A public review of U.S. foreign policy next month is planned by the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Richard G. Lugar said he would conduct several weeks of hearings to see if ways can be found to produce a broader national consensus. Mr. Lugar said he did not intend the inquiry as a criticism of the Administration. Rather, he said, it was an effort to educate Congress and the public on where the country stood internationally, as well as to repair some of the rifts between Democrats and Republicans that were widened by the recent Presidential campaign. He said witnesses would include Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other senior Administration officials, as well as prominent public figures, such as Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus R. Vance, who have held high office in the past, and leading foreign policy experts from the academic and business worlds.
The policies and management of UNESCO should be changed in many major areas, according to a report by the United States General Accounting Office. The report, which was made public November 30, was prepared at the request of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Science and Technology Committee. The committees asked for the report after the United States announced last year that it planned to withdraw from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at the end of 1984 unless changes were made in its management and budgeting. The United States said UNESCO had “become involved in political issues beyond the scope of its constitution; introduced statist concepts emphasizing rights of states rather than individuals into some of its programs; not properly managed its personnel, programs, and financial activities,” according to the General Accounting Office report.
Labor union leaders from West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands promised to support Britain’s striking miners by trying to limit the flow of coal imports from their countries, British unions reported. British imports of coal and oil from Europe have soared since the strike over pit closures began last March and have helped foil union efforts to choke off supplies to power stations. The British unions did not specify how the European unions planned to stem the imports, and a Dutch union leader said, “It will be very difficult for all kinds of reasons.”
The Polish Government today released two Solidarity activists who had remained in prison after an amnesty last summer. At the same time an inquiry began in the case of two people who helped form a group to monitor the police. The two released prisoners, Bogdan Lis and Piotr Mierzewski, are being returned by the police to their homes in Gdansk after being freed from Warsaw’s Rakowiecka Prison, Mr. Lis’s mother, Wladyslawa, said in a telephone interview.
About 100 students and two priests have renewed Poland’s “war of the crosses” with a sit-in at a public high school to protest Communist authorities’ stripping of crucifixes from classroom walls, officials reported. The protest, at a vocational school 150 miles south of Warsaw, was the first major dispute since March when thousands of students in two other communities protested the removal of crosses from school buildings.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres ended a four-day visit to France with a denial that he had met with Jordan’s King Hussein. The respected French newspaper Le Monde, quoting unidentified “good sources,” said that Hussein visited Israel “about a month ago.” Peres, however, said: “I met him (Hussein) neither recently nor earlier. We never went to school together.” Peres has expressed a wish to meet Hussein “publicly or secretly” to discuss peace. Upon leaving Paris, Peres also said his visit had strengthened French-Israeli relations.
Fighting broke out today between Druze militiamen and Lebanese Army troops in the mountains overlooking Beirut. It was the third consecutive day of fighting. Police sources and the Christian Voice of Lebanon radio station said the fighting in Souq al Gharb began shortly before noon and continued into the afternoon despite calls for a cease-fire. The battles with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades spread from the mountain town, which overlooks the Lebanese presidential palace in suburban Baabda, to Shuweifat near the airport.
An OPEC committee has agreed on changes in the group’s pricing policy but its benchmark price would remain untouched, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabian oil minister, announced. The recent weakness in world oil prices was temporary, he said, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries should be able to defend the benchmark of $29 a barrel for Saudi light crude.
Thirty-nine more hostages were freed by the Arab hijackers holding a Kuwaiti plane at the Tehran airport, but they retained two American and three Kuwaiti officials after vowing to “keep the guilty ones on the plane,” according to diplomats and the Iranian press agency. The hijackers reportedly threatened to put the Americans aboard the plane on trial. Those freed appeared to be mostly Pakistanis.
The deadly chemical that leaked in Bhopal, India, is not essential to the production of the main product of the Union Carbide plant there, a company spokesman acknowledged. He said that until 1978 Union Carbide made Sevin, the main insecticide produced in Bhopal, using a process that did not involve methyl isocyanate, the chemical that leaked. In addition, Union Carbide has told its plants in West Virginia, Georgia, Brazil and France to use up their stocks of the chemical as quickly as possible, a process that officials said would take two to three weeks. A spokesman, Laura Malis, said yesterday that the company had not decided whether to continue its use after current stocks are gone.
Deaths at Bhopal’s major hospital declined for the first time since the escape of the lethal gas from the Union Carbide plant there last Monday, the superintendent of the hospital said. He also said there were signs that medical consequences for survivors might not be so devastating or widespread as had been predicted. “The worst is over,” he said.
Sri Lankan security forces imposed a 42-hour curfew on the northern part of the country to curb separatist violence that has resulted in a reported 370 deaths in three weeks. Much of the north and northeast has been under night curfew since Tamil guerrillas stepped up their campaign for a separate state for their ethnic minority. Official sources said 102 bodies, most of them Tamil civilians killed by troops, were recovered after rebels bombed an army jeep, killing a soldier, near Mannar on Tuesday.
Pakistan’s President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, seeking the widest possible endorsement in a referendum later this month, set out today on a 10-day campaign tour that will take him all over the country. The military government has been apprehensive that there might be widespread boycotting of the December 19 referendum, which is designed to give President Zia five more years in office. After opposition leaders began urging voters early this week not to vote, the Government decreed that advocating a boycott would be a crime punishable by three years in prison. “Now I’m not quite sure what we will do,” said an opponent of General Zia in Karachi. “But either way it will be a fraud and either way Zia will, of course, win.”
At least 15 people were injured today when the police clashed with students during a nationwide anti-government strike that has paralyzed Bangladesh, the police said. The 24-hour strike, called by two opposition alliances, has closed shops and offices and stopped transport and industry across Bangladesh. The clash began when students and political workers started pelting police patrols with stones, the police said. The strike, the 16th since President H. M. Ershad took power nearly three years ago in a military coup, is part of a continuing campaign for the holding of elections.
China says rigid adherence to Marxist theories cannot be depended upon to solve the nation’s problems. The Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily said in a front-page commentary Friday that it would be “naive and stupid” to cling slavishly to Marxist principles while seeking to modernize China. Western diplomats said the unsigned commentary bore the unmistakable imprimatur of the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, who has set in motion a series of free-market policies aimed at dismantling the country’s unwieldy central planning system. It was titled, “Theory Must Be Combined With Practice.”
New policy approaches to Nicaragua proposed within the Reagan Administration have proven unacceptable to most officials. Different options were offered after many senior officials said the current policy, introduced three years ago on the premise that Congress would provide aid to Nicaraguan rebels, has become unrealistic and out of step with developments in Nicaragua and Washington.
Suriname’s Cabinet, apparently seeking restoration of $90 million in annual development money from the Netherlands, approved a proposal Friday to create a national assembly. The proposal would have to be sanctioned by the military regime headed by Lieutenant Colonel Desi Bouterse and officials said approval would also be sought from unions and businessmen. The proposal accepted by the Cabinet would create a 31-member assembly to draw up a new constitution within 27 months. The assembly also would have the power to legislate and authorize government spending. Under the proposal, 14 seats would go to the military, 11 to organized labor and 6 to the private sector. A Government official said a decision to form the assembly must be reached by December 31, when the mandate expires for the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Wim Udenhout.
A question has arisen over the amount of food available in Ethiopia. Relief workers returning from Korem, the largest famine refugee camp, say no new shipments have arrived there for more than two weeks and “it is a question of days” before reserve stocks are exhausted. Should that happen, they say, the death rate, now 30 a day, would rise.
Six Democratic U.S. Representatives said today that they would ask Congress next month to approve a $1 billion famine relief package for Africa. Members of Congress, African ambassadors, heads of private relief agencies and celebrities gathered outside the Capitol today to focus attention on the growing hunger problems in 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. “The official food requirements are now projected to be 1.7 million metric tons,” said Representative Mickey Leland, Democrat of Texas, chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger and sponsor of the bill. He said the total represented “an increase of 500,000 metric tons in the past week.” But Mr. Leland acknowledged it would be an “uphill fight” to persuade Congress to approve the $1 billion package in the midst of a campaign to reduce the Federal budget deficit.
A 59-year-old businesswoman from Jersey City is scheduled to be tried Tuesday in a Nigerian military tribunal on charges that she illegally exported petroleum products. If found guilty, she could be put to death by firing squad. The businesswoman, Marie McBroom, a commodities trader who was detained last February and held without charge for nearly 10 months in Kiri-Kiri Prison in Lagos, is accused of illegally exporting more than a million gallons of crude oil and 20,000 metric tons of automobile fuel. The crimes she is accused of fall under a decree issued five months after her arrest, and the law is being applied retroactively. The decree is one of about two dozen issued since military officers led by Major General Mohammed Buhari overthrew the civilian Government of President Shehu Shegari in a coup last December.
Six states bordering the South African-controlled territory of Namibia have rejected new U.S.backed proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock over independence for the territory, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Robert Mugabe announced. Mugabe said that South Africa’s proposal included an offer to withdraw its troops from Namibia in exchange for Angola’s agreement to order 25,000 Cuban troops from its borders. Mugabe called the proposal arrogant and interference in Angola’s affairs.
Social Security disability proposals drafted by the Reagan Administration would liberalize the criteria for awarding benefits to people with severe mental disorders. They fulfill a promise by Margaret M. Heckler, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to answer harsh criticism that the current rules are too strict.
President Reagan places a call to Milton Friedman, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute.
The President and First Lady watch the movie “Comfort and Joy.”
Americans for Democratic Action said the Senate became slightly more liberal this year, moderating President Reagan’s conservative policies, but still failed to attend to the nation’s economic problems. Leon Shull, retiring after 21 years as the ADA’s national director, praised the Senate for moving “to uphold the letter and spirit of the Constitution” by rejecting Reagan’s school-prayer amendment and his request for authority to veto parts of spending bills. It was also announced that Ann F. Lewis, political director of the Democratic National Committee since 1981, will succeed Shull.
Ann F. Lewis, political director of the Democratic National Committee, was appointed today as national director of Americans for Democratic Action. Mrs. Lewis will succeed Leon Shull, who is retiring after 21 years. The A.D.A., a leading liberal organization, has members in every state in more than 40 chapters. “The next four years will be critical ones for America and for American liberalism,” Mrs. Lewis said on accepting the appointment. “Our commitment to economic justice, human rights and effective political action has never been more important.” Before taking over the Democratic National Committee’s political operations in 1981, Mrs. Lewis worked for the 1976 Presidential campaign of Senator Birch Bayh, Democrat of Indiana, and on the staffs of Representatives Stan Lundine, Democrat of New York, and Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland. In a year-end report, Mr. Shull said, “The nation continues to suffer from a high level of unemployment, which President Reagan himself only four years ago called unacceptable,” and he said the Republican-controlled Senate’s “lack of concern for the nation’s continuing unemployment crisis is morally appalling.”
FBI agents and a fugitive neo-Nazi holed up in a house traded heavy-weapons fire in a gun battle climaxed by a huge fireball that destroyed the home, officials said in Coupeville, Washington. Robert Mathews, 31, wanted in the wounding of an FBI agent in Oregon on November 24, was believed to have been killed in the house, which was full of ammunition that might have been ignited. Earlier, three persons were arrested on charges of harboring a fugitive at the house, which had been under siege for two days.
A Federal jury tonight found Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, not guilty of libeling the Rev. Jerry Falwell in a parody advertisement accusing the evangelist of drunkenness and incest but awarded him a total of $200,000 in damages. The jury ruled there was no libel because the advertisement’s claims, published in the sexually explicit magazine, were too outrageous to be believed. But it said Mr. Falwell, who is head of Moral Majority, was entitled to $100,000 in actual damages for emotional distress and to $100,000 in punitive damages for what it said was a malicious parody. Mr. Flynt’s lawyers said they planned to ask Federal District Judge James C. Turk to set aside the award and said they were prepared to appeal to the United States Supreme Court if necessary.
Police recovered a baby’s hairbrush and a bloodstained seat in a car that had been in the body shop run by the father of a 4-month-old girl at the time she was raped and killed in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Police, who have not ruled out the parents as suspects, continued a news blackout on their investigation into the killing of Jerri Ann Richard, whose badly beaten body was found November 15 in an alley, four days after she was reported missing.
The troubled World’s Fair in New Orleans suffered a total loss of $121 million, according to a status report filed under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws. The first official tally of the fair’s finances since it ended its six-month run Nov. 11 said the loss includes more than $80 million owed by the fair and $40 million lost by 138 guarantors. The fair has $11 million in assets. The assets will be used to reduce the loss, but the bankruptcy court has yet to decide how the money will be divided among 750 creditors. Also on Thursday, Petr Spurney, the fair’s president, appeared before an Orleans Parish grand jury to discuss why 500 paychecks issued in the fair’s final week were voided by the declaration of bankruptcy, which froze the fair’s bank accounts. The grand jury is investigating, among other things, whether the fair broke the law in respect to worthless checks.
Negotiations in Chicago to end a strike that shut down the nation’s third-largest school system for a week resumed, but teachers vowed to walk out of talks unless the Board of Education puts money on the table. Bargainers for the 28,000-member Chicago Teachers Union walked out of talks Friday evening, charging that the board failed to present a salary proposal.
The Ralston Purina Company has paid $8.9 million to more than 16,000 people in a suit stemming from explosions that ripped up two miles of city streets and sewers in Louisville, Kentucky in 1981, the authorities say. The company has promised to pay an additional $24 million in damages related to the blast. Ralston has admitted it discharged the chemical hexane into the sewers and conceded it had no evidence that anything but hexane could have caused the explosions on February 13, 1981. But the company has denied any negligence. Nearly 16,600 people have received payments in the case for damage to homes and businesses in the central part of the city, a Federal claims adjuster said recently. Ralston has also said it will pay $18 million to the Metropolitan Sewer District, about $4 million to the city, state, water company and the University of Louisville, and about $2 million to people who did not sue. About 900 of the 22,000 claims filed remain to be settled.
A new Army camouflage pattern is being painted on tens of thousands of pieces of its field equipment. The new camouflage, developed by West Germany armed forces in the early 1980’s, is a three-color pattern of forest green, black and smaller amounts of brown. The former camouflage pattern used a wider variety of shades to match environments.
The South’s economy is being drained by troubles in two basic industries, textiles and tobacco. Textile manufacturers, the largest employers in six Southern states, are losing both jobs and income in their competition with cheap and plentiful imports. Tobacco farmers also face foreign competition and the likelihood of new attempts in Congress to end Federal price supports.
The world’s water supply is suffering from widespread overuse and mismanagement that, if continued, will result in shortages that restrict food production and economic growth, a study by the Worldwatch Institute, a research group, has concluded. In the United States, the study said, excessive withdrawal of underground water supplies threatens future availability in areas such as the Colorado River Basin, particularly the areas around Phoenix and Tucson; the Florida and Pacific coasts; the High Plains from Nebraska to Texas and Oklahoma, and much of California, including the Owens Valley and Mono Basin.
The National Kidney Foundation called for more extensive warning labels on a new non-prescription painkiller or its withdrawal from the market, but makers of the ibuprofen products said such warnings are inappropriate. The foundation said that preparations using ibuprofen should carry warnings about consulting a doctor if the potential user suffers such health problems as kidney, liver and heart disease. Ibuprofen is an analgesic known by its prescription trade names Motrin and Rufen, and is available as Nuprin from Bristol-Myers Co. and Advil from American Home Products Division of Whitehall Laboratories.
Ringo Starr hosts “Saturday Night Live”; Herbie Hancock is the musical guest.
Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Chris Evert-Lloyd beats Helena Suková 6–7, 6–1, 6–3; continues streak of winning at least 1 major per year since 1973.
NFL Football:
Buffalo Bills 17, New York Jets 21
Minnesota Vikings 7, San Francisco 49ers 51
In their staggering march toward the .500 plateau, the Jets hurdled the ineffective Buffalo Bills today to break a six-game losing streak and record a 21–17 victory. The game meant little, although it kept alive the club’s hopes of averting a losing season — they are now 7–8. It did indicate, however, that, finally, Ken O’Brien could bring the team back from a deficit. Although the triumph came against the Bills — who at 2-13 are one step closer to the worst record in the National Football League and the first pick in the draft — it also showed the potential of two Jets players who had made little contribution this season because of injuries: Russell Carter, the No. 1 pick who had two sacks and an interception in his first start at free safety, and Cedric Minter, an all-purpose back from the Canadian League who did many things well. But the Jets still had to find out whether O’Brien could pull out a game for them. After all, Pat Ryan had proved earlier this season that he could. But since O’Brien has taken over for the injured Ryan and started the last four games, he has done everything except win. Today, his team trailed by 17–7 going into the second half and was down by 17–14 in the final quarter. But the victory was fashioned in the third quarter on an O’Brien to Wesley Walker touchdown pass covering 39 yards and a fourth quarter drive led by the quarterback that ended with a 3-yard run by Tony Paige.
Joe Montana, playing only the first half, completed 15 of 21 passes for 3 touchdowns as San Francisco 49ers ran up their highest point total in 19 years in routing the Minnesota Vikings today, 51–7. It was the 49ers’ 14th victory, tying a National Football League regular-season record. It was San Francisco’s eighth consecutive victory. The Vikings (3–12) suffered their fifth straight loss. Wendell Tyler, the 49ers’ running back, gained 36 yards rushing on 13 carries, giving him a club-record 1,230 for the season. The previous mark was 1,203, set by Delvin Williams in 1976. The 49ers (14–1) raced to a 31–7 lead by halftime and several starters sat out the rest of the game. Montana opened the scoring with a 44-yard pass to Dwight Clark midway through the first quarter. Later in the period, Montana flipped a 3-yard touchdown pass to Freddie Solomon. In the second quarter, Renaldo Nehemiah scored on a 59-yard pass play and Tyler ran 5 yards for a touchdown. Archie Manning, the Vikings’ starting quarterback, left the game in the first period after being shaken up on a sack, the first of six registered by the 49ers. Wade Wilson, who took over for Manning, directed an 84-yard scoring drive in the second period. Darrin Nelson ran 5 yards for the Minnesota touchdown. The Vikings reached the San Francisco 1 in the final minute of the game but failed to score. The 49ers failed to get a first down on their first possession of the game but scored 9 of the next 10 times they had the ball. Ray Wersching kicked field goals from 41, 25 and 38 yards. His 6 extra points gave him a string of 104 without missing. The 49er reserves Derrick Harmon and Bill Ring ran for touchdowns in the last quarter. The 49ers will try to gain a record-breaking 15th triumph when they face the Los Angeles Rams next Friday night.
Born:
Antonio Johnson, NFL defensive tackle (Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee Titans), in Greenville, Mississippi.
Dee Webb, NFL cornerback (Jacksonville Jaguars), in Jacksonville, Florida.
Vince Anderson, NFL defensive back (Tampa Bay Buccaneers), in Lake City, Florida.
Sam Hunt, American country pop singer (“Take Your Time”), in Cedartown, Georgia.
Died:
Luther Adler, 81, American actor (“D.O.A.”, “The Desert Fox”).
Razzle [Nicholas Dingley], 24, British drummer (Hanoi Rocks), in a drunk driving incident while Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil was driving.
History Diaries 