Recent reforms by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization fall short of those needed to reverse the U.S. decision to pull out of the agency at the end of this year, Gregory J. Newell, a State Department official, told Congress. The Administration position was criticized by some congressmen at a joint hearing by two subcommittees of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The United States is still concerned about mismanagement and anti-Western politicization of UNESCO, Newell said.
An Italian court sentenced 19 members of the leftist Red Brigades terrorist group to life in prison and 80 members to terms of up to 30 years. The verdict came at the end of a mass trial in Milan of 112 men and women charged with Red Brigades crimes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Thirteen in the group were acquitted. The 19 who got life sentences were each convicted of taking part in one or more of eight murders between 1978 and 1983 in northern Italy. Those who received lesser sentences were convicted of such crimes as kidnaping and assault. The sentences were among the heaviest imposed by courts here in a series of Red Brigades trials. This case involved a group that operated in and around Milan from the 1970’s until the end of 1982.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister urged the United States today to become actively involved again in efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict and to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization as a participant in peace talks. “This is a very appropriate time for the United States to assume its role as full partner in the peace process,” the Foreign Minister, Esmat Abdel Meguid, said at a news conference. “I hope our American friends can understand that we cannot achieve peace without negotiating with the Palestinians and the P.L.O.”
Hijackers killed two more passengers aboard a Kuwaiti jetliner at the Tehran airport, the official Iranian press agency reported. It said the victims included an American official who was forced out of the plane and shot six times. The State Department said two Americans, both officials of the Agency for International Development, had apparently been killed by the hijackers.
The hijackers holding the Kuwaiti airliner at the Tehran airport are closely connected with the Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist group that is believed to have bombed the United States Embassy and the Marine barracks in Lebanon last year, according to American officials. “We have intelligence that leaves no doubt that the hijackers are connected with the Iranian-sponsored terror network in Lebanon and elsewhere,” a senior State Department official said. He specifically mentioned the Party of God, a militant Shiite Moslem group that has been involved in the bombings in Lebanon and in an attack on the American Embassy and other targets in Kuwait last December. The officials also said the Iranian authorities appeared to be cooperating with the hijackers by facilitating press access to the plane and transmitting their demands through the Iranian press agency.
The Indian police seized records from the Union Carbide insecticide plant in Bhopal and guarded the hospital room of an employee who was on duty Monday night when toxic gas leaked from the factory. The disaster took as many as 2,000 lives by unofficial count, and tens of thousands were stricken. A group of Union Carbide officials from the United States sought to visit the plant, but were turned away by Indian guards. Today, the police arrested the chairman of the Union Carbide Corporation, Warren M. Anderson, when he arrived in Bhopal to investigate the disaster, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The agency said he was detained at the airport on charges of “negligence and corporate liability” in connection with the gas leak. It said two of the company’s Indian executives, Keshav Mahendra, chairman of Union Carbide of India, and the Indian company’s managing director, V. P. Gokhale, were also detained. Five senior officials of the insecticide plant have already been detained for questioning.
A health care crisis of a severity unparalleled in peacetime will persist in the Bhopal area for years to come, according to several American public health specialists. They believe that the eyes and lungs of a considerable percentage of the population will be greatly impaired.
Tamil extremists burned 17 people to death in a bus near Anuradhapura in northern Sri Lanka, officials in the area reported. The district was put on an emergency footing to head off other attacks by Tamil guerrillas. Curfews were imposed in Colombo, the capital, and four other cities to prevent retaliation by Sinhalese, who are in the majority in Sri Lanka, against the minority Tamils. The bus deaths raised the reported toll to well over 300 in the latest violence connected with the campaign by Tamil militants for an independent state in the north.
Rescue crews in Taiwan found the bodies of 31 miners today, bringing the death toll from a coal mine explosion Wednesday to at least 33. Rescue workers said that it could take them two more days to reach the 61 miners still believed to be trapped and that chances were slim any would still be alive. Rescuers worked into the night in the tunnel, which was filled with carbon monoxide gas. The one miner found alive several hours after the explosion Wednesday at the Haishan Yikeng coal mine remained in serious condition, suffering from carbon monoxide inhalation. Most of the victims died from inhaling carbon monoxide, officials said. Preliminary investigations indicated that methane gas caused the explosion. The Taiwan Provincial Assembly took no immediate action on a recommendation that work be suspended in all of the country’s 120 coal mines. Two other mine disasters since June have killed 177 people.
President Reagan will meet with his Cabinet next week to try to shape a comprehensive strategy for dealing with the record trade deficit with Japan, Administration officials said today. The strategy session will be held on Tuesday, three weeks before Mr. Reagan will see Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone of Japan. Among other things, the discussion will touch on trade in autos, copyright issues, access to Japan’s high-technology markets and “transparency,” or more disclosure of what is being considered by the Japanese Government. The two leaders are scheduled to sit down together in Los Angeles on January 2 for their fifth encounter since Mr. Nakasone came to power in late 1982. The importance the White House attaches to shaping an overall strategy was underscored by the decision to convene the entire Cabinet.
A daughter of President Ferdinand E. Marcos who represents her family’s district in the National Assembly today called the presidential palace “a snake pit” and said abuses had been committed by people close to her family. But Imee Marcos Manotoc, 29 years old, said it was difficult for her father to end the abuses, saying, “It is not easy to fire all these people.” She denied reports that he is seriously ill, saying he suffers only from asthma. Mrs. Manotoc told a small group of reporters that it was too early to judge if her father’s martial-law experiment had failed. “History will judge whether Western democracy is suitable to our society and will put the Marcos regime in perspective,” she said, adding that Filipinos should not seek Western models to solve their problems. She acknowledged there were political detainees in the Philippines and said she had interceded for a couple of them. She blamed the country’s problems on the International Monetary Fund. “A good case can be made that these I.M.F. prescriptions got us into trouble in the first place,” she said.
Ten Melanesian separatists were killed Wednesday in the worst case of violence in more than two weeks of strife in this French territory in the South Pacific, the police said today. Although the investigation has just begun, the killings are assumed to be the work of French loyalists who oppose independence, according to French officials. Leaders of the Melanesian, or Kanaka, separatist group denounced the slaying of their followers. “We are facing people who want to massacre us,” said Iewene Iewene, to whom the militant group gave the title of Minister of Finance and National Solidarity in what they call their provisional government. “We are confronting barbarians with guns. We must develop a new strategy.”
Leftist guerrillas attacked a large coffee mill in El Salvador, burning 3,000 sacks of export-grade coffee worth nearly half a million dollars, authorities said. The rebels have declared war on coffee, the country’s most valuable export, as well as on the cotton and sugar cane harvests in an economic sabotage campaign against the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government. Francisco Palomo, administrator of the Usulutan province coffee mill, said the rebels also damaged the facility’s main office and burned a power generator.
President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador said today that he is prepared to suspend military operations at Christmas if guerrilla forces agree. Mr. Duarte, who met here with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, said at a news conference that he sent a letter Tuesday to Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of San Salvador committing the Government to a Christmas truce if the guerrilla opposition also stops fighting. He said he had received no response from the guerrillas. Mr. Duarte, while expressing frustration over the lack of progress in peace talks in El Salvador, said that he had “not lost hope” that the negotiations could eventually produce a political settlement to the five-year civil war.
The CIA distributed some of its controversial Nicaraguan rebel manuals earlier this year by attaching them to balloons and floating them into that country, Administration and congressional officials said. They said that the CIA’s apparent purpose was to frighten the Sandinista government by creating the impression that the U.S.-backed rebels posed a more serious threat than they did. The officials added that the program was ended after fewer than 100 manuals were sent aloft from Honduras because funds for covert operations were becoming scarce.
U.S. officials are urging Chile’s non-Marxist parties to consider negotiations with the military government on an appointed congress as a possible step toward ending the country’s political conflict. Reports from the Chilean capital said that U.S. Ambassador James D. Theberge suggested such a step at a meeting last week with Interior Minister Sergio Onofre Jarpa and that Jarpa replied that he was “prepared to consider” talks with opposition leaders on the makeup of an appointed civilian legislature. Chilean politicians said Theberge’s reported move is Washington’s first initiative beyond the making of public appeals for dialogue between President Augusto Pinochet. and the democratic opposition.
South Africa’s Roman Catholic bishops accused the country’s policemen today of indiscriminately killing and beating civilians like “an occupying foreign army controlling enemy territory” in their efforts to quell unrest that has racked black townships since September. The allegations were based on victims’ sworn affidavits, collected in a 38-page report that represented the most sweeping condemnation of police conduct during the unrest. A police spokesman disputed the report’s assertions. Witnesses, the report said, had accused the police of rape and of incarcerating prisoners in an iron cage. Publication of the report coincided with mounting protest in the United States over South Africa’s racial policies, but officials of the Bishops’ Conference said this was not intentional.
France performs a nuclear test at their South Pacific testing site at Muoroa Atoll.
The domestic spending cuts proposed by the Reagan Administration would affect more than 100 types of programs and would fall on Americans in every walk of life. The cuts would affect farmers and Federal workers, riders of trains and subways, veterans, women and infants, and the poor and elderly who need health care. In an effort to protect the economic recovery by bringing down the Federal deficit, now running beyond $200 billion a year, the President is proposing to cut $34 billion in projected nonmilitary spending for the 1986 fiscal year, which begins next October 1. Republican leaders in Congress generally endorsed the President’s deficit reduction package today, although they noted that nearly every proposal would draw strong objections from the programs’ advocates. The leaders emphasized that to share the pain fairly, the package should also include a smaller increase in military spending, a 10 percent pay cut for Congress and the President, and possibly a freeze on cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.
Republican leaders in Congress generally endorsed the Reagan Administration’s deficit-reduction package, though they noted that nearly every proposal would draw strong objections from the programs’ advocates. The leaders stressed that, to share the pain fairly, the package should also include a smaller increase in military spending, a 10 percent pay cut for Congress and the President and possibly a freeze on cost-of-living raises for Social Security.
President Reagan meets with members of the Hoover Institute about the President’s possible Presidential Library in Stanford, California.
President Reagan receives a replica of the Heisman Trophy, the first person to ever be made an honorary Heisman Winner.
Nancy Reagan opened the Christmas season by accepting a 20-foot blue spruce tree for the White House, starting to send out 125,000 Christmas cards-reproductions of a Jamie Wyeth painting of a snowy “Christmas Morning at the White House” — and announcing that her gift to the President will be a pickup truck. “This is my favorite time of year,” said the First Lady. She usually keeps her gift to President Reagan a secret. But she explained that they had discussed it and that it is to be a combination birthday, Christmas and anniversary present. “I’m going to give him a pickup truck” for chores around the Reagans’ mountaintop ranch near Santa Barbara, California, she said, adding that it would be American-made but has not yet been selected. “We don’t even have an old one,” Mrs. Reagan said, calling it, “Just what every girl wants.”
The President and First Lady receive a Belgian sheep dog from Ms. Kristen N. Ellis.
Geraldine Ferraro and George Bush had lunch together in the Vice President’s office, with memories of their tart campaign language put aside. She dodged questions about her reported intention to seek a Senate seat in 1986, saying her plans included writing a book, making speeches and joining a law firm. “I’d have preferred to be the host today, but under the circumstances I’ll take what I can get,” Representative Ferraro declared before eating salmon and salad in the office she spent four months vying for. “It’s a free lunch,” Mr. Bush shot back. The Vice President invited Mrs. Ferraro to join him for lunch when she called to concede the election, and at the time the defeated Democratic candidate was unsure whether Mr. Bush was serious. When she returned from a Caribbean vacation last week, Mr. Bush followed up and, in an effort to insure the lunch would not be interpreted too seriously, Mrs. Ferraro suggested they bring along the sparring partners who helped each of them prepare for their nationally televised debate.
Caspar A. Weinberger will fight for a large increase in next year’s military budget despite increasing pressures against any increase, according to Administration officials. The Defense Secretary will return from an overseas trip this weekend.
A Senate subcommittee has approved spending $8.4 million to build a U.S. Army facility in Utah to test deadly biological toxins, a congressional spokesman said. The project at Dugway Proving Ground, 87 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, would test defenses against lethal biological agents. Army spokesman Major Don Maple said he did not know how quickly construction would begin on the project, or if it would be delayed because of controversy. Until the subcommittee vote, the Army had expected to wait until the start of the 99th Congress in January to obtain approval. Approval came by a 4–1 vote in a telephonic poll.
Doctors have boosted the rate of William J. Schroeder’s artificial heart slightly in an effort to increase his stamina and allowed him for the first time to stand while holding a portable power pack, members of his medical team said in Louisville, Ky. But a plan to let Schroeder spend some time outside his cramped quarters at Humana Heart Institute International was delayed, they said. Schroeder, 52, slept a bit fitfully Wednesday night, doctors said, but continued his steady recovery from the November 25 surgery in which doctors implanted his Jarvik-7 heart.
A reputed high-ranking officer in the Gambino crime family who is suspected of harboring fugitive Italian banker Michele Sindona in 1979 was sentenced in Newark, New Jersey, to 45 years in prison for heroin trafficking. U.S. District Judge Frederick Lacey also slapped a $105,000 fine on Rosario Gambino, 42, who has been identified by lawmen as a powerful soldier in the New York-based crime family. Gambino’s brother-in-law, Erasmo Gambino, 37, was sentenced to 34 years and fined $95,000.
The superintendent’s son at the Manhattan apartment building where an aspiring actress was stabbed to death was arrested and charged with her slaying. Emmanuel Torres, 21, gave a videotaped statement to police before he was charged with second-degree murder in the rooftop slaying of Caroline Isenberg, 23. Chief of Detectives Richard Nicastro said Torres’ original plan had been only to rob the young actress, who moved to New York City two months ago after graduating from Harvard University. “This was a robbery that developed into an attempted rape, which developed into a homicide,” he said.
A meat industry leader said a court decision this week clears the way for use of “mechanically separated meat” (MSM) in hotdogs, bologna and similar products. Consumer groups had challenged 1982 rules by the Agriculture Department that permitted use of the product without mentioning on labels that it contains finely ground bits of bone. A decision this week of a federal appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling in favor of the USDA meat regulation.
A Missouri official announced a breakthrough in the destruction of dioxin in soil, but cautioned that the method’s potentially “astronomical” cost could prevent its use in large areas of contamination. Tests conducted last month on tainted soil in Times Beach, near St. Louis, the town virtually closed because of dioxin, reduced the dioxin level to below the amount believed to be hazardous to human health. Exposure to dioxin has been linked to such afflictions as chloracne, deterioration of the immune system and liver damage.
Striking Chicago teachers today shivered on picket lines with temperatures in the teens and a wind-chill factor of 26 below zero Fahrenheit as their strike kept the nation’s third-largest school district closed for the fourth day. Bargainers for the 28,000-member Chicago Teachers Union and the Board of Education resumed talks after negotiating for 12 hours Wednesday. The walkout, affecting 431,000 students, is the second Chicago teachers strike in 15 months and the seventh in 15 years. Pay raises and the length of the school year were the chief issues.
Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt took the stand in Roanoke, Virginia, in a $45-million libel suit filed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, and said an ad parody depicting Falwell as an incestuous drunkard was designed “to give people a chuckle” and not to hurt the Moral Majority leader. Flynt, testifying in his defense, said the ad parody was too absurd to be taken seriously.
A small Provincetown-Boston plane crashed in a wooded area shortly after taking off from the Jacksonville, Florida, airport, killing all 13 people aboard, the authorities said. A spokesman for the Provincetown-Boston Airline, which was grounded last month by the Federal Aviation Administration on an emergency basis, said the carrier resumed full operation last Sunday.
Food handling violations on planes have prompted a warning by the Food and Drug Administration. The agency said an unannounced spot check at Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports last summer found 21 airlines to have one or more planes with food handling violations. As a result, the F.D.A. urged all domestic passenger airlines to improve their food handling practices.
A shift on school desegregation was taken by the Justice Department. The department argued for the first time that a local school board could eliminate a completed court-ordered busing program and return to neighborhood schools even if the action increased racial segregation in the school system.
In California, Berkeley’s new City Council convened for the first time Tuesday and passed an ordinance to grant live-in partners of city employees the same benefits as spouses. The vote was 8 to 0. The Council also voted to make it illegal to evict almost anyone from an apartment and barred all conversions of apartments into condominiums. One of those attending the meeting was Eldridge Cleaver, the former leader of the Black Panther organization who is now a self-appointed conservative watchdog. He asked the members if they were going to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, an exercise that was eliminated from council meetings a number of years ago. “Shut up, Eldridge,” Mayor Gus Newport shouted. “Shut up or we’ll have you removed.”
Bogus medical degrees may be held by more than 10,000 people in the United States, Congressional investigators have concluded after a six-month inquiry.
Helena Suková snaps Martina Navratilova’s 74-match winning streak 1-6, 6-3, 7-5 in the semi finals of the Australian Open in Melbourne; ends Navratilova’s hopes of completing the Grand Slam.
The Chicago White Sox trade 1983 American League Cy Young Award winner LaMarr Hoyt and 2 minor leaguers to the San Diego Padres for pitcher Tim Lollar, infielder-outfielder Luis Salazar, and minor leaguers Ozzie Guillen and Bill Long. Shortstop Guillen will win the American League Rookie of the Year Award next season and hold down the Sox shortstop spot till the end of the 1990s. Workhorse Hoyt will be out of baseball in two years, amid rumors of drug use.
After losing the 1984 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, the Padres needed starting pitching and were in the market looking for a front-end starter. Hoyt was the American League Cy Young award winner in 1983 but had slumped in 1984 to a 13-18 record. The Padres gave away a young, prized shortstop named Ozzie Guillen. He was blocked at the position by Garry Templeton, so the Padres deemed him expendable. Lollar was a valuable part of the ’84 Padres run, but Hoyt was an upgrade in the rotation that they desperately needed.
Hoyt initially rewarded the Padres, going 16-8 with a 3.47 ERA and a 1.097 WHIP in 1985. After the season, he was arrested twice, in January and February of 1986, and went into rehab for drug abuse. That forced him to miss most of spring training and resulted in an 8-11 record with a 5.15 ERA and a 1.497 WHIP for the 1986 season. After that season, he was arrested once again and sentenced to 45 days in jail. Hoyt never pitched in the major leagues again. He was a massive mistake for the franchise, and it was a shame he never could get his life together.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1170.49 (-1.11)
Born:
America Young, American actress (“Starkweather”), in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Syndric Steptoe, NFL wide receiver (Cleveand Browns), in Bryan, Texas.
Died:
Ruth Cummings (née Sinclair), 90, American stage, silent and sound screen actress (“Daybreak”; “Dream of Love”), and screenwriter.
History Diaries 