A busy and manic news day, this July 8, 1983.
An 11-year-old American girl who worried that the Soviet Union might «art a ‘nuclear war arrived in Moscow today with suitcases of souvenirs and a “secret” present for the man who invited her, Soviet President Yuri V. Andropov. If Samantha Smith does get to meet the ailing 69-year- old Andropov, she’ll ask him: “Do you promise me the Soviet Union will never start a war?” the girl from Manchester, Maine, told a crowd of 50 newsmen upon her arrival today. Because of a letter she wrote to Andropov, Samantha and her parents were invited on a two-week tour of the Soviet Union. The Communist government is footing the bill, including about $10,000 for the family’s first-class airplane tickets.
Ten Soviet boys’ and girls who belong to the Young Pioneers, a Communist Party youth group, greeted her. The boys, in white shirts, red ties and navy shorts, and the girls, in skirts and blouses, gave her bouquets of flowers. Then a black Chaika limousine took Samantha and her parents out of Moscow’s Sheremyetovo Airport. With a Mercedes Benz Soviet militia car leading, the Smith motorcade drove to central Moscow. Samantha Smith told reporters at the airport: “The Americans are not going to start a war, either.
So why are we still making all these bombs and pointing them at each other?” She wore mauve slacks and a striped polo-shirt and had a yellow cardigan draped around her shoulders. Jane Smith said her daughter is “a good example of American youth and it will be good for Russians to get to meet her.” Her father, Arthur said: “Both East and West will enjoy good publicity from the visit”.
Meanwhile, Palestinian youths stabbed to death a Jewish seminary student in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron Thursday and escaped from irate Israeli settlers who torched Arab market stalls in retaliation, Israel Radio said. , Israeli military authorities immediately dismissed the appointed Arab mayor of Hebron, Mustafa Abdal Natche, and members of the Hebron City Council, charging “they contributed” to a growing number of disturbances in Hebron. The state-run radio reported ISO settlers from Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, massed in the ancient Arab souk, or marketplace, and set fire to the stalls of Arab vendors after the killing. The blaze burned out of control but there were no immediate reports of any casualties. The dead youth, Aharon Gross, 19, a student at a yeshiva or religious seminary in Hebron, was hitchhiking to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba when he was jumped by at least three Arabs, Israel radio reported.
And Robert Patrick Ricbter had always wanted to go to Cuba, his father said. The 26-year-old drifter, arrested Thursday in Havana for hijacking an Air Florida flight to Cuba, had expressed the desire time and again, but his father, John, said he never dreamed his son would go to such drastic lengths “He used to kid about going there,” said the elder Richter, a packaging businessman in Northfield, 111. “At one point I even offered to buy him a ticket, but I never thought be would do anything like this.” After interviewing the father Thursday night, FBI agents continued seeking information on Richter, ‘who that morning passed a note to a flight attendant ordering that Air Florida Flight 8, en route from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, fly to Havana. On arrival at Jose Marti International Airport, Richter emerged from the plane and kissed the ground. “He needs a lot of help. He’s going to need help from his father and his brothers,” the elder Richter said in a telephone interview from his home. The younger Richter, a computer programmer by trade, was a loner, a self-styled revolutionary who talked of despicable qualities of capitalism and longed to live in a Communist society, according to Xois Gendot, who lived next door to Richter during his childhood in Northfield, 15 miles north of Chicago. Mrs. Gendot said she didn’t understand how Richter developed such “radical” political ideas. “He was raised so well. Never needing, never wanting for anything,” she said.”
And while Samantha Smith mania was in full swing, that’s a little of what else happened in the world, this July 8, 1983 as presented by The CBS World News Roundup.
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