Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher vowed “no surrender” to Britain’s striking coal miners despite a decision by foremen to join the seven-month stoppage and increase the chances of electric power cuts throughout the country. Speaking in public for the first time since an Irish Republican Army bomb attack against her, Thatcher again rejected the miners’ demand that all pits be worked until the last recoverable ton of coal is dug out.
The police said 21 officers were injured in clashes with striking British coal miners today. Mine foremen affirmed their decision to start another strike next week and further cripple Britain’s coal industry. Pickets used darts for brass knuckles and threw stones and paint at police in three skirmishes in northern England, authorities said. Five police vehicles were reported damaged in one of the clashes. The police first reported that darts were thrown at them. Later, they said they believed the pickets removed feathers from darts and used the barrels and points in clenched fists like brass knuckles. Constable Glynne Leesing, 27 years old, was hospitalized with two puncture wounds in the face in clashes at Woolley Colliery near Wakefield. “It is a sad state of affairs when weapons of this type are used against the police,” said Keith Hellawell, West Yorkshire’s assistant chief constable. A foremen’s strike could force a shutdown of the last working coal mines in Britain, especially in the rich Nottinghamshire coal field where foremen’s delegates voted unanimously to stop working, their leader, Eddie Laing, announced.
Scotland Yard refused to comment on a British television report that police know the name of the man who masterminded the attempt to kill Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher last week. Independent Television News, quoting security sources, said the man, in his 30s, lives in Dublin. He worked alone, having contact with only a few IRA leaders, the report said. It added that he was responsible for several recent bombings-including attacks in London’s Hyde Park and Regents Park and at Harrods last Christmas.
Strong pressure for lower oil prices was generated by a decision by the British National Oil Corporation to cut the official price of most of its North Sea oil by $1.35 a barrel, to $28.65, shocking the petroleum industry. The British move puts strong pressure on other suppliers to follow with the first general worldwide oil price decline in 18 months. The unexpected price cut raises the prospect of broad economic benefits for consumers and companies in oil-importing nations, including lower inflation, reduced gasoline and heating oil prices and higher earnings. It also carries a potential of more problems for debt-burdened oil exporters such as Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela.
Western European countries have moved to end Poland’s diplomatic isolation with a series of high-level contacts that have distanced them from the Reagan Administration’s relatively tough posture toward Warsaw. Western Europeans and American officials agree that the overtures to Warsaw have not generated great friction with the Reagan Administration, which has moved more slowly in response to a political amnesty and other gestures by the Government of Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski. The first of a string of autumn visits to Warsaw for talks with officials in the Jaruzelski Government started Tuesday with the arrival of Austria’s Foreign Minister, Leopold Gratz, who has been lavishly hailed by the state-guided Polish press. Neutral Austria declined to join the NATO sanctions imposed on Poland after the crushing of the Solidarity movement three years ago.
A senior Soviet official denied having said that dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov is free to leave the Soviet Union but did not wish to do so. Ivan Y. Polyakov, a vice chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, said that comments on Sakharov attributed to him by Danish politicians were due either to imprecise translation or deliberate distortion by the news media. Polyakov said his actual words were, “If Sakharov had the possibility to leave the Soviet Union, I do not believe he would make use of it.”
A bomb explosion ripped through the headquarters of Belgium’s Christian Democratic Party in the city of Ghent, but no one was hurt. It was the fifth bombing in two weeks linked to a group opposed to deployment of U.S. Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in Europe. The Communist Combatant Cells claimed responsibility in a call to a radio station. It threatened more attacks “against buildings of labor unions, employers and political organizations anywhere in Belgium.”
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou said today that he had told a Pentagon official here this week that United States policy in the eastern Mediterranean endangered good Greek-American relations. The Prime Minister said he had also complained to the official, Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle, about what his Socialist Government considers violations of its rights to control air traffic in the Athens Flight Information Region during a military exercise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the Aegean Sea last week. Mr. Papandreou, who spoke at a news conference, met with Mr. Perle on Monday. The American left Tuesday after inspecting an American air base on Crete.
A German-born rocket expert has left the United States rather than face Justice Department charges that he brutalized slave laborers at a Nazi V-2 rocket factory in World War II. The expert, Arthur Rudolph, who is 77 years old, has quietly moved to West Germany and surrendered his citizenship. Mr. Rudolph developed the Saturn 5 rocket, which carried Americans to the moon.
What’s happened to Gary Kasparov, the highest-rated chess player in the world? Mr. Kasparov is being trounced by Anatoly Karpov by a score of 4-to-0 in the world championship chess match now under way in Moscow. The consensus among analysts is that the 21-year-old Mr. Kasparov overestimated himself, did not prepare properly for the match and has lost confidence.
Iran, backed by hard-line Arab countries, tried for the third year to oust Israel from the U.N. General Assembly but was again blocked by the West. Faced with a U.S. boycott threat, the assembly voted, 80-40 with 22 abstentions, that no action be taken on Iran’s challenge to Israel’s credentials. Iranian Ambassador Said Rajai-Khorasani urged the body to unseat Israel after accusing it of engaging in genocide against the Palestinians. Israel’s new U.N. envoy, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the Iranian challenge “unspeakably wrong (and) an undignified spectacle. Gentlemen,” he said, “check your fanaticism at the door.”
Iraq is negotiating for the purchase of as many as 45 U.S. helicopters that could be used in its war with Iran, U.S. officials said. The Reagan Administration bans all aircraft sales to Iran but permits civilian aircraft to be sent to Iraq. The Bell helicopters in question reportedly can carry 18 passengers. State Department spokesman Alan Romberg said the copters are classified as civilian transports but conceded that “obviously there is a possible dual use.”
A United States military training delegation has arrived in China, the first such group to be invited since the two nations began normal relations in 1979, diplomats said today. The diplomats said the 11-member delegation, led by Major General Johnny J. Johnston of the United States Army, arrived Tuesday and would visit Chinese military training centers in the next two weeks. The sources declined to identify other delegation members. The delegation will inspect military training practices and facilities in Peking, Xian, Shijiazhuang, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Shanghai at the invitation of the Chinese Defense Ministry, the sources said. “It covers general training matters, with primary emphasis on ground forces,” said an American diplomatic official. A similar Chinese delegation toured the United States in April, the official said. The New China News Agency reported on the United States delegation’s arrival but did not give its size or specify how long the visit would last.
Thousands of police guarded store shelves in Japan on the day an extortion gang had threatened to scatter cyanide-poisoned candy packets across the nation. Most of the officers were deployed in the area of Osaka, where 14 marked poisoned packets of Morinaga brand candy have been found since the scare began 10 days ago. There were no new discoveries. The extortionists have identified themselves as the “Man With 21 Faces” gang — a play on the name of a popular 1950s Japanese children’s television show.
For the second consecutive week, members of the opposition party disrupted a session of the Bahamian Parliament today, demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Lynden O. Pindling. Members of the opposition’s Free National Movement banged their desks and chanted: “Resign, Resign! Go, Go!” Mr. Pindling was in the chamber, but did not respond because the session was abruptly ended, after 10 minutes, by the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Clifford Darling.
A Central America peace plan advanced by the Contadora group of Latin American countries will be revised to meet objections raised by the United States. The group of four countries announced the plan after a meeting in Madrid. Representatives of the four countries, known as the Contadora group, said at a news conference that they had not drawn up the revisions. But they said they were optimistic they could satisfy the objections, raised mostly by Honduras and El Salvador, allies of the United States, and by the more neutral Costa Rica. Some privately held out hope for a treaty by the end of the year.
Rioting erupted again today in black townships around Johannesburg, South Africa and the police said they had fired rubber bullets, birdshot and tear gas to disperse hundreds of black youths. In Soweto, the country’s largest black township with nearly two million people, three schools were attacked and at least one black youth was injured. Black pupils are divided on whether to boycott classes to protest what they see as poor education. The police reported similar incidents of arson, looting and stone-throwing in townships east and south of Johannesburg and said they also fired tear gas at rioters in a township near Port Elizabeth on the south coast. Two people were arrested during the day, the police added.
Increased military spending is sought by the Pentagon, according to Reagan Administration officials. They said the Pentagon was completing a proposed $333.7 billion military budget for the fiscal year 1986 that would be 13.9 percent more than the appropriations for fiscal year 1985 that has been approved by Congress. Discounting inflation, the increase would be 8 to 9 percent.
President Reagan meets with Archbishop Roman Arietta of San Jose, President of the Secretariat of Catholic Bishops of Central America.
President Reagan participates in a signing ceremony for H.R. 5818, the Children’s Products Safety Act of 1984.
President Reagan participates in a message taping session for the 80th Annual Navy League Dinner.
G.M. plants in Canada were struck by about 36,000 unionized employees. An assembler in the General Motors transmission plant in Windsor, Ontario, said, “They took a lousy contract in the United States, but we sure are not going to take one here.”
A Southern California water shortage is in prospect. With 14 months to go before the region loses nearly a fifth of its water supply, the state has no plan to replace the water. The water, which is imported from the Colorado River, will be diverted to Arizona under a major reallocation of the West’s scarce supply.
The quality of undergraduate studies in American colleges was sharply criticized by a panel of scholars that said that the dropout rate was 50 percent and that for 12 years test scores have been declining on examinations taken by college seniors seeking to enter graduate schools. The scholars’ report calls for higher salaries for professors and a new emphasis on the liberal arts.
Efforts to lure Jewish voters from their usual Democratic base are being pressed by President Reagan, but the attempt is being at least partially offset by Jewish voters’ concern over the role of the Protestant right wing in Mr. Reagan’s campaign. Most Jews are now expected to vote for Walter F. Mondale.
A privately financed citizens’ committee recommended that the United States adopt a national health plan along with measures to assure stringent cost control and high-quality health care. The National Citizens’ Board of Inquiry into Health in America released a two-volume report concluding that although this country devoted 10.5% of its gross national product to health care in 1982, other industrialized nations that spent less got more for their money by having national health plans. The committee noted that 33 million Americans have no health insurance.
The U.S. Justice Department defied a federal judge’s order to disclose names of informants used to infiltrate anti-war groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s. According to a declaration by FBI Director William H. Webster and Deputy U.S. Attorney General Carol E. Dinkins, filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, disclosing the names could harm the government’s informant program and subject the informants to harassment and reprisals. Disclosure would signal to other informants that the government could not guarantee their confidentiality, the declaration said.
A panel of prominent educators warned that higher education is suffering serious problems, including underpaid faculty, deteriorating buildings and students abandoning the liberal arts. The panel, in a report prepared for Education Secretary Terrel H. Bell, called for sweeping changes in campus life, including more faculty attention for freshmen and sophomores, fewer part-time professors and less emphasis on vocational courses.
A man who was being served a drug-search warrant at an apartment in the troubled Overtown neighborhood in Miami was shot by a police officer and later died in a hospital, authorities said. The area, which was the scene of racial disturbances two years ago after a man was fatally shot by police, remained quiet after the 3 PM shooting, a police spokesman said. “Apparently during the arrest process there was a scuffle,” he added. He described the victim as a black man in his late 20s.
A weekend disturbance in which clothes, towels and sheets were burned in a call for a prisoners’ strike has led to 1,495 Cuban detainees being confined to their cells at a Federal prison in Atlanta, the authorities said today. The restrictions at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary went into effect Sunday, when about 75 of the detainees gathered in the recreation yard, waving homemade signs and calling for the strike. Up to 20 small fires may have been set, but no one was injured, William Noonan, a prison spokesman said. Since then, the prisoners have demonstrated from their cells with shouts of protest about their incarceration, he said. The Cubans were among more than 125,000 who came to the United States in 1980.
The first of more than 1,800 strikers returned to work at Disneyland today after approving a contract with a two- year wage freeze. Meanwhile in Florida, unions representing more than 2,600 maintenance workers at Walt Disney World said they had reached tentative agreement on a new contract. At Disneyland here, Al Flores, a spokesman for the park, said the first workers reported to their posts at 6:30 AM, and other full-time employees arrived throughout the day.
Robert Nix Jr., Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, today granted Philadelphia’s request for more time to reduce the inmate population at its three prisons. Acting only one day after he heard oral argument on the issue, Justice Nix ruled the city did not have to meet a series of deadlines for prison reduction set by a three-judge panel of the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court. Justice Nix also lifted the ban on putting two and three inmates in a cell at the House of Correction, Holmesburg Prison and the Detention Center, but he ruled the city had to meet several conditions or the lower court order would again take effect. He ordered the city to transfer all Federal and state prisoners from its facilities, to install showers, basins and toilets for inmates at the Detention Center and to begin planning the construction of a new detention center within 90 days. Ruling that overcrowded conditions at the prisons violated the prisoners’ constitutional rights, the three-judge panel had ordered the city to reduce the number of inmates to 3,525 by October 1 and to 2,700 by June 30, 1985.
South Pacific Island Airways, which had been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration after one of its planes flew too close to the Soviet Union, won a temporary order today that allows it to resume flights, a lawyer for the airline said. Judge Herbert Y.C. Choy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit signed an order allowing the airline to fly for seven days, or until the court’s emergency panel in San Francisco could review the dispute, said the airline’s lawyer, John Chanin. Judge Choy stipulated in his order that only qualified personnel could operate South Pacific planes and he ruled out polar flights, Mr. Chanin said. A hearing on the airline’s request for an order to overturn the F.A.A.’s ruling was held by Judge Choy in his chambers and was closed to the public. The Federal agency ordered the airline’s operations halted Saturday, saying there had been numerous violations of regulations, including an incident on September 29 in which a chartered polar flight carrying Fijian soldiers nearly strayed into Soviet airspace.
The second fire to strike the headquarters of the United States Postal Service erupted today in a damaged file cabinet as forensic chemists and explosives experts combed the fire-ravaged marble and glass tower. The flames in the latest fire were out “in a matter of a few minutes,” according to Ray Alfred, a battalion chief with the city fire department. “There’s a lot of debris up there” on the ninth and 10th floors, where Monday night’s four-alarm fire erupted, Chief Alfred said, adding, “One of the filing cabinets reignited.” Investigators from the city police and fire departments, the Postal Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms continued to comb the 10-story administrative building, which was expected to remain closed Thursday to the 2,800 postal employees.
A Federal district judge today refused a request from followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh that he order local officials to halt new voting restrictions that have blocked the registration of thousands of transients bused into the region. Judge Edward Leavy refused to issue a temporary restraining order against the Wasco County Clerk, Sue Proffitt, and the Oregon Secretary of State, Norma Paulus, the defendants in the lawsuit by the disciples of the Indian guru. But he said he would hear arguments on a request for a preliminary injunction Friday. Under an emergency state rule invoked by the Secretary of State on October 10, all applicants between then and the November 6 general election must attend a hearing at which their eligibility to vote will be determined.
The heartbeat of some apparently healthy young adults stops for up to nine seconds during sleep, raising concern that the sudden stop of blood flow could injure the brain, it was reported. The long pauses occur mostly during periods when the patient is dreaming, called rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep. Doctors said the condition may also lead to sudden death. Four examples of the condition were found by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers, who reported their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Caroline Kennedy, daughter of President John F. Kennedy, issued a statement through the Washington office of her uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), denying speculation that she entered David Kennedy’s hotel room shortly before he was discovered dead from a drug overdose. David Kennedy, 28, son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was found dead April 25 in his room in Palm Beach, Florida. Two hotel bellhops, David Dorr, 30, of Yarmouth, Massachusetts, and Peter Marchant, 24, of Warwick, Rhode Island, are awaiting trial on charges of selling cocaine to Kennedy.
The tax evasion trial of singer Jerry Lee Lewis went to the jury in Memphis, Tennessee, after a judge denied an acquittal motion, saying evidence showed Lewis “consistently defied the payment of his taxes.” Lewis, 49, is accused of evading payment of income taxes between 1975 and 1980 by hiding his assets from the IRS. The government contends that he owes $1.1 million in taxes, penalties, and interest. About $500,000 has been collected, most of it through government seizure of Lewis’ property and other assets.
How Catholic Notre Dame should be is a major issue on the university’s campus. The question is whether the priority of the theology department should be a commitment to ecumenical scholarship or to imbuing undergraduates with Roman Catholic doctrine.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Dr. R. Bruce Merrifield of Rockefeller University for research that has revolutionized the study of proteins and the development of important new drugs.
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two researchers for their roles in the discovery of three subatomic particles that is regarded as crucial in achieving a key goal of physics — combining all natural forces in a single theory. The Nobel laureates are Dr. Carlo Rubbia, an Italian on the faculty of Harvard University, an Dr. Simon van der Meer of the Netherlands.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1195.89 (-1.88)
Born:
Sami Lepistö, Finnish National Team and NHL defenseman (Olympics, bronze medal, 2010, 2014; Washington Capitals, Phoenix Coyotes, Columbus Blue Jackets, Chicago Blackhawks), in Espoo, Finland.
Eric Fowler, NFL wide receiver (Detroit Lions), in New Haven, Michigan.
Chris Lowell, American actor (“Private Practice”), in Atlanta, Georgia..
Randall Munroe, American webcomic author (“xkcd”), in Easton, Pennsylvania..
Died:
Alberta Hunter, 89, American blues singer and composer.
[Ed: Reagan thought she was a sweet kid. Whatever you do Ron, don’t leave the liquor cabinet unlocked.]
History Diaries 