Two days after the President joked in August about bombing the Soviet Union, a low-level Soviet military official ordered an alert of some troops in the Far East, according to statements made by American intelligence officials to Representative Michael D. Barnes, Democrat of Maryland. An aide to Mr. Barnes said the alert was reportedly canceled 30 minutes later by superiors.
A Soviet Foreign Ministry official today denied an assertion by Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger that the Soviet Union had increased the number of nuclear missiles aimed at Western Europe. He said the number of missiles had not increased and that Mr. Weinberger made his statement to put pressure on Western Europe. The spokesman, Vladimir B. Lomeiko, criticized Mr. Weinberger, who said during a meeting of NATO Defense Ministers in Stresa, Italy, on Thursday that the number of Soviet SS-20 nuclear missiles targeted on Western Europe had grown. “I would like to stress that dishonest play is going on in Stresa during the past few hours,” Mr. Lomeiko said at a news briefing called for the purpose. “The Soviet Union has not increased the number of its missiles and is doing all in its power to prevent the development toward nuclear confrontation.” According to Mr. Lomeiko, the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal has not grown this year. “The number of our missiles capable of striking Western Europe has not increased,” he said.
An associate of a Soviet journalist who returned to Moscow last month asserts that the man, Oleg G. Bitov, was forcibly taken back by K.G.B. men because of fears that he would give evidence to Italian officials investigating the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The friend, Anatoly Gladilin, a Russian emigre writer, wrote in an analysis of the case in Le Monde that Mr. Bitov had agreed to give written testimony in the case against a Bulgarian suspect, Sergei Ivanov Antonov, shortly before Mr. Bitov vanished from Britain in August. Mr. Bitov, a senior journalist for the weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta, was thought to have defected at the Venice Film Festival in September 1983 and to have been given asylum in Britain.
The I.R.A. took responsibility for placing a bomb in the seafront Grand Hotel, in Brighton, that killed at least two people, injured at least 34 and came within minutes of killing or maiming Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Mrs. Thatcher, who escaped without injury, had just left the bathroom of her suite when the explosion ripped through the Brighton Hotel. Her husband, Denis, later reported that the bathroom was “mangled.” The I.R.A. bombing of the hotel in Brighton was aimed at derailing new efforts to achieve a settlement in Northern Ireland, according to British and Irish politicians. Prime Minister Thatcher is scheduled to discuss the Northern Ireland situation next month with Garret FitzGerald, the Irish Prime Minister.
The state- run National Coal Board agreed today to a mediator’s proposal for ending Britain’s seven-month-old miners’ strike, breaking a stalemate in negotiations. Union leaders withheld immediate approval of the plan, which the Coal Board chairman, Ian MacGregor, said gave the board final say over the closing unprofitable mines, the key issue in the dispute. Alan Winston, general secretary of the British Association of Colliery Managers, said both sides were “unbelievably close” to a peace agreement. The miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, said, “We believe there are possibilities of a solution that could lead to a settlement.” But he added, “There has been no movement on the basic principle.” The two sides are to resume talks Saturday.
The Security Council voted today to extend the mandate of the United Nations force in southern Lebanon for six months amid suggestions that it might be expanded after Israeli troops are withdrawn. The extension of the mandate was approved 13 to 0 with the Soviet Union and the Ukraine abstaining. A total of 5,683 soldiers and administrative personnel from 10 nations are in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, which was established in 1978 as a buffer between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Fouad Turk, Secretary General of the Lebanese Foreign Ministry, said a report by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar contained “encouraging indications of a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanese territory” once security arrangements are established at the Israeli-Lebanese border.
An Iranian plane has bombed an Indian oil tanker, apparently in retaliation for an Iraqi attack on a supertanker near the Kharg Island oil terminal off Iran, shipping officials said today. The London-based Lloyd’s Shipping Intelligence Unit identified the tanker, which was attacked Thursday, as the 20,911-ton Jag Pari, owned by Great Eastern Shipping Company Ltd. of Bombay. One of the Indian crewmen was wounded by shrapnel, and the ship had minor damage, the shipping officials said. The ship anchored off Bahrain today. Iran, which has been at war with Iraq for four years, made no statement on the attack. The Jag Pari was the 47th ship damaged by an attack in the Persian Gulf this year. Most of the attacks have been carried out by Iraq. Iran has denied attacking any ships. The vessel was on its way to Kuwait to load fuel oil. It had been plying the neutral waters of the Persian Gulf south of the Iran-Iraq war zone when the attack occurred, the shipping sources said.
Iranian military aircraft were said to have been flying over the gulf for three days, apparently looking for a ship to attack in retaliation for an Iraqi missile strike Monday on the supertanker World Knight. The Iraqis fired an Exocet missile into the 254,000-ton Liberian-registered tanker, killing seven of its crew and wounding eight others. The World Knight was headed for Kharg Island when it was attacked.
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq was quoted today as saying he was ready to consider re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States after the American elections November 6. In an interview with an Arabic-language newspaper published in Paris, Mr. Hussein also disclosed that Iraq decided in principle in 1980 to restore those relations, but that moves to do so were put off after the start of the war with Iran in September of that year. Excerpts from the interview with the newspaper, Al Watan al Arabi, were broadcast today on the Baghdad radio. The United States, which has repeatedly declared that it is prepared to have formal relations with Iraq whenever Baghdad wanted, said today that it would welcome such a move by Mr. Hussein.
Iraq was one of the Arab nations that broke relations with the United States at the time of the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan. President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt charged then that American warplanes had been used on Israel’s behalf to destroy the Egyptian Air Force on the ground, a charge that the United States and Israel denied. But Egypt, Syria and Iraq broke relations as a result of that accusation. Egypt and Syria restored relations in 1973 and 1974, but Iraq refused to do so because of the continued American support for Israel. But in recent years there was a warming in relations after the severing of American ties with Iran in the aftermath of the hostage crisis of 1979-81. The United States and Iraq have so- called interests sections in each other’s capitals instead of formal embassies. There has also been an exchange of high-level visitors. Donald H. Rumsfeld, when he was President Reagan’s special Middle East envoy, visited Baghdad, as did Richard W. Murphy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Secretary of State George P. Shultz met in New York last week with Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi Foreign Minister.
The Morinaga candy company in Japan, hit by sales losses after extortionists poisoned its products with cyanide, laid off 450 workers today and cut production in half. As the police continued searching for poisoned candy, 100 special phone lines were added to the 22 set up Thursday to allow callers to listen to the taped voices of two people speaking for the extortionists. Spokesmen said that more than 8.6 million people phoned to listen to the tapes in the first 24 hours but that no one had provided clues. Morinaga announced it was laying off 450 part-time workers and cutting its production by half. Nearly 900 stores have stopped selling Morinaga candy since 12 cyanide-laced packages were found this week.
A U.S.-Canadian territorial dispute was settled by the World Court. The jurists awarded the United States about two-thirds of the Gulf of Maine and gave Canada the rest. The two- decade-old dispute involves 30,000 square miles of the sea, including the Georges Bank, one of the world’s richest fishing grounds.
Twelve of the 15 Cuban refugees who have spent four years in the Peruvian Embassy in Havana have left to resume normal lives in Cuba, diplomats said today. They said the refugees had left the embassy in the last few days after government assurances they would not be persecuted and could apply to emigrate through normal channels. It was not clear if the remaining three planned to leave the embassy. The Cubans entered the mission in 1980 in a bid to get exit visas during the so-called Mariel exodus, when 125,000 people fled the rule of Fidel Castro’s Communist Government.
President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador said his government had rejected a request by rebel leaders for outside observers to serve as intermediaries for their scheduled meeting on Monday. But Mr. Duarte said he believed that the negotiations would still take place. Mr. Duarte said in an interview that he had dismissed the rebel demand for outside intermediaries because he felt the issue of peace was primarily a national question. “For this I have proposed the meeting in La Palma in Salvadoran territory, with the Salvadorans, to seek a solution to the problems of Salvadorans,” he said. It was not clear whether the Government’s response to the rebel request would imperil the meeting, which Mr. Duarte proposed. Only two days remain to settle final details of the first face-to-face discussion between Government and rebel cfficials inside El Salvador.
The Nigerian Government has signed an agreement to buy 12 MIG-21B jet fighters from the Soviet Union. At a signing ceremony Thursday, Nigeria’s Acting Minister of Defense, Brigadier Mohammed Magoro, said aircraft bought from the Russians several years ago were still being used. Vice Admiral Yuri Grishin, leader of the Soviet delegation at the ceremony, called for widening the accord to allow Soviet technicians to instruct Nigerians in flying and maintaining the aircraft. The cost of the purchase was not announced.
Producer prices for finished goods fell two-tenths of 1 percent in September, held down by declines in the cost of food and fuel, the Labor Department reported. It was the biggest decline in the Producer Price Index in 21 months.
The 98th Congress adjourned after a week of legislative snarls in wearying late-night sessions as the Senate voted 37 to 30 to approve an increase in the Federal debt limit.
Both sides publicly claimed victory in Thursday’s debate between Vice President Bush and Geraldine A. Ferraro. Officials in both campaigns suggested that both candidates had achieved their goals and the mixed results would return public focus to the contest between President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale.
Vice President Bush’s contention in Thursday’s debate that Federal spending for food stamps and welfare under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program had risen under the Reagan Administration was contradicted by independent budget analysts. They agreed with Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro that spending for those programs had been reduced.
President Reagan participates in a whistle-stop tour of about 250 miles through Ohio aboard U.S. Car One, a custom built Pullman railroad car. President Reagan, imitating Harry S. Truman, took his re-election caravan on the late President’s 1948 whistle-stop train route and drew cheers from huge crowds in the farmlands and towns of western Ohio as he assailed Walter F. Mondale and asked Democrats to join his cause. In a display that Democrats charged amounted to political grand larceny, Mr. Reagan addressed crowds from the back of the Pullman car that was used by the Democratic President and repeatedly invoked his name.
Improprieties in college sports, including big illegal payments to athletes, are so widespread that a convention of university presidents should be called to consider a tougher violations code, according to Walter Byers, executive director of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Among the penalties Mr. Byers said he would like to have imposed for the most serious improprieties are more routine canceling of scholarships, dismissals of coaching staffs and suspensions of team schedules for one year or more.
The Challenger astronauts, elated by the successes of their ambitious mission to chart the earth and to practice refueling satellites in space, gathered additional scientific data, chatted with President Reagan and cleaned up their cabin in preparation for their return to earth tomorrow. The landing of the Challenger is scheduled for 12:26 PM, Eastern daylight time, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. For the first time, the shuttle is to come in for a landing over the central United States, descending at more than 15 times the speed of sound over Duluth, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Lexington, Kentucky, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Atlanta as it sweeps toward Florida. However, space agency officials said the shuttle would not be visible in the midday sky until it gets close to Florida.
An abortion will proceed for a profoundly retarded 19-year-old woman who is pregnant as the result of a rape in a Maryland state institution. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger refused to block the woman’s mother from obtaining the abortion. The daughter is blind, deaf, unable to communicate and has the intellectual capacity of a one-year-old.
Two Libyan nationals who had admitted they illegally bought three handguns with silencers from a Federal undercover agent on Staten Island last May were sentenced to prison yesterday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Bashir Baesho, 37 years old, of Lanham, Maryland, received eight years and a $10,000 fine from Judge Mark A. Costantino, and Mehdi Hitewesh, 36, of Glenolden, Pennsylvania, received seven years and a $10,000 fine. They had been permitted to plead guilty in August to reduced charges of unlawfully receiving the silencers. Federal prosecutors had suggested the weapons were intended for use by supporters of the Libyan regime of Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi against “defectors.” Lawyers for the defendants said their clients denied this and had bought the weapons for personal protection.
A Providence, Rhode Island man who the police say confessed killing three women this summer was indicted today on charges of murder, attempted murder and rape in those deaths and in the sexual assault on a 14- year-old girl. The suspect, Raymond J. Lassor, 23 years old, is to be arraigned Tuesday in Providence County Superior Court on three counts of murder, one count of rape and one count of attempted murder. The five-count indictment was returned by a Providence County Grand Jury. The latter two counts stem from an attack on a 14-year-old Pawtucket girl who was raped, beaten and left for dead in Roger Williams Park on September 17. The girl managed to give the police a description of her attacker, which led to Mr. Lassor’s arrest September 18. The killings raised fears among women in this city and the state and local authorities had formed a special group to search for the killer. The victims’ bodies were found within a five-block area of each other, not far from a bus depot where Mr. Lassor was frequently seen, the police said. The police said the suspect knew details of the slayings they had not made public and that he had confessed under questioning.
Two unwed mothers who assert they were pressured into giving up their babies for adoption by officials at a Fort Worth, Texas charity home have lost custody battles in rulings hailed by the home as a “vindication” of its policies. The rulings were issued Thursday by different three-judge panels. The cases have drawn national attention about the rights of natural mothers in adoption and were watched by other institutions that felt the decisions could threaten an adoption process. The rulings were “a vindication that the Edna Gladney Home has followed proper procedures and not tried to take advantage of these two young ladies,” said William Schur, a lawyer for the home. It is one of the nation’s largest institutions for unwed mothers. Barbara Landry, 20 years old, of New York City, lost her bid for a new trial to decide whether she should win custody of the baby girl she gave birth to on February 10 at the home. Her lawyer said he planned an appeal. Ellen Breeding, 19, of Shreveport, Louisiana, was denied her request for custody of the baby girl she gave birth to on January 20 at the home while she appeals a lower court ruling denying her permanent custody.
A man scheduled to be sentenced Monday for bank robbery kidnapped a bank manager at her home today, then held her and three other employees hostage at a Irvine, California Bank of America for two and a half hours before releasing them unharmed and surrendering, officers said. Lieutenant Sam Allevato said the hostages, all women, were “just fine.” The gunman, clad in a pinstripe suit, surrendered about four hours later. He was identified as David D. Dahlen, 34 years old, of La Habra, by a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investiation, Fred Reagan. Another agent, Patrick Mullany, said the man was seconds away from committing suicide when agents scrambled into the bank through a back door and arrested him. Mr. Mullany said Mr. Dahlen was scheduled for sentencing Monday in a previous bank robbery.
State troopers today replaced 48 prison guards who staged a walkout, saying they were sick, at the Maryland Penitentiary. The guards said they wanted to dramatize their claims of lax security that led to the death of a guard. Only 27 of 75 guards reported for the 8 AM shift at the penitentiary, beginning the job action called just hours after funeral services Thursday for Herman Toulson Jr., a guard who had been a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He was stabbed to death by an inmate last Saturday. A state prison spokesman said all 1,435 inmates remained locked in their cells today, but that essential services would be maintained. She said it was “tense and quiet” inside the 173-year- old institution. Joseph Adler, executive director of the Maryland Classified Employees Association, which represents many of the guards, said they planned to continue their walkout. “There are no negotiations,” Mr. Adler said. “There is no change in the guards’ position.”
The setting sun may have blinded one of the pilots, leading to a midair crash of two light airplanes that rained debris over a playground crowded with young football players, officials said today. No one was hurt by the flying wreckage in the crash in Morganton, North Carolina, Thursday. But the pilots, James Casey, 54 years old, and Richard Williams, 24, were killed. “The sun was low on the horizon,” said a spokesman at Morganton-Lenoir Airport, who said Mr. Casey “was flying into the sun. ‘That may have contributed to it,” the spokesman said. Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board dug through the wreckage and talked to witnesses in their investigation.
San Diego Padres’ pitchers tie the World Series record by issuing 11 walks in a 5–2 loss to the Detroit Tigers in Game 3 of the 1984 World Series. Tim Lollar failed to make it out of the second inning as Detroit erupted for four runs. Chet Lemon singled with one out, then with two outs, Marty Castillo’s home run made it 2–0 Tigers. Lou Whitaker then walked and scored on Alan Trammell’s double. A walk and single loaded the bases before Greg Booker relieved Lollar and walked Larry Herndon to force in another run. The Padres got on the board in the third when back-to-back leadoff singles off of Milt Wilcox was followed by an RBI groundout by Steve Garvey, but in the bottom of the inning, Booker walked three to load the bases with two outs. Greg Harris in relief hit Kirk Gibson with a pitch to force in the Tigers’ last run. The Padres scored their last run in the seventh on Graig Nettles’s sacrifice fly with runners on second and third off of Bill Scherrer. Willie Hernández pitched 2⅓ innings of one-hit relief for the save. The 5–2 victory gave the Tigers a two games-to-one series lead.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1190.70 (+7.62)
Born:
Sherrod Martin, NFL safety (Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Chicago Bears), in Griffin, Georgia.
Gijon Robinson, NFL tight end (Indianapolis Colts), in Denver, Colorado.
Mansfield Wrotto, Liberian-American NFL guard and tackle (Seattle Seahawks, Buffalo Bills), in Liberia.
Died:
Sir Anthony Berry, 59, British politician (Brighton Hotel I.R.A. bombing victim).
History Diaries 