A plan to deploy American missiles in West Germany was approved by a vote of 286 to 226 in Bonn’s Parliament after an acrimonious two-day debate. A government spokesman said deployment would begin today.
Ten East German border guards riddled a 32-ton tanker truck with submachine gun bullets and captured its two occupants after the vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier during an attempt to cross the fortified border into West Germany, West German police said. Witnesses at the Helmstedt crossing said one of the two occupants appeared to have been wounded. Both were quickly taken away by the East German guards.
President Reagan told Foreign Minister Ilter Turkmen of Turkey today that the United States strongly opposed the proclamation of a Turkish Cypriot state in northern Cyprus last week. President Reagan urged the foreign minister of Turkey to seek a reversal of the formation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but the official offered no support. Reagan met in Washington with Ilter Turkmen one day after meeting with Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou concerning the partition of the island. Turkmen said that the focus of diplomatic efforts on Cyprus should be on negotiations to settle its future, not forcing the Turkish Cypriot community to renounce its independence.
An attempt to hijack a Soviet jetliner to Turkey ended in a firefight in which at least seven people were killed, according to reports reaching Moscow. The attempt was made by a group of young Georgians.
Viktor Korchnoi, the Soviet defector whose feuds with his homeland have caused turmoil at two previous world chess championships, won the first game of his 12-game semifinal elimination match against the favored 20-year-old Soviet grandmaster, Gary Kasparov, in London. The winners of this match and the other semifinal match-between Vasily Smyslov of the Soviet Union and Zoltan Ribli of Hungary-will meet to determine who will challenge world champion Anatoly Karpov of the Soviet Union in 1984.
It was Iranians who exploded the truck bomb in the American Marine compound in Beirut on October 23 with the “sponsorship and authority of the Syrian government,” Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said. His statement marked the strongest public accusation by the Reagan Administration to date on who was responsible for the attack that killed 239 American servicemen.
President Reagan met today with President Chaim Herzog of Israel and pledged America’s “unswerving commitment” to Israel’s security. “We have always had, and will continue to have, close relations with Israel,” Mr. Reagan said in an appearance with Mr. Herzog in the White House Rose Garden.
Afghan insurgents firing machine guns shot down a Soviet-made military MI-8 helicopter about 10 miles south of Kabul, killing an Afghan army general and 11 other people, including several Soviets, Western diplomatic sources in Islamabad, Pakistan, said. Major General Mohammed Abdul Azim, the most prominent victim of the Nov. 15 crash, was commander of the 8th Division, based at Kharga, northwest of Kabul.
Algerian-backed guerrillas fighting Morocco for control of the Western Sahara said they have met in secret with Moroccan officials. Mustafa Bachir, a member of the executive committee of the rebel Polisario Front, insisted that the Moroccans will have to negotiate because they cannot win the war in Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich territory given independence by Spain in 1976. He said that Morocco controls a perimeter around the phosphate mines but that the rest of the sparsely populated region is in Polisario hands.
Two North Koreans went on trial in Burma for setting a bomb that killed 21 people, including four members of the Seoul Cabinet and 13 other prominent South Koreans. The two suspects, captured two days after the October 9 bombing in Rangoon, have been identified by Burmese authorities as a major and a captain in the North Korean army. The Government has identified the defendants as Major Zin Mo and Captain Kang Mim Chul. They are accused of plotting the bomb attack at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum in Rangoon, where top South Korean leaders were gathered for a wreath-laying ceremony. Among the victims were four South Korean Cabinet ministers and other senior officials. President Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea, on a state visit to Burma, was on the way to the mausoleum when the blast occurred. Murder carries the death penalty in Burma.
Philippine opposition figures denounced a new presidential succession plan approved by the ruling party of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, saying it could lead to a military coup. They urged Marcos to resign immediately and call general elections. Members of Marcos’ New Society Movement have agreed to abolish a 15-member executive committee that would succeed the president if he leaves office and restore the vice presidency in 1987.
Honduran forces have crushed a group of what the State Department described as “Cuban-trained Honduran insurgents” backed by Nicaragua. Department spokesman John Hughes said the rebels, reportedly numbering about 100, were infiltrated across the border from Nicaragua in what he described as fresh evidence of Cuba’s policy of trying to export revolution, particularly in Central America.
The recent Congressional decision to cut off nearly all aid to Guatemala has diminished the country’s interest in a regional military alliance being promoted by the Reagan Administration, according to Guatemalan officials. The alliance, made up of Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Honduras, was established in 1963 in reaction to Cuba’s revolutionary movement, but has been inactive in recent years. United States officials have encouraged the revitalization of the pact, the Central American Defense Council, as a way to deal either offensively or defensively with Nicaragua, one of its original members.
The Guatemalan outlook toward the alliance is important because its army is generally considered the best in the region and its forces would have to be used to bolster those of El Salvador and Honduras if either country engaged in a war with Nicaragua. Foreign diplomats and local politicians said the Guatemalan leader, Brigadier General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, promoted the alliance earlier this year hoping to win aid from the Reagan Administration. But last week Congress again refused military aid, which was suspended in 1977, and voted to cut off $13 million in economic aid.
Hundreds of United States troops were flown home today in time for Thanksgiving, leaving 3,100 soldiers still in Grenada. This was the second day of such flights, and Major Douglas Frey, an Army spokesman, said 1,200 people were flown home in the two days. On Sunday, he said, there were 4,300 United States troops in Grenada, 2,300 of them combat soldiers and 2,000 support troops. Major Frey said the troop reductions were the first since November 11, when 700 paratroopers were flown back to the United States. At its height, soon after the invasion on October 25, the United States force numbered about 6,000.
President Reagan attends a Memorial Mass Service in honor of the 20th Anniversary of the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy. With President Reagan listening from a front pew, the gathering heard John Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline, read excerpts from his speeches fashioned into a posthumous litany. The congregation responded to the old words of the New Frontier with, “Lord, hear our prayer.”
John F. Kennedy was remembered by his family and political clan as an enduring leader on the 20th anniversary of his murder. On a brilliant day grayed by bitter memory, Senator Edward M. Kennedy addressed mourners at Washington’s Holy Trinity Church. “All of us,’ he said, “may not gather all together again, but for those of us who share the commitments, the compassion and the high hopes of John Kennedy, there will never be a last assembly.”
President Reagan attends a top-secret meeting with Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan. Reagan writes in his diary: “Don Regan came by for another top secret item. We’re going to change our currency. Copying machine including new ones due on the market in ’86 can duplicate existing paper money so realistically it’s almost impossible to tell the difference. Already we estimate somewhere near $100 mil. of counterfeit in circulation.”
Moscow marked the 20th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination with articles reflecting a regretful tone. They suggested that Mr. Kennedy, had he lived, might have fostered a “long-term turning of U.S. policy toward detente,” as a Kremlin expert expressed it.
A disclosure of recommendations that United States forces begin shelling Muslim positions in Lebanon has prompted President Reagan to order the Justice Department to make an investigation, a government official said. An official suggested that the President’s special Middle East envoy believed that the disclosure of the plan, made two months ago in a National Security Council meeting, had endangered his life. The source said that the inquiry, which the President was said to have initiated in mid-September with a letter to Attorney General William French Smith, is focusing on people present at the meetings last September 10 and 11. They were said to include top White House staff members, National Security Council members, and officials of the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. A particular concern at the meetings was the safety of the American marines in Beirut.
President Reagan meets with economic advisors and administration to discuss ways to reduce inflation.
The FBI has arrested three persons and is investigating 12 others in connection with strike-related incidents against Greyhound Lines, the company said in Phoenix on the 20th day of the nationwide walkout. Greyhound officials said the arrests involved an incident last Wednesday when striking workers cut in front of a bus on a Michigan highway, causing an accident. Meanwhile, locals of the 12,700-member Amalgamated Transit Union voted on the latest company proposal, which would cut employee wages 7.8% and reduce benefits. Results of the balloting are not expected until next Tuesday.
Seattle police have identified two more young prostitutes as possible victims of the “Green River” killer-raising the total as high as 21. The man police think has been killing streetwalkers for more than a year has been dubbed the Green River killer because the first slayings occurred near the river and not far from Jackson International Airport, south of Seattle. Since the summer of 1982, 11 bodies have been linked positively to the killer, and 9 other women are missing and presumed dead. Police have recovered the remains of another woman, found between the airport and the community of Federal Way.
The Administration has asked Congress to give the President’s Commission on Organized Crime the power to issue subpoenas and grant immunity from prosecution to obtain testimony. Justice Department spokesman Art Brill further announced that the 20-member commission-named by President Reagan July 28 to explore the organization and source of income of organized crime and to recommend changes in the law-will hold its first public hearing in Washington next Tuesday. Witnesses will include Attorney General William French Smith, FBI Director William H. Webster and Drug Enforcement Administrator Francis M. Mullen Jr.
Lobbyists spent at least $11,556,059 trying to influence Congress in the second quarter of this year, an increase of nearly 36% over the first quarter, according to congressional records. The cost of persuasion could go even higher in the third quarter of 1983. The preliminary total for that period is $8,322,254, which is 11% above the corresponding preliminary figure for the second quarter.
A South Carolina forest exposed to radiation in an experiment 20 years ago has failed to replenish itself, and some surviving trees aren’t growing normally, an ecologist said. Only a few seedlings, none more than four years old, have sprung up in the affected 40 acres on the federal land of the Savannah River Plant, said Frank McCormick, who headed the research team that irradiated the forest with gamma rays in 1964 and now teaches ecology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Researchers aren’t sure why the seedlings’ recovery was delayed, McCormick said.
Three men who were given the option of 30-year jail terms or castration after they pleaded guilty to raping and torturing a 23-year-old woman have appealed the sentences, attorneys said. The sentences were handed down last week in Anderson, South Carolina, by Judge C. Victor Pyle, who told Todd Braxton, 19; Mark Vaughn, 21, and Roscoe James Brown, 27, they could be released from jail at any time if they have the surgery.
Overcrowding in local jails is becoming as common as it is in the nation’s state and federal prisons. Around the country, lawsuits filed on behalf of inmates have prompted judges to order officials to remedy the situation. Lacking other remedies, officials in New York City and elsewhere have reduced the number of prisoners by releasing some.
A scandal in Puerto Rico worsened as the government acknowledged that two police eyewitnesses had testified that two young advocates of Puerto Rican independence were fatally shot after they surrendered to the police. Since 1978, the authorities have contended that the two men were slain when they began shooting at officers who had trapped them.
A Democratic rules dispute is flowing into Presidential politics. Conflicting accounts have emerged over how six of the eight Democratic Presidential aspirants were drawn into an escalating fight over the rules governing delegate selection between the state parties in Iowa and New Hampshire and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
White Sox outfielder Ron Kittle, who hit .254 with 35 home runs and 100 RBI, but also struck out a league-leading 150 times, wins the American League Rookie of the Year Award. Cleveland’s Julio Franco and Baltimore’s Mike Boddicker finish 2nd and 3rd.
The Players’ Association fires executive director Kenneth Moffett and chooses Donald Fehr as his successor.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1275.81 (+7.02).
Born:
Davin Joseph, NFL guard (Pro Bowl, 2008, 2011; Tampa Bay Buccaneers, St. Louis Rams), in Hallandale, Florida.
Tyler Hilton, American singer-songwriter, and actor (“One Tree Hill”), born in Palm Springs, California.
Corey Beaulieu, American heavy metal guitarist (Trivium), born in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
Died:
Michael Conrad, 58, American Emmy Award-winning actor (Sgt. Phil Esterhaus-“Hill Street Blues”), of cancer.
History Diaries 