The United States and the Soviet Union concluded a round of talks today on ways to improve methods for the verification of underground testing of nuclear weapons and agreed to meet again in September. A State Department official said the weeklong round of discussions by experts in Geneva ended on a positive note. This was the first time under the Reagan Administration that the two sides had sat down to discuss these issues. But there was no resolution, the official said, of sharp political differences on nuclear testing. The Soviet side had proposed holding the talks to advance its proposals for a complete ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. The United States agreed to the talks to discuss methods of verification so that two decade-old treaties setting limits on the size of nuclear explosions could be ratified. “These were serious talks, and the fact that they will resume in the fall is definitely a plus,” the State Department official said. “You don’t expect an agreement in the opening round of such highly technical discussions.”
One State Department official said that “it is conceivable that if Gorbachev wants an agreement to sign at the next summit, he could easily get an accord on ratification of the threshold agreement.” Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, has said that while he remains in favor of carrying out a pledge to meet with President Reagan this year in the United States, there was no point in such a second summit meeting unless it would produce positive results in arms control. Several officials said the tone of the talks was much more productive than the contentious and highly polemical discussions that ended in Geneva on Wednesday. Those talks, held separately from the ones on nuclear testing, dealt with the American decision to repudiate the unratified treaty of 1979 limiting strategic weapons and the expired interim accord of 1972, also limiting strategic offensive weapons.
The Soviet Union is willing to accept China’s position on a longstanding border dispute along two rivers in northeastern Asia, East European diplomats said in Peking. They said a speech by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday in Vladivostok marked a crucial shift in Moscow’s position on the border river issue, which led to military clashes in March, 1969. “The official border might pass along the main ship channel,” Gorbachev said. Moscow had insisted in the past that the border ran along the Chinese bank of the Amur and Ussuri rivers, which determine the boundary of northeastern China and Siberia.
The Soviet Union indicated that it will not permit an increase in Jewish emigration, which has slowed to a trickle since the late 1970s. Yevgeny K. Silin, deputy chairman of the Soviet commission on the Helsinki accords on European security and cooperation, reiterated at a Moscow news conference the Soviet contention that most Jews who sought reunification with relatives abroad have emigrated. Many Soviet Jews and Jewish groups abroad dispute this, saying that tens of thousands of Jews still want to emigrate.
A leading member of the trade union Solidarity, Bogdan Lis, was released from prison today, becoming the first prominent opposition figure to be freed under Poland’s new clemency act. Mr. Lis was due to be released in February 1987 after serving a two-year jail term for taking part in a clandestine meeting to plan a nationwide strike against price increases. The strike was later called off. Speaking from his home in the Baltic port of Gdansk, Mr. Lis said that he did not know why he was freed and said the authorities had not imposed conditions on his release. Under the clemency law, which became effective last week, the state prosecutor is entitled to demand a written pledge that prisoners to be freed will not return to active opposition.
Several hundred people chanting Solidarity slogans and the name of Zbigniew Bujak, the union’s imprisoned underground organizer, marched through downtown Warsaw after a Mass on the eve of the anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw uprising against the Nazis. The police made no attempt to stop the demonstration, which swelled to about 1,000 people at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Victory Square before it dispersed without incident.
West German police arrested one of six Arabs sentenced to prison in absentia for their part in the Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacking, police in Rome and West Berlin reported. The suspect was identified as Ahmed Youssef Saad, 23, a Palestinian born in Lebanon. Prosecutors in the Achille Lauro trial called him the “official paymaster” of the terrorist operation. Last month, a Genoa court sentenced Saad to 6 ½ years in prison for complicity in last October’s hijacking of the Italian cruise ship during which an American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed.
A former Israeli military officer who allegedly plotted to snatch three drug smugglers from a British prison by helicopter was ordered held on $2-million bail in Philadelphia and charged with criminal solicitation and conspiracy. Abraham Ahronovich, 30, was arrested by FBI agents for allegedly offering two U.S. pilots $35,000 to swoop down on a Norwich, England, prison and spring three Israelis serving terms for smuggling hashish into England.
The Administration said that for the first time, the United States will channel financial aid to the Israeli-occupied West Bank through the government of Jordan despite conflicting Israeli and Jordanian claims to sovereignty over the territory. The announcement that $4.5 million in unspent aid for other countries is being diverted to West Bank projects came while Vice President George Bush visited Jordan as part of his 10-day Mideast peace mission. Previous U.S. aid for the West Bank was funneled through private organizations such as the Red Cross.
Two devastating car-bomb attacks in as many days in Beirut have generated fears that unless the country’s continuing political deadlock can be broken, another cycle of violence is unavoidable in Lebanon’s 11-year-old civil war. The car-bombings, one on Monday in a predominantly Christian suburb, the other 24 hours later in mostly Moslem West Beirut, killed a total of 58 people, wounded 300 and caused damage valued at $50 million. All of the casualties were said to be Lebanese. The “Slaughter of Innocents,” as newspaper headlines here called it, was preceded by an outbreak of artillery duels across the Green Line, the demarcation line from the Mediterranean Sea to the southern suburbs that cuts the Lebanese capital into Christian and Moslem sectors. Four people, two of them children, were killed and 38 wounded when artillery shells struck residential areas on both sides of the line.
The Foreign Ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan, meeting under the auspices of the United Nations, resumed indirect negotiations today on the six-year-old Afghan conflict. They are expected to concentrate on setting a timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Diego Cordovez, the United Nations Under Secretary General for Politcal Affairs, met separately with Shah Mohammad Dost of Afghanistan and Sahabzada Yaqub Kahn of Pakistan. Mr. Cordovez shuttled between the two sides because Pakistan refuses to meet Afghan negotiators face-to-face. The talks come three days after the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, announced plans to withdraw six regiments, or about 7,000 of the 120,000 Soviet soldiers, from Afghanistan. Although the United States has reacted cooly to the announcement, Mr. Cordovez was reported as saying the move was a positive development.
The United States and Japan today announced a settlement of a bitter trade dispute involving computer chips. The Americans had charged that Japan sold the semiconductors here below their fair value, while obstructing American access to the Japanese market. In today’s agreement, the Japanese, who deny they “dumped” chips, promised to sell at fair prices and to open up their home market. “This agreement represents an important step,” President Reagan said, “toward freer and more equitable world trade, and will enhance the ability of our semiconductor manufacturers to compete fairly in the Japanese market.”
A special commission today set aside the results of a trial that acquitted the former military chief, General Fabian C. Ver, and 25 others in the 1983 murder of President Corazon C. Aquino’s husband, Benigno. The three-member commission declared a mistrial in the case, saying it found sufficient evidence that former President Ferdinand E. Marcos had interfered in the proceedings. The finding makes it almost certain that the accused will have to face a new trial.
Mexico City’s subway system has been one of the world’s great urban transportation bargains since it opened in 1969. For one peso, 0.15 cents in United States money, passengers can ride anywhere on the 75-mile metro system and get off at any of its 109 stations. But today the cost of a ride will go up 2,000 percent — to 20 pesos, or slightly more than 3 cents. International bankers have seen the subsidized system as a symbol of Mexico’s economic ills.
The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for it to comply with a World Court order to stop aiding Nicaraguan rebels. The vote was 11 to 1 for the resolution with Thailand, Britain and France abstaining, but the negative vote of the United States killed the measure. The World Court ruled June 27 in a case brought by Nicaragua that U.S. support for the contras was illegal and the United States should pay reparations. The court is the judicial arm of the United Nations, but it has no power to enforce its decisions.
A Senate subcommittee voted approval of President Reagan’s package of military aid to rebels fighting Nicaragua’s leftist government. The decision by the Appropriations subcommittee on military construction is the first step in the latest round concerning Reagan’s plan to provide $100 million, including $70 million in military aid, to the contras. The full committee is expected to approve the plan next week, sending it to the floor of the Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats opposed to aid have warned of a filibuster when the measure reaches the floor, but Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) has threatened to delay a scheduled August 15 recess until the Senate votes on the aid package.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee today defeated a proposal to mandate the withdrawal of all American investment from South Africa. But a majority of the panel clearly favored imposing some form of severe sanctions on the Pretoria Government. By a party-line vote of 9 to 7, the panel rejected a proposal by Senator Alan Cranston, a California Democrat, calling for divestment as a protest against the racial policies of South Africa. A similar bill passed the House last month, but most lawmakers have assumed that such a sweeping proposal would never become law. However, 13 of the 17 members of the Foreign Relations Committee, including five Republicans, seemed to favor stringent sanctions in some form. The committee is to meet Friday in an attempt to clear a bill for floor action.
The shadowy South African Communist Party surfaced in London on the occasion of its 65th anniversary Wednesday, packing a meeting hall as it shared a stage with the African National Congress and ridiculed charges that Communists dominate the congress, the leading group fighting white domination of the nation’s black majority. “The Communist bogey is being exploited in an attempt to weaken the major force of our liberation, the African National Congress,” the Communist Party chairman, Joe Slovo, declared in denying the South African Government’s charges. “We refuse to join in this game of answering the question, ‘Are you or have you ever been?’ ” he added, defending the policy of keeping party enrollment secret from the South African police. The party, driven underground 35 years ago, is small in size, but its significance is increasingly debated. Wednesday night’s celebration represented its first public appearance here in five years. Mr. Slovo, a stocky, gray-haired white South African and long its most prominent member, was not known to be its new chairman until a recent mention in a party publication.
President Reagan signed legislation upholding $11.7 billion in spending cuts made last March as the first step in reducing the federal deficit under the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law. The across-the-board automatic cuts were invalidated by the Supreme Court when it ruled that the law’s automatic budget-cutting mechanism was unconstitutional. But the $11.7-billion worth of reductions was reaffirmed by Congress last month under the theory that it would be too disruptive to restore money already cut.
President Reagan refused this evening to allow members of the Senate to see internal memorandums that William H. Rehnquist wrote from 1969 to 1971, when he was a high-ranking Justice Department official in the Nixon Administration. Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee protested the decision to withhold the memorandums under the doctrine that the executive branch has the privilege to withhold certain information from Congress or the courts to maintain confidentiality or for other reasons. The Democrats had requested the memorandums written by Mr. Rehnquist, now an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and Mr. Reagan’s nominee for Chief Justice, during hearings to approve his nomination and pass it on to the Senate for confirmation. The documents dealt with civil rights, civil liberties, wiretapping and surveillance of radical groups. Earlier in the day’s hearing, Senators continued to question the Justice’s views on civil rights issues, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the nominee once owned a house in Phoenix with a deed forbidding sale to nonwhites. On Wednesday, Mr. Rehnquist was questioned about his summer house in Vermont, which has a deed restriction against sale or lease to Jews. Justice Rehnquist said he had only recently learned of the restrictions, which are not enforceable under a 1948 Supreme Court ruling.
President Reagan attends a breakfast meeting on arms control with Bipartisan Members of Congress.
President Reagan hosts a luncheon with corporate leaders for supporting “Vote America Youth” initiative, a voter registration project.
The Air Force said today that it was planning a large new fleet of unmanned rockets and would close its new shuttle-launching facility on the West Coast at least until 1992. The $2.8 billion shuttle facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has never been used. The Air Force also said its new rocket program would encourage developing a vast new commercial space-launching industry. Under the plan, payloads that are critical to national security will be carried by unmanned rockets launched from the East Coast or by rockets from Vandenberg. Military experts had hoped to launch some satellites from West Coast shuttles because their orbits would have let them survey a greater portion of the earth.
House and Senate negotiators, struggling for months over a compromise plan to extend the Superfund toxic-waste cleanup program, approved legislation to extend it for five years with a budget of $8.5 billion. Their plan, hailed by environmental groups, proposes taxing the petrochemical industry for half the money, with an additional $2 billion coming from other U.S. manufacturers and balance from taxpayers and other sources. The conferees proposed requiring the Environmental Protection Agency to initiate 375 cleanup projects and extending the statute of limitations for lawsuits by people exposed to environmental diseases.
After a daylong delay, House tax-revision negotiators reached agreement on a promised “big bang” tax proposal, mixing both the low rates and more generous deductions for the middle and upper classes. They had been expected to reach agreement Wednesday night. The proposal, a response to a more modest Senate offer Tuesday, bogged down for a time because it would increase the federal deficit, a House spokesman said. The Senate had proposed to finance lower rates for the majority of taxpayers by adding about $120 billion to the corporate tax burden over the next five years.
The Senate, in a surprise move, tonight voted to repeal the so-called windfall profits tax on domestic oil, a tax that is no longer raising revenue because of the sharp decline in oil prices. The amendment was approved on a voice vote after a move to kill the proposal lost 51 to 47. Opposition to the tax reflects the concern, both economic and political, for the plight of the oil states and the Senate races in them this crucial election year. Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, Democrat of Ohio, an opponent of repeal, said he had been told that the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Democrat of Illinois, had said the House would not accept the repeal.
Morton Thiokol and NASA have been lax for several years in correcting problems with quality control and safety at the company’s facilities for producing shuttle rockets, Government investigators said.
Members of the United Steelworkers of America set up picket lines at USX Corporation plants nationwide early today, hours after last-minute negotiations to avert a strike failed. The negotiations had begun somewhat unexpectedly in Pittsburgh at 4 PM in the company’s headquarters and halted about 6:30. The company, formerly the United States Steel Corporation, has not been struck since the nationwide steel strike that lasted 116 days in 1959. The union said the company had locked out its members. The company said the union was on strike.
The GPU Nuclear Corporation, the operator of the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island, said today that it wants to boil 2.1 million gallons of leftover radioactive water and release the steam into the atmosphere over two and a half years. The corporation has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to begin the $10 million plan next summer. It said the level of radiation was well within guidelines. But Kay Pickering, a spokesman for Three Mile Island Alert, said, “We don’t favor anything additional being released into the air.” About 1 million gallons of the plant’s water were contaminated in 1979 in the worst accident at a commercial nuclear power plant.
The head of the Government’s central personnel agency is recommending major changes in Federal law to require the dismissal of Government employees found to be using illegal drugs. One of the proposals, by Constance Horner, director of the Federal Office of Personnel Management, would end the classification of Civil Service drug users as handicapped people who are to be treated rather than dismissed. Mrs. Horner recommended that her agency develop standards for drug screening of Federal employees, through urinalysis and other means, but said the heads of Government agencies should retain discretion over whether to order such tests. The proposals, set forth in a confidential memorandum to Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, are part of a comprehensive antidrug program being developed by the Administration. Mr. Meese presides over the Domestic Policy Council, a Cabinet-level advisory body that met today to discuss drug proposals.
Fourteen people described as mercenaries pleaded innocent in New Orleans to charges stemming from a plot to overthrow the government of Suriname. Authorities said members of the group planned to pose as financiers closing a bank deal, then seize power after taking hostage Commander in Chief Desi Bouterse, head of state of the small South American country. The defendants were indicted on charges of illegal foreign intervention and violating currency export laws.
Condemned murderer and rapist Michael Marnell Smith, 40, who spent more than eight years on Death Row, was executed in the electric chair at the Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond less than an hour after losing a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. He had been convicted of raping, strangling, drowning and stabbing a divorced mother of two who was attacked on a riverside stroll near Jamestown, Virginia, in 1977.
The police in Cleveland have accused a teen-age boy of using his home computer to break into computers nationwide, including those of school systems and Congress. Police Sgt. Lyle G. Westerfield of Rocky River said the boy was charged Tuesday in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court with theft of services and receiving stolen property. Sergeant Westerfield said he could not reveal the boy’s name because he is a juvenile. He said the boy used the long-distance telephone lines of Cleveland companies to hook up with computer systems in other cities, including those of the suburban Lakewood Schools, the Milwaukee school district, the University of Texas, and Congress.
A State Court of Appeal reinstated a criminal charge today against a fundamentalist woman who cited her ex-husband’s homosexuality as a motive for taking their son from him. The court Judge Earl Maas of Superior Court had erred in throwing out a child-stealing charge against the woman, Betty Lou Batey. Judge Maas had said the dismissal was justified on the ground of double jeopardy. Under an earlier civil contempt of court citation, Mrs. Batey was fined and briefly jailed for taking the boy, Brian Batey, now 15. Brian’s father, Frank Batey, was awarded custody in September 1982 when she refused to grant him court-ordered visitation. A few days later Brian disappeared. They reappeared 19 months later in Denver.
The drought is a great hardship to many of the Southeast’s small towns, particularly those that depend on surface streams or impoundments of water, and to rural people who depend on springs or shallow wells. In many regions, rivers are at or near record low levels, reservoirs have shrunk dramatically and springs that always previously produced water have gone dry.
A major new oil strike on Alaska’s frontier may generate a major battle between energy developers and wildlife conservationists. East of the Prudhoe oil field lies the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where a wide range of animals and waterfowl roam the tundra undisturbed.
A dinosaur did not have two rows of armor plates running down its spine, but only one, according to a major revision in thinking by paleontologists. The new theory could help explain how the upright fan-shaped plates provided the Stegosaurus dinosaur with an especially efficient solar heating and cooling system to allow them to move easily through different climates.
Major League Baseball:
In the only transaction today, the Toronto Blue Jays sell Joe Beckwith to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Cleveland Indians edged the Detroit Tigers, 8–7. Carmen Castillo’s run-scoring double capped a four-run rally in the eighth inning as the Indians survived three consecutive Detroit home runs and overcame an early six-run deficit. The loss was only the fourth in 15 games since the All-Star Game break for the Tigers, who built their lead on fifth-inning homers by Alan Trammell, Kirk Gibson and John Grubb. Cleveland ended its three-game losing streak.
Brian Downing and Bob Boone hit first-pitch grand slams in consecutive innings today to lead the California Angels to an 8–5 triumph over the Oakland A’s. The victory went to Mike Witt (11–7), who gave up nine hits, walked two and struck out six over six and one-third innings. With Oakland ahead by 2–0, Eric Plunk (3–7) walked Rob Wilfong to lead off the Angels’ third. Dick Schofield hit into a fielder’s choice and, after Boone flied out to center, Plunk issued walked Gary Pettis and Reggie Jackson to load the bases. Downing then hit the first pitch to him deep into the left-field seats for his second grand slam of the season and the sixth of his career. Boone’s grand slam came in the fourth. Plunk gave up a leadoff single to Doug DeCinces and then walked Jack Howell. Wilfong sacrificed and Schofield drew a walk to load the bases. Boone followed by driving Plunk’s first pitch into the left-field seats to make the score 8–2.
Pinch-hitter Candy Maldonado drew a bases-loaded walk from Gene Garber with one out in the ninth inning Thursday night, giving the San Francisco Giants a 3–2 victory over the Atlanta Braves. Garber walked leadoff man Jose Uribe to lead off the bottom of the ninth after the Braves had tied the score in the top of the inning. Winning pitcher Scott Garrelts sacrificed Uribe to second. Third baseman Rafael Ramirez then threw Dan Gladden’s grounder past first base, allowing Uribe to go to third. Robby Thompson walked to load the bases and Maldonado, the National League’s leading pinch-hitter with a .424 average, walked on a 3–2 pitch for his 18th pinch-hit RBI. Ken Griffey’s bloop single tied the game in the top of the ninth, costing Steve Carlton a chance at his 320th career victory.
Detroit Tigers 7, Cleveland Indians 8
California Angels 8, Oakland Athletics 5
Atlanta Braves 2, San Francisco Giants 3
Activity on Wall Street slowed substantially yesterday and stock prices dipped moderately as investors, waiting for two key economic reports today, decided to hold off on any new stock purchases. “There’s no question that right now a lot of major money managers and investors are on pins and needles,” said Hugh Johnson, a market analyst and economist with the First Albany Corporation. Mr. Johnson said he believes that concern over the economy is one factor keeping a lid on Wall Street’s enthusiasm. The Dow Jones industrial average, which has not moved much in either direction over the last few days, fell 4.08 points, to 1,775.31, yesterday.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1775.31 (-4.08)
Born:
Evgeni Malkin, Russian National Team and NHL centre (Olympics, 2006, 2010, 2014; NHL Champions, Stanley Cup-Penguins, 2009, 2016, 2017; NHL All-star, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2016; Pittsburg Penguins), in Magnitogorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.
Brian Orakpo, NFL linebacker (Pro Bowl, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2016; Washington Redskins, Tennessee Titans), in Houston, Texas.
Troy Kropog, NFL tackle (Tennessee Titans), in Metairie, Louisiana.
Wunmi Mosaku, Nigerian-English BAFTA Award-winning actress (“Loki”, “Sinners”, “Call Jane”), in Zaria, Nigeria.
Died:
Chiune Sugihara, 88, Japanese diplomat (Vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania, 1939-41), who issued thousands of travel visas to imperiled Jews.
Teddy Wilson, 73, American jazz pianist and arranger (Billie Holiday; Benny Goodman), dies of stomach cancer.
History Diaries 