President Reagan meets with Prime Minister of the State of Israel Yitzhak Shamir to discuss the situation in the Middle East. A new high-level U.S.-Israeli panel will be established to coordinate military planning, joint military exercises and a stockpiling of American weapons in Israel. The plan to create the political-military committee was announced by President Reagan and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir after two days of talks in Washington.
The U.S. Central Command, responsible for protecting U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean region, will establish a small floating headquarters there, the Pentagon said. A staff of up to 20 officers and men will be stationed aboard a Navy ship sailing with a small flotilla called the Middle East Force, which normally consists of two or three destroyers operating mainly in the Persian Gulf. The command’s main headquarters is at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.
Israel urged the Soviet Union to end an “ominous campaign of anti-Semitic incitement” and permit the departure of Jews wishing to emigrate. Addressing the U.N. General Assembly’s Social Committee, Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Z. Blum cited an “increasing volume and ferocity of anti-Semitic incitement in the government-controlled media, masquerading as anti-Zionism.” The Soviets, Blum noted, have severely curtailed emigration to Israel, and articles in the Soviet press have attacked Jewish culture, including the study of Hebrew, as subversive and treasonous.
Palestinians on the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River staged scattered protests to mark the 36th anniversary of the U.N. decision to partition Palestine. Israeli troops were out in force to maintain order. Jewish settlers have threatened vigilante action against Arab protesters. Arab students at Nablus University went on strike, and Arab merchants in Jerusalem and Ramallah did not open their stories until midday.
Iran is allocating almost $11 million a day to the war against Iraq in the next fiscal year and will, if necessary, increase this figure to this year’s level of $16 million daily, Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi told Parliament. Moussavi presented a budget totaling $48.2 billion for the fiscal year starting in March. In a speech to Parliament broadcast on Tehran radio, Moussavi said $4 billion will be allocated for direct war expenses, and that this figure could be raised to $5.7 billion, the expected level for this year.
Afghanistan’s Defense Minister, General Abdel Qader, reportedly escaped an assassination attempt in Kabul on November 10, a Western diplomat in Pakistan said today. According to the diplomat, two gunmen in a car shot at General Qader as he was getting out of his limousine near his home after work. The general was uninjured, but two soldiers, presumably his bodyguards, were slightly wounded, the diplomat said, quoting what he called credible reports from Kabul. The diplomat said the assailants escaped. In mid-May, General Qader reportedly was attacked by his deputy, who was said to be disgruntled over his career at the Defense Ministry. General Qader has reportedly been under pressure because he is considered responsible for ordering the bombing of Herat this spring in the war against the insurgents. The bombings reportedly destroyed up to 40 percent of the city and caused civilian casualties.
Strategic arms talks continued in Geneva. American officials took Soviet attendance at the session as a sign that Moscow will continue the talks next year despite having walked out of the negotiations on intermediate-range missiles.
The Soviet nuclear energy program has been set back because the biggest reactor-manufacturing plant was built too close to a reservoir, where the waters are washing away its foundations, Soviet sources said. The sources could provide few details about the extent of the damage to the Atommash plant, near the Tsimlyanskoye reservoir about 600 miles southeast of Moscow. The Atommash plant is one of three installations built to provide the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies with the reactors needed to produce electricity.
The USSR performs a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk.
Lech Walesa’s wife, Danuta, will be allowed to travel to Norway to receive his Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, the Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, said today. But Mrs. Walesa said she would not make the journey unless a man named by Mr. Walesa to accompany her is granted a travel visa. Mr. Walesa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the now-outlawed Solidarity labor movement, had named his wife, their oldest son Bogdan, 13 years old, and a union adviser, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 56, to receive the prize on his behalf. “Mrs. Walesa will be granted a passport,” Mr. Urban said, adding that Bogdan would also be allowed to go. But Mr. Mazowiecki said he was told by passport officials today that they could not consider his case before December 12.
The Bonn prosecutor’s office announced it intends to indict Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff on charges of taking bribes. The prosecutor asked the West German Parliament to lift Mr. Lambsdorff’s parliamentary immunity. It also said that Hans Friderichs, a former economics minister and chairman of West Germany’s second largest bank, had been indicted along with three others in what the prosecution says was a large payoff scheme.
Socialist and Socialist-led regimes have come to power in every country in southern Europe for the first time in history. But this remarkable turnabout in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece has in no way changed the pro-American alignment of this half of the Continent or endangered United States military interests in the Mediterranean.
Two visa applications were rejected by the Reagan Administration. It turned down travel requests from the Interior Minister of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the leading right-wing political figure in El Salvador. The State Department said the United States had turned down requests from Tomas Borge, the Nicaraguan minister, and Roberto d’Aubuisson, President of the Salvadoran Constituent Assembly. Administration officials said that the State Department had favored granting the visas, but that the White House had overruled it. The actions came as Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth W. Dam declared American opposition to “would-be dictators of both left and right.” In a speech to the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, Mr. Dam said “the killers – whether they are left-wing guerrillas or right-wing death squads – must be stopped” if Central American countries are to achieve stability.
Thirty Japanese fighters scrambled from four bases in Kyushu and Okinawa to head off a formation of nine Soviet bombers flying close to southwestern Japan, defense officials said. It was the largest number of interceptors ever scrambled in postwar Japan, a spokesman said. The Soviet planes, seven TU-16 Badgers and two TU-95 Bears, were spotted at an altitude of 14,000 feet over the strait between Japan and South Korea. They flew off without violating Japanese airspace. On November 15, three Soviet bombers briefly flew into Japanese airspace.
Six people were reported killed and 500 injured in Dhaka, Bangladesh today in rioting against the martial law government. Government officials said four people were killed by police gunfire and opposition sources reported two additional deaths after thousands of demonstrators massed outside the government headquarters in the capital. The government said security forces opened fire when an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 protesters demolished part of the compound wall, attacked officers on duty and set fire to vehicles. The government said an estimated 500 people were injured in the clashes.
Zimbabwe acknowledged that rounding up hundreds of women suspected of prostitution was wrong, and all were set free, including admitted prostitutes. “It was recognized mistakes were made and innocent women were detained,” Eddison Zvobgo, minister of legal and parliamentary affairs, said. He said those arrested were freed on orders of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, who is attending a Commonwealth meeting in India. The roundup, which included schoolgirls and five British teachers, caused the angriest outcry since Mugabe came to power three years ago.
President Reagan meets with Members of Congress with the goal of getting the government out of the dairy industry. Payments not to produce milk will be received by farmers for the first time under a bill signed by President Reagan. Mr. Reagan has long opposed the program as too costly for taxpayers, but he yielded to political appeals from key allies in Congress. President Reagan, letting his free-market philosophy take a back seat to politics, signed a bill that for the first time will give dairy farmers government checks for not producing milk. The President acted two hours after he had met with a small bipartisan group of House and Senate members who lobbied for the bill, saying it was far preferable to the dairy policy that has led to huge government stockpiles of milk products. The measure is deemed important to several Republican senators who face tight reelection races next year.
The Administration has decided to keep extra security measures in place at the White House for now and to begin a search for long-term precautions against possible terrorist attacks, officials said. As part of the continuing precautions, sand-filled dump trucks, moved into place last Thursday, remained parked at White House gates as protection against a possible suicide truck bombing, such as the one that killed 239 Americans in Beirut last month.
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said he expected President Reagan to sign legislation reconstituting the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights before the deadline for action to keep the independent watchdog agency alive. Speakes said failure to act by midnight tonight would amount to a veto of the measure designed to keep the bipartisan, 26-year-old agency going. After Reagan fired three Democratic members of the six-member panel last month, Congress approved and sent to him compromise legislation keeping the panel alive for at least five more years and expanding its membership to eight from six.
The Air Force has opened an investigation into possible fraud in pricing at an aircraft plant operated by General Dynamics Corp., the Pentagon said. General Dynamics said in a statement that it was cooperating fully with the Air Force and had started an inquiry of its own. The Air Force said only that the investigation involved a cutting tool used in maintenance on the F-16, which is to become the Air Force’s chief fighter plane of the 1980s and 1990s. However, aviation sources said the investigation involved a markup in the price of the tool to $1,158 from its purchase order price of $240.
Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson said he would not support fellow Democrat Walter F. Mondale, if Mondale is nominated for that office, unless he challenges discrimination in trade unions and within the ranks of labor. Jackson told reporters in Washington that, if he does not win the Democratic nomination himself, he will not automatically support whoever does.
A ban on employees’ homework was reinstated by a federal appeals court in a rebuff to a Reagan Administration deregulation measure. In a 64-page opinion, the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the Labor Department’s 1981 decision to rescind the 40-year-old federal ban on the manufacture of knitted outerwear by people working at home was “arbitrary and capricious” and an “abdication of statutory responsibility” under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which regulates wages, hours and working conditions.
A government lawyer argued before the Supreme Court today for a narrowed interpretation of the federal law barring sex discrimination in education. The lawyer, Deputy Solicitor General Paul M. Bator, told the Justices the law applies to any college whose students receive federal scholarship aid. But if student aid is the college’s only financial link to the federal government, he said, then only the aid program itself, and not the entire institution, is covered by the nondiscrimination requirement. The Court heard arguments in the term’s most important and politically charged sex discrimination case. The case, brought by Grove City College, a small private college in Pennsylvania, concerns the scope of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. That law bars discrimination on the basis of sex in “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance” and provides for the cutoff of the federal funds as a sanction for noncompliance.
A grim financial report on Medicare was issued by the Congressional Budget Office. It said that modest changes could not prevent bankruptcy foreseen for the Medicare trust fund and warned that Congress must consider sweeping changes to save the program.
A threat to underground water supplies was cited by the Environmental Protection Agency. It warned that 11 million gallons of gasoline was leaking into the ground each year from at least 75,000 tanks at service stations and elsewhere.
Scientists spun in weightlessness aboard the earth-orbiting space shuttle Columbia as part of the most elaborate series of experiments ever done in space to determine its physiological effect on the human body. All six of the Columbia’s crew members were said to be in excellent health and working smoothly.
The way for the execution of 36-year-old Robert Sullivan was cleared by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court. Mr. Sullivan, who was convicted of murder, has been on death row longer than any other inmate. He was set to die in Florida’s electric chair tomorrow at 10 A.M. First, the appeals court vacated a stay of execution that had been issued Monday by one of its judges and then the high court, for the third time, rejected his appeal Tuesday. Earlier, a clemency plea by Pope John Paul II had been rejected by Governor Robert Graham. The Death Row wait for Sullivan, 36, who denies murdering a restaurant manager during a robbery, began on November 14, 1973.
Continental Airlines has resumed negotiations with striking pilots with the help of a mediator, but it has rejected talks with its stewardesses. Continental and the Air Line Pilots Association first met with the mediator, Benjamin Aaron, in Los Angeles a week ago and were to get meet again this week, Mr. Aaron said. Mr. Aaron is a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. The pilots’ group, which went on strike October 1, has held several meetings with Continental since the airline filed on Sept. 24 for protection from its creditors under the Federal bankruptcy law.
The pilots’ last written proposal, on October 14, would have saved the airline an estimated $30 million a year but was rejected by Continental as inadequate, a union spokesman said. Continental currently employs 450 pilots, some of them union members who crossed picket lines and others newly hired, the airline said. It employed 1,400 pilots before the strike. Meanwhile, Debbie Powell of the Union of Flight Attendants said in Los Angeles that Continental, in a Nov. 9 letter, rejected as unneeded a union suggestion that a mediator be brought into that dispute.
An 80-year-old insurance adjuster and two New York City landlords are accused of repeatedly torching 19 buildings in a million-dollar scheme to collect the fire insurance, federal authorities said. Forty firefighters were injured and hundreds of apartment dwellers in the depressed South Bronx and Harlem lost their homes in the 50 blazes set by the ring between 1976 and 1980, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani said. “Each of those fires puts life in jeopardy,” he said. Three other landlords were convicted last March of taking part in the same ring, which netted over $1 million in insurance claims, he said.
Dozens of women, some clad in bathrobes, fled today from the 15th arson fire this semester in a University of Massachusetts dormitory and stood in a chilly drizzle as the small blaze in a student’s room was extinguished. “They keep telling us there is 24-hour security, but we don’t see any cops,” said Lesley Gaynor, 18 years old, of Mamalapan, New Jersey, as she waited outside the dormitory in her bathrobe. The fire in the four-story dormitory was the first in a student room, according to Donald Robinson, director of environmental safety for the 25,000-student university. He said one of the young women living in the room went to take a shower, leaving the door unlocked, and returned to find the papers on her desk burning.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1287.19 (+17.38).
Born:
Craig Gentry, MLB outfielder (Texas Rangers, Oakland A’s, Los Angeles Angels, Baltimore Orioles), in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Tanner Glass, Canadian NHL left wing (Florida Panthers, Vancouver Canucks, Winnipeg Jets, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers, Calgary Flames), in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Bryan Smith, NFL linebacker (Jacksonville Jaguars), in Newton, Texas.
Darrell Hunter, NFL defensive back (Arizona Cardinals), in Middletown, Ohio.
Tanisha Wright, WNBA guard (WNBA Champions-Seattle, 2010; Seattle Storm, New York Liberty, Minnesota Lynx), in Brooklyn, New York, New York.
Pamela Brown, American television reporter and newscaster (CNN, ABC WJLA-TV), in Lexington, Kentucky.
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