President Reagan today called on Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, to translate his publicly stated readiness for sharp cuts in nuclear forces into “concrete proposals” at the Geneva arms talks, which resume next week. He said such a move could produce “a positive additional stimulus” to their meeting Nov. 19-20 in Geneva. Mr. Reagan met for 30 minutes today at the White House with the chief American arms negotiator at Geneva, Max M. Kampelman, who also is in charge of the space defense talks; former Senator John G. Tower, who heads the delegation to the strategic arms talks, and Maynard W. Glitman, who heads the team for the talks on medium-range arms. In a statement issued by the White House after Mr. Reagan’s meeting, the President said his team in Geneva had “unprecedented authority” to negotiate flexibly. “There is no reason why a serious reduction process cannot begin promptly,” he said.
An orbiting satellite was destroyed 290 miles over the Pacific Ocean by an Air Force missile in the first such trial of an anti-sattelite weapon. The test was described as flawless. The Air Force said the heat-seeking missile borne into outer space by a rocket launched from an F-15 fighter plane, homed in on a six-year-old satellite traveling at 17,500 miles an hour and struck it at 4:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Major Wilbert D. Pearson, U.S. Air Force, flying McDonnell Douglas F-15A-17-MC, 76-0084, Celestial Eagle, launched an anti-satellite missile in a test, approximately 200 miles (322 kilometers) west of Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the central coast of California.
From level flight at Mach 1.22, Major Pearson pulled into a 3.8 G zoom to a 65° angle of climb. On reaching 38,100 feet (11,613 meters) and having slowed to 0.934 Mach, the LTV ASM-135 missile was automatically launched. At 1:42 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, the 30 pound (13.6 kilogram) kinetic interceptor collided with the Solwind P78-1 satellite at an altitude of 345 miles (555 kilometers) and a closing speed of 15,000 miles per hour (21,140 kilometers per hour). The ASM-135 was a three-stage guided missile using a Boeing AGM-69 Short Range Attack Missile (SRAM) as its first stage and an LTV Aerospace Altair 3 rocket as the second stage. The third stage was the homing vehicle, which used an infrared seeker to intercept the targeted satellite. This was not an explosive warhead. The satellite was destroyed by the energy of the very high speed impact. The ASM-135 is 18 feet (5.48 meters) long, 20 inches (50.8 centimeters) in diameter and weighs 2,600 pounds (1,180 kilograms).
A Soviet intelligence operative whose defection led Thursday to an order for the expulsion of 25 Russians from Britain had been working for Britain as a double agent for nearly 20 years, Western intelligence sources said today. It was also learned from British officials that the agent, Oleg A. Gordiyevsky, defected in late July or early last month because he feared that his cover had been destroyed. The officials said he believed that his life would be in danger if he remained at his post as head of the London mission of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence agency, for even a few more days. The timing of his departure from the mission indicated that his decision was not connected with the recent defection of the West German senior counterespionage officer, Hans Joachim Tiedge, who fled to East Berlin at least two weeks after Mr. Gordiyevsky’s defection.
The United States, citing reports of spying by United Nations personnel, will restrict the movements of about 500 United Nations employees from the Soviet Union and five other nations. The regulations, which take effect Sunday, apply to United Nations employees who are nationals of the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Libya and Vietnam. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar asked the United States to reconsider the measures, but his request was turned down, a United Nations spokesman said. The rules require that affected workers who want to travel outside a 25-mile radius of New York City on unofficial business get permission from the State Department and use the department to make travel arrangements.
The official death toll in the Portuguese train collision rose to 54 today, but the authorities said at least 64 people were still missing, their bodies believed buried in the charred wreckage. Eleven foreigners, including 5 from Finland, 2 from Norway and 4 from Luxembourg, were among the missing. A technician in the regional social security center in Viseu said 64 people known to have boarded the train did not appear on the lists of survivors or dead.
Syria and Israel have fortified their military positions on the Golan Heights in recent days, a development that has raised tensions in the area. The two armies are separated on the Golan by a 1,200-member United Nations peacekeeping force. The United Nations force was deployed there after Syria and Israel signed a United States-sponsored disengagement agreement in 1974. Under it the Israelis gave back part of the occupied territory to the Syrians, including the town of Quneitra. A newspaper in Damascus said today that the Israeli Army had moved closer to the “flash point” near the Syrian lines and warned that Syria would not be intimidated by threats from Israel. Al Baath, a daily newspaper, declared that if war should break out, the result would not be in Israel’s favor. Al Baath speaks for Syria’s ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party, which is headed by President Hafez al-Assad.
A White House spokesman confirmed today that Iraq was buying 45 American-made 20-seat helicopters once destined for Iran and said the purchase has been designated a commercial transaction. A State Department official said the Iraqis had assured the Administration that the helicopters were not being purchased for military purposes. The huge helicopters were initially developed as Iranian troop carriers but are now certified as a civilian aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration, The Washington Post reported. The purchase by Iraq, estimated to cost between $225 million and $275 million, is being viewed by some as an indication that the United States favors Iraq in its five-year-old war against Iran, despite official American neutrality and an embargo on arms sales.
The Indian Government has dropped legal procceedings against a reporter for The Associated Press, Brahma Chellaney, who was accused of inflammatory reporting about army operations in the Punjab last year, a senior official says. Officials returned the reporter’s passport last Thursday, having renewed it for five years. It was impounded more than eight months ago for what the Government called national security reasons.
The Thai police questioned a group of labor leaders today about their activities during the coup attempt Monday, according to Bangkok press reports. The union leaders, including several representing rail and bus workers, have been accused by the head of Bangkok’s transportation authority of trying to bring workers into the streets to support the uprising, which was put down by troops loyal to the Government.
Philippine prosecutors in the trial of 26 people accused in the assassination in 1983 of Benigno S. Aquino Jr. today rejected evidence supplied by the United States that described what appeared to be unusual activity by the Philippine Air Force on the day the opposition leader was slain. The Government ombudsman, Bernardo P. Fernandez, who is in charge of the prosecution in the trial, made public a memorandum saying statements by six American servicemen were “irrelevant and immaterial” as well as legally flawed. Sources here said the affidavits, which have not been made public, describe an apparently unsuccessful attempt by two air force F-5 fighter planes to intercept the China Air Lines commercial airliner that was bringing Mr. Aquino from Taipei to Manila.
Canada urged changes in apartheid, warning that it would place stringent sanctions against South Africa unless it made policy modifications. The warning followed sanctions announced July 6.
The Honduran Air Force shot down a Nicaraguan helicopter and attacked Nicaraguan positions inside Nicaragua today in the most serious border confrontation yet between the two countries, according to Honduran Government and American diplomatic officials in the Honduran capital. It appeared to be the first time Honduran forces have entered Nicaragua to attack military forces there. President Roberto Suazo Cordova of Honduras cut short a vacation to announce the Honduran attack today. The Honduran Army was mobilized and military units were moved to the border, according to Western diplomats and Honduran officials, who were interviewed by telephone in Tegucigalpa. President Suazo also recalled the Honduran Ambassador from Nicaragua.
In an effort to counter Nicaraguan Government arguments before the World Court, the State Department issued a long position paper today asserting that the Nicaraguan Government has continued to supply weapons, training and advice to the guerrillas in El Salvador. The United States has refused to take part in the World Court case, so the paper has no legal force. Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, said the Nicaraguan position that no weapons have been shipped from Nicaragua to the Salvadoran rebels since early 1981 “is an outright lie.” He asserted that there was now “a mountain of evidence” against Nicaragua on the issue and said even Congressional critics of United States policy toward Nicaragua accepted the evidence.
A former C.I.A. insurgency specialist testified to the World Court today that the agency had drafted a plan to send 1,500 armed rebels into Nicaragua and had won President Reagan’s approval of it. The specialist, David Macmichael, who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1981 to 1983, told the court that the agency’s Latin American affairs office developed a plan in the fall of 1981 to “destabilize the Nicaraguan Government or reduce the threat Nicaragua posed to the region.” The Nicaraguan Government has filed a complaint charging that United States support for anti-Government rebels constitutes “state terrorism” and violates international law. Mr. Macmichael took the stand for 30 minutes in the second day of oral testimony in the case.
The Peruvian Government has ordered an inquiry into a purported massacre of 69 villagers by troops fighting Maoist guerrillas in the Andes. A leftist Senator, Cesar Rojas, said that young women among the victims had been raped in front of their mothers and then had been shot, that the entire village was set afire, and that a few survivors returned later to “the smell of charred human flesh.” The purported massacre was said to have taken place August 14 at the village of Accomarca. A Government statement issued Thursday night said President Alan Garcia wanted the results of the investigation within a week.
Talks with South African guerrillas were held in Zambia by white South African business executives and newspaper editors over the protests of President P. W. Botha, who has called the meeting a betrayal. Business leaders, most of them mainly from the Anglo American Corporation, South Africa’s biggest mining company, held the talks with leading figures from the outlawed and exiled African National Congress, which seeks the overthrow of white rule in South Africa. White opposition figures inside the country, meanwhile, welcomed proposals Thursday by a Government-sponsored panel for dismantling apartheid legislation that restricts blacks’ rights to move to the townships set aside for them in urban areas. But the most prominent black opposition movement, the United Democratic Front, said the proposed changes would not dent “white power and privilege,” while other opponents said more changes would be needed to defuse the nation’s racial confrontation, which has taken about 680 lives in a year of violent unrest in the black townships.
An alliance of members of Congress and private groups today announced the creation of a Coalition for the Strategic Defense Initiative to promote President Reagan’s research plan to develop a defense against nuclear attack.
President Reagan receives the annual report of the Intelligence Oversight Board.
President Reagan travels to Camp David for the weekend.
President Reagan’s special representative on acid rain told the governors of six New England states today that he believes the problem is caused by sulfur emissions from industry and that he will recommend a cleanup program. The envoy, Drew Lewis, said that while some scientific questions remained, “it seems to me that saying sulfates do not cause acid rain is the same as saying that smoking does not cause lung cancer.” The Administration has argued that more study is needed to justify the expense of national action to reduce sulfur emissions from the smokestacks of factories and power plants. Around the nation, but especially in the Northeast and in eastern Canada, scientists have linked the death of fish and the decline of forests to the acidity of rainfall.
The death penalty does not apply in the espionage case of Jerry A. Whitworth, one of four Navy men accused of participating in a Soviet spy ring, a Federal judge ruled. The ruling by Judge John P. Vukasin of Federal District Court in San Francisco followed a court hearing granted to the Washington Legal Foundation, which had argued as a friend of the court for the death penalty.
The legal status of aliens applying for benefits would have to be verified by the states before they qualify for for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and other aid under a proposal approved by the Senate. Senator Paula Hawkins, Republican of Florida, offered the proposal as an amendment to a comprehensive bill designed to curtail illegal immigration.
A member of a Neo-nazi group testified today that the group included an “assassination unit” with a contingency plan to murder former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and the the heads of the nation’s three major television networks. He testified that the group, whose members call it the Order, also considered and abandoned a plan for a suicide mission to blow up a member of the French Rothschild banking and wine family who was visiting a Seattle hotel in the fall of 1983. These plans were described in the first day of testimony in the trial of 10 members of the group, which also called itself Bruder Schweigen, or Silent Brotherhood, in Federal court in Seattle. A key Government witness, 33-year-old Denver Daw Parmenter 2d, one of the original members of the Order, testified today under an arrangement in which he pleaded guilty to one of the two Government charges against him. He has been given the maximum 20-year sentence but was assured that he would serve his time in a medium-security prison rather than a maximum-security one and that his cooperation would be made known to prison officials and the parole board.
Michael Drummond, the Arizona man whose life was supported for nine days on an artificial heart until he received a human heart transplant, tonight took issue with critics who urge a moratorium on further use of mechanical hearts until the problem of strokes has been solved. “There shouldn’t be a stop to it at all,” Mr. Drummond said in an interview from his hospital bed at the University Medical Center, an affiliate of the University of Arizona. Mr. Drummond’s speech was clear in the interview with Nina Trasoff, a spokesman for the hospital. Occasionally, he slurred a few words, showing a trace of the effects of the strokes that he suffered while living on the Jarvik-7 mechanical heart.
A judge released the last five prisoners in the Jackson County (Ohio) jail today after the sheriff told him there was no money to keep the jail open. Judge Thomas Mitchell of Common Pleas Court commuted the sentences of three men convicted of drunken driving and released two others on their own recognizance. One of them was being held on an auto theft charge while the other was charged with gross sexual imposition in an attack on a child. The judge said he took the action after Sheriff Edgar Hayburn told him he would have to reduce his staff from 16 employees to 4 in a week because his department was out of money. Jackson County officials say most services will stop by the end of the month unless a state loan is obtained or an emergency tax increase approved.
A bus carrying about 40 church members went off an Arkansas embankment and overturned in the Ozark Mountains today, killing five people and injuring at least 16 others, the authorities said. The bus careened down a ravine at 7:40 PM about four miles north of Eureka Springs in northern Arkansas near the Missouri border, said Deputy Rand Langhover of the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department. Coroner Douglas Nelson said five bodies were found in the wreckage. The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, and one was later flown to a hospital in Springfield, Missouri. The bus was carrying young worshipers from the Ozark Bible Institute, a small college of about 120 students in Neosho, Missouri, to a performance of a passion play in Eureka Springs.
A twin-engine plane that reported engine trouble crashed and burned today in a soybean field in northern Alabama, killing six people, the authorities said. The plane, traveling from Lakeland, Fla., to Huntsville, Ala., crashed in a rural area near Hartselle, said Lloyd Alley, the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic manager at the Huntsville-Madison County Jetport. He said the pilot reported “engine difficulty and hydraulic problems.” Coroner Gene Shelton of Morgan County said five members of a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, family, three of them children, and a Florida woman were killed in the crash and ensuing fire.
The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered all United States airlines to lengthen cables on emergency escape slides on the doors of Boeing 737’s after investigators of an accident last month in Manchester, England, found that a slides momentarily inteferred with the opening of a door. Fred Ferrar, a spokesman for the agency, said that the order was a “precautionary measure.” He said there was no indication that the delay had contributed to the loss of life in the accident, in which 54 people died. Eighty-three people escaped.
California school officials rejected all of the science books submitted for use in the seventh and eighth grades next year on the ground that publishers “water down” the theory of evolution to avoid controversy. About 30 books submitted by a dozen national publishers were turned down in an unanimous vote by the California Board of Education.
One house of the Episcopal Church’s legislature tried to take a strong step today toward opening the process of ordination to homosexuals, but the other house narrowly resisted any change. The House of Bishops approved a church law forbidding discrimination on the ground of “sexual orientation” against anyone seeking “access to the selection process for ordination.” The House of Deputies turned the move down.
The first spacecraft to fly through a comet’s tail provided data appearing to confirm the theory characterizing comets as “large dirty snowballs,” mission scientists said. The craft encountered the comet Giacobini-Zinner Wednesday. It detected an abundance of charged water and carbon monoxide molecules and a sprinkling of tiny dust particles. Scientists said such substances should be common if the nucleus of a comet was, as hypothesized, a conglomerate of ices, silicate minerals and possibly metals. But in other respects the data confounded scientists by giving a picture of interactions between solar forces and comets that were more complex and turbulent than predicted. Phenomena observed in the region of the most intense solar-comet interaction, scientists said, were unlike anything seen elsewhere in the solar system.
Publication of the Sunday issue of The Philadelphia Inquirer was canceled today after newspaper executives concluded that they could not settle a strike by nine unions in time, a company spokesman, William Broom, said. “We could have gotten out a bare bones edition, but it would have borne no resemblance to a normal Sunday paper,” Mr. Broom said.
Super Mario Bros game first appears, created by Shigeru Miyamoto at Nintendo.
2nd MTV Video Music Awards: Don Henley, Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, and USA for Africa win.
Major League Baseball:
The Rangers trade pitcher Dave Stewart to the Phillies for pitcher Rich Surhoff, whose brother B. J. was the first pick in the amateur draft in June.
The Giants trounced the Braves, 9–3. Vida Blue pitched his 197th career victory, and Ron Roenicke hit a two-run homer to lead the Giants at Atlanta. Blue (6–6) allowed four hits in six innings while striking out nine. But he walked four batters, hit one and twice balked runners to second base. Frank Williams surrendered one hit in two innings and Scott Garrelts finished. Len Barker (2–8) took the loss. “It was a sweet one to me because it got me back on the victory path,” Blue said. “I believe my last win came on July 5.
The Mets suffered a bit of a lapse tonight when they split a doubleheader with the Montreal Expos and lost half of their one-game lead in the National League East. Most of the suffering came in the first game, when Bryn Smith outpitched Rick Aguilera and the Mets got only four hits and lost, 5–1. Then the Mets went out and won the second game, 7–2. There were no goats this time, only heroes: notably, Terry Leach, the celebrated understudy and spot starter who once more relinquished his role in the bullpen and filled in as a frontline pitcher. It was the third time he had done it this season, and the third time he had won.
Cesar Cedeno had a pair of run-scoring singles, including one in a three-run first inning, and Willie McGee scored three runs today as the St. Louis Cardinals rolled to a 9–3 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Bob Forsch (7–6) won his first game since August 24, scattering six singles over 6 ⅓ innings. Rookie Todd Worrell pitched 2 ⅓ innings for his first major league save. The Cardinals are one-half game behind the Mets in the tight National League East race. New York split a doubleheader against the Expos in Montreal.
Eric Davis singled home Eddie Milner from second base with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning to give Cincinnati a 6–5 victory and a split of its double-header with Los Angeles. Mike Marshall hit a pair of homers to help the Dodgers win the opener, 8–2, behind Orel Hershiser (15–3). The split left the Dodgers eight and one-half games ahead of Cincinnati in the National League West. The Dodgers trimmed their division-clinching number to 14.
The Phillies topped the Pirates, 6–3, in Pittsburgh. Glenn Wilson drove in two runs, and Ozzie Virgil singled home the winning run in a seventh-inning rally at Pittsburgh as John Denny (11–11) won his third straight decision. Denny gave up nine hits in 8 ⅓ innings.
The Astros edged the Padres, 3–2. Mike Scott pitched a five-hitter and drove in two runs at Houston to win for the eighth time in his last 10 decisions. Scott (17–7) struck out six and walked four.
If 38-year-old Al Oliver had any respect for his elders, Phil Niekro might have gained career victory No. 300 last night. Instead of respect, though, Oliver registered two hits that drove in three runs and carried the Toronto Blue Jays to a 3–2 victory over the Yankees. The outcome restored the Blue Jays’ division lead over the Yankees to two and a half games with two games left in this four-game series. “Tonight was a big win for us,” said Bobby Cox, the Toronto manager, relieved that his team had come back with a victory after losing to the Yankees Thursday night. “I’ll admit there are big wins now.”
Jamie Quirk broke up a scoreless game with a bases-loaded single off Jose Rijo in the seventh inning, and Kansas City scored four more runs in the inning to beat Oakland, 5–2. The Royals, winning for the 11th time in 12 games, remained two games ahead of the Angels in the American League West. Mark Gubicza (13–7) had allowed only one hit over the first six innings. Rijo (3–3) yielded just two while striking out nine batters before leaving in the seventh.
Don Sutton, making his first appearance with the Angels, recorded his 294th career victory, and Reggie Jackson hit a two-run homer to lead the Angels to a 2–0 win over the Texas Rangers. Sutton, a 40-year-old right-hander acquired from the Oakland A’s last Tuesday, gave up two hits, struck out two and walked three in seven innings, outdueling Charlie Hough, who finished with a five-hitter. The only hits Sutton (14–8) allowed were two-out doubles by Gary Ward in the fourth inning and Don Slaught in the seventh. Stewart Cliburn and Donnie Moore pitched an inning apiece, Moore earning his 27th save. The three held Texas to five hits.
Frank Viola and Ron Davis combined on an eight-hitter, and Mark Salas and Gary Gaetti homered as the Twins beat the Indians, 3–1, in the second game for a split of their twi-night doubleheader at Cleveland. In the first game, the Indians won, 3–2, as Curt Wardle, acquired from Minnesota in the Bert Blyleven trade on August 1, improved his record to 7–7. He allowed seven hits in 7 ⅓ innings against his former teammates, and the Indians scored all their runs in the first inning.
At the Kingdome, the White Sox score 5 runs in the 9th inning to beat the Mariners, 6–1. Joe DeSa hits his 2nd and last Major League homer, a grand slam. The White Sox loaded the bases off starter Matt Young (11–15) with singles by Tim Hulett, Harold Baines and Carlton Fisk. After reliever Ed Nunez struck out Greg Walker, Ed Vande Berg came on, and Julio Cruz, hitting just .235, lined a single to break the tie. Then came DeSa.
Floyd Rayford hit a three-run homer and Eddie Murray a solo shot as the Orioles extended the Tigers’ losing streak to eight games, downing Detroit, 6–4. Scott McGregor (12–12) gave up two runs in the first inning but settled down to blank the Tigers until he left with two out in the seventh. Don Aase got the last three outs for his 11th save.
Paul Householder hit two doubles, walked, scored a run, and drove in a run at Milwaukee in leading the Brewers to their second win in a row after seven straight losses, defeating the Red Sox, 6–3. Tim Leary (1–0) making his first American League appearance, held Boston to seven hits while striking out six in 7 ⅔ innings. Danny Darwin, the third Milwaukee pitcher, got two outs for his first save. Leary was obtained from the New York Mets in an off-season trade and was 10–7 for Vancouver of the Pacific Coast League before joining the Brewers Wednesday.
San Francisco Giants 9, Atlanta Braves 3
Texas Rangers 0, California Angels 2
St. Louis Cardinals 9, Chicago Cubs 3
Los Angeles Dodgers 8, Cincinnati Reds 2
Los Angeles Dodgers 5, Cincinnati Reds 6
Minnesota Twins 2, Cleveland Indians 3
Minnesota Twins 3, Cleveland Indians 1
Baltimore Orioles 6, Detroit Tigers 4
San Diego Padres 2, Houston Astros 3
Boston Red Sox 3, Milwaukee Brewers 6
New York Mets 1, Montreal Expos 5
New York Mets 7, Montreal Expos 2
Toronto Blue Jays 3, New York Yankees 2
Kansas City Royals 5, Oakland Athletics 2
Philadelphia Phillies 6, Pittsburgh Pirates 3
Chicago White Sox 6, Seattle Mariners 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1307.68 (-4.71)
Born:
Davone Bess, NFL wide receiver (Miami Dolphins, Cleveland Browns), in Hayward, California.
Keyunta Dawson, NFL defensive end (Indianapolis Colts, Detroit Lions, Tennessee Titans, New Orleans Saints), in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Luke French, MLB pitcher (Detroit Tigers, Seattle Mariners), in Salina, Kansas.
Died:
Dane Rudhyar [Daniel Chennevière], 90, French-American composer, author, and astrologist.
History Diaries 