Konstantin U. Chernenko pledged that the Soviet Union would search for the “most radical” solutions to the arms race at talks with the United States scheduled for January. It was the Soviet leader’s first public comment since the negotiations were announced last Thursday. Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko said the Kremlin is ready to make a “new start” on arms talks with the United States without conditions, British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock reported after meeting with the Soviet leader in Moscow. He said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that the Soviets have dropped their insistence that the Atlantic Alliance remove new Pershing 2 and cruise missiles being deployed in Europe as a condition for new arms talks. The Soviets walked out of two sets of missile talks last year in protest against the deployment.
Four prominent members of past Administrations called on President Reagan to abandon his controversial “Star Wars” space defense program, saying it would be costly, impossible to achieve and destabilizing to the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance. At a press conference, the four men — former National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, former arms negotiator Gerard Smith and Soviet Union expert George F. Kennan — also said that future arms control talks with Moscow would fail unless Reagan “radically constrains” his effort to find a nationwide defense against enemy warheads.
[LOL. WRONG. A cautionary tale: The “experts” often are talking out of their ass.]
U.S.-Iraqi ties will be restored, the two countries announced. Baghdad’s decision to renew full diplomatic relations with Washington means that all the Arab countries that broke ties in 1967 have restored them. President Reagan meets with Deputy Prime Minister Aziz of Iraq to re-establish diplomatic relations, which Iraq had broken off 17 years prior.
Poland’s Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, arrived in Rome on a weeklong visit to confer with Pope John Paul II after the kidnapping and killing of a highly popular pro-Solidarity priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Glemp, who normally answers questions willingly, declined all comment on arrival. “This time I don’t speak,” he said. “I am deaf and dumb.” The Pope, a native Pole, said in a carefully worded statement late in October that Popieluszko’s murder “has shaken the opinion and confidence of men in Poland and in all the world.”
An end to Britain’s long-running coal miners’ strike would increase the nation’s economic growth to 3.25 percent in 1985, up from the 2.5 percent predicted for 1984, the Confederation of British Industry said today. It said growth could be lower than 3.25 percent if the miners’ strike continued, or if world economic growth declined sharply.
The Lebanese Army moved to consolidate fully its control of the capital and its suburbs today. The deployment of troops was the first phase of a new plan to extend the authority of the central Government to the north and south of the country. Soldiers patrolled the streets in armored personnel carriers, and army positions were reinforced at five checkpoints on the Green Line between the Moslem and Christian parts of the city. It was the second time since last summer that a security plan had been put into effect by the army in Beirut and its environs. The measures today are intended to plug loopholes in the original plan, which took effect in July but did not eliminate factional fighting.
Syrian President Hafez Assad urged visiting French President Francois Mitterrand to overcome U.S. objections to a Mideast peace conference. Assad said at a state dinner that “Israel and its allies across the Atlantic” are to blame for undermining relations between France and Syria. “We. . . realize the importance of the role Europe, and foremost France, can play to convene the conference,” Syrian media quoted Assad as having said. In reply, Mitterrand praised Assad, reasserting his view that “nothing can be accomplished in the Middle East without Syrian help.”
The hijackers of a Somali Airlines plane said today that they would wait until Tuesday before deciding whether to carry out their threat to blow up the plane and kill the 108 passengers on board. Negotiations are continuing between the hijackers, said to be three Somali soldiers, and the Somali Government, according to a spokesman for the Ethiopian authorities. The negotiations, the spokesman said, “have reached a delicate and extremely difficult stage.” The hijackers are demanding the release of 21 political prisoners from Somali jails. The Somali Government has rejected the demands. The Somali plane, a Boeing 707, was hijacked to Addis Ababa on Saturday on a flight from the Somali capital of Mogadishu to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
Britain’s deputy high commissioner in Bombay, India, was shot and killed on his way to work, a commission spokesman said. The spokesman said three shots were fired at Percy Norris, 56, who was struck once in the temple and once in the heart. Indian police immediately cordoned off the area near the building in central Bombay, India’s main commercial city. Police said details of the killing were still unclear, and there was some question whether it had political overtones. The only recent major issue between the two countries has been the jubilant reaction of some Sikhs living in Britain to the Oct. 31 assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
A reporter for The Associated Press said today that the Indian Government had charged him with sedition, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a fine. The reporter, Brahma Chellaney, is in the Punjab, where he has been questioned on earlier charges related to a report he filed in June on the Indian Army attack on the Sikh temple in Amritsar. Mr. Chellaney, a 27-year-old Indian citizen, had earlier been accused of maliciously inciting sectarian discord because of his Associated Press dispatch, which was never distributed in India and published only abroad. The dispatch said that at least 1,000 Sikhs and 200 soldiers were killed in the army’s operation in June to flush out purported terrorists from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The dispatch quoted police and medical sources as saying that some Sikhs had been shot with their hands tied behind their backs.
A young Soviet man whose defection set off a gun battle last week in the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea said in a videotaped interview that he had decided to defect two years ago. U.S. military officers played the tape at a meeting with North Korean representatives at the truce village of Panmunjom to support claims that Vasiliy Yakovlevich Matuzok, 22, acted voluntarily. The North Koreans reiterated charges that Matuzok was abducted after inadvertently crossing the border. Three North Korean soldiers and one South Korean soldier were killed in the gun battle.
The U.S. Navy, which left Shanghai in 1949 with a cruiser’s guns trained on victorious Communist troops, will return to China in 1985, showing off a gas-turbine destroyer engine that the Chinese want to buy. Plans for the port call were formally announced in Peking by Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. The newspaper China Daily said Hu again ruled out a military alliance with the United States. A Pentagon source said the first port call will be made next year by a ship of the 7th Fleet, most likely at either Shanghai or Tsingtao.
The Japanese Government said today that it had protested to the Soviet Union over what it called repeated violations of Japanese airspace by Soviet bombers. The Foreign Ministry said the protest, the second in 11 days, was made in both Tokyo and Moscow. In Tokyo, the ministry said it had called in Lyudvig A. Chizhov, minister counselor at the Soviet Embassy, to demand an end to such violations. Japan said two Soviet TU-95 bombers violated Japanese airspace over the Tsushima Strait between Japan and South Korea last Friday. A TU-16 bomber entered the same area November 12, the Defense Agency said.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos met today with Cabinet ministers and members of the National Assembly for the first time since he went into seclusion for health reasons on November 14. “He’s up and about,” said Juan Ponce Enrile, the Defense Minister. Last week, senior Government officials said privately that the President had undergone hospitalization, received an undisclosed treatment and seemed to be improving.
The United States faces a trial before the World Court. The Justices voted 15 to 1 against United States arguments that they had no jurisdiction in the dispute and then decided unanimously in favor of Nicaragua’s request to try the United States as an aggressor nation. The Court also ruled that preliminary restraining orders it issued against the United States in May, at Nicaragua’s request, should remain in force pending resolution of the case. These called on the United States to halt any attempts to blockade or mine Nicaraguan ports and to refrain from jeopardizing Nicaragua’s political independence by any military or paramilitary activities.
The World Court’s ruling that it had jurisdiction to decide Nicaragua’s lawsuit against the United States will force Washington to consider whether to boycott further proceedings in the case, Reagan Administration officials said. The chief White House spokesman, Larry Speakes, said, “We are disappointed with the Court’s decision.” He added, referring to four Latin American nations’ efforts to solve the region’s disputes, that the ruling “will be harmful to the Contadora negotiations and will, accordingly, hinder rather than help achieve peace in Central America.”
A bomb exploded under a car near the United States Embassy in Bogota, Colombia today, killing a woman and wounding six men, including two embassy employees. Police blamed drug traffickers for the blast.
A centrist Uruguayan politician who played a key role in persuading the military to leave office was elected to head the first civilian government in 11 years. The next Uruguayan President will be Julio Maria Sanguinetti, a lawyer. He promised to seek the broadest possible consensus “so that this Government can consolidate Uruguayan democracy and forever bury the past.” Embraced by Opponent In an important symbolic gesture, his main challenger, Alberto Saenz de Zumaran of the National or Blanco Party, traveled to the Colorado Party headquarters before dawn to embrace Mr. Sanguinetti in front of a cheering crowd that began singing the national anthem.
A Chilean official said today that the government would take all necessary measures, including an early curfew, to maintain “order and tranquillity” during anti-government protests called for Tuesday and Wednesday. “Military commanders have instructions to adopt all the methods that appear at the time and place prudent, with the objective of guaranteeing absolute order and tranquillity,” said Francisco Javier Cuadra, the Secretary General of the Government. The police confirmed late today that six people driving in a truck were shot at for being out after curfew. Four were said to be in critical condition. Meanwhile, Enrique Lafourcade, who last week published a political satire critical of the government, sought refuge in the Argentine Embassy late today after police agents arrived at his bookstore and harrassed his manager, according to friends of the author. He was granted political asylum and will leave Tuesday for Buenos Aires.
A senior member of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party was shot and killed Sunday near his home in the southern region of Matabeleland, a government spokesman said today. The spokesman said the official, Jini Ntuta, 60 years old, had been killed by three anti-Government dissidents who chased him on foot for two and a half miles before shooting him to death with automatic rifles. Some diplomats here said they questioned the official explanation. Earlier this year, Mr. Ntuta himself charged that army troops posed as dissidents and then killed civilians. Mr. Ntuta was a member of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, led by Joshua Nkomo. The party’s secretary general, Cephas Msipa, suggested today that the government’s account of Mr. Ntuta’s killing was incongruous, and he called for a thorough investigation of all slayings that have been attributed to dissidents. Dissidents have been blamed for at least nine killings this year of officials of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s party, the Zimbabwe African National Union.
An income tax plan that would generally lower the taxes paid by individuals and would raise the taxes paid by corporations was recommended to President Reagan by the Treasury Department, according to Administration officials. They said the plan would reduce the top individual tax rate to 35 percent from 50 percent and the highest corporate rate to 33 percent from 46 percent, but important business tax breaks would be curtailed, leading to an overall increase in corporate taxes.
A “Draconian” budget plan that would reduce spending by about $100 billion in 1988 and reduce the projected deficit in that fiscal year to $100 billion has been completed by a working group ready to present the proposals to President Reagan tomorrow, officials said. They said the proposed spending cuts included farm subsidies, Civil Service retirement, veterans’ programs, student aid and education and hundreds of smaller programs, some of which would be eliminated.
President Reagan places a call to Rev. Richard C. Halverson, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate.
President Reagan participates in a Cabinet Affairs briefing to receive an overview of the Treasury Department’s tax simplification plan.
The Senate foreign relations panel, once the prestigious focus for national policy debates, has almost become just another committee. In many ways, the decline has reflected changes in the Senate as a whole, growing partisanship and ideological polarization, along with reduced power compared with the more disciplined House and the assertive executive branch.
William J. Schroeder was described by his doctors as “looking super” one day after he bled massively into his chest hours after becoming the second person to receive a permanent artificial heart. But because the doctors were sedating Mr. Schroeder, the 52-year-old retired Federal worker, of Jasper, Ind., did not know that he had had to undergo two operations on Sunday. He remains in critical but stable condition. Critical is the standard hospital term to indicate that a patient’s life remains in danger, even though he may be making progress or not losing ground. Mr. Schroeder is “just as well off as we could possibly hope for at this time,” said Dr. Allan M. Lansing, the chief medical spokesman for the Humana Heart Institute International, where the surgery was done.
Governor Robert Graham granted an indefinite stay of execution to Gary Eldon Alvord, one of two convicted killers scheduled to die Thursday in Florida’s electric chair. Graham granted the stay after three psychiatrists issued a report saying Alvord apparently did not understand the death penalty he received for strangling three Hillsborough County women in 1973. The governor ordered Alvord sent to Florida State Hospital for mental therapy. Meanwhile, lawyers for Jesse Joseph Tafero, also scheduled for execution Thursday, were in Miami federal court to appeal his sentence. Tafero was sentenced to death for killing a Florida highway patrolman and an off-duty Canadian policeman in 1976.
President Reagan’s son, Michael, said his father telephoned to reprimand him for his public reply to a remark by First Lady Nancy Reagan that father and son are estranged, the Washington Post reported. “He’s angry with me,” the Post quoted Michael Reagan, 39, as saying. The younger Reagan said the President told him “he wanted to sit down and figure out what caused the rift, which I agreed to.” He said the talk “wasn’t a chewing out exactly” but an effort to mend the dispute. But he said no meeting was scheduled. The White House had no comment on the report.
The Justice Department said it will appeal a federal court order calling for a 50% white student body at traditionally black Tennessee State University. The department’s Civil Rights Division, which has voiced opposition to racial quotas, filed notice with the U.S. District Court that it planned to appeal the order to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The order is an attempt to settle a 16-year-old lawsuit marked by protests by black students at TSU in Nashville. At one point, about 500 blacks marched on the federal courthouse carrying signs, many of them with pro-segregation slogans.
The nation’s three largest automobile manufacturers today announced they were recalling more than four million automobiles to inspect and repair potential safety defects. The Department of Transportation announced that the General Motors Corporation had agreed to call back 3.1 million of its mid-size passenger cars from the 1978 to 1980 model years for “inspection” and repairs “where needed” of rear axles. Wear in the axle compartments had been found, in some cases, to cause separation of the axle shaft and wheel assembly from the rest of the vehicle. The callback was the largest such action of its kind since the 1973 recall of 3.7 million General Motors vehicles for correction of steering lock defects.
The six-year campaign of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee to win collective bargaining rights with the Campbell Soup Company is taking a new turn. With the help of a New York labor consulting concern, Corporate Campaign, the advocacy group for an estimated 5,000 migrant workers, intends to put pressure on three financial concerns that share directors with Campbell. Ray Rogers, director of Corporate Campaign, describes the consulting concern’s basic strategy as one of “divide-and-conquer against the corporate power structure.”
Leaders of guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s Oregon commune will not challenge the November 6 election results in rural Wasco County, where they had been accused of trying to take over political control. “Rajneeshnees have always desired to peacefully coexist… and in this spirit of peace we have decided not to file suit,” said Rajneeshpuram Mayor Krishna Deva.
A Lutheran Church committee in Pittsburgh charged a defiant pro-labor minister with willfully violating the church constitution and denied his request to postpone any further hearings until he is out of jail. The Rev. D. Douglas Roth could be defrocked if the committee invokes the maximum penalty. The hearing was held at the Allegheny County Jail, where Roth was serving a 90-day contempt-of-court sentence. During the hearing, a bomb threat was phoned into the jail, but it turned out to be a hoax, Warden Charles Kozakiewicz said. Roth, 32, was arrested November 13 after defying both church and court orders to stop preaching at the Trinity Lutheran Church in nearby Clairton because of his vocal support of two labor activist groups.
A couple linked by the authorities to slayings and assaults in six Middle Western states pleaded guilty today to Federal kidnapping charges in Ohio, while in Indiana they were charged with killing a 7-year-old girl. The two, Alton Coleman, 28 years old, and Debra Brown, 22, were charged with abducting Tamika Turks of Gary, Indiana, who was found dead June 18, beaten and raped. The charges carry a possible death penalty. In Dayton, the couple pleaded guilty to abducting Oline Carmical of Lexington, Kentucky, who was found unharmed in his car trunk in Dayton. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
A sheriff says he has ordered his department not to evict any residents whose homes are foreclosed on this winter, citing high unemployment in an area dependent on the steel industry for jobs. “I think it’s the least we can do for the guys who are unemployed,,” said Sheriff Rudy Bartolomei. Gary, Lake County’s largest city and the one most dependent on the steel industry, has a 20 percent unemployment rate. Some lenders complained that the decision might be unfair to mortgage loan investors. “Borrowers who have lost their jobs need to protect the equity they have earned on their homes, while investors who have bought mortgage loans need to be repaid,” said Terry Conley, vice president of the Lake Mortgage Company.
Poor conditions in the oil industry were cited by Texaco inc. as it said it would reduce the value it places on some assets by $765 million and charge that amount against earnings in the fourth quarter, producing a loss for the period.
The danger of ground collisions is expected to cause the Federal Aviation Administration to announce this week new steps to help reduce one of the airline industry’s major worries. The steps are expected to include proposed new rules to improve the signs that identify taxiways and runways and additional training for airline crews in procedures for safe ground operations when rain, snow or fog restricts visibility.
The City Council of the newly incorporated city of West Hollywood, California was cheered Sunday by several hundred elderly residents as members announced a proposed rent rollback at a get-acquainted meeting. Three of five Council members promised that when they took office Thursday, rents would be reset at August 6 levels, with a six-month moratorium on increases and evictions. Although great attention was given to the election of three homosexuals to the Council, rent control was the key issue for residents in the November 6 election in which voters approved creation of the city. The city has 35,000 residents, many elderly or homosexual.
Bats are much more sophisticated and benign than previously believed, according to scientists who studied the world’s only flying mammal in both the laboratory and the field with advanced technologies.
After 518 goals & 14 years with Montreal Canadiens, Guy LaFleur retires abruptly. Lafleur, whose explosive speed and deft scoring touch made him a superstar with the Montreal Canadiens, announced his retirement today. The 33-year-old right wing, a member of five Stanley Cup championship teams in the 1970’s, made the decision after meeting with the Canadiens’ managing director, Serge Savard, a former teammate, for most of the morning. Reading a prepared statement at a hastily called news conference in the Forum, a teary-eyed Lafleur said, “I thought of this for a long time at the end of last season, but thought things would go better this year. But as you all know, I’ve been in a slump this year.”
John W Mercom Jr announces New Orleans Saints are up for sale for $75 million.
NFL Monday Night Football:
New York Jets 17, Miami Dolphins 28
Dan Marino, the Dolphins’ remarkable second-year quarterback, was prevented from throwing long passes tonight. So he threw four short touchdowns instead. Though he produced his lowest yardage total of the season, he tied the league’s single-season record for touchdown passes, 36, as the Dolphins eliminated the Jets from the 1984 playoff chase, 28–17. The loss was the fifth straight for the New Yorkers, who fell to 6–7. But there were bright spots for the Jets. Freeman McNeil rushed for 116 yards to establish a club season record of 1,028, breaking John Riggins’s mark of 1,005, set in 1975. And Ken O’Brien, in the second start of his career, displayed the right blend of coolness and cockiness. It was his finest outing and would have been even better if his receivers had not dropped a half-dozen passes. He completed 21 of 39 passes for 267 yards and a touchdown. His only interception came on his final, desperate pass. Coach Joe Walton said O’Brien would start again next Sunday against the Giants. Walton did not say that O’Brien permanently was replacing Pat Ryan, but that Ryan “has been through some (rough) times and is pretty dinged up.” The record that Marino equaled in his 13th game was set by a pair of hall-of-fame members in 14-game seasons – George Blanda of the 1961 Oilers and Y.A. Tittle of the 1963 Giants. Had Marino heard of those players? “I saw George Blanda kick,” said the 23-year-old Marino. “I don’t remember him playing quarterback, though. Of course, I remember Y.A. Tittle.” Marino threw repeatedly into parts of the field deserted by Jets’ linebackers, who stayed back, along with the defensive backs, to prevent the big play. None of his touchdowns covered more than 12 yards. “He was hitting us underneath,” explained Russell Carter, the defensive back. “What was his yardage? We were taking away the big pass.” His yardage total was 192 as he completed 19 of 31 attempts. He was not intercepted and was sacked just once, by Barry Bennett.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1212.35 (-7.95)
Born:
Ana Maria Popescu [as Ana Maria Brânză], Romanian épée fencer (Olympics, individual silver medals, 2008, 2020; team gold medal, 2016), in Bucharest, Romania.
Cody Wallace, NFL center (San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Pittsburgh Steelers), in Cuero, Texas.
Garrett McIntyre, NFL linebacker (New York Jets), in South Lake Tahoe, California.
History Diaries 