, declined to comment on the Soviet charges, but said that the expelled American, Erik Sites, had left Saturday. Mr. Sites had worked in the military attaché’s office, but Mr. Verner declined to say whether Mr. Sites was a member of the military or how long he had been in Moscow. In Washington, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, also declined to discuss the espionage charge, saying that “we do not comment on such allegations.” When asked whether the United States would retaliate by expelling a Soviet diplomat, Mr. Speakes said, “I don’t have anything on that.” The Government press agency Tass, citing the K.G.B., the internal security agency, said Mr. Sites was “arrested in Moscow on May 7, when he had a secret meeting with a Soviet citizen recruited by the U.S. intelligence service.
The Soviet Union wants to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan “in the near future,” a senior Kremlin official said. Anatoly F. Dobrynin, former ambassador to the United States, told the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization in Moscow that the withdrawal schedule requires only that a political settlement be implemented, the official news agency Tass reported. Dobrynin said Moscow hopes for success in indirect U.N.-sponsored talks in Geneva between Pakistan and the Afghan government.
Andrija Artukovic, an 86-year-old Croatian nationalist extradited from California, was convicted and sentenced to death today for ordering mass killings and deportations when he was an official in a Nazi-supported Government from 1941 to 1945. Mr. Artukovic, who lived for more than 35 years in Long Beach, California, before he was deported in February, had to be helped to his feet by guards. He heard the verdict and the sentence of the court without any show of emotion. The sentence of death by firing squad can be appealed within two weeks. “This trial, for which we have waited so long, is a victory of justice,” declared Milko Gajski, the presiding judge, who spent an hour pronouncing sentence and reviewing four weeks of testimony. Judge Gajski said that witnesses, who included victims and collaborators of the wartime Croatian Government, showed the defendant to have been an ambitious and ideologically committed official who as “Minister of the Interior ordered the killings of civilians and prepared legislation that called for mass killings, mass deportations and mass torture.” The judge said the real case against Mr. Artukovic was one of great magnitude involving the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies and other nationalities.”
U.S. and West German intelligence agencies have identified two Libyans as the masterminds of the April 5 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub in which two people, one an American soldier, were killed and more than 200 injured, the West German newspaper Bild reported. The two men were identified as Said Raschid, head of the Libyan Operations Bureau, and Abdulla Amin, assigned to the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin. The newspaper said that Raschid works directly under Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi and is responsible for the planning and execution of terrorist attacks.
By today, the 74th day of the investigation into the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was gunned down here on his way home from the movies with his wife, police investigators had fed 23,272 separate documents into the computer they are using to collate a constantly expanding mass of information. The material included statements by informants and witnesses, summaries of leads and tips, reports on the activities of individuals who might be suspects or known to suspects, anything at all of potential value. But despite the volume of information, Hans Holmer, the man running the largest murder investigation Scandinavia and possibly Europe has seen, could not say whether the killer acted on his own or with accomplices, whether he was Swedish or foreign, whether he was crazed, hired or seeking revenge. What Mr. Holmer, Stockholm’s Police Commissioner, could say in his first interview with a foreign journalist since the shooting, was that more than ten weeks of systematic police work had put him in a position to start closing off some paths of investigation as probable dead ends. He said he believed that meant he must be getting closer to the heart of the matter, even if he was still searching.
The Irish Parliament, facing fierce opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, today began debating a bill aimed at legalizing divorce, which is banned under the country’s Constitution. Opening the debate on the bill to allow a national referendum on whether or not to amend the Constitution, Justice Minister Alan Dukes described the proposal as one of the most important to come before the Irish people in recent years.
The World Health Organization’s annual assembly in Geneva called for an all-out war against tobacco smoking. It urged its 166 member nations to “abate the smoking pandemic” by the end of the century through health warnings, education, and by protecting young people and nonsmokers against “this noxious form of environmental pollution.” A resolution adopted unanimously by an assembly committee said that tobacco contains cancer-causing substances and kills at least 1 million people a year. It added that links between smoking and other fatal and disabling diseases have been scientifically proved.
The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation publishes Anne Frank’s complete diary
The Reagan Administration said today that it was “premature” to draw any conclusions about Syrian complicity in recent terrorist activities. But officials denied that the United States was seeking to “soft-pedal” Syria’s links to violent attacks in Europe. At the same time, Secretary of State George P. Shultz said that a Syrian buildup near Israel had helped create “a highly tense situation” in the Middle East, and that the United States had “cautioned” both nations about the possibility of war. In Lebanon, radio and television reports said Israel had sent as many as 50 tanks into an area of southern Lebanon under its control, The move, not confirmed by Israel, was said to have been in response to what was described as a redeployment of Syrian forces in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region. “There are growing tensions, there is a big Syrian buildup,” Mr. Shultz told reporters. “They have been moving their fortifactions forward in Lebanon, and there are investigations going on about various terrorist incidents in which Syria may or may not have been involved. That remains to be seen. So it has contributed to tension.”
Israel has sent a large number of tanks into a zone under its control in southern Lebanon, apparently to counter what was described as redeployment of Syrian forces in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region, Lebanese radio and television reports said today. There was no confirmation of the reported tank deployments from Israeli officials. The Lebanese radio and television reports said as many as 50 Israeli tanks escorted by helicopter gunships had taken up positions in the Arkub region on the slopes of Mount Hermon. Voice of the Nation, a Muslim radio station based here, said the reported tank concentrations are around the villages of Chabaa and Habbariye within the Israeli-designated “security zone.” This is the part of zone closest to Syrian military encampments in southeastern Lebanon. Channel 7, the state-run television station in Muslim West Beirut, showed film footage of what an announcer said was Israeli helicopters hovering over the Arkub. Voice of the Nation said the crossings between the ‘security zone’ and the rest of Lebanon were closed for the last 24 hours because of the Israeli military moves. Israeli troops shot and wounded two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, military sources said. The injured were among a group of Arab students who hurled rocks at an Israeli army patrol in the town of Nablus. The sources said the troops fired warning shots before aiming at the protesters. A curfew was imposed on Nablus’ marketplace, where the incident occurred. Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel was quoted in press reports reaching here today as saying that Syrian forces in eastern Lebanon were “creeping forward” and moving closer to the Israeli lines.
President Reagan meets to discuss his veto of the Cranston resolution disapproving the Saudi arms sale. Major Jewish organizations today rebuffed White House efforts to enlist their support for President Reagan’s proposal to sell $354 million worth of advanced missiles to Saudi Arabia. Their reaction dims the chances that Mr. Reagan will be able to get his plan through Congress, which has already rejected it once by overwhelming margins. David M. Gordis, the executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee, said the White House request for help on the Saudi issue was “beyond what we consider realistic.”
A United States Navy ship came to the aid of an American merchant vessel in the Gulf of Oman Tuesday during an encounter between the freighter and an Iranian patrol boat, Pentagon officials said today. The Navy destroyer, which was in the area at the time, warned the Iranians “to stand clear to insure freedom of navigation of the United States merchant ship,” a Pentagon statement said. The Iranians complied, and there was never any threat of hostilities, officials said. As the Pentagon officials spoke, the Iranian foreign minister issued a statement warning that Iran would not tolerate any United States intervention in the Persian Gulf.
Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, was paralyzed for six hours by a strike called to protest alleged election fraud. Police said at least 23 people were injured, including eight hurt when a bomb thrown at a police vehicle instead hit a passenger bus. The strike was called by the leftist opposition Awami League to protest alleged fraud and voter intimidation by the military government’s Jatiya Party in the May 7 parliamentary elections. Unofficial results gave Jatiya 134 seats, the Awami League, 88, and others, 44.
Three homemade rockets were fired at the United States and Japanese embassies in Jakarta, Indonesia today, and a car bomb went off outside a building housing Canada’s mission, Jakarta’s military commander said. No injuries were reported. The commander, Maj. Gen. Sugito, said that none of the rockets exploded, but that the bomb destroyed the car in which it was planted and damaged five other vehicles.
A couple who are leading figures in the South Korean movie world and who disappeared into North Korea under mysterious circumstances eight years ago emerged here today and said they had been kidnapped on the direct orders of the son of President Kim Il Sung of North Korea. The couple, Shin San Ok, a director, and Choi Un Hui, an actress, met with two reporters here and told a story that they found more bizarre than any screenplay. They said Kim Il Sung’s son, Kim Jong Il, who is widely regarded as the most important Communist Party official in North Korea today and the likely successor to his father, was a movie buff, with a personal collection of 20,000 films. The elder Mr. Kim is both head of the Government and the party. “Kim Jong Il told us later he had ordered our kidnapping,” Mr. Shin said. The four-and-a-half hour interview was conducted through an interpreter, with Mr. Shin occasionally using English.
Officials of Taiwan’s national airline proposed today that talks begin on Monday with China over the return of a Taiwanese Boeing 747 cargo jet and crew flown to Canton by a defector. The talks would be the first such face-to-face negotiations approved by Taiwan. China Airlines of Taiwan said in a statement that it was negotiating a timetable for the talks with China’s national carrier. The talks are to take place in Hong Kong. The plane was flown to China by Wang Hsi-chuen, who said he defected to join his family on the mainland.
Mexican officials, expressing anger and some mystification over highly critical testimony by Reagan Administration officials before a Senate subcommittee, said today that Mexico and the United States were in danger of entering a new era of highly strained relations. “Since Monday, suddenly the relations between Mexico and the United States are in a very delicate period,” a senior Mexican official said. “If this unexpected climate of confrontation between us continues, it could seriously harm our relations.”
Thirteen voodoo priests appeared at mass on a recent Sunday morning and, before the altar of St. Helen’s Church, recanted their belief in African spirits and proclaimed their faith in Christianity. The occasion was tense. A day earlier, lay workers from the Roman Catholic church had smashed the priests’ voodoo temples. The parish priest had burned the drums, vessels, potions and crosses that were their cult objects. Now, by renouncing their “superstitions,” the voodoo priests had been told, they could save their lives. In the three months since the ouster of the Government and the flight of Jean Claude Duvalier to France, where he now lives in a luxury villa inland from the French Riviera, other villagers, many of them from religious groups, have attacked voodoo temples and harassed, threatened and killed their occupants. According to military, church and local officials, nearly 100 priests and priestesses of Haiti’s ancestral religion have been hacked, burned or otherwise put to death by mobs since February.
Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra accused the Reagan Administration today of using the regional Contadora peace talks as a vehicle to isolate Nicaragua. Mr. Ortega, the brother of President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, repeated that the Government would not sign the draft peace treaty drawn up by the four Contadora nations — Mexico, Panama, Colombia and Venezuela — unless the proposal was altered substantially. The treaty is to be ready for signature by all Central American countries on June 6.
Nicaraguan rebel leader Eden Pastora will seek asylum in Costa Rica for himself and 400 men, spokesmen reported. They said that Pastora, whose fight from bases in Costa Rica against the Sandinista government has sputtered for three years, will make the request Friday. There was no immediate comment from the Costa Rican government. Six field commanders of Pastora’s group have broken away and joined a broadbased contra coalition, the United Nicaraguan Opposition.
Leaders of Paraguay’s banned opposition front, addressing an independence day rally, called for a nonviolent campaign to end 32 years of rule by dictator Alfredo Stroessner. “This time, the end of General Stroessner’s regime is very near,” Miguel Angel Martinez, president of the front, called the National Accord, said at a rally attended by 600 people. No incidents were reported.
The commission investigating the Challenger disaster will urge President Reagan to make changes in launching procedures to insure that warnings about severe dangers are brought to the attention of top space agency officials, Administration officials said today. This proposal will be among the main recommendations in the Presidential commission’s final report, due June 6, the officials said. They added that Mr. Reagan was likely to adopt the major recommendations of the 12-member panel, which is headed by William P. Rogers. Commission members have said the probable cause of the disintegration of the Challenger on January 28, in which all seven astronauts died, was defective seals of the joints of the booster rockets. And the investigators were told in hearings that engineers had warned that disaster could result from the defects but that the warnings were never relayed to the top. The report is said to be “tough” and highly critical of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The commission is expected to suggest the establishment of a permanent quality control panel that will have the power to halt shuttle launchings for technical or other reasons, and an improved process for launching. It is unclear if the proposed panel would be set up in the NASA structure or work independently. The commission will seek to assure that anxieties raised inside and outside NASA get attention all the way to the top of the agency, they said. Another recommendation, which the commission will suggest be carried out before the shuttle program is resumed, the officials said, involves redesigning the rocket joint. One senior Administration official familiar with the report said its most striking feature was its sharp tone in criticizing NASA.
President Reagan addresses members of the Tax Reform Action Coalition.
The Senate completed congressional action on a bill authorizing more than $31 million through 1988 to help states set up agencies to work for the rights of mentally ill people. By a voice vote, the Senate approved a House-Senate conference report on the bill, sending the measure to President Reagan. The measure requires states to set up agencies to advocate the proper treatment of mentally ill people and provides up to $125,000 a year to each state for that purpose. The measure authorizes $10 million in the current fiscal year, $10.5 million in the 1987 fiscal year and $11 million in the 1988 fiscal year, for the establishment of the state advocacy offices.
The U.S. population reached 239,283,000 on July 1, 1985, an increase of 12.2-million people, or 5.4%, from the 227,061,000 counted April 1, 1980, the Census Bureau. said. The total population, the bureau said in releasing a formal estimate of changes since the 1980 census, included 122,634,000 women and 116,649,000 men. The median age of Americans — the point where as many are younger as are older — rose from 30 in 1980 to 31.5 in 1985, mainly because the large baby boom generation continued ticking off birthdays, it said. The aging of the baby boomers, those now between 25 and 40, created a sharp increase in that broad category.
The Senate, prompted by election-year jitters, voted for the first time to curb the escalating costs of mailing newsletters to constituents at government expense, but there was no assurance the House would go along. “We are forced with stopping mailing or going into the red, throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Postal Service,” said Senator Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Maryland). He estimated that only $20 million remains of the original $95.7-million appropriation.
The Federal Aviation Administration “cannot say with assurance” that airlines are complying with safety regulations, the General Accounting Office told a Congressional panel today.gressional panel today. The aviation agency, whose officials are scheduled to appear before the panel on May 22, took strong exception to the accounting office’s view. Steve Hayes, an F.A.A. spokesman, said the agency was “absolutely” able to assure compliance.
The National Transportation Safety Board voiced concern yesterday over the persistence of near-collisions on airport runways and expanded its recommendations for reducing the hazard. The board made the recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration after a 10-month study. Among other things, they call for creation of a special team to develop memory aids for traffic controllers, stricter requirements for reporting and investigating incidents and determination of the most effective airport “signs, markings and procedures.”
William J. Bennett believes that many college “radicals tend to view the university as a kind of fortress at war with society, an arsenal whose principal task is to raise revolutionary consciousness, frustrate the government and discredit authority.” Mr. Bennett, the Education Secretary, also accuses campus radicals of not “promoting tolerance and freedom of inquiry.”
Three teen-age climbers, found nearly frozen, died today and eight others in their party were missing after they were trapped by a snowstorm Tuesday near the summit of Mount Hood. Two other climbers in the group walked to safety off the 11,239-foot peak. The three teenagers, part of a group of climbers from a Portland high school, were found near death this morning about 7,500 feet up the mountain, which is 50 miles east of Portland. After the snowstorm struck Tuesday, wind chill temperatures fell to about 50 degrees below zero. Two girls were pronounced dead after a daylong attempt to revive them at Portland’s Emanuel Hospital, said Dr. William Long, a hospital spokesman. The heartbeat of the third victim, a boy, was revived, but hospital officials said he died several hours later. The three, who were not identified, had been flown to the hospital, where a team of 40 medical workers tried to revive them, said Lori Callister, an Emanuel spokesman. She said their core temperature had been brought up to 68 degrees Fahrenheit from 43 degrees. Ten students at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland and three adults had begun climbing the mountain Monday in the annual sophomore class wilderness outing. At least one of the students had no previous climbing experience.
A Federal grand jury has indicted four people for conspiring to smuggle 3,800 anti-tank missiles from the United States to Iran and Iraq, officials said. The indictment, the result of an undercover operation, was unsealed after the arrest of the two principal defendants, Gil Silva and Zevy Reiss. The two others charged in the case are Europeans and were not in custody, according to a statement Tuesday from the United States Attorney’s office in Dallas that was released in Washington. The four conspired between February 21 and April 23 to illegally smuggle 3,819 telemetric optic guided wire missiles to the two Middle East countries, which are at war with each other, the indictment charged. The four were charged with conspiring to export munitions wihout an export license.
Voters up in Nebraska awoke today to find that they had fulfilled pre-primary predictions by becoming the first state to stage a woman-against-woman campaign for Governor. Now, no matter which party they choose, they will elect the eighth woman to become a governor. But the primary election Tuesday resulted in one departure from the predictions. The Republican candidate will be Kay Orr, now the State Treasurer, rather than the party’s early front-runner, Nancy Hoch. Ultimately Mrs. Hoch, “outorganized and outspent,” as one expert put it, ran third, behind Kermit Brashear, an Omaha lawyer. Now Mrs. Orr, 47, faces Helen Boosalis, a 66-year-old former Mayor of Lincoln, the state capital, who never flagged after beginning the Democratic race as a front-runner.
A panel on pornography has called for a reversal in the nation’s law enforcement priorities and widespread prosecution of obscenity distributors. In its final report, the panel, the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, criticized Federal, state and local prosecutors for “striking under enforcement” of laws controlling pornography.
Texas’ largest teacher group said it will file a federal court lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in the skills test taken by more than 200,000 Texas public schoolteachers last March. Education Commissioner W.N. Kirby responded that the test was painstakingly designed to avoid discrimination against any minority group. The results showed 96.7% of the 202,084 educators who took the basic reading and writing skills test passed it. A racial breakdown showed only 1.1% of whites failed the test, compared to 18.4% of blacks and 6% of Latinos.
Parents owning certain Century and Bilt-Rite strollers are being urged to obtain replacement safety straps for their children, to avoid the danger of the children getting the straps tangled around their necks, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced. About 200,000 of the strollers, which have shoulder harness restraints, are in use, the commission said. Century Products Inc., of Stow, Ohio, is offering replacement waist straps to interested parents.
Utah’s Legislature today approved a $55 million plan to pump floodwaters from the Great Salt Lake into the western desert. The legislation includes $10 million for emergency dikes to keep flood waters back until a system is designed and installed. Pumping is expected to begin by February 1987 at the earliest. The lake has doubled its volume in the last four years to 30 million acre-feet. Flooding has caused $125 million in property damage, and threatens another $110 million in damage. Unless the 80-mile-long, 30-mile-wide lake is pumped, water will swamp Interstate 80 and two major railroad lines, bringing economic disaster to Utah, said Governor Norm Bangarter. Under the proposal, the lake’s excess would be pumped into a desert valley west of the lake, creating a temporary sister lake about one-third the size of the Great Salt Lake.
The anti-rejection drug cyclosporine apparently can cause permanent kidney damage when given in high doses to battle certain immune system diseases, doctors said in a study published in Boston in The New England Journal of Medicine. They added, however, that the amount of damage may not be enough to cause a serious deterioration of kidney function and the drug is usually used in lower doses on transplant patients.
A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Weather Service was not liable in the deaths of three lobstermen who drowned in a severe storm after a prediction of fair weather. In a unanimous decision Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston set aside a $1.25 million award to the families of the three men. The panel said the Government was protected from such liability because weather forecasting was a discretionary or policy-related function. The ruling by the appellate court overturned a ruling last August by Federal District Judge Joseph L. Tauro, who said the Government was liable in the three deaths because of its failure to repair a buoy used in forecasts of weather conditions on Georges Bank, a fishing ground off Cape Cod.
Knowledge of Halley’s comet is vast because of the five spacecraft that flew past it in March. In 38 scientific studies reported in the journal Nature, researchers describe the comet’s black-coated, icy nucleus and 55 surface features, including at least seven spots or rifts radiating jets of dust.
NHL Clarence Campbell Conference Final: Calgary Flames beat St. Louis Blues, 4 games to 3.
Major League Baseball:
The Baltimore Orioles downed the Minnesota Twins, 8–3. Floyd Rayford started a seven-run rally in the seventh inning with a two-run double and Fred Lynn capped the inning with a three-run homer as the Orioles won their fifth straight game. The Orioles were held to two hits through six innings and trailed, 2–1, when the Minnesota starter, John Butcher, was replaced after Cal Ripken singled to open the seventh. An interference call against the Twins’ catcher, Mark Salas, his third of the season, and a walk to Mike Young, loaded the bases against the reliever Juan Agosto. Rayford, who was in a 2-for-19 slump, doubled into the right-field corner to put the Orioles ahead, 3–2.
Bill Buckner’s run-scoring single sparked a three-run ninth inning tonight that lifted the Boston Red Sox to an 8–5 victory over the Angels. California provided the early highlight when Reggie Jackson moved into fifth place in career home runs. Jackson’s shot, the 537th of his career, gave the Angels a 2–0 lead against Roger Clemens in the first inning. The towering blast moved Jackson, who will turn 40 on Sunday, ahead of Mickey Mantle on the career list. T.R. Bryden (2–1), who entered as a reliever in the eighth inning for the Angels, did not retire any of the first five batters he faced in the ninth. After issuing a leadoff walk to Dwight Evans, he yielded singles by Wade Boggs and Buckner, a run-scoring double to Jim Rice and a run-scoring single to Dave Stapleton. Clemens (6–0), who earlier this season set a major league record with 20 strikeouts in a game, fanned nine and allowed six hits in eight innings. He leads the majors with 69 strikeouts. Joe Sambito pitched the ninth for his fourth save.
The San Francisco Giants routed the Chicago Cubs, 11–3. Jeff Leonard and Dan Gladden hit three-run homers to lead San Francisco. The Giants, who had 16 hits, scored three runs in the third and six more in the sixth to give Mike LaCoss a 9–2 lead. LaCoss improved his record to 4–0, giving up seven hits and two walks over five and one-third innings. The Giants took a 3–2 lead in the sixth. Chili Davis opened the inning against Rick Sutcliffe (1–6) with a triple. After Bob Brenly walked, Davis scored on a bunt single by Robby Thompson. Brenly went to third when Jody Davis, the catcher, threw wildly trying to pick him off second and scored when Bob Dernier’s throw from center field to third hit him in the helmet and bounced into the stands. With Thompson at third, Jose Uribe hit a bloop single to center, putting San Francisco ahead by 6–2. LaCoss bunted for a single and Gladden hit his first home run of the season for the 9–2 lead.
Chet Lemon, Lance Parrish and Darrell Evans hit homers to support the five-hit pitching of Walt Terrell as the Detroit Tigers spanked the Texas Rangers, 8–2. Terrell (4–1) walked one and struck out one in pitching his third complete game.
The Mets opened an 11-game, four-city trip by losing to the Houston Astros, 6–2. It was the second straight loss for the Mets, and their third in four games. It didn’t dislodge them from first place or anything like that, since they still have won 21 of their first 28 games this season. But they hadn’t dropped two games in a row since the opening week of the season, when they dropped three — just before racing to 18 victories in their next 19 games in one of the best breakaway starts in modern baseball. Not only that, but another starting pitcher fell from the ranks of the unbeaten tonight, as Dwight Gooden did Sunday. This time, it was Bob Ojeda, who had won five straight. He was outpitched by Bob Knepper, who stopped the Mets on five hits and became the first seven-game winner in the big leagues. The Mets’ problems started in the home half of the second inning when Phil Garner rammed a grounder into the left-side hole, and the rookie shortstop Kevin Mitchell was charged with an error when the ball bounced off his backhand. Mitchell played four positions with distinction while the Mets were rolling, but this time he opened the door to two unearned runs. The first crossed when Kevin Bass followed with a double over Mookie Wilson’s head in center, and Mark Bailey lined a two-out single. In the home half of the sixth, the Mets became forlorn again. This time, Garner led with a single, Bass grounded out to third and Dickie Thon sent a long drive into right-center. Wilson ran and leaped but didn’t get it, Thon wound up on third with a triple, Garner scored and the Mets now were four down.
The Kansas City Royals shut out the Cleveland Indians, 5–0. Mark Gubicza pitched a three-hitter and George Brett drove in three runs to surpass Amos Otis as the team’s career leader in runs batted in. Gubicza (1–4) struck out eight and walked none. Tony Bernazard’s one-out single in the fourth and Otis Nixon’s infield single in the sixth were the only hits allowed by the 23-year-old right-hander until Julio Franco’s leadoff double in the seventh. Phil Niekro (2–3) gave up four runs in 5 ⅔ innings for the Indians.
Andre Dawson hit a home run, stole home and threw out two runners from right field tonight, leading the Montreal Expos to a 3–2 victory over the Atlanta Braves. The victory was the 10th in the last 11 games for the Expos. Bryn Smith (3–2) pitched seven innings and gave up one run on seven hits. Jeff Reardon relieved Smith and gave up a one-out, run-scoring single to Ted Simmons in the ninth. The Braves went on to load the bases in the ninth with one out, but Reardon retired Claudell Washington and Rafael Ramirez on short fly balls to the outfield to end the game and get his sixth save. Dawson hit his eighth home run of the season in the eighth off Gene Garber, giving Montreal a 3–1 lead. Glenn Hubbard’s two-out single scored Terry Harper and sent Ken Oberkfell to second. Zane Smith followed with another single, but Dawson’s throw to the catcher, Mike Fitzgerald, erased Oberkfell. Dawson got another assist in the fifth inning when he threw out Ozzie Virgil, who was trying to advance from second to third on Smith’s fly ball.
Bob Shirley started for the Yankees April 26 because Ed Whitson had a stomach ache and a sore rib. He started May 2 because John Montefusco had sore ribs. When Shirley started for the third time last night, no one had a sore thumb or a stomach ache. When the game was over, however, the Yankees had a collective headache, although it had little to do with Shirley. After Shirley shut them out and held them to three hits for eight innings, the Chicago White Sox stunned the Yankees by scoring three runs in the ninth inning and snatching a 3–2 victory. Although Shirley gave up two hits in the decisive inning, Brian Fisher was the pitcher who permitted the devastating damage. Fisher, an inconsistent reliever this season following an impressive rookie year, gave up a run-scoring single to Greg Walker with one out and a two-run triple to Ozzie Guillen with two out. Mike Pagliarulo’s fourth-inning home run and successive seventh-inning doubles by Bobby Meacham and Rickey Henderson against Joel Davis had produced the two Yankee runs, which appeared to be a sufficient number the way Shirley was pitching.
Jose Canseco clouted a two-run homer, and Dave Kingman and Mike Davis added bases-empty shots off Dave Stieb (0–5) in the seventh inning, as the Oakland A’s defeated the Toronto Blue Jays, 9–4. Recently recalled A’s left-hander Curt Young got his first victory. Young worked 7 ⅓ innings, gave up six hits, struck out six and walked three. With the score tied 3–3, Jerry Willard opened the Oakland seventh with a single. He scored after a sacrifice and an error. Canseco followed with his 11th home run, a two-run shot, and Kingman with his eighth homer. One out later, Davis hit his third homer. Canseco also added a run-scoring hit for this third RBI, in the eighth.
Mike Schmidt, who did not start because of pain from a cracked rib, lined a pinch-single with the bases loaded that combined with a Cincinnati error to score three runs in the eighth inning and rally the Phillies to an 8–6 win over the Reds. The Philies trailed, 6–4, entering the eighth, but singles by Rick Schu and Steve Jeltz and a walk to the pinch-hitter Luis Aguayo loaded the bases against John Franco (0–1). Schmidt then batted for Milt Thompson and Ted Power relieved for the Reds. Schmidt hit a drive off the center-field wall that went for a single when the runners held up to see if Eddie Milner would catch the ball. The single drove in Schu, and when the second baseman Ron Oester took the relay and threw wildly to third, Jeltz and Aguayo also scored. Juan Samuel then hit a sacrifice fly that drove in Schmidt.
The Padres hammered the Pittsburgh Pirates, 10–4. Steve Garvey hit a two-run, first-inning homer and Bruce Bochy added a solo shot to lead the Padres. Tony Gwynn went 4-for-5, including a triple, and scored three times in the Padres’ 14-hit attack. The Pirates’ loss was their 11th in 16 home games this season. Dave Dravecky (3–3) pitched 5 ⅔ innings for the victory.
The Milwaukee Brewers beat the Seattle Mariners, 9–6. Charlie Moore scored three runs and drove in two as the Brewers ended a three-game losing streak. Dan Plesac (2–1) pitched 4 ⅓ innings of scoreless relief after the starter Juan Nieves was unable to get through the fifth inning with a 9–3 lead. Plesac allowed just two hits and struck out three. Mike Moore (2–4) was the loser.
Steve Sax drove in three runs on three hits and Mariano Duncan scored three times to lead the Dodgers over the Cardinals, 8–3. Fernando Valenzuela (5–2) survived a shaky first inning to pitch into the ninth inning. Valenzuela gave up five hits, struck out nine and walked five before leaving in the ninth. Valenzuela also had three wild pitches.
Minnesota Twins 3, Baltimore Orioles 8
Boston Red Sox 8, California Angels 5
San Francisco Giants 11, Chicago Cubs 3
Texas Rangers 2, Detroit Tigers 8
New York Mets 2, Houston Astros 6
Cleveland Indians 0, Kansas City Royals 5
Atlanta Braves 2, Montreal Expos 3
Chicago White Sox 3, New York Yankees 2
Toronto Blue Jays 4, Oakland Athletics 9
Cincinnati Reds 6, Philadelphia Phillies 8
San Diego Padres 10, Pittsburgh Pirates 4
Milwaukee Brewers 9, Seattle Mariners 6
Los Angeles Dodgers 8, St. Louis Cardinals 3
An abnormally sharp rise in a handful of blue-chip stocks gave Wall Street what appeared to be a substantial rally yesterday, but over all the market was only slightly higher and trading activity remained depressed. The Dow Jones industrial average, which has been inching lower in recent weeks, closed 22.94 points higher, at 1,808.28, with the vast majority of the gain coming in the final hour. It was the first time that the Dow closed above the 1,800 level since April 29.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1808.28 (+22.94)
Born:
Clay Matthews III, NFL linebacker (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 45-Packers, 2010; Pro Bowl, 2009–2012, 2014, 2015; Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams), son of Clay Matthews, Jr., grandson of Clay Matthews (both NFL linebackers), in Northridge, California.
Lawrence Timmons, NFL linebacker (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 43-Steelers, 2008; Pro Bowl, 2014; Pittsburgh Steelers, Miami Dolphins), in Florence, South Carolina.
John Nalbone, NFL tight end (Miami Dolphins), in Trenton, New Jersey.
Efren Navarro, MLB first baseman and outfielder (Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs), in Lynwood, California.
Jackson Williams, MLB catcher (Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants), in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Camila Sodi, Mexican actress (“Inocente de Ti”; “Rubí”), in Mexico City, Mexico.
History Diaries 