French planes attacked installations in central Lebanon belonging to pro-Iranian Shiite militiamen suspected of involvement in recent truck-bomb attacks against French, American and Israeli forces in Lebanon. Lebanese officials said there had been extensive damage. Casualties appeared to be heavy.
President Reagan attends a National Security Council meeting. Washington should now decide whether American jets should also attack the pro-Iranian group believed to be responsible for the terrorist attacks on American, French and Israeli forces, according to high-ranking Reagan Administration officials. A senior State Department official said that if all the suitable targets in the area where the pro-Iranian Shiites are based had been destroyed, there might not be any point in ordering an air attack now.
U.S. arms negotiator Paul H. Nitze met for more than two hours with the chief Soviet delegate in Geneva and said the missile reduction talks will continue — even though the Soviets have repeatedly threatened to walk out when new U.S. missiles are deployed in Western Europe in December. The negotiators agreed to meet again next Wednesday. In Paris, Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi sided with the Soviets on a key issue, saying that the 162 French and British nuclear missiles should be counted in the Geneva negotiations.
Pravda said today that the new proposals on medium-range missiles made by the United States this week were not aimed at saving the Geneva negotiations, “but, on the contrary, at finally drowning hopes for elaboration of an agreement in Geneva.” An editorial for Friday’s edition of the Communist Party daily newspaper, issued today by the Soviet press agency Tass, dismissed the new negotiating stance under the headline “Washington Practices Trickery Again.” The American proposal was to place a global limit on medium-range warheads wielded by the United States and the Soviet Union at 420 to each side. The proposal equates a United States total of 420 single-warhead medium-range missiles with a total of 140 Soviet triple-warhead SS-20s.
Opposition Social Democratic leaders in West Germany ignored a plea by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to preserve Western unity and came out against deployment of new U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe. The party’s National Committee, by a vote of 27 to 5, recommended that a special party convention this weekend reject the deployment of U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise medium-range missiles. Meanwhile, the West German anti-nuclear movement announced plans to besiege Parliament in Bonn next Monday to protest the deployment plans.
An American naval officer and his Greek driver were slain with the same weapon that terrorists used in 1975 to murder the C.I.A. station chief in Athens, according to the capital’s Police Department, which called the finding preliminary. The 1975 slaying remains unsolved.
The Polish Government has reduced charges against seven Solidarity leaders who have been in custody for nearly two years without trial, one of their lawyers said today. The seven had been charged with trying to overthrow Poland’s Communist system, which carries a maximum sentence of death. The lawyer, Wladyslaw Sila-Nowicki, said the Government prosecutor informed defense lawyers last week that the charges had been reduced to conspiracy to overthrow the system, which carries a one- to 10-year sentence, Four Solidarity advisers are also awaiting trial on the lesser charge. All have been in custody since the martial law declaration in December 1981 that suspended Solidarity, the only free trade union in the Soviet bloc.
Two North Koreans captured after the bomb explosion in Rangoon that killed 4 South Korean Cabinet ministers and 17 others are likely to go on trial for their lives soon, diplomats said today. The Burmese Government broke diplomatic relations with North Korea this month, saying confessions by the two men showed Pyongyang was behind the October 9 blast. The North Koreans were captured separately within days of the explosion, which was believed aimed at President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea, who was on an official visit to Burma. Both men apparently tried to commit suicide with hand grenades and were severely wounded. The informants said the captured men were now well enough to appear in court and would probably be tried for high treason, which carries a maximum sentence of hanging in Burma. They said no date had been set for the trial, but it was expected to start soon and would probably be held in open court.
Two U.S. troopers were wounded slightly by snipers on Grenada, according to military spokesmen. The incident raised to 115 the number of Americans wounded there. Snipers fired on a U.S. observation post on an island off the coast of Grenada, slightly wounding two soldiers. A U.S. military spokesman on Grenada, Major Douglas Frey, said the latest shooting occurred before dawn on Green Island, just off Grenada’s northeast coast. One soldier was hit in the arm and the other in the leg, he said. They were not identified. A search failed to locate the snipers. It was the first shooting incident since Monday, when soldiers in the hills in the southeast part of the main island heard automatic weapons fire. No one was hurt.
Six foreign journalists said they saw 20 bodies and seven fresh graves in an area where Salvadoran guerrillas and their supporters reported that army troops November 4 rounded up and shot to death more than 100 people, including women and children. The journalists reached the area, near Lake Suchitlan about 40 miles northeast of San Salvador, by crossing the lake in an open boat. The boat capsized in a storm, but all returned safely to the capital. They said they were given a list of 117 killed by the troops, and residents of three villages gave similar accounts of a massacre. A military spokesman promised to investigate.
Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge proclaimed a policy of permanent, unarmed neutrality but said that his country will continue its traditional role in regional politics and the promotion of democracy. Costa Rica’s reputation as the neutral “Switzerland of Central America” has been sullied somewhat by recent disputes with Nicaragua, which accuses Costa Rica of providing refuge for anti-Sandinista guerrillas.
Guatemala has dispersed rebels by mobilizing its civilian population, according to church officials and foreign diplomats. They said that in less than two years the Guatemalan government has mobilized more than 700,000 men, or nearly 10 percent of the population, in “self-defense” patrols that have at least temporarily limited the leftist guerrillas’ base of popular support.
Two of Bolivia’s five most wanted drug traffickers have been arrested, a senior government official said. The official, Gustavo Sanchez, Under Secretary of the Interior, said at a news conference Wednesday night that Jorge Flores and Jorge Cuellar were detained in a police raid in the northeastern region of Beni last Sunday. They were found in possession of 52 pounds of cocaine and $54,000, Mr. Sanchez said.
Sudanese army commandos freed two British oil workers in an attack on a rebel base in southern Sudan, the army said. Seven French and two Pakistani workers, also abducted Tuesday, were still missing. The rebels had threatened to kill their hostages within 48 hours if the pro-U.S. government of President Jaafar Numeiri did not meet their demands to halt work on canal and oil pipeline projects in the area. Numeiri blamed the abductions on Libya and Ethiopia. The two freed hostages, British employees of the American oil company Chevron, were abducted Tuesday near Bentiu, 470 miles south of Khartoum. Bentiu is the site of Chevron’s Rub Kona base camp, near two newly discovered oilfields. About 150 miles away, rebels kidnapped seven Frenchmen and two Pakistani employees of a French-run canal project the same night. But today’s army statement made no mention of those men.
Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda announced that the Kenyan-Tanzanian border will reopen immediately after being closed for six years. The move, after a summit of the three nations’ leaders in Arusha, Tanzania, is expected to boost trade and tourism. Socialist Tanzania had ordered closure of the 450-mile border with capitalist-oriented Kenya, apparently with the aim of protecting Tanzania’s economy while hurting Kenya’s. Many observers believe that the strategy backfired.
A Soviet guided-missile frigate that was apparently shadowing the United States aircraft carrier Ranger had a “minor collision” with an American destroyer today in the northern Arabian Sea, the Defense Department reported tonight. There were no American casualties and the collision was so slight that it appeared there were no Soviet injuries either. It occurred at about 3:30 P.M. New York time, a spokesman for the Defense Department said. The vessels involved were the USS Fife, a destroyer with the United States Seventh Fleet, and the Soviet guided-missile frigate Razyashchy. The spokesman said the United States had protested to the Soviet Union through the Incident at Sea agreement between the two countries. An official at the Soviet Embassy said tonight that he had no information on the incident. “The Fife sustained only two 15-foot scuff marks in the incident,” the spokesman said.
No deficit-reducing bills can be adopted before Congress adjourns for the year despite the likelihood of a $200 billion budget gap in this fiscal year, members of Congress said. But in their drive to adjourn on schedule, they moved to compromise on the military budget for the fiscal year ending September 30 and to break a long stalemate over the United States contribution to the International Monetary Fund. After weeks of negotiation, the Senate reluctantly approved a much-amended compromise measure authorizing the United States to lend an additional $8.4 billion to the monetary fund.
Nerve gas arms were opposed by Congressional conferees who rejected the Reagan Administration’s plan to resume production of the weapons. But the conferees cleared the way to begin testing of an antisatellite weapon. The elimination of funds for production of chemical weapons thus appeared to end for this year another chapter in a struggle that began in 1973 when the Army first proposed production of new nerve gases that would mix to become fatal after a projectile was on the way to the target. They would replace the existing stocks of chemical weapons that would be fatal if employed in their present form. This year, the House voted against the chemical weapons while the Senate approved the measure when Vice President Bush broke a tie vote. The decision against chemical weapons, for which the Defense Department and the Reagan Administration had vigorously lobbied, involved a relatively small amount of money, $124.4 million. It would have financed the production of 155-millimeter artillery shells containing nerve gas, components of the gas and production facilities.
President Reagan participates in a Swearing-in Ceremony for Susan Phillips as Chairman of the Commodity Futures Traders Commission.
Greyhound buses rolled again, but with few passengers as striking employees tried to block buses in angry and sometimes violent confrontations around the country. The strikers, upset by the company’s decision to replace them with new employees, demonstrated at Greyhound terminals, taunted people who crossed their lines and, at some points, surrounded buses, beat on the sides and bent rear-view mirrors.
The role of women in the church will be the subject of a pastoral letter by the National Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops. Bishop Joseph L. Imesch said the statement would take at least four years to write and would examine the possibility of wider roles for women within the boundaries of church law.
A decision on formaldehyde was rescinded by the Environmental Protection Agency after heavy criticism. The agency said it would now solicit public comment to determine whether the widely used building and insulation material and preservative should be regulated as a cancer-causing substance.
Fifty-six cars of a Santa Fe Railway freight train derailed in a narrow canyon in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico early today, and some of the overturned cars caught fire. Gasoline tanks in a load of new automobiles exploded, a cargo of paper napkins fluttered across the tracks and whiskey flowed into the creek. “Flames were shooting probably 100 to 200 feet high,” said Elliott Ferrer, fire chief of Mountainair. “It was quite a sight at 2 o’clock in the morning.”
Heart disease caused by smoking cigarettes will kill 170,000 Americans this year, the federal government said in a report on smoking and health.
The telephone industry workplace is being transformed by computers. The companies say the changes improve customer service and increase productivity. But union officials and many workers say the changes are often detrimental to employees, generating work speedups, extensive monitoring and loss of jobs.
Secretary of Labor Raymond J. Donovan must testify at the trial of two former union leaders accused of lying to a special grand jury, a federal judge ruled in New York. The defendants, Louis Sanzo and Amadio Petito, are charged with lying to a panel that sought to determine whether Schiavone Construction, partly owned by Donovan, allowed union officials to create “no-show jobs” on a New York subway project in the late 1970s. The court appearance will mark the first time Donovan has testified publicly about any of the allegations against him that led to a special prosecutor’s investigation last year.
Republicans and producer-state Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee defeated an effort to roll back natural gas prices by 5% to 10%, killing the prospects for any such legislation this year. The committee refused 23 to 19 to support a bill sponsored by its chairman, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Michigan), that would have lowered federal price ceilings on about half the nation’s supply of natural gas to their August, 1982, levels.
Rita M. Lavelle used the $1.6-billion “superfund” toxic waste cleanup program “to help Republican candidates be elected,” a prosecution lawyer charged on the opening day of the fired Environmental Protection Agency official’s trial in Washington. But a defense attorney told the federal jury that Lavelle gave false testimony to congressional panels only because she was confused and had been “set up” by government lawyers. The former head of the hazardous waste cleanup program is charged with perjury and obstructing a congressional investigation.
A Senate subcommittee chairman said he will seek contempt of Congress charges against Anthony (Big Tuna) Accardo because of the refusal of the alleged Chicago mob figure to answer the panel’s questions. Accardo, 77, who described himself as a retired beer salesman, refused 40 times to respond to questions about organized crime, his sources of income and reputed control of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union. The panel, headed by Senator William V. Roth Jr. (R-Delaware), has been investigating alleged skimming of union benefit funds by organized crime.
The Administration’s chief civil rights enforcer was accused at a Senate hearing of “doing an end run around the Constitution” by failing to vigorously protect mentally retarded persons from abuse in public institutions. But Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds contended that the Administration’s shift in policy-toward negotiating with state officials to correct mistreatment of the retarded-avoids years of litigation.
The Administration’s top arms control official, anticipating the possibility of increased public demand for a nuclear freeze as a result of a television movie scheduled to air Sunday about the destruction of a Midwestern town by nuclear weapons, warned against “simple formulas” to nuclear arms control problems. L. Kenneth Adelman, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, told a news conference in Los Angeles that he and his staff had seen the ABC movie, “The Day After.” He called it a powerful, powerful presentation,” but said the picture was not effective in portraying a solution to the problems.”
Two Idaho deer hunters stranded on a windy mountain survived by killing their horses and crawling into the carcasses to keep warm. Richard Dailey, 35 years old, and Steven McCoy, 27, said today they owed their lives to the horses’ warmth and to encouraging each other. “If I’d been alone, I would have laid down and died,” Mr. Dailey, said by telephone from his home in Caldwell, 18 miles west of Boise.
“La Tragedie de Carmen” opens at Beaumont Theater NYC for 187 performances.
Film “Yentl” produced, directed and starring Barbra Streisand and Mandy Patinkin premieres, based on play and story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Kansas City Royals teammates Willie Wilson, Willie Aikens, and Jerry Martin, who, along with former teammate Vida Blue, had pleaded guilty to attempting to purchase cocaine, are each sentenced to 3 months in prison.
The Philadelphia Flyers win their 13th straight NHL game.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1254.67 (+3.35).
Born:
Christopher Paolini, American novelist (“Eragon”), in Los Angeles, California.
Ryan Braun, MLB left fielder and third baseman (All-Star, 2008-2012, 2015; Milwaukee Brewers), in Mission Hills, California.
Nick Markakis, MLB right fielder (All-Star, 2018; Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves), in Woodstock, Georgia.
Scott Moore, MLB third baseman, first baseman and second baseman (Chicago Cubs, Baltimore Orioles, Houston Astros),in Long Beach, California.
Trevor Crowe, MLB outfielder (Cleveland Indians, Houston Astros), in Portland, Oregon.
Eric Winston, NFL tackle (Houston Texans, Kansas City Chiefs, Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals), Midland, Texas.
Tony Ugoh, NFL tackle (NFL Champions, Super Bowl 46-Giants, 2011; Indianapolis Colts, New York Giants), in Houston, Texas.
Reggie Corner, NFL cornerback (Buffalo Bills), in Canton, Ohio.
Harry Lloyd, English actor (“Game of Thrones”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
History Diaries 