Week of January 8, 1988
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announces that the Soviet Union will
unilaterally reduce its armed forces by half a million men and withdraw thousands
of troops and tanks from Eastern Europe.
An earthquake rocks Armenia virtually destroying cities with tens of thousands of
people dead.
PLO Chairman
Yasser Arafat
, addressing a special
session in Geneva of the U.N General Assembly,
says that Palestinians want to live in peace
alongside Israel and are ready to join its leaders in
seizing “a historic, possibly irreplaceable opportunity”
to negotiate a lasting settlement of the 40-year-old
Arab-Israeli dispute.
A Soviet military transport plane carrying rescue
workers and relief supplies to victims of the
devastating earthquake in northern Armenia
crashes, killing all 78 aboard.
Vice President-elect Dan Quayle will be replaced in the senate by republican rep.
Dan Coats, a former aide recently elected to a fifth term as an Indiana
congressman.
At least 36 are dead and 150 injured when two crowded commuter trains crashed
outside Britain’s busiest rail junction in London and a third plowed into the
wreckage, creating a vast tangle of crushed metal.
President and Mrs. Reagan phone Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his
wife to offer U.S. sympathy and aid to the victims of a massive earthquake in the
Soviet Union.
Jean Harris
, the former girls’ school headmistress
who is serving a 15-year prison term for slaying diet
doctor Herman Tarnower, asks Gov Mario Cuomo for
clemency.
The National Enquirer tabloid paper is put up for sale.
Founder Generoso Pope Jr. who died Oct. of a heart
attack at his beachfront home, built it from a small New
