Belgium has delayed a decision on deploying 48 American cruise missiles until early next year. Prime Minister Wilfried Martens told reporters after the weekly Cabinet meeting Friday, “The appraisal of the situation which, according to the 1981 Government statement, was scheduled for the end of this year, will be made during the first quarter of 1985.” Belgium conditioned its 1979 commitment to deploy cruise nuclear missiles on the failure of East-West disarmament talks. March has been the generally accepted deadline among Belgium politicians for the government to make a final decision. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European military command said in November that 93 cruise and Pershing 2 missiles had been deployed so far in West Germany, Britain and Italy. Other missiles are be deployed in the Netherlands and Belgium. There are eventually to be 572 medium-range nuclear missiles.
East German border guards opened fire on a man trying to escape over the Berlin Wall, apparently killing him, West Berlin police reported. They said East German police fired between 20 and 30 shots at the man as he tried to climb over the wall at a point in the French sector’s Wedding district. Later they said they saw Eastern guards drive away with an apparently lifeless body under a tarpaulin. The shooting was condemned by West Germany and the Western Allies — the United States, Britain and France — who share overall jurisdiction with the Soviet Union for Berlin.
Two Soviet soldiers who returned home last month after being granted asylum in Britain were quoted as saying they had been held by force and drugged into claiming they deserted. The government newspaper Izvestia published a story based on purported interviews with Sgt. Igor Rykov and Pvt. Oleg Khlan. It said they spoke of being first taken prisoner by Afghan guerrillas and then maltreated in London. The account was similar to charges made by Soviet journalist Oleg Bitov, who returned to Moscow in August a year after defecting to Britain.
Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, today banned a priest from preaching in Warsaw churches, ruling that his anti- Communist sermons were “alien to the spirit of the Gospel.” Cardinal Glemp’s ruling against the Rev. Stanislaw Malkowski was the first in the country to be made because of political views. Father Malkowski has, in the pulpit, spoken of Moscow, saying “this city that is dedicated to the devil should be razed,” has called for the “slaying of the Red Dragon” and has called the Government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, a “clown and a court jester.”
The British government confirmed a newspaper report that Alexander Karaulov, a Soviet scientist, defected last year while on an exchange visit to London. The government’s Home Office, which is responsible for immigration, confirmed the Daily Mail report that Karaulov, 34, an expert in molecular analysis, was given permission to stay in Britain over a year ago. Karaulov, who now works at Queen Mary College in London, has resisted pressure from Soviet officials to return to Moscow, the newspaper said.
A British newspaper reported that a London security firm arranged a $3-million contract to train 17 of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s bodyguards in “killing techniques.” The Observer said the contract, which covered instruction in kidnappings, “first aid including poisons” and armed conflict, was called off after the killing of a British policewoman outside the Libyan Embassy last April. The firm, Amac Corp. of London, supposedly sent Qaddafi a prospectus for the course, which “promised the skills of highly respected British security agents…” The British Defense Ministry denied knowing of such a contract.
A British court ordered two striking Welsh miners held without bail on charges of murdering a taxi driver who died while taking a non-striking miner to work. At a hearing in the south Wales mining town of Merthyr Tydfil, Reginald Hancock, 21, and Russell Shankland, 20, were charged with the killing of David Wilkie, 35. Meanwhile, in London, the High Court dismissed an appeal from the three top leaders of the militant National Union of Mineworkers seeking to regain control from a court-appointed receiver of $10.6 million in union funds placed outside Britain.
Concerted action against terrorism taken by the Reagan Administration, the bureaucracy and Congress following the September 20 bombing of the United States Embassy in Lebanon seems to have prevented another terrorist attack in Lebanon shortly before the November 6th election. The target this time, officials said, was the American Ambassador’s hillside residence in Yarze, a Beirut suburb overlooking the Mediterranean. “We knew who was planning the attack and generally where in West Beirut they were located,” said Robert B. Oakley, the director of the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism and Emergency Planning. Little was written about it at the time, but American officials point to the swift response to the threat as an example of what has to be done if the United States is to counter the continuing threat of international terrorism. Armed with advance intelligence, American and Lebanese forces mobilized. Half the American staff was evacuated, the Ambassador was secretly flown out of the country, the perimeter defense at the residence was reinforced and pushed outward, antiaircraft weapons were put on the grounds and the air lanes above the residence were closed to all traffic.
King Hussein of Jordan arrived in Cairo today for a three-day state visit, the first official trip here by an Arab leader who politically shunned Egypt for making peace with Israel. Egyptian and Jordanian officials said President Hosni Mubarak and King Hussein would explore joint diplomatic initiatives and other means of reviving the long-stalled Middle East peace talks. After the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders met privately today, Osama el- Baz, President Mubarak’s chief foreign policy adviser, appealed to Syria to help devise a joint approach to peace.
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi opened his party’s national election campaign today with a 14-hour swing through the state of Uttar Pradesh. Tens of thousands of people cheered him at his stops in the state, India’s most populous, shouting, “Indira Gandhi will live forever!” and “Long live Rajiv Gandhi!” He wound up the day at a rally in this Hindu holy city, whose name is now officially Varanasi. A crowd estimated at 100,000, many swathed in shawls against the night chill and peering at him through haze from the smoke of thousands of cooking fires, heard him castigate his opposition for what he called encouraging national disunity.
Pakistan’s President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq said in a television broadcast today that a referendum on his Islamization policies would be held December 19 and that he would stay in power for the next five years if he won. He said he had decided to hold the referendum because several opposition parties planned to boycott elections for a National Assembly in March. One opposition group, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, which opened its boycott campaign on Tuesday, said the referendum was a fraud.
The Labor Government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke won the Australian parliamentary elections today, but its margin of victory was narrower than had been expected. With more than 70 percent of the votes counted shortly before midnight, it appeared that the Labor Party would hold a majority margin of 18 to 20 seats in the 148-seat House of Representatives. Labor led for 80 seats and the opposition coalition of the Liberal and National parties for 56, while 12 were undecided. Pre-election polls had predicted a far stronger showing for the Labor Party, based on Mr. Hawke’s personal popularity and the robust performance of the Australian economy during his 21 months in office. The polls had predicted that Labor’s majority would increase from its present 25-seat margin to more than 40 seats.
France performed a nuclear test at its Pacific teting site at Moruroa Atoll.
The United States sent the nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz to aid a Navy-chartered ship that drifted into Cuban waters because of concern that the Cubans might try to seize the ship for political purposes, a senior Defense Department official said today. The Navy-chartered ship, the Seaward Explorer, drifted into Cuban territorial waters and the 90,000-ton Nimitz, on a port call at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, was ordered to sea so quickly Friday morning that about 1,000 of its 5,200 crew members were left behind, Pentagon officials said. The decision to send the Nimitz and an escort ship, the nuclear-powered cruiser Arkansas, to sea was made when the Cuban authorities told the State Department that a Cuban boat might take the disabled ship to a Cuban port for repairs, a State Department official said. “We did not want the Cubans to take that ship,” the senior Pentagon official said. “The Cubans might have tried to make a political show of the whole thing and hold the crew and ship. We did not want that to happen. So we sent the Nimitz because its planes could get to the scene.”
Three human rights groups have asked the State Department to refuse to certify Haiti in the department’s annual review of human rights unless violations there are ended. The State Department delivers its annual review of human rights to Congress at the beginning of each year. Countries must be certified as having a good record to receive United States aid.
Two Washington groups, one closely associated with the Republican Party and the other with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., have contributed more than $25,000 for campaigns to encourage Grenadians to vote in elections Monday, according to group officials here and in Washington. Partly as a result of these campaigns, a high turnout of 80 to 85 percent of the 48,000 registered voters is expected in the elections, the first the island has held in eight years. Foreign diplomats and many Grenadians say the main beneficiaries are expected to be members of a centrist coalition party that is favored by the Reagan Administration and the leaders of many neighboring islands. No reliable polls have been conducted, but many diplomats and Grenadians say they expect the coalition, the New National Party, to win a majority of the 15 seats in the House of Parliament that are being contested. But members of the three other competing parties and four independents say they remain optimistic and some analysts say there is a slim possibility that a coalition may emerge.
President Jose Napoleon Duarte today rejected an rebel plan presented Friday that called for the eventual formation of a new government, a new constitution and a new army. But he said negotiations would continue. Mr. Duarte termed the demands “hard, intransigent, inconsequential and totalitarian,” and called on the rebels to reconsider them. “This document has an objective,” Mr. Duarte said at a news conference. “He who reads it will find this is an invitation for unconconditional surrender. I cannot accept a document under these conditions. What I propose is that they revise their position.”
Chile’s President Augusto Pinochet issued a decree ordering women drafted into the armed forces. Previously, only men in Chile were subject to compulsory military service. Decree No. 210, published in the Official Gazette, said that men and women who were born in 1965 would be “called for obligatory military service for ordinary conscription in the army, navy and air force.” The decree also ordered the call-up of a number of reservists and said their service of one year “could be extended.”
Mediation efforts in Chile are necessary to prevent the country from turning into “another Nicaragua,” Reagan Administration officials said. They said a monthlong review had produced an Administration consensus to seek mediation — perhaps by the Vatican, other Latin American countries, or even the United States — that could hasten a transition to democracy in Chile.
Little sympathy for New Yorkers who would pay much higher income taxes under the Treasury’s proposals was expressed by Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan. He said “my heart will not break” for the middle and higher income residents of New York State who face sharp increases if the proposals are approved. He was responding to criticism from Governor Cuomo and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both Democrats.
President Reagan spends most of the day catching up on reading.
President Reagan receives a call from former President Richard M. Nixon.
President Reagan places a call to Heisman Trophy winner Douglas R. Flutie.
More than 300 doctors and medical suppliers were kicked out of the Medicare and Medicaid programs because of fraudulent claims during fiscal 1984, the Department of Health and Human Services reported. In a semiannual report to Congress, the department’s inspector general said that 327 healthcare providers were the target of legal sanctions in cases that included billing the government for goods or services not provided, billing for services not eligible for federal reimbursement or overcharging for goods or services. Investigations of Medicare and Medicaid fraud resulted in 234 convictions in the last half of the fiscal year and recovery of more than $27 million.
The government’s survey of new Social Security beneficiaries shows a jump in the number of retirees who also draw pensions, Acting Social Security Commissioner Martha McSteen said. “Between 1970 and 1982, it rose from 25% to 42% for the unmarried, and among the married from 42% to 53% for men and from 12% to 24% for women,” she said. The $2.5-million survey of 18,599 new recipients, the first extensive review since 1969-70, showed that Social Security remains the biggest source of retirement income for middle-income Americans.
Charges were dropped against two congressmen and a black labor union leader arrested at anti-apartheid protests at the South African Embassy in Washington. U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova dismissed the cases because they lacked “prosecutive merit,” a spokesman said. The arrests of Rep. Don Edwards (D-California), Rep. George W. Crockett Jr. (D-Michigan) and Leonard Ball, national coordinator of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, were part of continuing daily demonstrations at the South African Embassy protesting that country’s policies of racial segregation.
The federal government should end its “benign paternalism” over the nation’s Indians and begin a “federalist partnership” to help reservations become economically self-sufficient, the Presidential Commission on Indian Reservation Economies said in a report. The panel listed more than 40 major obstacles to economic development on the nation’s 487 reservations and Alaska Native villages. One of the more controversial of the panel’s 37 specific recommendations is expected to be a proposal to close the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Creation of an umbrella U.S. Space Command within the Defense Department will be authorized by President Reagan, the Pentagon announced. The command will eventually “centralize operational responsibilities” now. divided between the separate Air Force and Navy space commands, the Pentagon said. Between them, the two services have more than 100 active satellites in space.
Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode announced a hiring freeze that would eliminate 1,200 city jobs over 18 months in an austerity program he hopes will save $35 million in seven months. Goode also announced a crackdown on outstanding taxes. Without these moves, he said, Philadelphia could face a deficit of $75 million.
The resignation of 10 bank directors in Chicago has been requested by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Ten of the 16 directors of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, which nearly failed last summer, will be asked to step down Monday by John E. Swearingen, the bank’s new chairman, banking officials said.
A pilotless jetliner sent flames hundreds of feet into the air when it was deliberately crashed in a government test of a special fuel mix designed to avoid a lethal fireball in case of an accident. The test disappointed safety experts. After four years of planning and preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) intentionally crashed a Boeing 720 airliner to test an experimental fuel additive intended to reduce post-crash fires, and to assess passenger survivability. An anti-misting agent was added to standard commercial JP-5 jet fuel to create AMK, or “Anti-Misting Kerosene.” The airliner’s fuel tanks were filled with the AMK mixture, totaling 16,060 gallons (10,794 liters). Instrumented crash test dummies were placed in the passengers seats. The test failed spectacularly as the plane erupted into a giant fireball on impact.
More state control over education has resulted from hundreds of new laws enacted to improve the quality of elementary and secondary schools across the country. “What we’re seeing is fundamental shift in the role of the states, as compared to local entities, with respect to education.” said T. H. Bell, the Secretary of Education, in an interview. The growing state influence over the classroom is seen in requirements that students study more subjects to earn high school diplomas, statewide testing, new standards for teachers and other programs. Many educators, politicians and business leaders welcome this state intervention, which they say will improve the ability of schools to provide the trained workers businesses need and keep the country economically competitive with nations such as Japan.
Medicare surgery may not go ahead unless it is approved by Federal agencies under a new Government program intended to reduce Medicare expenses that took effect in most states last month. The program would not affect emergency procedures. Some doctors say they have serious concerns about the program, which took effect in most states last month. They contend it could lead to rationing of health care. But, as justification, Federal officials cite a large body of studies that show tremendous variations in medical care from one region to another.
A live-in housekeeper’s dream of a Christmas trip to her homeland, El Salvador, evaporated when the old raincoat in which she had kept $675 was sold for $1 at a family garage sale. The housekeeper, Silvia Esperanza, said she had not told her employers, Marilyn and Joseph Kove, about the old pink coat, in which she had been storing money since August for the trip and for medicine for her 11-year-old son, who has hepatitis. The Koves’ children sold the coat last weekend at a garage sale for $1, Mrs. Esperanza said. “I feel real bad that I sold the raincoat without looking in the pocket,” said Danielle Kove, 11 years old. “She doesn’t deserve it. She is like a mother to me.” Mrs. Kove said she would give $50 to the buyer of the raincoat if the money was returned. Danielle and her brother, Mitchell, 13, said that if the money was not returned they might give Mrs. Esperanza the $150 they made at the garage sale.
Agriculture Secretary John R. Block welcomed his Soviet counterpart, Valentin K. Mesyats, to his 3,500-acre farm today, and said agriculture was the foundation of friendly relations between the two powers. Mr. Mesyats and a Soviet delegation, who are touring farms and agricultural plants in the Midwest, ate lunch with Mr. Block, then visited his hog and grain farm. “We welcome you here, Minister Mesyats, to see this agriculture with your own eyes,” Mr. Block said. “We know that there is an old Russian proverb which says: ‘To see is 10 times better than to hear.’ ” Speaking through an interpreter, Mr. Mesyats proposed better relations between the two countries, expanded agricultural trade and invited Mr. Block to visit the Soviet Union.
The 1984 Atlantic hurricane season, which produced 11 major storms, ended this morning, leaving an odd legacy: Florida’s most damaging storm was not a hurricane. Hurricane damage for the season, June through November, is almost nonexistent in Florida, said Gordon Guthrie, director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management. He said the “the only damage” had been caused by a three-day storm around Palm Beach November 21. Damage estimates for that storm are still incomplete. It threw heavy seas against vulnerable beaches, closed roads and damaged seaside homes and businesses while forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people. In September Hurricane Diana “gave us some water and Isidore gave us some water, but it was nothing significant,” Mr. Guthrie said. But Hurricane Diana caused two deaths and $70 million in damage in North Carolina.
“Beverly Hills Cop” directed by Martin Brest and starring Eddie Murphy and Judge Reinhold premieres in Los Angeles.
American tennis icon Chris Evert wins her 1,000th career professional match; beats Pascale Paradis of France 6-1, 6-7, 6-2 in the round of 16 at the Australian Open; Evert goes on to win the event.
American boxer Greg Page KOs home town favourite Gerrie Coetzee in 8th round to win WBA heavyweight title in Sun City, South Africa.
49th Iron Bowl: Alabama beats Auburn 17-15 in Birmingham.
50th Heisman Trophy Award: Doug Flutie, Boston College quarterback.
Born:
Edgar Jones, NFL defensive end (Baltimore Ravens, Kansas City Chiefs, Dallas Cowboys), in Monroe, Louisiana.
Charles Michael Davis, American actor (“The Originals”, “Younger”), in Dayton, Ohio.
Yolandi Visser, South African rapper (Die Antwoord), in Port Albert, South Africa.
History Diaries 