Ronald Wilson Reagan won a second term as President in a landslide election that Republican leaders hailed as a sweeping personal triumph and a mandate for his policies. As the count proceeded, Mr. Reagan was leading Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic nominee, by a ratio of about 3 to 2. Reagan ultimately won the contests in 49 of the 50 states.
The President and First Lady helicoptered in the morning to Solvang, California to turn in their absentee ballots. Nancy Reagan today showed signs of what the White House termed a “dizziness” after bumping her head when she fell in a hotel room early Monday morning. She was unsteady on her feet and had to be helped by President Reagan down the steps of a helicopter they took to Solvang this afternoon to cast their votes. Mrs. Reagan told reporters tonight that she simply “took a header” but was in good shape now after experiencing some dizziness. “My bump is gone,” she said, smiling as the Reagans watched election returns on television. “I feel fine.”
The three commercial networks declared Ronald Reagan the winner of the Presidential election while voters were still casting ballots in nearly half the 50 states.
President Reagan receives congratulatory calls from Prime Minister Mulroney of Canada, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and President Zia of Pakistan.
Republicans narrowed the Democratic majority in the House, but appeared to be falling short of seizing control from Democratic leaders. If the trend continued, the House would continue to pose a major obstacle to President Reagan’s legislative agenda, despite his overwhelming re-election victory.
Senate Republican candidates grasped President Reagan’s coattails, but the returns indicated they would be unable to solidify their control of the chamber. In the most bitter and expensive race, Senator Jesse A. Helms, Republican of North Carolina and a leader of the New Right, defeated a challenge by Gov. Jim Hunt, a moderate Democrat.
In gubernatorial races, Republicans appeared to be making only marginal gains despite President Reagan’s national sweep. In the 13 races, Republicans seized statehouses in North Carolina, Rhode Island and Utah and retained seats in four states — Delaware, Indiana, Missouri and New Hampshire.
Senator Bill Bradley easily won re-election to a second term. The 41-year-old Democrat was leading Mary V. Mochary, a 42-year-old lawyer and former Mayor of Montclair, 63 percent to 37 percent.
Despite a nationwide landslide for President Reagan, Lieutenant Governor John F. Kerry, a liberal Democrat, defeated Raymond Shamie, a conservative Republican businessman, today for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by Paul E. Tsongas.
President Reagan swept New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but except for Connecticut generally failed to translate his landslide into Republican victories in the House and local offices. In Connecticut, the Reagan tide enabled Republicans to win both houses of the Legislature for the first time in a decade and to seize the seat of Representative William R. Ratchford, a three-term Democrat.
Paper ballots had to be used by tens of thousands of voters in New York City as exasperated poll inspectors were unable to locate voting cards filed in recent weeks.
Moscow called on Washington to make its avowed desire for better Soviet-American relations “more credible.” The appeal was made by Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko at a Kremlin meeting. While condemning past U.S. policy, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko extended an olive branch to Washington. “We offer peace and peace only,” the longtime Soviet official said in a speech on the eve of the 67th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. “We are ready to cooperate in the interests of strengthening international security.” Gromyko implied, as President Konstantin U. Chernenko has in recent statements, that the United States would have to show by some deed that it seriously wants to improve relations.
The duties of Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, were expanded by the Communist leadership to include direct responsibility for the Interior Ministry. The action was considered a slap at the hardline wing of the Polish Party, particularly at Miroslaw Milewski, the national secretary who has been directly in charge of the police and security apparatus. Members of the security police, under the Interior Ministry, have been charged with the abduction and killing of the 37-year-old priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko. Even before the slaying of Father Popiełuszko, there was known to be rivalry between Mr. Milewski, who was Interior Minister until July 1981, and his successor in that post, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, who is an army colleague of General Jaruzelski. “What was an isolated event,” a Politburo statement said, “must not undermine the good name of the security service and the police.”
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced today that a key member of the Soviet Union’s ruling Politburo will visit Britain next month to discuss nuclear arms control. She told Parliament that Mikhail S. Gorbachev, 53 years old, who is in line to succeed Konstantin U. Chernenko, will lead a delegation of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal Parliament. Mr. Gorbachev is to be followed next year by Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, another member of the Soviet leadership group. “We shall hope during these visits to take forward the search for ways to reduce the burden of armaments,” Mrs. Thatcher said. “With our Western partners, we have made far-reaching but practical proposals in every arms control negotiation. So far, the response from the Soviet Union has not been forthcoming.”
The British Government today outlined its legislative program, dominated by a much-criticized plan to abolish the Greater London Council and six other metropolitan authorities, most of which the Labor Party usually controls. In the annual Speech from the Throne, read by Queen Elizabeth II but written by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her staff, the Government also pledged to go ahead with “privatization,” the return of state companies to private hands. They include the National Bus Company, which operates between cities; the aircraft-engine division of Rolls Royce; parts of British Steel, British Shipbuilders, and British Leyland, the automotive manufacturer, and several airports. The speech contained no promises of radical programs to cure unemployment, which has reached a record level of 13.3 percent. British politicians, including many in Mrs. Thatcher’s own Conservative Party, are coming to the conclusion that joblessness could hurt her in the months ahead. The speech said the Government “remains deeply concerned.”
The trial of six Yugoslav dissidents charged with counterrevolutionary activities reconvened briefly today before it was recessed for two days to allow a newly appointed defense lawyer to prepare his case. The trial, which started Monday, is the largest political trial in recent years. The presiding judge, who was asked to remove himself from the case by the defendants on Monday, continued to conduct the opening session today after that motion was dismissed.
Neo-Nazis from five European countries have formed an Adolf Hitler Committee to organize celebrations in 1989 for the 100th anniversary of the Nazi dictator’s birth, a magazine that monitors the activities of extreme right-wing groups said. Blick Nach Rechts (Look to the Right) said that neo-Nazis from West Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and Britain met in Madrid some weeks ago to form the committee. The senior officials of the committee are based in West Germany, it said.
Arab terrorist Abu Nidal, who was once allied with Yasser Arafat in the Palestine Liberation Organization but who later condemned it as too moderate and deserted to form his own radical faction, has died in Baghdad, Iraq, of a heart attack, British television reported. Abu Nidal led the breakaway guerrilla group called Black June that functioned outside the PLO and that was blamed for a series of assassinations, bombings and other terrorist acts against a wide range of Jewish and European targets.
Egypt allowed a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy ship to pass through the Suez Canal for the first time last weekend in what one official called a breakthrough for U.S. diplomacy. The cruiser USS Arkansas, traveling from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, was shadowing a conventionally powered Soviet ship that had steamed through the canal the previous day. Egypt has always barred nuclear-powered ships from passing through the Suez Canal, with officials saying they feared an accident that might close the canal to traffic.
Passengers and crew members on a hijacked Saudi airliner attacked their two abductors while the plane was on the ground in Tehran, allowing Iranian troops to storm the plane and capture the hijackers, Persian Gulf news agencies reported. The hijackers, identified only as citizens of Yemen, seized the Saudi Airlines TriStar jet, with 117 passengers and 14 crew members, on a flight from London to Riyadh, the Saudi capital. They reportedly demanded Iranian asylum and the payment of $500,000 in Saudi developmental aid to Yemen.
The two hijackers were captured and one passenger was injured during the melee, the Iranian press agency said. The Saudi Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement that Iranian authorities had notified them “all the passengers enjoyed good health.” The statement said the hijacking ended eight hours after the plane was commandeered today. The news agency quoted Andrew Miller, identified as an American pharmacologist among the passengers, as saying several passengers got involved in the brawl with the hijackers. “There were two hijackers, holding only one gun, and when the clash started, they were intermingled with the passengers,” Mr. Miller was quoted as saying. His hometown was not given.
The surviving Sikh accused of killing Indira Gandhi has told investigators in New Delhi that he was also to have killed Rajiv Gandhi, now Prime Minister, if he had been with his mother at the time of the assassination, The Statesman, a leading Indian newspaper, reported. As this and further details on Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination emerged unofficially in the Indian press, the two senior police officers responsible for Mrs. Gandhi’s security were suspended for dereliction of duty. Mr. Gandhi was on a political tour of Calcutta and West Bengal when his mother was shot last Wednesday. The police identified the assailants as Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, two Sikhs who were members of Mrs. Gandhi’s personal security force. One, Beant Singh, was said to have been killed by other guards.
Today’s account in The Statesman said that well before the assassination, one of Satwant Singh’s superiors reported in writing to a higher authority that Mr. Singh was unfit for guard duty at the Prime Minister’s house. The report was shelved, the newspaper said. Earlier, it had been reported that Mrs. Gandhi opposed the transfer of Sikhs out of her security force because it would look as if a minority group were being discriminated against.
The Thai Army sent reinforcements today to push out Vietnamese soldiers who overran a border post inside Thailand, army officers said. Two Thai soldiers have been killed, 25 have been wounded and 5 are missing since fighting began Monday for control of Hill 424 on the Cambodian border at Traveng, 180 miles northeast of Bangkok, the officers said. They said about 100 soldiers from Vietnam’s 73d Regiment punched about a mile into Thai territory but, according to the Thai radio, they were later pushed back into Cambodia by Thai forces. A Thai military source said the Vietnamese crossed the border in pursuit of Khmer Rouge guerrillas.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos will be a candidate in the country’s next presidential elections in 1987, the presidential palace in Manila said. Marcos, 67, in power for 19 years, often is rumored to be suffering from a serious kidney ailment, and he has weathered 14 months of protests arising from the assassination of his main rival. “I wanted you to know that I am running in 1987,” he was quoted as telling Cabinet members and regional officials of his party.
Movements of a Soviet freighter are being closely monitored because intelligence reports indicate the ship contains Soviet fighter planes that might be destined for Nicaragua, according to Reagan Administration officials.
Reports on two investigations of the controversial CIA manual prepared for Nicaraguan rebels were delivered to President Reagan by Robert C. McFarlane, his national security adviser. Larry Speakes, deputy press secretary, said the reports were prepared by the CIA inspector general and the Intelligence Oversight Board, a non-governmental advisory panel. Speakes said the reports will be sent to congressional committees.
A policeman and a youth were killed and at least 40 people were injured overnight as guerrillas blacked out a large part of central Peru and staged attacks in the capital, the police said today. The guerrillas knocked down three electricity poles, cutting power to eight provinces including the capital and its port, Callao. A policeman was shot dead in an attack on a police station, and a 13-year old boy was killed in a bomb explosion outside the Economics Ministry. At least 40 people were injured in the capital as cars collided and pedestrians tripped on sidewalks in the dark. Power was restored in central Lima two hours later, but had not returned to the suburbs and Callao by morning. Police sources blamed the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.
A state of siege was imposed in Chile by President Augusto Pinochet for the first time in six years. Acting after months of political unrest, General Pinochet also imposed a curfew from midnight to 5 AM. “It is precisely to save democracy and liberty that now more than ever it is necessary to be inflexible with respect to the institutional order that rules us,” the President said at a ceremony at which he announced a new Cabinet. The President already had considerable powers to combat terrorism under the previous state of emergency. The press could be censored and political leaders exiled. The main difference seems to be that under the state of siege the Goverment can hold terrorist suspects without charges for an indefinite period and trials can be delayed indefinately.
The United States proposed today that African countries seeking economic recovery offer incentives and competition at home rather than “state-controlled programs designed to provide a shortcut to development.” Speaking in the General Assembly near the end of a three-day debate on the economic crisis in Africa, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the chief United States delegate, emphasized the private sector as the key to long-term recovery. “Many parts of the continent, including areas that were previously net food exporters, have become dependent on food imports,” she said, suggesting that “coercion failed where market incentives might well have succeeded.” Amid Appeals for Help The debate, which began last Friday, took place against a backdrop of appeals for help and expressions of support for the 150 million people facing hunger and malnutrition in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. Many Western countries said new allocations of food aid or financial assistance were being sent to Ethiopia, the hardest hit by drought.
South African Army units set up roadblocks around townships south of Johannesburg today in the second day of unrest associated with a civil rights strike by hundreds of thousands of black workers. Police officials said 16 people had died in two days of rioting, stoning of policemen and arson in townships around Johannesburg and near the southern industrial center of Port Elizabeth. The police reported 10 deaths Monday. The death toll within a 24-hour period was the highest since South Africa’s latest convulsion of protracted violence erupted in early September. More than 100 people, all but one of them black, have died since then, at least 70 of them shot by the police.
The Discovery was set to begin an eight-day mission to deliver two new satellites into orbit and to retrieve two errant satellites in the world’s first space salvage operation. The space shuttle, with five astronauts aboard, was set for launching at 8:22 A.M. tomorrow. The countdown proceeded smoothly today, and fair skies were forecast for liftoff time. If the Discovery gets away as planned, it will be the shortest interval, less than a month, between flights in the shuttle project. This will be the project’s 14th flight and Discovery’s second. A sister ship, the Challenger, landed here October 13 after a seven-day flight.
It will be the first space voyage for Commander David M. Walker, 40, a Navy pilot, and Dr. Anna L. Fisher, 35, a physician. She and her husband, Dr. William Fisher, also an astronaut, have a 14-month-old daughter, a fact that earns Dr. Fisher a footnote in space history: She will be the first mother to travel in space. According to their flight plan, the astronauts will devote the second and third days of the mission, Thursday and Friday, to the deployment of two commercial communications satellites, the 11th and 12th satellite deliveries of the shuttle program. On Thursday, the astronauts are to release Anik D-2 for Telesat Canada, a private telecommunications company. Telesat announced that once Anik was in its 22,300-mile-high operational orbit, the company planned to offer the satellite for sale, something that has never happened before in the satellite communications industry. On Friday the second satellite, Leasat 1, is to be deployed from Discovery’s cargo bay. This satellite is owned by the Hughes Aircraft Company, which is leasing it to the United States Navy for its global communications network.
Then the astronauts are to turn their full attention to salvaging two satellites, Palapa B-2 and Westar 6, that were misdirected to useless orbits when their rockets misfired last February. Palapa was owned by the Indonesian Government, and Westar was owned by the Western Union Corporation. But now ownership has passed to the insurance underwriters that paid out $180 million when the satellites were declared a loss. It is the insurers, most predominantly Lloyds of London, that arranged to have the Discovery astronauts attempt to snare the two satellites, tuck them in the cargo bay and bring them back to earth for refurbishment and re- launching. The insurers hope to recoup up to $50 million of their losses by selling the used satellites.
The parents of Baby Fae are accepting bids from publications willing to pay for the story of the world’s longest-living recipient of an animal heart transplant. Dick Schaefer, a spokesman for the Loma Linda Medical Center, said Monday that the family had authorized submission of written bids to be forwarded to the family. Mr. Schaefer said the hospital did not want to get involved in any monetary negotiations and urged the family to hire a lawyer. The family, which has so far kept its anonymity, is reportedly low-income, but costs of the historic operation are being donated by the hospital and physicians.
Arguments on whether a magazine violated copyright law when it published an article based on an unauthorized advance copy of former President Gerald R. Ford’s memoirs were heard by the Supreme Court. The five-year-old dispute involving The Nation magazine took the Justices into a little-explored gray area where two constitutional protections, copyright and freedom of the press, overlap and clash.
An election night strike against NBC television was avoided when the union for 400 newswriters at the network recommended approval of a new four-year contract. The pact is retroactive to April 1, 1983. A spokesman for the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians said the union’s action came after an all-day bargaining session between NABET and NBC negotiators. Voting on the proposed agreement will be finished by Friday, the spokesman said. Those the contract will cover include 60 employees at NBC-owned KNBC-TV and the NBC News bureau in Burbank.
Appeals courts stopped what would have been the nation’s first double execution since 1965, but one of the two killers set to die today in Florida’s electric chair only got a temporary reprieve and may still be executed this week. The state Supreme Court granted an indefinite stay of execution to Chester Levon Maxwell to allow a review of his mental retardation. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta granted a stay of execution until Thursday morning to Timothy Charles Palmes to allow an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The village board of Oak Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, has approved a plan to reward landlords and tenants for racially integrating their apartment buildings. By a 5-1 vote, the board approved a measure that will hand out up to $400,000 in grants and subsidies next year. Under the plan, landlords could receive up to $1,000 per rental unit to be used for improvements. Tenants would be eligible to receive up to $300 in rent subsidies for renting units in the integrated buildings.
The Miami City Commission repeated its 3-2 vote to fire black City Manager Howard Gary as a compromise designed to defuse racial tension over Gary’s firing collapsed. Gary, the highest paid municipal administrator in the nation with a salary of more than $100,000, said he now wants a public hearing. Mayor Maurice Ferre again cast the deciding vote for Gary’s ouster. The dismissal resolution said the reasons for the firing were “unacceptable management style” and “lack of communication.”
FBI agents in Cleveland collected weapons caches from “safehouses” they said provided shelter for five captured radicals and pressed a search for a sixth fugitive who fled a farmhouse before a police raid. The suspected radicals, including a man on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, were being held on fugitive charges stemming from the murder of a New Jersey state trooper and dozens of East Coast bombings and bank robberies.
The police in Los Angeles said today that they did not have enough evidence to book the man a newspaper reporter said took him on a harrowing nightlong ride while threatening to “blow his head off.” Timothy Carlson, 35 years old, said he was kidnapped from the scene of a killing that he was covering for The Los Angeles Herald Examiner. The suspect, Dennis Lee Higgins, 26, surrendered this afternoon to sheriff’s detectives. He was turned over to the police but was not immediately booked. A police spokesman said: “The elements for the crime of kidnapping have not been established sufficiently. There are conflicts in the two stories.” He said the investigation was continuing.
A Federal mediator called company and union representatives back to the bargaining table Tuesday, while for the second day the police were called to quell violence on the picket line at the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth, Texas. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents 6,400 workers, voted Sunday to strike after rejecting a proposed three-year contract.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has put off deciding whether to force the complete upgrading of an emergency system in the undamaged reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant before allowing it to restart, possibly sometime next year. The five-member commission was asked by the Union of Concerned Scientists to review a decision by government regulators allowing the plant’s owner, General Public Utilities Inc., to finish the work two years after it has resumed operation. The undamaged Unit 1 reactor at the plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been shut down since before its sister Unit 2 reactor overheated because of a loss of cooling water in March, 1979, in the nation’s worst nuclear power accident.
The beleaguered 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans, at least $100 million in debt, filed for protection from hundreds of creditors under the Federal Bankruptcy Code. The fair’s marketing director, George Williams, said that under the provisions of Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code the Louisiana World Exposition Inc. “expects to conclude the fair’s operation and liquidate its assets in an orderly fashion.” The fair has been a financial disaster since it opened May 12, because of poor attendance. Instead of packing in the predicted 12 million free-spending visitors in its 184 days, the exposition is struggling to reach a total attendance of 7 million by the time it closes Sunday.
Tropical storm Klaus boiled up suddenly in the Caribbean Sea south of Puerto Rico and gale warnings were posted for Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Netherlands Antilles of the Leeward Islands and also on the islands of St. Kitts, Nevis and Anguilla. The storm had sustained winds of 40 m.p.h. and forecasters said “some slow strengthening is possible.”
The Detroit Tigers’ Willie Hernandez wins the American League MVP Award, joining Rollie Fingers as the only relief pitchers to be named MVP and Cy Young Award winner in the same season. Kent Hrbek is 2nd with Dan Quisenberry third. Boston’s Tony Armas is the 7th, despite winning the home run and RBI titles; the last player to lead in those categories and not win was Ted Williams.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1244.15 (+14.91)
Born:
Ricky Romero, MLB pitcher (All-Star, 2011; Toronto Blue Jays), in East Los Angeles, California.
Atahualpa Severino, Dominican MLB pitcher (Washington Nationals), in Cotui, Dominican Republic.
Danny Watkins, Canadian NFL guard (Philadelphia Eagles, Miami Dolphins), in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
Patina Miller, American actress and singer (‘Daisy Grant’ – “Madam Secretary”), in Pageland, South Carolina.
History Diaries 