Photograph: President Ronald Reagan addresses U.S. Troops at Camp Liberty Bell in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea, 13 November 1973 (November 12 in the U.S.).
A tour in the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea and a visit to the American troops based there was on the schedule of President Reagan. “You are on the front lines of freedom,” Mr. Reagan told the Americans in remarks prepared for the visit.
President Reagan addresses the General Assembly of South Korea.
Pope John Paul II urged scientists to abandon their “laboratories and factories of death” and replace them with “laboratories of life” at a special Vatican audience for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The Pope stopped just short of explicitly urging all military researchers to quit their jobs. An aide to the Pope, who contributed some ideas to the speech, said the Pope had strongly implied that military research should be abandoned.
Yasser Arafat wants guarantees of security before he will leave the Tripoli area in northern Lebanon, where he withdrew his forces last week. He declined to define the security guarantees, but an aide said they included the withdrawal from the Tripoli area of the P.L.O. rebel forces, a consolidation of the current cease-fire agreement, a guarantee that he be allowed to return to Tripoli and the deployment of Arab League truce observers.
Yuri V. Andropov, after a year in office that began with promises of change, seems overshadowed by the same doubts and questions that hung over the last years of his predecessor, Leonid I. Brezhnev: Does the man at the center have the vigor, power, or above all, the time to take charge? The questions arose last June when Mr. Andropov missed his first meeting with the West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, and they increased when he dropped from public view in mid-August.
The Soviet Union denied American charges that it resumed bombarding the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with low-level microwaves after a five-year hiatus. Ambassador Arthur Hartman said last week that microwave transmission was detected in July and continued until October 19. He stressed that the levels were not high enough to endanger embassy personnel and suggested that the transmission might have been intended to disrupt communications. Moscow labeled Hartman’s charges unfounded, according to the official Soviet news agency Tass.
Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the illegal Irish Republican Army, elected as its president Gerry Adams, a member of the British House of Commons from Belfast. The unopposed election of Adams at the movement’s annual congress in Dublin transfers control of Sinn Fein from old-guard leaders in the Irish capital to younger militants in Northern Ireland. It was regarded as the most decisive power shift in the organization since Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence began in earnest in 1969. Adams, 34, succeeds 55-year-old Ruairi O’Bradaigh, president of Sinn Fein for 14 years.
The military government of Turkey has approved a tough press law under which editors and writers would face long prison sentences and heavy fines for publishing articles found to threaten national security or offend public morality. Publishers found guilty of the same offense would face temporary closure of their publications and confiscation of their printing presses. The ruling National Security Council adopted the press law on Thursday, only days before the new civilian Parliament is to convene and take over legislative powers. The military rulers’ action was seen as a blow not only to the press but also to the winner of last Sunday’s parliamentary elections, Turgut Ozal, who is expected to become the new Prime Minister. Mr. Ozal said in an interview on Thursday that he favored a free, responsible press.
Policemen in Holland searching for Alfred H. Heineken, the kidnapped chairman of Heineken Breweries, have turned their attention to Dutch organized crime, police sources said today. Police sources said some aspects of the abduction on Wednesday pointed to an experienced gang that had apparently planned the operation for several months. The police sources noted that the van used in the kidnapping was stolen in July. The police sources added that the kidnappers were unlikely to have risked crossing a border and were presumably able to arrange “safe houses” as well as having access to automatic weapons.
Twenty Poles defected to Sweden after a Polish steamer stopped at a port near Stockholm last weekend, police said. The defectors slipped away from a group of passengers who had left the ship, docked in Nynashamn, for a sightseeing tour of the area, and most of them immediately applied for permission to remain in Sweden. Authorities said they would consider the requests.
Acts of violence in Guatemala have begun to increase since the overthrow of Brigadier General Efrain Rios Montt three months ago, according to church officials, politicians and foreign diplomats. Diplomats and Guatemalan political leaders believe the promise made by the country’s present ruler, Brigadier General Oscar Mejia Victores, to establish civilian rule and eliminate secret tribunals has been undermined by his criticisms of the Roman Catholic church.
Ripples from the Caribbean washed Nicaragua’s shores last week. In Managua, Victor Tirado Lopez, one of the nine members of the Sandinista junta, warned that “foreign” troops might come to the aid of United States-backed Nicaraguan rebels who, he said, had failed to seize a portion of the country’s territory. Mr. Tirado accused the Reagan Administration of trying to revive the Central American Defense Council, a largely inactive grouping of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, as an instrument of aggression against Nicaragua. He appeared to have the American operation against Grenada in mind. “We have powerful enemies who have tried to destroy us,” he said. “President Reagan has assumed the right to invade wherever he pleases.”
Further cause for Nicaraguan concern lay in reports of a secret meeting last month at which the chiefs of staff of Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador considered the legality of joint military action against the Sandinista regime. Direct American participation was recommended “in case of extreme crisis.” Ruben Zamora, a Salvadoran rebel leader, said he expected American troops would intervene in his country first before going into Nicaragua. He predicted the Americans would act to prevent the defeat of the Salvadoran Government.
A Peruvian police guard was killed and three were wounded in a wave of terror by radical leftist guerrillas seeking to disrupt today’s municipal elections by attacking political party headquarters and other buildings in Lima. The dynamite and machine-gun blasts panicked shopkeepers and pedestrians in the central part of the Peruvian capital and prompted police to divert traffic. Security had been tightened at police stations, major hotels and embassies — all recent targets of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) guerrillas.
Leaders of the Philippines’ 5 million Muslims threatened to secede and form an autonomous state unless a plan for national reconciliation is adopted to avert “impending chaos and a bloodbath.” In a meeting at the suburban Manila residence of Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, moderate Muslim leaders threatened secession and expressed support for Sin’s call for national unity, a spokesman for the cardinal said.
Divers examining the wreckage of a U.S. oil-drilling vessel that sank during a typhoon in the South China Sea with 81 people aboard found a huge rip in the deck and side of the vessel. Shipping officials refused to speculate on the cause of the damage or on what caused the Glomar Java Sea to sink October 25. The divers also found evidence that two lifeboats seemed to have been properly launched, suggesting that some crewmen were able to abandon ship in an orderly manner, officials said. However, no survivors have been found.
Rebels in Zimbabwe killed an Austrian Catholic missionary in the southwestern province of Matabeleland, a government spokesman announced. It was the first slaying of a religious worker since the end of the nation’s civil war in 1980. Brother Mathias Sutterluety, 49, who had worked in the country for 14 years, was abducted from Embakwe Mission near the town of Plumtree along with other missionaries as they worked on a fence. Sutterluety, a member of the Mariannhill order, was killed and the others were freed, a government spokesman said without elaborating.
The fact that some people are violently opposed to American foreign policy was brought uncomfortably close to home late one night last week when a bomb exploded outside the Senate Democratic leader’s Capitol office. Responsibility for the explosion, which caused no injuries but ripped the outer doors off Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd’s office and damaged furniture and portraits, was claimed by a group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit. It said it was protesting American military presence in Lebanon and Grenada. A group using the same name took credit for bombing the National War College building in April, and investigators said similar devices had been used in 10 or 11 bombings of Federal facilities since 1981. Congress responded the next day by approving measures to tighten Capitol security. Entrances open to the public were reduced from 10 to 4 and metal detectors already in place were calibrated for greater sensitivity. In addition, Capitol police instituted more thorough searches of visitors and their parcels.
The newest plan to reduce planting for next year’s wheat crop offered by the Reagan Administration appears to have been rejected overwhelmingly by farmers, according to federal officials, farmers and agricultural experts. The rejection, combined with fine planting weather this fall, has brought many preliminary forecasts that the wheat harvest next spring and summer will be the largest in American history, with wide economic and political effects.
A Pentagon ‘whistle blower,’ A. Ernest Fitzgerald, said he was being blocked from carrying out his duties as one of the chief cost cutters for the Air Force and might have to seek relief in federal court.
Greyhound bus drivers and other workers have been asked by the company to tell supervisors by noon tomorrow whether they will return to work and end the walkout that began a week and a half ago. A company spokesman said Greyhound would then determine the manpower available and try to resume bus service later this week.
Four die in a train crash in Marshall, Texas. Four people were reported killed and at least 91 were injured this morning when an 11-car Amtrak passenger train derailed nine miles north of this East Texas city. Most of the injured were released after treatment at hospitals here, but three people were listed in critical condition late today. The bodies of four women were pulled from the wreckage, according to the authorities. United Press International reported tonight that one victim had been identified as Dorothy Blask, 77 years old, of Dallas, but the other names were being withheld pending notification of relatives. Investigators were still trying to determine the cause of the derailment late today.
Residents in nearby houses said their homes shook and they heard a loud roar as the last four cars of the train derailed about 10:15 A.M. The train, the Eagle, began its trip in Chicago and was destined for San Antonio. Passengers said there had been no indication of any problem before the train jumped off the track. “It started bumping a little like it was running on the ties or something,” said Willie Ray, 39, who was working in the dining car. “Then the next thing I knew I was flying through the air like Superman.” Another passenger, Patricia Sanders of Pevely, Missouri, near St. Louis, said she had been crocheting at her seat in the second car from the rear of the train when the accident occurred. “I didn’t hear anything at all until it happened,” she said. “I was sitting there, and then I was flying towards the window.”
Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, urged teachers to accept some unpleasant compromises, such as competence tests and merit pay, in order to fend off the threat of increased private school enrollment. “We must make people believe the public school system is changing for the better,” Shanker told the AFT’s Eastern regional conference. Tuition tax credits are the greatest threat to public school systems, he said, quoting surveys showing that 36% of blacks and 44% of Latinos would enroll their children in public schools.
Striking copper workers at the Arizona plants in Morenci and Ajo should “pack up and leave” because there is no future for them with Phelps Dodge Corp., said Jack Ladd, the company’s director of labor relations. Ladd disputed a suggestion by union representatives that progress is being made toward settling the strike that began July 1. “The sooner those people… realize that they are finished, the better off they will be,” Ladd said. Phelps Dodge has hired replacements for the strikers and said their only chance to be rehired would be when vacancies occurred through attrition.
Officials of the youth organization Camp Fire, citing their concern about youngsters’ fears of nuclear war, voted to launch a peace education program for its 400,000 members in 300 local chapters across the country. “Studies show that children feel the world is coming to an end and there is no use planning for the future or thinking about having a family,” said Evelyn de Ghetaldi, Camp Fire president and author of the resolution. “We want to bring the children out of despair and give them a feeling for the future.”
The fact that men held most leadership roles in biblical times doesn’t mean today’s Christians must hold to the same arrangements, a priest and a nun said as 75 Roman Catholic bishops began a weekend meeting in Washington, D.C., with women’s groups on the role of women in the church. Speaking of men’s role in biblical societies, Father Eugene LaVerdiere said, “The mere presence of a practice in the New Testament does not bind the church to that practice today. Neither does the absence of a practice in the New Testament exclude that practice today.” Sister Dianne Bergant, making a similar argument, said the limitations of the earlier societies “neither invalidate the fundamental religious message… nor do they preclude contemporary changes.” The meeting is not expected to produce any significant changes for Catholic women, who cannot become priests or hold other high church offices.
A tiny 9-month-old boy described as “a little fighter” struggled for his life at University of Minnesota Hospitals after a six-hour liver transplant operation. Joshua Brooks of Laurinburg, North Carolina, was listed in “very critical condition” after surgery but later he was said to be improving. Joshua’s operation was complicated by heart problems and kidney failure, but he rallied after the transplant, prompting a family spokesman to say, “He’s a little fighter all the way.” Joshua received the liver of a brain-dead baby.
A gunman firing wildly from a hotel room across the street from Disneyland in Anaheim, California, injured one woman and forced the evacuation of 100 people from three motels before he surrendered today after a all-night standoff with the police. The woman was cut on the nose by flying glass. The police took the gunman into custody about 8:47 this morning, after he had fired “numerous shots” through a window. He was captured when he opened the door of his room in the Sands Motel to let his dog out.
Government officials planned to begin slaughtering millions of chickens this weekend in a federally financed effort to stop an epidemic of poultry flu in southeastern Pennsylvania. The State Health Department said the two virus strains causing the outbreak are not harmful to people but one is deadly to chickens. Officials began visiting farms Friday to assess the birds’ market value. The Federal Government has agreed to reimburse farmers for the entire value of chickens killed. The farmers must agree on the terms of reimbursement before their chickens are destroyed.
Icy gales gusting up to 50 m.p.h. thrashed the Northeast and churned up breakers on the southern Great Lakes as the Coast Guard suspended a search for people who had radioed that they were abandoning a boat in high waves east of Chicago. An accident on an icy road claimed the life of a woman in South Dakota as up to three inches of snow blanketed the state. And a snowstorm that left three persons dead in Pennsylvania and clogged Pittsburgh’s airport with up to five inches of snow moved into Maryland’s mountains, piling up five inches of snow in 20-degree cold. Snow was half a foot deep in parts of western New York state and slippery roads caused 80 highway accidents near Binghamton, New York. One fatality was reported.
The New Jersey Devils play their first overtime game, and lose to the Calgary Flames 4-3.
Born:
Charlie Morton, MLB pitcher (World Series Champions, 2017-Astros, 2021-Braves; All-Star, 2018, 2019; Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates, Houston Astros, Tampa Bay Rays), in Flemington, New Jersey.
Matt Ryan, Canadian NHL centre (Los Angeles Kings), in Sharon, Ontario, Canada.
Steve Huffman, American web developer (CEO and co-founder of Reddit), in Lansing, Michigan.
The new #1 song in the U.S. this week in 1983: Lionel Richie — “All Night Long (All Night)”
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