The police freed Alfred H. Heineken and his chauffeur in Amsterdam. Ten police officers raided an unguarded warehouse and released the two men from unheated concrete cells in which they had been chained for 21 days. The police later arrested 24 suspects, all Dutch citizens who are related, and said they were hunting for 4 others. The rescue of the two men, who were said to be cold but in good health, came two days after a ransom payment rumored to exceed $10 million was made.
About 50 relatives of the 181 victims of Spain’s Avianca jumbo jet crash arrived in Madrid to help authorities in the arduous task of identifying the charred remains. The relatives were flown to Spain on a special Avianca flight from Bogota, Colombia, at the request of Spanish authorities who have identified only 52 of the victims of Sunday’s crash.
The five Socialist governments in southern Europe are imposing austerity measures in an effort to recover from the brink of bankruptcy. In a paradox, the political shift to the left in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece has produced conservative economic policies.
The health of the Soviet leader is again the mainstay of Moscow gossip. With Yuri V. Andropov now absent from public view for more than 100 days, the questions, the search for hints, signals, planted rumors or signs of a succession struggle — so prevalent in the last months of Leonid I. Brezhnev’s rule — have revived in force, though in a different form. One difference is that Mr. Brezhnev appeared in public, letting people take some direct measure of his condition. The rumors, too, were harder and more credible — about the collapse he suffered on a flight back from Tashkent, about his daughter’s high-flying way of life, about the maneuvering in the Kremlin to succeed him. This time there has been virtually nothing resembling concrete information, and diplomats and reporters have taken to searching for hints in such phenomena as the movement of Government limousines around Moscow or the quality of references to Mr. Andropov in speeches and articles.
Bombs exploded inside law courts and 15 other public and private buildings on Corsica on the eve of an official visit by French Interior Minister Gaston Defferre. Police said no one was injured, but severe damage resulted from the explosion inside the high court in Ajaccio, Corsica’s main city. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts. The bombs were believed to be the work of the outlawed Corsican National Liberation Front, a separatist group fighting against French rule.
A French soldier was killed today when his patrol was fired on by an unidentified gunman, a spokesman for the French force in Beirut said. The spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Phillipe de Longeaux, said the patrol came under small-arms fire at 5:50 A.M. as it drove through the Tayuneh neighborhood on the southern edge of Beirut. The patrol returned fire, he said. He did not say if the assailant was hit. Tayuneh is on the green line that divides Beirut into predominantly Christian and Muslim sectors and is the front line between Lebanese Army troops and Shiite Muslim militiamen.
Security conditions continued to deteriorate in Lebanon today. The international airport here was ordered closed after a third day of shelling incidents. At the same time, scattered fighting was reported throughout central Lebanon.
President Reagan meets with Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Ada al-Aziz al Saul, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States.
Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi lit the first Hanukkah candle at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, opening the eight-day holiday marking the capture of Jerusalem from Syrian occupiers more than 2,000 years ago. The ceremony was led by Rabbi Avraham Shapiro, leader of Israel’s Ashkenazic Jews-those of European origin-and was repeated in homes throughout Israel.
A Salvador bill was killed as President Reagan pocket vetoed it. The measure would have made continued aid to El Salvador contingent on his assuring Congress every six months that the country was improving its human rights record. Ten legislative days had elapsed since Congress sent the bill to Mr. Reagan. By refusing to sign it by midnight tonight he killed it with what is known as the pocket veto, which is possible when Congress is no longer in session. In vetoing the legislation meant to renew the certification procedure, the President rid himself of a duty that he and his top advisers had said they found onerous and confining. But on four occasions, the President and the State Department had certified that El Salvador was making progress on human rights, land redistribution and the control of its security forces, despite assertions by critics that the progress was more illusory than real.
Nicaragua is about to offer amnesty to prisoners jailed for crimes against state security, according to diplomats, opposition figures and a senior Sandinista official. They said the government also planned to tell anti-Sandinista rebels that if they lay down their arms, they can return home without punishment. In addition, diplomats and opposition leaders said they expected the Sandinistas to announce a new program soon aimed at bringing Miskito Indian refugees back from self-exile in Honduras and investing substantial amounts in development of the Miskito area in eastern Nicaragua. The reports of these steps followed a series of gestures that Nicaraguan leaders have made recently toward their domestic critics and foreign adversaries. The Nicaraguan Government has been urged by several friendly countries to take such steps, diplomats said.
Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said that some of the U.S. support troops on Grenada will remain after combat forces withdraw before Christmas. Among those to remain are engineer battalions and medical personnel, Weinberger said in an interview. He did not say how long they will stay. The Pentagon said this week that there are 1,030 combat troops and 1,693 support troops on Grenada.
The kidnappers of Jaime Betancur, the younger brother of Colombia’s President, said today that they would kill their prisoner December 10 if the government did not meet their demands. The warning came in a letter to the daily El Bogotano by the National Liberation Army. This is the guerrilla group that kidnapped Mr. Betancur, 53 years old, on November 22 in Catholic University, where he teaches law. President Belisario Betancur has refused to give in to the demands, which include a 40 percent increase in the minimum wage and freedom for political prisoners.
Bangladesh has ordered the expulsion of 18 Soviet diplomats and closed the Soviet cultural center in Dhaka, the capital, a Bangladesh government source said. The source said the expulsion followed reports that Soviet diplomats were meddling in the Asian nation’s politics. Protests against the military government have brought violence to Dhaka and other cities recently, and the government imposed curfews on Dhaka and Chittagong, where one person was killed when troops fired on a crowd of demonstrators.
According to Ittafaq, the goverment summoned Ambassador Valentin P. Stepanov on Monday and told him to reduce his diplomatic staff from 36 to 18. The cultural center was ordered closed at once. Ittafaq said Soviet Embassy personnel had been seen associating with “political elements” and were moving about the city during the clashes on Monday. The Soviet Embassy is the largest in Dhaka, staffed by 36 diplomats and 100 other employees.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos left his heavily guarded Malacanang Palace for only the second time in four months, to visit his family in the northern resort city of Baguio. The trip was his first outside the palace since the August 21 assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. except for a brief visit to a nearby military headquarters. His seclusion prompted rumors that he was seriously ill, and he later acknowledged some minor ailments.
More than 3,000 peasants and factory workers demonstrated today against President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s policies. About 100 other people began a five-day fast to demand the release of 900 political prisoners. The protesters were mostly relatives of the prisoners.
Foreign Minister Lee Won Kyung of South Korea said today that the bombing in Burma that killed 16 South Koreans last month was believed to be part of a plan meant to lead to an invasion of South Korea. Mr. Lee said his government believed North Korea planned to send agents to the South after the bombing to stage incidents and then invade on the pretext that it was supporting a popular uprising. He said he believed North Korea dropped the plan because its agents failed to assassinate President Chun Doo Hwan. He said evidence of the purported invasion plan was circumstantial and he offered no direct proof. The bombing at a ceremony in Rangoon on October 9 killed 16 South Korean officials, but President Chun escaped because he arrived late. Burma said November 4 that it had established that the bombing was carried out by North Koreans.
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals urged Chinese officials to stop the mass killing of dogs, saying that “a caring society provides supports for its unfortunate human beings and support for its unfortunate animals.” The SPCA letter to Zhang Wenjian, China’s ambassador to the United States, was in response to news reports that Peking is banning ownership of dogs beginning today, and that half of Peking’s dogs have been killed in the last six weeks.
Vasily Smyslov of the Soviet Union regained the lead in the world chess championship elimination semifinals with a victory over Hungarian grandmaster Zoltan Ribli. Smyslov, a former world champion, unleashed an assault that ended with the capture of the queen. Ribli surrendered after 41 moves, giving Smyslov a 3-2 lead in the 12-game series. In the other semifinal match, due to resume today, Viktor Korchnoi leads Gary Kasparov 2½ to 1½. The winners of the two matches will play off for the right to challenge world chess champion Anatoly Karpov.
Nuclear defense technology is to be developed, according to a Reagan Administration official. He said that President Reagan and his senior advisers had agreed in principle to proceed with the development of weapons capable of repelling nuclear attacks by destroying missiles. The official said, however, that Mr. Reagan had not yet made key decisions on the kind of technology, the level of financing for next year and other aspects of the proposal. He first advanced the idea last March, creating an immediate furor. Mr. Reagan was said to be leaning against the recommendation of some members of Congress that the United States should embark on a program to deploy defensive weapons quickly.
Instead, according to the Administration official, Mr. Reagan was leaning toward a more “prudent” approach that would emphasize research and development of technologies that might be available in the long-term future. Early this month, it was reported that a Pentagon-appointed panel of experts had urged Mr. Reagan to increase spending substantially for long- range research on defensive technology. It was understood that such a long- term program might be seen as less provocative to the Soviet Union, as well as to critics of the weapon systems, who regard them as opening up a new area in the arms race. “I think we’re looking more toward a long-term program, unless the threat changes,” the official said.
President Reagan signs H.R. 2230 establishing a new Commission on Civil Rights. A reconstituted civil rights panel will be created. President Reagan signed a bill restructuring the United States Commission on Civil Rights as an agency independent of the executive branch even though he said the Justice Department had “reservations” about the measure.
The Reagan Administration, rebuffed by four courts, will not ask the Supreme Court to revive the “squeal rule” covering teen-agers using federally financed birth control clinics, officials said. A Justice Department official said a decision was made not to ask the high court to review rulings that the regulation was “unlawful” and beyond what Congress intended. Officials offered no explanation for the decision.
President Reagan, recalling his small-town boyhood in Dixon, Illinois, signed legislation extending for three years the revenue-sharing program under which local governments receive funds directly from the federal government. The legislation, however, ends a similar program that allowed up to $2.3 billion per year in federal money to be appropriated directly to state governments. Under the bill, local governments will receive $4.57 billion per year in fiscal 1984, 1985 and 1986, the current funding level.
The prosecution closed its case against Rita M. Lavelle by charging she lied to Congress about mishandling the Environmental Protection Agency’s toxic-waste cleanup program to protect her relationship with “big money” in California. The defense, in final arguments at Lavelle’s perjury trial before the jury retired, contended that the fired EPA “superfund” chief “didn’t try to deceive anybody” in sworn statements to congressional subcommittees earlier this year. However, the defense acknowledged that she may have “made a mistake” in her testimony to Congress.
A retreat on birth control was confirmed by a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. She said the Reagan Administration had given up its attempts to force federally aided birth control clinics to notify the parents before prescribing contraception for unmarried teenagers. About 4,000 clinics that receive federal money to provide contraceptive services would have been affected. Some 682,000 women under 18 years old used the services of family planning clinics in 1981.
Martin S. Feldstein was criticized and ridiculed openly by the White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, amid signs that Mr. Feldstein, the chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers, was under rising pressure to soften his warnings about the dangers of federal deficits or to resign. Mr. Feldstein said he had no intention of resigning. He later flew to New York City, where he made an appeal for tax increases that Mr. Speakes indicated was contrary to the Administration’s policy.
Convicted drug trafficker Jamiel (Jimmy) Chagra and James R. Kearns were charged in San Antonio with trying to assassinate federal prosecutor James Kerr in 1978. Kerr narrowly escaped death when more than a dozen bullets ripped into his car. Chagra, now serving a 45-year federal prison sentence in Marion, Illinois, was convicted of obstructing justice in the investigation into the 1979 murder of U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. Kearns, 44, is serving an 18-month sentence in a New Hampshire state prison for theft from interstate shipments.
Robert A. Sullivan was executed at the Florida State Prison in the northern town of Starke. Supporters and opponents of the death penalty held orderly vigils outside the prison. A group of 24 citizens, half of them journalists, witnessed the electrocution of the 36-year-old convicted murderer, as prescribed by Florida law. They said that Mr. Sullivan’s last words were: “I hold no malice to none. May God bless us all.”
A Continental Trailways bus, believed by authorities to have been speeding, rammed the rear of a truck before dawn and plunged 40 feet into a muddy creek five miles north of Livingston, Texas. Six passengers were killed and the driver and five others were injured. Several of the passengers were pinned in the mangled wreckage for 90 minutes as rescue workers cut off the top of the bus. The truck driver was uninjured. The bus was bound from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Houston, officials said.
Assisted by Government mediators, a union representing striking employees of the Greyhound bus line is considering making a contract counterproposal in an effort to end a 28-day walkout. One day after officials of the Greyhound Corporation in Phoenix vowed to “go forward full bore” with hiring replacements for the 12,000 strikers, the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Local Unions was here reassessing its position in the dispute with the help of federal mediators. The strikers overwhelmingly rejected a proposal of a cut in pay and benefits, which Greyhound said was needed to keep the bus line competitive.
An Amtrak Silver Meteor passenger train derailed after hitting a tractor-trailer truck stuck on the tracks, injuring at least 35 persons, none seriously, authorities said in Citra, Florida. Four cars, including a locomotive, derailed when the New York-bound train broadsided a truck carrying an earth grader in mid-afternoon. The truck driver was charged with parking on a railroad crossing, a misdemeanor. The train, carrying 96 passengers and traveling at 79 m.p.h. on a track rated for 80 m.p.h., was able to decelerate to about 35 m.p.h. before it rammed the truck, Florida state police said.
State Senator David Serotkin, a Democrat, today became the second state legislator in eight days to be voted out of office for supporting an increase in the state income tax. “I think it’s a sad thing that a minority is able to undo what the majority did last year,” Mr. Serotkin said in Lansing. “It’s not democracy.” With all 129 precincts reporting, the unofficial vote was 25,992 in favor of recall, 11,737 against. The recall moves against Mr. Serotkin and Senator Philip Mastin of Pontiac, who lost a similar vote November 22, were engineered by antitax activists angered by their support of Gov. James J. Blanchard’s push for a tax increase to deal with a projected $900 million budget deficit.
A legal and political battle in Texas centers on a $1.7 billion suit contesting a half century of royalties from a vast tract of prime oil. The dispute has pitted the Mobil Corporation and a Houston law firm against the state’s tough-talking populist Attorney General and an assertive, self-made rancher-oilman.
U.S. Navy Commander Gerald M. Vanderwier was convicted of three counts of sodomy with one of the crewmen aboard a ship he commanded during a Mediterranean cruise in March. Vanderwier, who did not testify during the three-day court-martial in Norfolk, Va., faces sentencing today. Vanderwier, 42, a 19-year member of the service, could be dismissed from the Navy, lose pay and benefits and be sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was convicted of having oral sex with former Petty Officer 3rd Class John E. Rainville aboard the Florida-based frigate USS McDonnell. Rainville was granted immunity from prosecution and was honorably discharged from the Navy last week.
The upper atmosphere was probed by sensing instruments in the space shuttle Columbia’s Spacelab. The experiments provided the scientists aboard with a comprehensive survey of high-altitude chemistry and the first definitive data on turbulence in the critical zone where upwelling gases interact with solar ultraviolet radiation.
Radio Shack announces the Tandy Model 2000 computer (80186 chip).
Sam Shepards “Fool for love” premieres in NYC.
Denver Nuggets Coach Doug Moe was fined $5,000 and suspended for two games yesterday by the National Basketball Association for ordering the Nuggets to stop playing defense near the end of a 156-116 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on November 22. The suspension began last night in Milwaukee and continues until Saturday against Seattle. “It is clear from your own admissions, from the statements of the game officials and Coach Jack Ramsay and newspaper accounts that you did, in fact, take a 20-second timeout with 1:12 remaining in the game and instruct your team to stop playing defense and let the Portland team ‘have it,’ meaning the points record,” Scotty Stirling, the league’s vice president for operations, told Moe in a letter. Ramsay is coach of the Trail Blazers.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1276.01 (-11.18).
History Diaries 