The Irish Republican Army warned it plans more attacks against the British government similar to last week’s bomb blast at Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s hotel in Brighton. In an interview, an IRA spokesman said the “myth that the British government is impregnable has been blown.” Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Charles H. Price said the Reagan Administration will examine new ways to clamp down on Noraid, the New York-based organization that aids the IRA.
A U.S. State Department spokesman chided Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou of Greece, saying he should act like a friendly ally of the United States. Alan Romberg reacted after the Socialist prime minister charged that U.S. favoritism toward Turkey harms relations with Greece. “The United States values its friendship with Greece and has made clear its desire for good U.S.-Greek relations,” Romberg said. “What is needed, frankly, is a similar approach by the Papandreou government.” Mr. Romberg was responding to news reports today quoting Mr. Papandreou as saying he had told the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Richard N. Perle, that American policy in the region endangered relations between the two countries.
President Reagan meets with Henry Kissinger to discuss U.S. – Soviet relations. Reagan writes in his White House diary: “Henry Kissinger came by the hotel, we had a good session. He feels my firmness about the Soviets has worked & that if I’m elected they’ll want to get together on arms talks.”
Secretary of State George P. Shultz said today that “the way is wide open” to sustained progress in Soviet-American relations, but he warned against expecting “immediate and exciting breakthroughs.” In the first of two speeches setting forth the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy agenda for a second term, Mr. Shultz said that in the last few months there had been some signs from the Russians that “just may herald more substantial and productive moves to come.” Mr. Shultz, who has been helping President Reagan to prepare for his foreign policy debate with Walter F. Mondale on Sunday night, flew to Los Angeles today for the two speeches. The first, on long-term Soviet-American relations, was to be given tonight to the Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, run jointly by the Rand Corporation and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Two legislators from the Greens Party were ejected from Parliament today for using insulting and foul language, setting off a shouting match in the normally staid chamber. One of the Greens charged that Chancellor Helmut Kohl had been “bought,” and the other called the chamber’s presiding officer a foul name. The two Greens, Jürgen Reents and Joseph Fischer, were ordered to leave the chamber by Richard Stücklen, acting president of the Parliament.
A West German prosecutor said today that he was awaiting documentation from the United States before determining whether to take legal action against Arthur Rudolph, a German-born scientist who left the United States earlier this year to avoid prosecution for brutalizing slave labor at a Nazi rocket center in World War II. Alfred Streim, a prosecutor at the Central Office for the Registration of National-Socialist Crimes, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Rudolph, 77 years old, was living in West Germany and had made no attempt to flee or hide from the authorities. Mr. Streim, who declined to say where the former American space official is living, said his office learned of Mr. Rudolph’s presence in West Germany “three or four months” after he left the United States on March 27.
Mr. Rudolph, who developed the rocket that carried Americans to the moon, renounced his American citizenship at the Stuttgart consulate on May 25, according to United States officials. The prosecutor said that he had “no incriminating evidence” in the center’s archives against Mr. Rudolph, but said that he had asked the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations to forward the material it had accumulated about the scientist. Although the statute of limitations has expired for most war crimes, there is no limit for Germans accused of murder during the Nazi period. The Justice Department said Wednesday that Mr. Rudolph, as director for production of V-2 rockets at an underground factory near the Dora-Nordhausen camp, “participated in the persecution of forced laborers.”
Iranian troops opened a drive against Iraqi positions in the mountainous central border region, breaking an eight-month lull in major ground clashes in the Persian Gulf war. Iranian officials here described the operation as an offensive designed to protect border villages from Iraqi artillery fire. The Tehran radio said hundreds of Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded and more than 100 captured. Baghdad asserted that the Iraqis had repelled the attack, killing 923 Iranians and forcing the others to retreat. There was no independent confirmation of either side’s claims. Diplomats here said that Iran’s declared objectives, the nature of the terrain and the coverage of the attack by the official news outlets indicated it would not develop into a full-scale offensive.
More than 2,000 people demonstrated in front of the Afghan and Soviet embassies in Paris, protesting the month-long detention of television reporter Jacques Abouchar in Afghanistan. Abouchar, 53, was captured and arrested after he crossed into the country from Pakistan without a visa, and his case has attracted wide attention. The protesters, carrying photographs of Abouchar and banners calling for his release, walked from the Afghan to the Soviet Embassy.
The police near Hyderabad, Pakistan tried to stop two busloads of people traveling to the hometown of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and 5 people were killed in ensuing gunfire between the police and some of the nearly 100 passengers, the police said today. Seven people were wounded, the statement said. Sources said the police arrested 88 people, 51 of them students, in connection with the incident.
A White House aide met this week with Vietnam’s Foreign Minister to discuss details on how to carry out the Administration’s offer to accept tens of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants, State Department officials said today. The United States has said that it is prepared to take in all of the Asian- American children in Vietnam and 10,000 of the current and former prisoners from its re-education camps.
China and the Soviet Union returned to the conference table today for a fresh round of discussions aimed at normalizing their strained relations. Before the talks resumed, China expressed doubts that any breakthrough on longstanding differences would be achieved. The talks began two years ago at Moscow’s request and have been held alternately in Peking and Moscow. The opening of the fifth round of talks today was not announced officially but was confirmed by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman. The previous round adjourned in Moscow in March.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council endorsed the Chinese-British draft agreement that outlines the conditions under which the territory will become a special administrative region of China after 1997. Philip Haddon-Cave, chief secretary of the lawmaking body, said, “It is now for the people of Hong Kong to put their views on the overall acceptability of the agreement in writing to the Assessment Office.” The Assessment Office’s survey will serve as a guide to a British parliamentary debate on the agreement later this year.
Secret talks between the United States and Cuba have been discontinued until after the November 6 election, U.S. and Cuban diplomats said. A U.S. delegation met in New York in July and August with a Cuban delegation, a State Department official said, on such issues as Cuban political prisoners, immigration and the possible repatriation of Cuban criminals and mental patients. The State Department believes the talks will provide a test of broader Cuban intentions.
Two inquiries into whether the CIA acted improperly in preparing a manual for Nicaraguan rebels that includes advice on kidnapping and killing public officials were ordered by President Reagan. One of the investigations is to be by the agency’s Inspector General and the other by its oversight board.
Salvadoran army units began the first major offensive against leftist rebel forces since rebel and Government officials met Monday to discuss ways of ending the civil war. The authorities said that army operations involving at least 6,000 troops around the country were aimed at blunting an expected rebel offensive.
Costa Rican Archbishop Roman Arrieta Villalobos, a leader of Central American bishops, condemned as unacceptable the Marxist-based theology of Nicaragua’s so-called People’s Church and said that a large majority of Nicaragua’s Roman Catholics remain faithful to the orthodox hierarchy. After a meeting in Washington, Arrieta Villalobos said that relatively few Catholics have embraced Marxist elements in the controversial theology of liberation.
Chile and Argentina initialed a Vatican-sponsored accord to settle the dispute that brought them to the brink of war in 1978 over maritime jurisdiction in the area around the Beagle Channel at the southern tip of South America. The pact must still be approved by Argentina’s Congress and voters and by Chile’s ruling military junta before it can be formally signed. Meanwhile, in Santiago, Chile charged that Argentina fired eight artillery rounds across the channel in the direction of a Chilean lighthouse after the Vatican treaty ceremony was held. Argentina denied the charge.
Nigeria cut the price of oil by $2 a barrel to $28, becoming the first member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to break the official price structure that OPEC set 18 months ago. Reaction was swift in foreign-exchange, stock and credit markets because of a widespread belief that a general oil price break is inevitable.
The most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor ever found has been discovered in Kenya, fossil hunters announced. They uncovered the 1.6-million-year-old skull and bones of a 12-year-old male about 5 feet 5 inches tall, an unexpectedly large stature for an early human.
Bishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, returned home today to a joyous airport welcome. His supporters greeted him with hugs, impromptu dancing and songs about South Africa’s “liberation.” White police officers made no move to interrupt the celebrations. At a news conference later, Bishop Tutu made no departures in either tone or substance from two familiar themes: that his country is heading for violent “catastrophe” if the white authorities refuse to negotiate with blacks, and that Reagan Administration policy in South Africa has been, in his view, an “unmitigated disaster.”
Coincidentally, authorities in South- West Africa released 74 of 145 prisoners taken in raids into southern Angola starting on May 6, 1978. All those released were South-West African blacks who had been interned without trial and accused of being members of the insurgent South-West Africa People’s Organization. Others were released earlier this year, and only one remains in custody at a prison camp south of Windhoek, the capital of South-West Africa, or Namibia.
In Durban, South Africa, meanwhile, three political dissidents who took refuge in the British Consulate over a month ago offered to leave voluntarily if the authorities released other detainees or permitted them to travel to New York to address the United Nations. The demands were all pitched well beyond what the rulers of this divided nation are likely to allow and instead seemed designed to revive international interest in their cause.
The USSR performs a nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan.
A low-key Presidential address was offered by Mr. Reagan at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in New York. The President chose to avoid overt politicking in favor of tributes to four late leaders — Terence Cardinal Cooke, Francis Cardinal Spellman, the philanthropist Charles H. Silver and Governor Smith.
The President and First Lady meet a group of World War II pilots gathered for their departure to New York.
Air Force Two dived 200 feet when it came unusually close to a small private plane near Boeing Field in Seattle. No one aboard Vice President Bush’s plane was injured and, after landing safely, Mr. Bush minimized the incident.
More than 80 million people are expected to witness the second Presidential debate on television and radio Sunday evening. But Walter F. Mondale will be focusing his appeal at a fraction of the audience, the 15 million or so likely voters who can be lured out of the undecided column or talked into switching their votes from President Reagan.
The votes of 6.6 million Hispanic Americans are being courted by Democrats and Republicans, and some Hispanic-Americans say they are working toward real political power that will last beyond November 6. Their confidence grows in part from extensive voter registration drives aimed at them by both partisan and nonpartisan groups.
The NASA space shuttle Discovery moves to the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center (Florida) for mating with its external tank and solid rocket boosters for the STS 51A mission.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered General William C. Westmoreland in 1967 to conceal from the public that the enemy was stepping up attacks in Vietnam because it “would literally blow the lid off Washington,” according to a cable filed in federal court. In the March 9, 1967, cable, General Earle Wheeler told Westmoreland to “do whatever is necessary to ensure these figures are not — repeat are not — released to news media or otherwise exposed to public knowledge.” The cable was used as evidence by CBS in Westmoreland’s $120-million libel suit against the network in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The general is suing the network over a documentary that claimed he plotted to deceive the public about the strength of enemy forces in Vietnam.
The Pentagon is likely to ask for a budget in the next fiscal year that is almost 14% higher than its current spending plan and is based on a budget already rejected by Congress, Pentagon officials said. The budget being prepared for fiscal 1986 calls for spending about $333.7 billion, or 13.9% above the $292.9-billion Pentagon budget approved by Congress last week, said the officials, speaking on the condition they not be identified.
Dentists and dental hygienists can transmit herpes virus from their hands to patients’ mouths and cause serious illness, said researchers who reported the first such outbreak among patients infected that way. The type of herpes involved was the kind that causes lip lesions or “cold sores,” not genital herpes, said Dr. John Manzella of York, Pennsylvania, Hospital, an author of the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A father with a history of violence shot his six sleeping children to death with a .45-caliber revolver in Evansville, Indiana, then sat down in a rocking chair and killed himself, police said. James Alan Day, 36, and each of the children, who ranged in age from 6 to 15, were shot in the head. The shootings apparently happened sometime after Day’s wife, Candace, went to work about 2:30 AM. She discovered the bodies around 10 AM. when she returned from her job with the Post Office, Police Chief Ray Hamner said. The children were in their beds and their father was found slumped in the rocking chair with the gun in his hand, Hamner said.
A preacher whose followers refuse medical care has been indicted on charges that his teachings killed a teen-age disciple with chronic kidney disease. The Rev. Hobart Freeman, leader of the Faith Assembly, said he would not hire a lawyer to fight charges that he induced the girl’s parents to commit reckless homicide, criminal recklessness and child neglect. “We’ll trust the Lord to be our defense,” Mr. Freeman said at a brief arraignment. He was indicted late Wednesday in the death of Pamela Margaret Menne, who was 15 years old. She died September 16 after a kidney illness of about 90 days. Her parents, James and Ione Menne of rural Warsaw, also refused a lawyer today. They face charges of reckless homicide, child neglect and criminal recklessness.
An Indian guru’s disciples have stopped recruiting homeless people to live in their Oregon commune, but they denied today that the halt was timed to coincide with a deadline for voter registration. “The only people having those thoughts are the politicians,” said Ma Prem Sunshine, speaking for the commune, founded by followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She said the commune had no more room to accommodate additional newcomers. Wednesday was the deadline for the 20-day state residency requirement for voter registration.
Some buses with homeless people might be on the way to Rajneesphuram, but none have actively been sought since last Friday, another commune spokesman said. About 3,700 homeless people are living in Rajneeshpuram, 150 miles east of Portland. The influx has raised the town’s population to 7,000. The commune is embroiled in a political battle with opponents over its motives in bringing the homeless to their city. The opponents, including many area residents, fear the sect is trying to take political control of the county government, much as it did at a small town near the commune two years ago.
The Gerber Products Company announced today that it had recalled about 550,000 jars of fruit juices for infants after glass fragments were found in jars in Rhode Island and Vermont. The jars of apple-plum and apple-cherry juice are being voluntarily recalled from store shelves in 15 states, said a spokesman, Steve Poole.
A Federal District Court jury today acquitted the rock star Jerry Lee Lewis of charges of evading taxes and the jubilant singer said the verdict made him feel “the power of God.” Spectators in the courtroom erupted in cheers as the foreman reported that jurors had cleared Mr. Lewis of charges that he tried to hide his assets to avoid paying more than $1.1 million in taxes, penalties and interest for 1975 through 1980. “I knew I wasn’t guilty, but then again, you never know what’s going to happen,” the 49-year-old Mr. Lewis told reporters. “I actually felt the power of God.” Mr. Lewis had filed tax returns for the disputed years but voluntarily paid only $5,000 toward the tax bill, an assistant United States Attorney said. The Government says Mr. Lewis still owes $653,796 in taxes, penalties and interest for the disputed years.
A lawyer for Vanessa Redgrave charged in court that the Boston Symphony Orchestra canceled the actress’s scheduled performance with it in 1982 for political reasons, seriously damaging her career. In seeking $5 million for Miss Redgrave, the lawyer, Daniel J. Kornstein, contended the orchestra had called off her performance, as the narrator in Stravinsky’s “Oedipus Rex,” because of pressure from a Jewish board member who objected to her pro-Palestinian views.
The Environmental Protection Agency, agreeing with environmentalists that most states are doing a poor job at protecting national parks and wilderness areas from air pollution, said it wants to take the job away from them. The agency proposed new regulations giving it the authority to review new factories in 33 states, including California, and directly monitor the pollution from them and other facilities to protect the visibility around pristine areas. EPA said only two of the 35 states near wilderness and park areas — Alaska and Louisiana — have adopted approved clean-air plans to provide for visibility protection, as required by a 1980 federal order.
A Rocky Mountain earthquake jolted sections of six states and damaged buildings 200 miles apart in Wyoming and Colorado, forcing their evacuation. No injuries were reported as the temblor shook objects from Billings, Montana, to Salt Lake City and the Nebraska Panhandle.
The “greatest single storm” on record at Salt Lake City plastered up to three feet of snow across parts of Utah, closing schools, blacking out a third of the city and contributing to a 50-car pileup. It was the second storm this week, and forecasters said a third wintry blast was heading inland from the Pacific. The stormy weather has claimed at least two lives, one in a traffic accident in Colorado during the week’s first storm and one in an avalanche Wednesday. The snow around Salt Lake City was the heaviest on record there for October since records were first kept in the city in 1928, and the 18.6 inches at the airport was the heaviest 24-hour snowfall ever measured there, meteorologist William Alder said.
His staff did well enough to get the San Diego Padres into the World Series, but what happened next has cost Norm Sherry his job as pitching coach, or so it seems. General Manager Jack McKeon denies that Sherry’s dismissal was a result of the pitchers’ World Series collapse to the Detroit Tigers and attributes it instead to “conflicts.”
Rick Sutcliffe and Bruce Sutter, who could be on the brink of becoming the highest-paid pitchers in baseball history, rate high in the statistical rankings, too. According to ranking statistics completed yesterday, Sutcliffe and Sutter are among seven eligible players who qualify as Type A free agents. Joining the pitchers in the Type A category are Andre Thornton, Cleveland’s designated hitter, who already has filed for free agency; Fred Lynn, California outfielder; Dan Driessen, Montreal first baseman; Jim Gantner, Milwaukee second baseman, and Cliff Johnson, Toronto designated hitter.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1225.38 (+29.49)
Born:
Lindsey Vonn, American alpine skier (Olympic gold 2010, 4 World Cup Championships), in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Chris Houston, NFL cornerback (Atlanta Falcons, Detroit Lions), in Austin, Texas.
Xavier Adibi, NFL linebacker (Houston Texans, Minnesota Vikings, Tennessee Titans), in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
David Liffiton, Canadian NHL defenseman A(New York Rangers, Colorado Avalanche), in Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Milo Yiannopoulos, British internet personality and political commentator, in Kent, England, United Kingdom.
Esperanza Spalding, American jazz bassist, singer and songwriter (Radio Music Society; 12 Little Spells), in Portland, Oregon.
Freida Pinto, Indian Bollywood actress (“Slumdog Millionaire”; “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”), in Mumbai, India.
Died:
Jon-Erik Hexum, 26, American actor (“Voyagers!”, “Cover-up”), after negligently mishandling a pistol loaded with blanks.
Florence Rinard, 82, TV panelist (20 Questions).
History Diaries 