Private talks with Soviet officials will be given priority in coming weeks by the Reagan Administration in the hope of beginning high-level discussions early next year on a wide range of arms-control issues. Administration officials assert that in the aftermath of President Reagan’s re-election, signs of movement toward negotiations, which have been suspended, have become apparent in recent public statements from Moscow and Washington. Because of this perceived movement, Administration officials said Secretary of State George P. Shultz would step up talks here with Ambassador Anatoly F. Dorbrynin. Talks between Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and Ambassador Arthur A. Hartman in Moscow are also to be stepped up, they added.
The strike that has immobilized most of Britain’s coal fields for more than 36 weeks appears to be losing some of its momentum. More than 5,000 of the miners who had been taking part in the walkout returned to their jobs this week, according to the National Coal Board. Although the National Union of Mineworkers challenges the board’s figures, its officials make no effort to hide the fact that a back-to-work movement is under way. Some expect that as many as 7,000 to 9,000 strikers may leave the picket lines next week to qualify for pre-Christmas bonuses.
Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, said it regularly receives reports of torture and ill treatment occurring in more than half the 159 member states of the United Nations. “This is in spite of the total ban against torture in international agreements like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights,” an official of the group said at a conference in Tanzania.
Britain has told its principal allies that it is prepared to follow the Reagan Administration’s example and give notice that it intends to leave UNESCO in a year unless the organization agrees to further changes in the way it operates, according to Western diplomats. The British move has touched off a flurry of diplomatic activity on both sides of the Atlantic, the diplomats say. Many countries are urging Britain to stay in the agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Others want Britain to try to persuade the Reagan Administration to postpone for a year America’s planned departure from UNESCO in December, and join for a year in a final push for change.
A militant British animal-rights group claimed to have injected rat poison into Mars candy bars on sale in London and four other cities because the candy maker funded a medical experiment involving force-feeding monkeys. In a telephone call to the Sunday Mirror newspaper, the Animal Liberation Front said some of the poisoned bars were marked but others were not. The candy firm, Mars U.K. Ltd., previously announced funding of medical research into tooth decay but has denied that monkeys are being force-fed a sugar-rich diet as part of the project.
Fighting with stones and clubs broke out in central Athens tonight at a mass march celebrating the 11th anniversary of a student revolt. The police said at least two people were hurt. They said the fighting broke out after 400 anarchists were refused permission to join an officially approved annual march from the Polytechnic School to the United States Embassy to commemorate a 1973 student uprising against the military dictators who ruled Greece from 1967-1974. At least 30 people were killed in the supression of the uprising. Greek leftists say token opposition to the junta by the United States was tantamount to support. Tens of thousands of people, including Cabinet members in the Socialist Government, leading politicians and unionists, took part in the march, which was organized by the Greek Students Union.
The P.L.O.’s first formal split in its 20-year history may be approaching. It would mean, Palestinians said, a division into two and possibly several factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the single umbrella group that has claimed to represent the aspirations of Palestinians in Israel-occupied land and elsewhere. The P.L.O. has been deeply but informally split since a group of Palestinian fighters broke away 18 months ago from Al Fatah, the faction led by Yasser Arafat, who also heads the P.L.O.
Over U.S. and Israeli objections, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly called on Israel to promise not to attack foreign nuclear facilities like the Iraqi plant that it destroyed three years ago. A watered-down resolution was adopted 106–2 with 33 abstentions. Israeli Ambassador Benjamin Netanyahu criticized the assembly for continuing to debate the matter.
Two former officers of an elite Israeli anti-terrorist unit have been arrested on suspicion of selling military secrets to another country, security sources in Jerusalem reported. They said the officers, who served in a “special guard” of the paramilitary border police, sold top-secret training manuals and course instructions on how to storm guerrillas holding hostages and. other counterterrorist techniques. The sources, who declined to be identified, also refused to name the country alleged to have received the information, only saying that it is in the Third World but not in Latin America.
A Palestinian professor at the Islamic University in Gaza City in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip was shot to death outside his home, university and hospital officials announced. The officials, who requested anonymity, identified the victim as Ismail Khatib, 39, dean of the university’s Arabic-language college. The officials quoted witnesses as saying two men, who appeared to be Arabs, were seen running away from the scene of the shooting. No motive for the killing was immediately known.
Egypt said today that it had foiled a plot by Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi to assassinate a political opponent and then used faked photographs to trick Libya into announcing that the intended victim had been slain. The faked pictures, which were sent to Libya by Egyptian intelligence agents, showed the intended victim with his hands tied behind his back and his mouth gagged, with blood spattered on his face and shirt, and, finally, lying supposedly dead in a pool of blood. Libya’s official press agency and the Government-run Tripoli Radio both reported Friday that one of Colonel Qaddafi’s “suicide squads” had executed the man on Monday, the last day friends and relatives reported seeing him and his wife. Today, President Hosni Mubarak announced in a speech that the supposed victim, Abdul Hamid Bakkush, was “alive and well.” Shortly afterward, Mr. Bakkush, Libya’s last Prime Minister before Colonel Qaddafi overthrew King Idris in 1969, appeared at a news conference in Cairo with Egypt’s Interior Minister.
Victims of the drought and famine afflicting much of Ethiopia will require huge shipments of emergency food supplies for at least a year and possibly beyond, according to Western experts. “We really have no idea how long this country will be dependent upon emergency feeding programs,” a senior European diplomat here said. “People could be starving to death here for years.” The experts, who include relief officials as well as Western diplomats, estimate that a minimum of 600,000 metric tons of grain will be needed for the next 12 months. So far only half that amount has been pledged, mainly by American and European donors.
India’s assassination inquiry widened as more than three dozen members of Indira Gandhi’s personal security force were reportedly detained. Indian intelligence sources said they suspected the conspiracy against Mrs. Gandhi was part of wider plot to kill President Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi, and his family. The news agency said more than three dozen police officers assigned to guard Mrs. Gandhi and some officers from other services underwent “sustained questioning to find out whether they were part of the plot or had any inkling of the conspiracy.” Officials could not be reached for comment on the report.
Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid has proposed a 1985 national budget that would increase spending by 54 percent, to $90 billion, but that would not quite keep pace with this year’s inflation rate of 55 percent. In a document accompanying the spending proposal, Mr. de la Madrid outlined his economic goals for 1985, which included economic growth of 3 to 4 percent, reduction of the inflation rate to 35 percent a year and reduction of the federal deficit to 5.1 percent of the gross national product. Budget and Planning Secretary Carlos Salinas de Gortari noted that the projected growth in the economy would be greater than the population growth of 2.4 percent a year and said the expansion would bring new jobs to millions of unemployed. Mr. de la Madrid said in his message to Congress that the money for the budget would be provided by $36 billion in taxes, $31 billion in income from state enterprises such as the Government oil monopoly, and $23 billion from domestic and foreign loans. The statement said that a maximum of $1 billion would come from foreign loans, the smallest amount in 13 years.
Opposition leaders who won seats in the new National Assembly said in interviews this week that they intended to present a strong challenge to the governing Sandinista Front. “When the Assembly convenes in January, the Sandinistas will be facing a strong and belligerent opposition, most of which was elected on explicitly anti-Communist platforms,” said Adolfo Evertsz Velez, a leader of the Socialist Party of Nicaragua. “They are going to have to make concessions.” The opposition’s determination to press its demands indicates that the Assembly will reflect a relative diversity of views. But key decisions that will determine the power of the Assembly, such as whether it will have the power to approve the national budget, remain to be made.
Zaire has accused unnamed African “sister” nations of involvement in what it terms the third invasion in seven years of its mineral-rich Shaba province. Zairian units recaptured the town of Moba, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, after it had been occupied for 24 hours by an number of rebels, Information Commissioner Sakombi Inongo said. While not naming the countries allegedly involved in the attack on Shaba, Sakombi did say that 100 of the insurgents were killed by Zairian troops after crossing the border from Tanzania.
Nigeria has executed 42 soldiers accused of plotting to assassinate the head of state, Maj. Gen. Mohammed Buhari, and his Cabinet ministers, London’s Sunday Observer reported. Citing reports from Lagos, the Nigerian capital, and without revealing its sources, the newspaper said the plan had been to gun down the Nigerian leader, General Mohammed Buhari, and his ministers while they were watching the independence day parade in Lagos on October 1, the paper said. But the plot was revealed, and the plotters were rounded up and shot in an underground firing range at Ikeja, outside Lagos, it said. General Buhari toppled the civilian Government of President Shehu Shagari in a coup on Dec. 31, 1983. Among those executed were 14 officers, including two lieutenant colonels and four majors, the paper said. The report could not be independently confirmed.
Prime Minister Robert Mugabe said today that the government would do all it could to insure that a general election due by next March was free and fair. He said at a news conference that he did not believe there was tension in the country, even in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces, where rebels have been fighting the government for two years. He called on the opposition party of Joshua Nkomo, his ally in the guerrilla war for independence, to end its backing of the rebels, but the party denies it is backing them.
Leaders of the movement for a freeze on nuclear weapons say that they view President Reagan’s re-election as a major defeat but that they have been heartened by the victories of several Congressional candidates favoring a halt in the deployment of nuclear arms. Advocates of the freeze said this week that they would concentrate their efforts in the next two years on defeating Congressional candidates opposed to the freeze. Twenty-two Republican Senators, most of whom oppose a nuclear freeze, will be up for re-election in 1986, and strategists aim to focus on the issue in the campaigns, said Dr. Jane Gruenebaum, associate director of the National Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign. Of the 12 Democratic Senate incumbents who will run in 1986, only one has opposed a freeze, she said.
The President and First Lady leave for Rancho del Cielo and Phoenix.
President Reagan along with his ranch hands laid out the template for the new irrigation system that will be next to the ranch house.
The elimination of a depreciation provision that saves corporations about $24 billion a year has been recommended by Treasury Department officials as part of the Administration’s coming tax simplification plan, Administration sources said. The provision, which allows companies to write off the costs of plant and equipment faster than under earlier law, was a key feature of President Reagan’s tax cut for businesses in 1981. The proposal to drop the Accelerated Cost Recovery System was reached by Treasury aides at a meeting last week, the Washington Post reported, and the plan now goes to Secretary Donald T. Regan for review.
More restrictions on Medicaid payments to states where health-care costs are considered excessive are being considered by the Reagan Administration. Further cutbacks were recommended in a new report from the Heritage Foundation that is being used an unofficial guide to budget policy in the Administration. Without being specific, the report also recommends the consolidation of several welfare programs and reductions in other domestic spending.
Tearful over their loss and prideful in their sense of common achievement, the community of Loma Linda paid tribute today to Baby Fae with the words of a 245-year-old hymn, “Where, O Death, is now thy sting?” About 2,300 people filled the Loma Linda University Church to remember the infant whose flawed heart was replaced with the heart of a baboon in a historic medical procedure. Baby Fae died Thursday night at the age of one month, after 20 days with the baboon heart. She met death in anonymity, her true name having been withheld from the public by her parents and the medical authorities.
With astronauts and space officials still glowing over their first space salvage mission, technicians at Cape Canaveral started preparing the space shuttle Discovery for a top-secret Defense Department flight in January. Discovery was towed into a processing hangar Friday just a few hours after the ship and its crew of four men and one woman landed here with two communications satellites that were plucked from useless orbits in daring space walks.
Puerto Rico will be the South Bronx of the Caribbean if the incoming administration of Governor-elect Rafael Hernandez Colon fails to convince Washington to help the commonwealth become more economically self-reliant, an economic adviser to the island administration said. Puerto Ricans fear that further budget cutting by Congress and the Reagan Administration might bring about political and social destabilization, which would strengthen groups demanding independence.
Estimates for the cost of making Bikini Atoll in the Pacific fit for human habitation have been lowered to $42 million, a special committee reported to Congress. Bikini was contaminated by radioactivity from U.S. nuclear weapons tests from 1946 through 1958. Residents were allowed to return in 1970 but were removed in 1978 because of high radioactivity. In a preliminary report from the Bikini Atoll Rehabilitation Committee a year ago, the cost was put at $100 million.
A former Three Mile Island senior operator was convicted of trying to deceive the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by having a co-worker complete parts of his take-home relicensing test. James Floyd, former supervisor of operations at TMI’s Unit 2, scene of the nuclear plant accident in March, 1979, admitted in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, court that he cheated on the exams but maintained that no crime was committed because he never intended to deceive anyone.
Skeletal remains discovered by two hunters 10 miles east of Enumclaw, Washington, have been identified as those of a missing young woman who became the 28th known victim of the Green River serial killer, a spokesman for the King County Medical Examiner’s office said. The victim, Martina Theresa Authorlee, 18, of Seattle, was last seen alive on May 15, 1983. She was known to have had a history of prostitution but did not frequent the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport “strip” where many of the other Green River victims were last seen.
The United States is planning to blockade two major shipping lanes from Colombia to stop marijuana shipments to the United States, ABC News and the Miami Herald reported. ABC said the U.S. Navy, “working with the governments of Venezuela, Panama and Colombia, is about to launch what amounts to a naval blockade off the coast of Colombia. At least nine U.S. ships are already involved and more are likely to take part…” The South Florida Task Force on drugs, Coast Guard, U.S. Customs, Drug Enforcement Administration and Florida authorities are involved, the Herald said.
The teamsters, in a bitter internal wrangle, placed a local into trusteeship and ousted its president because of accusations that he used unauthorized union funds to lease an automobile, finance an audit and hire bodyguards. The order by Jackie Presser, the union’s national president, followed a two-month investigation of El Paso Local 941 by the Washington-based union. Joseph Allgood, an international union representative, went to local headquarters Friday afternoon and personally delivered Mr. Presser’s order to the local president, Daniel Diaz. Mr. Diaz, who waged a fierce fight against the trusteeship, has refused comment.
Another round of court-supervised negotiations has been ordered in an effort to end a teachers’ strike in Pennsylvania, and a new strike seemed imminent in Illinois. About 12,500 students have been affected by four walkouts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania involving 986 teachers. Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Emil Narick will supervise talks between negotiators in Pennsylvania’s South Fayette dispute, which involves 73 teachers who have walked off the job twice since August.
A convicted forger who faked a release order to slip out of prison in New Hampshire has been recaptured in Colorado after more than six weeks of freedom. The forger, Edgar Berube, 28 years old, who has also impersonated members of the Kennedy and DuPont families, was arrested in Boulder, Colorado, Friday on fugitive from justice charges, Mary Keniston, spokesman for the New Hampshire Corrections Department, said late Friday. Mr. Berube apparently fled from New Hampshire to the West Coast before traveling to Boulder, she said. An official at a Seattle bank and security officials at the University of Washington helped lead police to Mr. Berube, she said. Mr. Berube, convicted of theft and forgery charges, forged the signature for his release to a Massachusetts drug treatment center October 2. Corrections officials did not detect the fake signature until November 7.
An Illinois judge presiding over the trial of a man accused of killing his wife and three children has scheduled night sessions Sunday and Monday so jurors cannot see a movie, made for television, about an Army doctor convicted of killing his family. The order camme at the request of defense lawyers in the murder trial of David Hendricks, 30 years old, a back-brace inventor and salesman from Bloomington who is charged in the ax and knife slayings of his wife and three children that took place November 7, 1983. A prosecutor says there are some “striking” similarities between the Hendricks case and the subject of the two-part NBC miniseries, the 1979 conviction of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, a former Green Beret physician, on charges of murdering his pregnant wife and their two daughters.
Mr. Hendricks, denies killing his family and contends he was in Wisconsin on a sales trip when the slayings took place. Prosecutors say he hacked his family to death and then went to Wisconsin to set up an alibi. The movie, “Fatal Vision,” based on the best-selling book by Joe McGinniss, details the case of Dr. MacDonald, whose conviction came nine years after the killings of his family.
A Florida X-ray technician was held without bail today on charges of killing nine young women since May, and the authorities say a 10th victim may be related to the other killings. The technician, Robert J. (Bobby Jo) Long, 31 years old, of Tampa, was arrested Friday on first-degree murder charges, said Sheriff Walter Heinrich of Hillsborough County. Mr. Long, now on three years’ probation for aggravated assault, also was charged with the rape, abduction and sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl. He was being held without bail today. As Mr. Heinrich announced the arrest at a news conference Friday night, he stopped to say that deputies had found the body of Vickie Marie Elliott, who had been abducted from Tampa earlier this month. That brought the number of possibly related slayings in the Tampa Bay area since May to 10, investigators said. Mr. Long, whom officials said had a criminal history dating to 1970, had not been charged in that death.
Captain Wayne Williams, the military pilot of Air Force Two, should have been looking out the window for a small airplane that he had been warned was nearby instead of changing radio frequencies before a near-miss October 18 near Seattle’s Boeing Field, a memo by Frank Benedict, a Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector, said. Vice President George Bush was aboard when his plane came within 1,500 feet of another. The FAA has no authority over Air Force pilots.
The Coast Guard intensified the search today for a 87-foot fishing trawler that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean four days ago along with its nine-man crew. Eight aircraft, the Coast Guard cutter Chilula, and three other vessels combed a 17,600-square mile area southeast of Cape May, New Jersey, in search of the trawler Amazing Grace, which is based in Hampton, said Lieutenant L. R. White of the Coast Guard. The trawler, owned by the Wanchese Fish Company of Wanchese, North Carolina, has been missing since Wednesday when the captain radioed another ship that his vessel was taking on water. “We don’t know for sure that the boat has sunk,” said Lieutenant White, who is based at the Coast Guard’s 3rd District Operations Center in New York.
Hepatitis researchers found a virus they say might be the major cause of hepatitis transmitted through blood transfusions. The discovery of the virus by scientists at the New York Blood Center was the second independent report in two weeks that claimed discovery of a virus that was the probable cause of most cases of post-transfusion hepatitis. Whether the two reports represent the same virus is unknown.
Golden State Warrior Purvis Short scores a career high 59 points but the team loses to the New Jersey Nets, 124–110.
Born:
Park Han-byul, South Korean actress (“I Have a Lover”), in Seoul, South Korea.
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