Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko denounced the United States, vowing that the Kremlin will never allow its Western adversaries to gain military superiority. “It is the U.S.A. and its allies that have set themselves the insane goal of achieving military superiority over socialist countries,” Chernenko told Communist youth group leaders. “Naturally. we cannot allow this to happen.”
In an interview on October 16, Mr. Chernenko said he had seen no shift for the better in American policies and he offered several ways to improve the situation. But, he said then, “first of all, of course, the elections should take place to answer what will happen after the elections.” The Soviet press and Soviet officials have indicated that they expect Mr. Reagan to be re-elected. A television report from Washington today portrayed the election as a superficial and costly race in which basic issues were not being discussed. Soviet press coverage of the campaign has been minimal, focusing on criticism of President Reagan and paying less attention to Walter Mondale. The press has been condemning a wide range of United States policies – on the Caribbean and Latin America, the Middle East and southern Africa.
The 22nd game of the world chess championship in Moscow ended in the 13th consecutive draw, after the 20th move by challenger Gary Kasparov. World champion Anatoly Karpov leads the series, 4-0. The first player to win six games takes the title; draws do not count.
A group of Polish dissidents said today that recent official criticism of the activities of the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, a pro-Solidarity priest, had created “the basis and the climate” for his slaying. A statement read by Jan Jozef Lipski, a member of the Workers Defense Committee, a dissident organization, said the Government was once again “evoking hatred” by accusing six of the dissidents of exploiting the slaying. The six, who had been criticized by the Governmment spokesmen or in press accounts, were listed in the statement as Seweryn Jaworski, Jacek Kuron, Henryk Wujec, Zbigniew Romaszewski, Andrzej Gwiazda and Janusz Onyszkiewicz. They had been criticized for their reactions to the slaying, which ranged from calls by Mr. Gwiazda for a one- hour work stoppage to discussion by some of the others of establishing citizens committees to monitor on police activities.
Britain’s National Coal Board reported that 710 miners across the nation broke ranks with the striking union and reported back to work. It estimated that 53,000 of the nation’s 178,000 miners are now defying the eight-month-old walkout. The mine union suffered another blow when a High Court judge in Ireland agreed to a British request to freeze $8.8 million in union funds hidden in an Irish bank. Meanwhile, about 25,000 auto workers went on strike for higher pay, halting production at Austin Rover factories in Birmingham and Oxford.
A trial of six Yugoslavian dissidents charged with conspiring to overthrow the government was recessed today for 24 hours after a defendant objected to a ruling by the presiding judge. Miodrag Milic, a writer, said the judge had denied him access to court documents for his defense. The defendants were among 28 intellectuals detained after a police raid April 20 on a meeting in a private apartment. It is the second political trial since the death of President Tito in May 1980. Dr. Vojislav Seselj, a lecturer from Sarajevo, was sentenced last July to eight years for counterrevolutionary activities. The influential Belgrade weekly Nin, in an editorial before the current trial, said it would represent “a test for Yugoslavia’s leadership.” Nin also said the “court alone” should pass the verdict. At first the foreign press was granted five passes to the trial, but the number was increased Saturday to 15.
Philipp Jenninger, an adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl, was elected the Speaker of Parliament today to replace Rainer Barzel, who resigned in a scandal. Mr. Jenninger, a 52-year-old Christian Democrat, was elected by a secret-ballot vote of 340 to 105. He appealed for a restoration of the trust in West German politics he said was lost through the so-called Flick affair, which has forced Mr. Barzel and a Cabinet member to resign.
He said charges that West German political parties had been paid off by the Flick holding company of D”usseldorf must be “cleared up without reserve.” Mr. Barzel, also a Christian Democrat, resigned October 25 amid accusations that he had accepted $556,000 from Flick. He denied the charge. On June 26, Otto Lambsdorff, the Minister for Economic Affairs, resigned just before he was indicted on charges of accepting $45,000 from Flick. His trial is to begin in January.
A Saudi Arabian jetliner was hijacked during a regular London-to-Riyadh flight and taken to Iran with 113 passengers and 14 crew members aboard, the Saudi state radio reported. The plane landed safely at Tehran airport, the radio said. There was no word on the identity of the hijackers and no immediate statement from Iran. Aviation sources said that one of the hijackers had entered the cockpit and forced the pilot at gunpoint to divert the aircraft. They said the pilot complied and no one was hurt. The plane was hijacked shortly before it was scheduled to land in Riyadh. It had stopped earlier in the Saudi city of Jidda, where some passengers got off.
Offices, banks and stores reopened in New Delhi for the first time since the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi last Wednesday. Commuters, shoppers and tourists crowded the streets and traffic moved normally. Schools, however, will remain closed until Saturday. Sikhs, who were the major target after Mrs. Gandhi’s killing, apparently by two Sikh bodyguards, appeared in public for the first time. The Press Trust of India reported tonight that three people were killed and four were injured in incidents of violence and arson in the central district tonight. It was the only report in two days of major violence after the rioting, burning and clashes that followed the assassination.
In the three days after Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination, nearly 1,000 people died throughout the country in violence, mostly directed by Hindus against Sikhs. More than half the deaths occurred in the New Delhi area. A measure of what was apparently the return to normality was the Bombay stock market’s performance when it reopened for trading after having been closed for four days. Prices closed with only modest losses.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi collected the ashes of his mother at the site on the Jumna River where she was cremated on Saturday. He spent much of the day overseeing the placement of the ashes in 40 copper urns. The urns are to be taken by train to every state of the country before the ashes are scattered over the Himalayas next Sunday.
The Communist government of Laos says it has dismantled the “reeducation camps” it established in 1975 to hold political prisoners, a visiting American professor, MacAlister Brown, said in Bangkok, Thailand. He quoted Laotian Vice Foreign Minister Khampai Bouphas as saying that camp internees have either returned to the capital to work for the government, have been granted retirement or have taken jobs near the camps. However, an unknown number of Laotians are possibly still being held in “internal exile,” Brown said.
The Philippine armed forces commander, General Fabian C. Ver, and 25 others were ordered to respond to allegations that they were involved in a plot to assassinate opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. A three-man panel, the Philippine equivalent of an ombudsman, served subpoenas ordering them to reply to statements in the majority report of a commission of inquiry into Aquino’s murder at the Manila airport last year. Ver has taken indefinite leave from his duties.
The Philippines armed forces have tripled in size to about 200,000 men since the declaration of martial law in 1972. Defense analysts in Manila say many of the troops are poorly equipped, provisioned and led and have been unable to contain a rapidly growing Communist insurgency, which now controls about 20 percent of Philippine villages.
Mexican police made their biggest drug haul ever over the weekend, seizing 660 pounds of cocaine bound for the United States, officials announced. Eight suspected drug traffickers were arrested. The cocaine was confiscated southwest of Nuevo Laredo, which is across the border from Laredo, Texas.
Seven Haitians opposed to President Jean-Claude Duvalier were detained Friday aboard a boat with arms and ammunition, the French police said today. The group was stopped on a sailboat rented in Pointe-a-Pitre. The seven are being questioned. The police said they had also investigated other Haitians living in Pointe-a-Pitre.
An overwhelming Sandinista victory in the first elections in Nicaragua in 10 years was announced by Daniel Ortega Saavedra, the party’s presidential candidate. A Sandinista triumph had been widely predicted. Mr. Ortega made the announcement at a news conference at noon and said it was based on an insurmountable lead over six other parties in partial results from the voting Sunday. With about 37 percent of the voting districts reporting and approximately 25 percent of the vote counted, he said, the Sandinistas had captured about 68 percent of the vote for President. Taking invalid ballots into account, the total for the Sandinistas was 63 percent.
The Sandinistas held a comparable lead in separate balloting for the National Assembly. “The big winner of this election has been the F.S.L.N.,” Mr. Ortega said. “The people of Nicaragua have given their support to the F.S.L.N.” The initials are from the Spanish name of the group. Two opposition parties – the Democratic Conservatives and the Independent Liberals — were vying for second place but were far behind the Sandinistas. The Democratic Conservatives had 12.5 percent of the vote and the Independent Liberals had 10.6 percent. Four other parties were on the ballot — three Marxist groups and the Popular Social Christian Party. Three other parties refused to take part in the election, asserting that the procedures were unfair. About 8 percent of the ballots were nullified for being defaced or blank.
Chile’s Cabinet resigned, freeing President Augusto Pinochet to reorganize his military government after a week of political violence in which 14 people died. Chile’s entire Cabinet resigned after the nation’s interior minister stepped down, admitting that he had failed to stem recent terrorist violence and protests directed against the 11-year-old military government. Interior Minister Sergio Onofre Jarpa described his resignation as a sign of “personal failure.” The remaining 15 Cabinet ministers added their resignations so that President Augusto Pinochet could reorganize his government.
Ten South African blacks died as hundreds of thousands of workers and students boycotted jobs and schools in an anti-Government protest. Police officers used rubber bullets, buckshot and tear gas against the demonstrators in black townships around Johannesburg and Pretoria. The strike was the first time black workers had joined students and anti-apartheid groups for a protest. Dr. Nthato Motlana, a longtime civil rights activist in the black township of Soweto, said the impact of the strike was “tremendous.” The police and transport officials reported violence in several black townships in Transvaal Province. Demonstrators damaged 25 buses, burned taverns, constructed barricades in the streets and threw stones and gasoline bombs at trains and houses, officials reported.
American voters choose tomorrow between President Reagan and Walter F. Mondale in an election that is also being watched as a test of long-term trends in party loyalty and Congressional power. Political analysts in both parties directed their attention to voter turnout as one of the few unknown factors that could make the contest tighter than that forecast by the public opinion polls.
President Reagan finished his plea for re-election with a fond return to home-state voters and an appeal to the nation to “go forward with an America of momentum.” President Reagan views a picture and plaque in the newly named Ronald Reagan Cabinet Room at the California Capitol building. President Reagan addresses a crowd on the west steps of the California Capitol, where the President was sworn in twice as Governor of California.
Walter F. Mondale ended his long, hard campaign for the Presidency with his fist held high, his face in a grin and his voice booming. Mr. Mondale told a cheering crowd in downtown Los Angeles, “We can make history by giving them the biggest upset in history.”
The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency has withheld making public a study of antisatellite arms control issues pending the election. The study, written on contract for the agency by a Harvard University researcher, is not classified, and it departs from Reagan Administration policy in concluding that agreements with the Soviet Union to limit antisatellite weapons could benefit American interests. Joseph Lehman, director of public affairs for the agency, an independent body that advises the President and the Secretary of State, said today that he did not want the study to become a “political football” before the election. He said he was using his “own discretion” in refusing reporters’ requests for the paper, but he offered to make a copy available Tuesday.
Business interests are contributing about half the money going into today’s Congressional elections, and Democrats appear to be getting almost as much as Republicans. Of the $44.3 million that business groups have given to candidates, Democrats received $20.7 million, against $23.6 million for Republicans.
Baby Fae’s new heart has beaten more than two million times, and with every new beat the thriving infant at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California makes history as the longest surviving human recipient of a transplanted animal heart. Hers is one of the most exciting and potentially important medical stories in recent times. Dr. Leonard L. Bailey, the surgeon who heads the team that did the bold experiment at Loma Linda University Medical Center, said, “We know more about newborn heart transplant surgery and immunology than anyone on the globe right now.”
An insurance-brokerage merger was announced by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States. The company said it would buy Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc., a leading Wall Street brokerage firm, for $432 million.
Internal Revenue Service agents in Minnesota say they fear for their safety and are taking precautions in the wake of threats from militant tax protesters. The agents told the Minneapolis Star and Tribune that. threatening literature has been placed in their home mailboxes, that tax protesters have watched their homes and that farmers have posted signs threatening to kill agents who enter their property. Officials say the threatened bombing of IRS offices in Bemidji, which led to the arrests of two tax protesters last week, is not the first threat they’ve received.
Canceling Vanessa Redgrave’s 1982 appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra was harder than allowing her to perform, an orchestra executive testified today at the trial of the actress’s $5 million suit against the organization. “We felt it was deplorable and a tragedy that the integrity of an artistic production had to yield to practical concerns of public safety,” Carolyn Smedvig, promotion director for the orchestra, said in Federal District Court. Miss Redgrave says the orchestra dropped her because she backed the Palestine Liberation Organization. The symphony officials say she posed a danger only because she was a target of violence.
Broward County Circuit Judge Thomas Coker refused to spare Chester L. Maxwell, one of two convicted killers scheduled to die in Florida’s electric chair Wednesday in the first double execution by a state in 19 years. His attorneys next sought a reprieve from the Florida Supreme Court and said they would appeal to a U.S. District judge. Maxwell, 29, was convicted of the 1980 fatal shooting of an intended robbery victim. Lawyers for Timothy C. Palmes, 37, who was sentenced to death for the 1976 stabbing death of a store owner, filed an appeal with the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeal in Atlanta.
The number of births for teenage mothers fell during the 1970s, partly because the number of young women in the age group began to shrink at the end of the decade, a report by the National Center on Health Statistics said. The study reported 537,024 births to females under age 20 in 1981, 18% fewer than the 656,460 births in 1970. During the decade, there were 9,632 births to girls 10 to 14, 187,397 births to those 15 to 17 and 339,995 to those 18 and 19, according to the 1981 data. The adolescent female population fell by 4% in 1980-81 and by 1% in 1979-80.
A second lot of birth control pills believed to be counterfeit has been withdrawn from the market, the Food and Drug Administration said. The Interstate Cigar Co. of Westbury, New York, a distributor, recalled pills in lot number 489. The FDA said it hoped the recall would eliminate from the market all the bogus pills, first reported last week. The first lot of bogus pills, batch number 441, was traced to Interstate Drug Exchange, a distributor in Plainview, New York, the FDA said. The company recalled them last week. The pills resemble Searle Pharmaceuticals’ product Ovulen, the FDA said.
Commercial home knitting was upheld by the Labor Department, which said that the knitters must register with the Government so that minimum-wage and child-labor laws could be enforced. The action rescinds a 42-year-old ban on commercial home knitting. The Labor Department published a regulation allowing manufacturers of knitted outerwear to employ people for work in their homes, so long as the companies get a government certificate. The new rule, which will be effective in 30 days, stems from the so-called “Vermont knitters” controversy involving a few hundred women working at their homes in Vermont. The Reagan Administration has been seeking to end a more than 40-year-old ban on knitted outerwear work in the home. That ban was first lifted in 1981, but organized labor opposed the change, and a federal court eventually reinstated the ban.
A retired officer said he “screamed bloody murder” at military headquarters in Vietnam because his estimates of enemy infiltration were rejected as too high, according to his testimony in General William C. Westmoreland’s libel suit against CBS. In testimony read to the jury because he could not attend, Lieutenant Michael Hankins said he had decided in late 1967 that 20,000 to 30,000 North Vietnamese a month were infiltrating South Vietnam, a figure far above the official military estimate of 5,000 to 7,000. His testimony was the first to support figures CBS reported in the 1982 documentary “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” However, Hankins said his superiors may have had access to better and more secret information than he did.
Police officers and firefighters used fire hoses to stop strikers from throwing bottles hours after 6,400 workers struck the Fort Worth division of the General Dynamics Corporation today. The Forth Worth division makes the F-16 jet fighter plane. Earlier seven people were arrested as strikers tried to keep nonstriking employees from entering the plant in cars, said Bob Salinas, the Acting City Manager of White Settlement, a Fort Worth suburb. The main entrance to the plant is in White Settlement. Following violence earlier, White Settlement firefighters and Forth Worth police officers used hoses to quell an afternoon disturbance. District Lodge 776 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted 4,936 to 108 Sunday to strike after turning down a proposed three-year contract, said Pat Lane, the lodge president. He said the union wanted a 2½-year contract and General Dynamics wanted a 3-year contract. He said the company had offered a 3 percent cash bonus instead of general wage increases, which the union wanted in increments of 8 percent, 5 percent and 5 percent over the life of the contract.
A former Philadelphia police officer changed his plea to guilty today as jury selection began in the trial of five fellow officers on extortion charges. The case of a seventh officer, former Lieutenant Edward Quinn, 42 years old, was separated from the others in Federal District Court here after prosecutors dismissed a conspiracy charge. Raymond Stern, 32, who pleaded guilty to four extortion and conspiracy counts. Jury selection in the case, stemming from a Federal investigation, began before Judge Daniel Huyett for the five remaining defendants, accused of taking payoffs from video poker machine vendors and bar owners. The former officers on trial are Albert Mazzo, 41, who had been a lieutenant, and John Anderson, 41, Andrew Kelly, 44, Thomas Volkmar, 34, and George Novack, 30, former officers.
The shuttle program suffered a major setback today when space agency officials grounded the Discovery’s sister ship Challenger because of insulation problems. Challenger was scheduled to ferry a top-secret military satellite into orbit December 8. A space agency spokesman, Charles Redmond, said Challenger was not expected to be ready to fly until “three to six weeks” after the original December date. Engineers will have to remove as many as 2,800 heat-shielding tiles from Challenger’s underbelly because the bonding layer softened after six trips into space and repeated use of special waterproofing agents.
Levels of dioxin high enough to threaten human health have been found at the Dow Chemical Company’s plant in Midland, Michigan, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The agency has drafted an order to require Dow to seal over the contaminated soil.
NFL Monday Night Football:
Atlanta Falcons 14, Washington Redskins 27
Joe Theismann passed for one touchdown and ran for another, and John Riggins scored twice as the Washington Redskins beat the Atlanta Falcons, 27–14, tonight. The Redskins’ victory created a four-way tie for first place in the National Conference East. The Redskins broke a two-game losing streak and joined the Cardinals, the Giants and the Cowboys at 6–4. Atlanta is 3–7. Washington took a 14–0 lead in the second period on 1-yard runs by Theismann and Riggins. But the Redskins lost the lead, giving up touchdowns late in the first half and early in the third period as the R.F.K. Stadium crowd of 51,301 booed. Late in the third quarter, a Redskin linebacker, Mel Kaufman, hit the Atlanta quarterback, Mike Moroski, behind the line. Moroski, who had replaced an injured Steve Bartkowski in the second period, fumbled and Neil Olkewicz recovered on the Atlanta 32. Seven plays later, Riggins scored from the 1. After holding the Falcons, the Redskins scored on a 12-play, 65-yard drive that ended with a 7-yard slant-in pass to Calvin Muhammad.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1229.24 (+12.59)
Born:
Eliud Kipchoge, Kenyan distance runner (Olympic gold medal, marathon 2016; first under 2:00), in Kapsisiywa, Kenya.
Toby Enström, Swedish National Team and NHL defenseman (Olympics, 2010; Atlanta Thrashers, Winnipeg Jets), in Nordingrå, Sweden.
Nikolai Zherdev, Ukrainian-Russian NHL right wing (Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Rangers, Philadelphia Flyers), in Kiev (now Kyiv), Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.
Nick Folk, NFL kicker (Pro Bowl, 2007; Dallas Cowboys, New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, New England Patriots, Tennessee Titans), in Los Angeles, California.
History Diaries 