Bhopal disaster: A Union Carbide pesticide plant leaks 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, officially killing 2,259 — other more plausible estimates are as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured. The lethal gas leaked from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide in central India. At least 12,000 people were reported sickened in the city of Bhopal, 2,000 of them seriously enough to be hospitalized. The death toll, initially reported as over 400, was expected to rise as more bodies were found and the critically injured died.
An Indian environmental official, T. N. Khushoo, today called it the “worst such disaster in Indian history.” The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh State, where Bhopal is situated, told reporters that the gas had escaped from one of three underground storage tanks at a Union Carbide Company plant in Bhopal. Witnesses said thousands of people had been taken to hospitals gasping for breath, many frothing at the mouth, their eyes inflamed. The streets were littered with the corpses of dogs, cats, water buffalo, cows and birds killed by the gas, methyl isocyanate, which is widely used in the preparation of insecticides. Doctors from neighboring towns and the Indian Army were rushed to the city of 900,000, where hospitals were said to be overflowing with the injured. Most of the victims were children and old people who were overwhelmed by the gas and suffocated, Indian press reports said.
The world’s two most powerful military alliances opened meetings of their defense ministers-the Communist Warsaw Pact convening for two days in Budapest and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gathering in Brussels. The Warsaw Pact got down to business without Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri F. Ustinov, 76, who has been out of view for several months and is rumored to be seriously ill. The three-day talks by the Atlantic Alliance are expected to lead to spending increases on conventional weapons.
A warning on the MX missile was issued by two conservative Republican Senators — Steven D. Symms of Idaho and John P. East of North Carolina. They said they might vote against deployment of 100 of the land-based missiles if President Reagan did not stop abiding by provisions of the 1979 arms limitation agreement with Moscow.
Sources in the banned Solidarity trade union said over the weekend that that one of their underground activists in Lublin died in a hospital after he was attacked and beaten on the night of October 19, the night that a pro-Solidarity priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popiełuszko, was abducted more than 100 miles away and then killed. According to a report made available to reporters this weekend, the former Solidarity organizer who died as a result of a beating was Stanisław Chac, 42 years old. A Roman Catholic priest has also said he was tortured and beaten in his parish near Lublin October 19. The priest, the Rev. Eugeniusz Kościółko, leader of a group that is trying to put up a chapel at the Maidanek concentration camp outside Lublin, said that he had been tortured and that he had complained to prosecutors about the attack. Union sources said another Lublin area priest was attacked a few weeks earlier.
Coal miners in Great Britain vowed today to continue their strike despite being threatened with the loss of their union’s $10 million of assets. The decision was made by delegates at a conference of the National Union of Mineworkers.
The British government said that its research scientists subject animals to cyanide poisoning without anesthetics, a disclosure that brought an immediate outcry from Britain’s animal rights advocates. Member of Parliament Roland Boyes said: “This is terrible. It is an affront to an animal-loving nation.” In a statement to Parliament, the government said the experiments, at Porton Down, a top-secret Ministry of Defense research center, are aimed at improving treatment of cyanide poisoning.
The leaders of the Common Market were told today that their community was in crisis and could not move significantly forward in political or economic integration without major changes. A special committee, in an interim report to the meeting of the European Economic Community here, called on the leaders to convene a high-level conference next year to draft a treaty on European union that would establish “a true political entity with the power to take decisions in the name of all citizens.” But support for the recommendations among the 10 member countries was mixed, reflecting the quarrels that have stripped the Common Market of unity and prestige in recent years. Four countries, including Britain, expressed serious reservations about the proposals, affixing 30 critical footnotes to a 23-page internal working document.
The leaders of the European Economic Community were edging toward an agreement tonight on curbing surplus wine production that would open the door to Spain and Portugal joining the Common Market in a year’s time. In recent months, the inability of the market’s 10 present members to limit wine overproduction has emerged as the principal stumbling block to an agreement admitting the Iberian countries to membership. But a compromise proposal, offered by Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald of Ireland, who is the chairman of the market’s semiannual summit meeting here, appeared to win widespread support. It sets new limits for European wine production and prescribes penalties for market regions producing more than their fair share.
World chess titleholder Anatoly Karpov and his fellow Russian, Gary Kasparov, agreed to still another draw in the 29th game of their world championship match in Moscow. The draw was the quickest so far in the match, which Karpov leads, 5-0. It came after Kasparov, playing black, made his 13th move. Play resumes Wednesday, and Karpov needs one more victory to retain his title. Draws do not count.
Israel’s counterterrorist strategy has consistently sought to make terrorists feel the same fear victims feel and, if necessary, to meet terror with terror. In the view of many of Israel’s top experts on counterterrorism, the strategy has been both a remarkable success and a failure.
Peter Kilburn, 60, a library employee at the American University of Beirut, was reported missing after he failed to show up for work. “We are not saying he was abducted,” a university official said. “We are saying that he is missing.” Kilburn, an American believed to be a native of California, was last seen Friday. There has been increased concern about security of Americans in Beirut after several kidnappings and telephone calls threatening U.S. citizens and institutions.
Lebanese and Israeli military officers said that the seventh round of talks on Israeli troop withdrawal from southern Lebanon has shifted from declarations of intent to military details. A joint communique said, “Some positive elements appeared.” However, no practical progress was reported. Meanwhile, a U.S. State Department official said that Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy will return to the Middle East this week to visit Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
Egypt and Jordan agreed that an international conference under U.N. sponsorship is needed to negotiate an Arab-Israeli settlement. Leaders of the two countries, in a joint statement at the end of three days of talks in Cairo, also gave their support to Palestine Liberation Organization participation in such a parley. Their statement rejected “Israel’s expansionist policy and its settlement building” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres called on Jordan to stop pressing for an international conference and instead hold direct talks with Israel.
President Reagan participates in a meeting with members of Congress about the famine in Ethiopia.
The Defense Minister of Afghanistan, who had been considered the No. 2 man in the Soviet-backed Government of President Babrak Karmal, has been replaced, the state-run Kabul radio reported today. The radio report, which was monitored in Islamabad, said General Abdel Qader had been reassigned to the post of first deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Council Assembly. It said he was replaced in the Defense Ministry by Lieutenant General Nazar Mohammed, the former Chief of Staff. The report gave no reason for the move. General Qader led the 1978 coup that brought to power the Communist Party leader Noor Mohammed Taraki, who was later assassinated by Hafizullah Amin, who ruled until December 1979. He was then executed, President Karmal took power and the Soviet Union sent troops to help fight the rebels.
An Indian news agency said that police have made another arrest in the assassination of Indira Gandhi and are searching for two more suspected plotters, including a policeman. United News of India said a man arrested last week is accused of administering an oath to one of Gandhi’s assassins, binding him to eliminate her. No sources were cited. The two being sought are believed to be a relative of Beant Singh, one of the two Sikhs involved in the October 31 assassination, and a Delhi police officer.
A close political aide of Ferdinand E. Marcos said today that the President was “in control but cannot take major initiatives at this time.” “The health of our leader is undergoing certain vicissitudes, problems which started a year ago,” said the aide, Blas Ople, the Labor Minister. The Philippines, Mr. Ople said, is going through “a kind of interregnum” because of Mr. Marcos’s illness.
Unofficial returns from the Palau election on Friday were released today, indicating that the President, who is seeking a second term, was being strongly challenged by a state Governor. The early count showed President Haruo I. Remeliik leading the Governor of Airai state, Roman Tmetuchl, 1,585 to 1,268. Final results were expected in mid-December, after ballots from outlying islands and absentee votes are counted. There are 9,600 voters in Palau, a Pacific archipelago 600 miles east of the Philippines. Palau has been administered by the United States since 1947 under a United Nations mandate.
The captain of the Seaward Explorer, the Miami-based ship towed today into the Port of Miami after being incapacitated in Cuban waters last Thursday, said his 105-foot vessel had been out on a routine ocean mapping operation, not “a secret mission.” The incident led to the dispatch of the 90,000-ton aircraft carrier Nimitz because of what a senior Defense Department official said was concern that the Seaward Explorer could be seized by the Cubans for political reasons. “We were mapping the depths of the seas between Haiti and Cuba,” said Capt. Peter Skipp, who is also a co- owner of the vessel. “This was a nonclassified Navy operation. We had no Government equipment aboard and no equipment of highly sensitive nature. This was not a secret mission.”
A centrist Grenadian party won general elections 13 months after a United States-led invasion ended revolutionary government on the island. Officials said that candidates of the coalition party that is favored by Washington had won 10 of the 15 seats in Parliament and were leading in races for 4 others.
A leader of El Salvador’s left said today that the rebels remained willing to discuss the possibility of a cease-fire “for whatever period” with the Salvadoran Government. Hector Oqueli, a member of the leftists’ political-diplomatic commission, made the statement in discussing the negotiating session Friday between the Salvadoran Government and the rebels. He was responding to Government charges that guerrilla intransigence had led only to a limited agreement to allow free transit during the holiday season.
Separatist Sudanese guerrillas ambushed a Nile River steamship carrying military personnel near the southern town of Bor Sunday night but were driven off by army reinforcements, a military spokesman said today. But anti-government guerrillas said their forces had ambushed two steamships and a government convoy in the Upper Nile region in the last four days, killing scores of government soldiers and capturing 103. Major General Babiker Abdul-Rahim told the Sudan News Agency that the steamship was ambushed by rebels after it steamed out of Bor, 100 miles north of the provincial capital of Juba. The rebels, who want a separate nation in the south, said in a radio broadcast monitored in Nairobi that one steamship was ambushed Friday and another Sunday, both between Juba and Malakal, 450 miles south of Khartoum.
United States-South African ties are a target of continuing demonstrations outside South Africa’s Embassy in Washington and at consulates in New York and Los Angeles. The Reagan Administration asserted that change had slowly been taking place in South Africa’s racial situation as a result of American policies.
Government price supports for farmers would be sharply curtailed under legislation that will be proposed by the Reagan Administration as part of its effort to reduce Federal spending, according to Agriculture Secretary John R. Block. If approved by Congress, such legislation would unravel the system of income and price supports developed in the Depression. It would leave the nation’s farmers more dependent on the marketplace to determine the prices they receive for their products. Mr. Block said he would also propose a “get-tough” policy to discourage foreign competitors from subsidizing their farmers to the disadvantage of American farmers.
The tax legislation that President Reagan will propose to Congress next year will be similar to the sweeping plan the Treasury presented last week, in the opinion of Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan. The Treasury published a detailed analysis of its plan, providing a rationale for its recommendations to tax such items as fringe benefits and graduate fellowships that now go untaxed and to abolish popular deductions such as state and local taxes.
President Reagan participates in a meeting to discuss nondefense spending with the Budget Core Group.
Prosperity for states and localities was predicted by the Treasury. It issued a report estimating that state and local governments would achieve a total surplus of $86.5 billion by 1989 if current spending and tax policies continued unchanged.
Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. was chosen to serve a fifth and final two-year term as Speaker of the House amid expressions of discontent from younger Democrats who want to see the party move away from some of the New Deal values that have dominated Mr. O’Neill’s career. Representative Charles W. Stenholm of Texas, a leader of conservative Southern Democrats, dropped plans to challenge Mr. O’Neill’s re-election, and said such a campaign would have been a “destructive decision” for party unity. But he said at a news conference that he had considered a challenge to demonstrate the argument that the Democratic Party had moved “far too far to the left.” In the eyes of many Southern and Western voters, Mr. Stenholm said, Mr. O’Neill “is perceived as being the cause of the Federal deficit.”
A decision on Haitians’ rights was set by the Supreme Court. The Justices agreed to decide whether Haitian refugees seeking asylum in the United States may challenge the constitutionality of their confinement in Federal detention centers. The case could produce an important ruling on the rights of a particular group of aliens, those who have never entered the country but have been stopped at the border and are deemed “excludable.” A Federal appeals court ruled earlier this year, in a lawsuit brought in behalf of 2,000 Haitian “boat people,” that excludable aliens “have no constitutional rights” to challenge the way in which their admission to the country is handled. By a vote of 8 to 4 that court, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, overturned an earlier ruling by a panel of three of its judges that the Government’s policy of keeping the Haitians in detention while considering their asylum applications amounted to unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of national origin.
Dr. William C. DeVries gave his first interview since he implanted an artificial heart into the chest of William J. Schroeder on November 25. Dr. DeVries, a candid man, described his struggle to control himself and his surroundings as he moved methodically toward a difficult and perhaps historic undertaking. When William J. Schroeder and Dr. William C. DeVries talked about the informed consent form allowing the implant of an artificial heart, the patient said: “I want to live to March to see my son married. Can you promise me that?” Dr. DeVries said he could not. Mr. Schroeder responded, “You’ll do the best you can, though.” “Yes,” Dr. DeVries said.
William J. Schroeder’s name was taken off the critical list, and the 52-year-old patient said his new artificial heart had made a “fantastic” difference in his life. He said that when he entered the hospital he had to lean on two of his sons and had to put his head between his legs to catch his breath. Now he can breathe normally, Mr. Schroeder said. In addition to upgrading Mr. Schraoeder’s official condition from critical to serious, doctors at Humana Heart Institute International also revealed today that the patient had permitted them to begin certain tests that would enable them to determine how some drugs react on the body, particularly those used in treatments for shock and high blood pressure.
The federal government ruled that state and local officials have no authority to ban or severely restrict the transportation of radioactive materials. The Transportation Department said seven state and local restrictions on moving spent nuclear fuel through New York, Vermont and Michigan are inconsistent with federal law. The department preempted the restrictions. All involve interstate transportation by trucks. The Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of 1974 preempts state and local requirements that are inconsistent with federal law.
The House Ethics Committee will issue a report next week on whether Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro (D-New York), the Democratic vice presidential candidate in this year’s election, violated federal ethics laws by omitting data about her husband’s assets and income on her annual financial disclosure forms from 1978 through 1983. A committee source indicated the report would be critical of Ferraro. No congressional reprimand of Ferraro would be possible, however, because the 98th Congress has adjourned and she will not be a member of the new Congress in January.
President Reagan gave tentative approval to cuts in college-student aid, in farm-price supports, and a shift away from federal farm loans and toward loan guarantees, Administration officials said. Officials said the President will propose tighter eligibility rules for federal student loans that would confine the aid to those who need it most when all sources of income are taken into account.
The Reagan Administration, noting the huge Federal budget deficit, broke with tradition today and said Federal workers should report to work on Christmas Eve. Donald J. Devine, director of the Office of Personnel Management, encouraged supervisors to allow “liberal leave” for workers but said Federal offices would stay open on December 24. “A balance should be struck between the spirit of the season and the very critical budget situation in which we find ourselves,” Mr. Devine said. Christmas Eve this year falls on a Monday. The personnel office said presidents had given Federal workers the day off when that has happened in the past, the last time in 1979. Loretta Ucelli, a spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents many Federal workers, criticized the action, saying it would have only a “minuscule” effect on the deficit.
Two top officers of General Dynamics Corp. appear to have conspired to cover up illegal gifts to Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Michigan) charged in a letter to Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. Dingell pressed the Navy secretary to sever the company’s $5 billion in contracts with the service. Dingell accused Lehman of being insensitive to Rickover’s years of service by trying to “direct the spotlight” of controversy away from General Dynamics’ conduct.
A federal grand jury in Philadelphia charged four men with conspiring to sell tons of “filthy, putrid and decomposed” beef to wholesalers supplying Pennsylvania hospitals, Delaware schools and two Air Force bases. For 32 years, the four conspired to sell up to 15,000 pounds of meat a week that “consisted in whole or in part of filthy, putrid, and decomposed substances and was unsound, unhealthful, unwholesome, and otherwise unfit for human food,” said Joel Friedman, director of the Philadelphia Strike Force in charge of organized crime.
More than 15 police officers and detectives canvassed an Upper West Side block in New York, searching for witnesses in the fatal stabbing of a young drama student who fought off a would-be rapist and robber on the roof of her apartment building. Working on only a spare description from the victim before she died, police interviewed neighbors who said they heard the woman screaming early Sunday but were unable to help her in time. Caroline Isenberg, 23, died on the operating table.
A federal jury was seated in Roanoke, Virginia, to hear a $45-million libel suit the Rev. Jerry Falwell filed against sex magazine publisher Larry Flynt for portraying the evangelist as an incestuous drunk. “This case doesn’t relate just to Jerry Falwell, but whether a publisher can maliciously attack an individual without any recourse,” Falwell said during a court break. “I just plan to make him pay the piper.” Flynt’s attorney, Alan Issacman, said Falwell was not libeled because the material was clearly labeled as fiction and a parody.
A state district judge ordered today that the trial of a teenager accused of killing a postal carrier be moved out of Houston because of the attention the case has been given by news organizations. Judge I. D. McMaster said he would decide by the end of the week where the trial of David Port, 17 years old, would be held. Mr. Port is free on $20,000 bond on a murder charge in the death of Debora Sue Schatz, 23. She disappeared June 7 while delivering mail in the neighborhood where Mr. Port’s parents live. Her body was found June 9 in a remote area of northwest Harris County.
The Massachusetts state Supreme Court agreed today to hear a request that it cancel a judge’s order halting new sewer connections in Boston and its suburbs. The order was aimed at speeding the cleanup of Boston Harbor. A hearing was scheduled for Wednesday before Justice Joseph Nolan on the appeal filed by the state Attorney General’s office. The ruling by Judge Paul Garrity came Thursday in Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge in a battle initiated by the southern suburb of Quincy against the Metropolitan District Commission and state officials over Boston Harbor pollution. The district commission sells sewage service to 43 Massachusetts communities, including Quincy.
Chicago teachers went on strike and talks over money issues between their union and the school board resumed. A board spokesman said, “There’s a strong willingness on both sides to settle this thing.” Should a settlement be reached today, the schools could reopen Wednesday. The strike, which began after negotiations broke down early Sunday morning, is over salaries and benefits.
Oldest groom on record: Harry Stevens, 103, weds Thelma Lucas, 83, in Wisconsin.
“Do They Know It’s Christmas” single written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure and sung by an all-star cast under the banner of Band Aid is released in the UK.
NFL Monday Night Football:
Chicago Bears 7, San Diego Chargers 20
The sinking San Diego Chargers and the supposedly rejuvenated Chicago Bears played one of those football games that confirmed the suspicion that parity equals mediocrity. Two plays lit up the evening, and those two fourth-period plays won the game for the Chargers, 20–7. An 88-yard touchdown pass from Ed Luther to Bobby Duckworth, who gained a giant measure of vindication for having fumbled en route to another sure touchdown in the third period. And a 66-yard interception return by defensive end Lee Williams with 1:15 to play and the Bears driving toward a tying touchdown.It was appropriate that the Charger defense should score a touchdown in this affair, because it was a little difficult to tell which of the two defenses came into the game ranked No. 1 in the National Football League and which was the much-maligned No. 27. The Charger defense, good ol’ No. 27, forced the Bears to punt 11 times and sacked Chicago quarterbacks five times for 37 yards in losses. So what if Walter Payton ground out 92 yards on 23 carries? Neither team, to be sure, was playing with its starting quarterback. The Bears, with Jim McMahon already sidelined, got down to No. 3 Rusty Lisch midway through the first period when Steve Fuller went out with a shoulder injury. Luther started for the Chargers because of assorted injuries to Dan Fouts.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1182.42 (-6.52)
Born:
Tobi Stoner, MLB pitcher (New York Mets), in Landstuhl, West Germany.
Died:
Virginia Lacy Jones, 77, American librarian and presidential advisor.
History Diaries 