Italy’s Prime Minister resigned after making a dramatic speech to Parliament in which he spoke of his “bitterness” over American actions after the hijacking of the liner Achille Lauro. In his address, Bettino Craxi also asserted that an unauthorized United States aircraft had followed a plane taking a senior Palestinian official and an associate from Sicily to Rome. The collapse of the 26-month-old coalition Cabinet led by Prime Minister Bettino Craxi produced one of the most dramatic days in Italian politics in several years. The Prime Minister was forced to resign after Giovanni Spadolini, the Defense Minister, pulled his Republican Party out of the Government on Wednesday to protest its handling of the hijacking and its decision to free Mohammed Abbas, a Palestinian guerrilla sought by the United States. The United States also condemned Mr. Craxi’s decision to release Mr. Abbas. After a final Cabinet meeting today, which the Republicans did not attend, Mr. Craxi made his address and then drove to the Presidential Palace to hand his resignation to President Francesco Cossiga.
It was a bitter moment today when Prime Minister Bettino Craxi was forced to hand in his resignation. His government was just 28 days shy of becoming Italy’s longest-lasting administration since World War II. There was, however, a certain symmetry to his resignation: Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, whose withdrawal from the five-party coalition touched off the crisis, saw his own first government brought down on Aug. 7, 1982, by the departure of none other than Mr. Craxi. The competition between the two men has been a key element in Italian politics in the 1980’s. Some of the most important competition in this country’s political life has been for the broad ground between the Christian Democrats, the largest party, and the Communists, who are the largest Communist Party in the West.
The U.S. hopes to keep friendly ties with Italy but has no regret for its actions that precipitated the resignation of Prime Minister Craxi, according to a spokesman for the Reagan Administration. A White House spokesman, Edward P. Djerejian, praised the overall policies of Mr. Craxi’s Government, but he repeated that “we were clearly disappointed” by Mr. Craxi’s decision to allow the departure to Yugoslavia last Saturday of Mohammed Abbas, the Palestinian official named in an American arrest warrant for a role in the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. American officials said relations with Italy had been strong during Mr. Craxi’s tenure, with the United States particularly grateful for his support of NATO policies and his accepting the deployment of cruise missiles in Sicily despite Soviet objections. An American protest on Sunday over the decision to allow Mr. Abbas to leave Italy was seized on by Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini, whose Republican Party was a member of the coalition government.
Washington and Rome authorities are cooperating more closely than ever in a major campaign against organized-crime leaders. The long-term effectiveness of the battle remains to be seen. One expert, G. Robert Blakey, said the ultimate success of the campaign would require “a sustained follow-up that breaks up the structure and financial assets and activity” of organized crime.
A group of U.S. congressmen, just back from Moscow, said they were told that the Soviet Union is building a new space station and that it will be ready to go into orbit next year. The United States has such a station on the drawing boards, but it is not expected to be ready for launching until the mid1990s. Rep. Bill Nelson (D-Florida), chairman of the House subcommittee on space science, said the American delegation was given no details on the station.
The U.N. General Assembly elected Bulgaria, the Congo Republic, Ghana, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela to two-year terms on the Security Council, beginning in January, 1986. Four rounds of balloting were needed to fill one of the African seats when a contest developed between Ghana and Liberia. The other four seats were filled on the first ballot. The five new members will replace the Ukraine, Burkina Faso, Egypt, India, and Peru.
Doctors can legally prescribe contraceptives to girls under 16 without parental consent, Britain’s highest court ruled today in a case that has stirred a national debate over teen-agers and the pill. By a 3-to-2 vote, the House of Lords’ law lords said that parents do not have absolute authority over their children and that the law must keep pace with changing social attitudes. The law lords are the equivalent of the United States Supreme Court. The British Medical Association, family planning associations and the Labor Party praised the decision as a means of controlling unwanted teen-age pregnancies and abortions. But Conservatives and other critics denounced it as an affront to traditional morality and family values.
The radical Greens party is joining a coalition to rule the West German state of Hesse. The state premier, Holger Boerner, said the Greens will get Cabinet posts for the environment and for energy, along with a junior position for women’s affairs. It will be the first time that the Greens, known for their opposition to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as for their pro-environment stance, have taken part in a government coalition.
Belgian Premier Wilfried Martens said he will form a new center-right government and continue with plans to deploy more U.S. cruise missiles in Belgium if the Geneva arms talks prove fruitless. Sixteen of a planned 48 missiles have already been installed. Martens, whose outgoing coalition increased its legislative majority in last Sunday’s election, also said he will continue economic austerity measures begun in 1981.
Israel and Poland will partially restore diplomatic ties that were broken by the Warsaw government in the wake of the 1967 Middle East War, Israeli officials announced. Under an agreement worked out between Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and his Polish counterpart, Stefan Olszowski, diplomatic interest sections will be opened in Warsaw and Tel Aviv. The Israeli section in Warsaw is expected to be under the auspices of the Dutch Embassy. The Polish representative is expected to work out of a Polish bank that was operating in Tel Aviv before Israel’s founding in 1948.
Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel met today with President Reagan and said afterward that Israel was prepared to take “bold steps” in the Middle East and extend “the hand of peace” to Jordan. At the same time, Mr. Reagan, standing in the sun-drenched White House Diplomatic Entrance, expressed confidence “that the hurdles to peace can be overcome.” “There is a better opportunity for real progress now than there has been for some time and a better chance than we may have for some time to come,” Mr. Reagan said. While Mr. Peres, after an hourlong meeting at the White House, spoke positively about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, he did not include the Palestinians in his remarks.
Five Americans have been detained in Egypt for the last 10 days for unknown reasons, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said in Cairo. Sources said they were held “for religious reasons, for belonging to some sort of sect or cult whose activities are not acceptable in Egypt.” They said the detentions do not appear to be linked to the current tension in U.S.-Egyptian relations. The U.S. Embassy said that it is following the situation closely and is “giving all possible assistance” to the Americans, who were not identified.
Three men with explosives strapped to their bodies caused extensive damage to a radio station run by American missionaries in the Israeli-controlled part of southern Lebanon today, Lebanese authorities said. At least five people were reported killed, including the attackers. The Soviet-oriented Lebanese Communist Party later said it was responsible for the attack on the station, known as “Voice of Hope.” There were no reports of American casualties. The radio was put off the air for several hours.
Vice President Bush sailed through the gorge of limestone peaks along the Li River in Guilin today, then flew to the bustling port city of Canton and praised its new prosperity. In a banquet toast on his fourth China visit since heading the United States mission in Peking a decade ago, Mr. Bush said, “Canton has taken on a whole new appearance — new hotels, factories, cars, store fronts, new prosperity, a new vitality.” Welcomed by the Guangdong Province Governor, Ye Xuanping, son of the revolutionary hero Marshal Ye Jianying, Mr. Bush noted that 37 United States companies now have offices in Canton, and one quarter of the 81 American joint ventures in China are in the southern port. Mr. Bush will conclude his six-day China visit on Friday, when he leaves by helicopter for Hong Kong.
The office of President Ferdinand E. Marcos showed some irritation today at American criticism of his government. The irritation became apparent after two meetings with Senator Paul Laxalt, who brought Mr. Marcos a message of concern from President Reagan. While an American Embassy press release described the meetings Wednesday and today as “cordial and mutually beneficial,” a statement from the presidential palace characterized them less warmly as a “frank exchange of views.”
A week after sending the first shipment of renewed U.S. aid to Nicaraguan contras, Reagan Administration officials in charge of the program said they are not sure what happened to the supplies. Honduras officials said that the shipment was seized and will be returned to the United States. But rebel leaders insisted that the supplies have reached their base camps on the Honduras-Nicaragua border. The office in charge of the program in Washington said it is “double-checking” on the fate of the shipment, which left New Orleans on October 10.
Nicaraguan officials are explaining their suspension of civil liberties as part of an effort to curb what President Daniel Ortega Saavedra has described as the “internal allies” of the United States. The Government decree, issued here Tuesday night, came at a time when military and political pressures on the ruling Sandinista Front have clearly been increasing. Internal discontent appears to be growing, mainly because of the deteriorating economic situation. Government officials say it is no coincidence that political opposition has become more strident at the same time as rebel forces are preparing new attacks. They say the two groups are working hand in hand to overthrow the Government.
A Salvadoran Government official said today that while substantial progress had been made in negotiations for President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s kidnapped daughter, “at the most optimistic” it would take three more days to gain her freedom. The official, Information Minister Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, said the Government had dropped an earlier demand that 23 kidnapped mayors, also seized by leftist rebels, be released at the same time as the President’s daughter and a friend.
The South African authorities today withdrew the passports of eight white university students who were to have traveled to Zambia later this month to meet representatives of the outlawed African National Congress. The action, South African commentators said, seemed to show mounting official anger at the readiness of some South Africans to ignore official policy and meet with figures considered by the Government as prime adversaries. A crowd of about 300 blacks, meanwhile, spilled onto the streets of the partly white suburb of Woodstock tonight after a speech in the town hall there by Desmond M. Tutu, Bishop of Johannesburg and winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Woodstock is technically divided into residential areas set aside for whites and mixed-race people, but the reality is far more blurred.
The Commonwealth conference here, now in its second day, has developed into a lobbying session on South Africa, with Britain trying to persuade most of the other members that discussion is likely to be more effective than sanctions in eliminating apartheid Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher avoided the subject of South Africa when she opened today’s closed-door meeting with a wide-ranging speech on world issues. But she had previously spent 45 minutes talking mainly about South Africa with Prime Minister Robert Hawke of Australia. Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary, had lunch with several Caribbean foreign ministers and others in the 21-member British delegation had fanned out among the conference participants.
The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Claude Simon, a leading practitioner of the French nouveau roman, for work that the Swedish Academy said contained “the poet’s and the painter’s creativeness.” The 72-year-old writer’s avant-garde work is not widely read, even in France. The announcement triggered a frantic scramble for information in Manhattan literary and publishing circles. Some people tried to fake information.
Fifteen of 41 victims of AIDS or related disorders who were evaluated at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center became infected through sexual contact with a partner of the opposite sex, according to Army scientists. They said the findings had “important implications” in suggesting that heterosexuals should be considered “at risk” for becoming infected with the virus. A report of their findings in the October 18 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association said 10 of the 15 were men who apparently got the disease from women, and 5 were women who apparently got it from men. An editorial and a letter in the same issue of the journal called for new programs to slow the spread of AIDS to heterosexuals by tracking down all the sexual contacts of people infected with the AIDS virus so that they could be counseled about the risk they face and how to avoid infecting other people.
President Reagan meets with a group of Republican Governors to discuss deficit reduction.
The House Ways and Means Committee approved a new broad-based corporate tax to help finance the proposed $10-billion expansion of the Superfund toxic waste cleanup program. After the panel’s initial vote on the tax plan, the committee reversed its position and voted down the overall Superfund package. The panel, after a two-hour caucus, changed its mind again and passed the overall bill by voice vote with no further debate. The plan, which would raise $4.7 billion over the next five years, was approved despite reminders from President Reagan’s top financial advisers that he will veto any broad-based tax.
The Defense Department reacted coolly to a Senate staff committee report urging sweeping reforms in the bureaucracy and the replacement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying there is no need for “drastic, fundamental changes” in its structure. “The decision-making machinery is running smoothly: our civilian and military leadership meshes as rarely in the past,” Pentagon spokesman Robert Sims said in response to the study.
House Democratic whips encouraged Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. to remove President Reagan’s proposed tax overhaul from the House agenda to make room for legislation dealing with the budget and trade deficits. But O’Neill declared that it was still up to Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Illinois), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, to prepare a tax bill, and O’Neill said he would keep the House in session long enough this year to pass a bill if the committee could prepare one.
The nation’s economy expanded at a 3.3 percent rate in the July 1-September 30 quarter, somewhat faster than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said. Economic growth was triple that of the two previous quarters, but most analysts viewed the rebound as only a mediocre performance of uncertain durability.
A former naval intelligence analyst was convicted today on charges of espionage and theft for giving secret photographs to a British military journal and having other secret information in his home. The verdict was returned by a jury in Federal District Court here after it deliberated six hours. The analyst, Samuel Loring Morison, a civilian, was found guilty of all four counts in the indictment. Mr. Morison, a grandson of the naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison, faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and $40,000 in fines. The case was widely watched because it marked only the second time the government had used the espionage laws to prosecute an official, or former official, for disclosing secret information to the press.
An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said today that the espionage conviction of Samuel Loring Morison would have a “chilling effect on all public debate of national security matters.” “The A.C.L.U. views this conviction as a threat to the First Amendment in its central purpose of protecting public debate about issues of public importance,” said Morton H. Halperin, director of the A.C.L.U.’s Washington area office. “It will fight it in the courts, in the Congress and in the public arena.”
Two fatal bombings in Salt Lake City on Tuesday were very likely carried out by a dealer in rare Mormon Church historical documents who may have felt cheated in a sale, according to local and Federal investigators. United States Attorney Bruce Lubeck said he expected to file Federal bomb charges against the 30-year-old dealer, Mark W. Hofmann, who was critically wounded in a third blast Wednesday.
San Diego’s Mayor accused a bailiff of tampering with his jury during their deliberations and asked that his conviction be set aside and that he be granted a new trial — his third this year. The Mayor, Roger Hedgecock, who was convicted of violating the law on campaign contributions, also accused the court bailiff of obstruction of justice and sought to prevent his sentencing on November 6.
Philadelphia’s Mayor was disputed by a top city official for the second successive day. The official, Police Commissioner Gregore J. Sambor, challenged an assertion by the Mayor, W. Wilson Goode, that he did not know about police plans to blast small holes in the walls of a radical group’s fortified house and fire tear gas inside.
Deaths of drunken drivers dropped 24% between 1980 and 1984, indicating nationwide campaigns to crack down on intoxicated motorists are beginning to pay off, a government study said. A study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that the number of drunken drivers who suffered fatal injuries dropped from more than 14,000 in 1980 to 11,000 in 1984. In another set of figures, the federal agency, a unit of the Transportation Department, said the percentage of drunken motorists among all fatalities involving drivers during the same period dropped from 50% to 43%.
A freight train sideswiped Amtrak’s Zephyr at Thayer, Iowa, breaking windows on the passenger train and injuring 60 persons, authorities said. Most of the injuries to passengers and crew aboard the train en route to California from Chicago were minor, a hospital official said. An Amtrak spokesman in Washington said that the 13-car Zephyr, carrying 307 passengers and 21 crew members, was struck by a car of an eastbound Burlington Northern freight train. The Amtrak train did not derail, but many windows were broken.
Documents in a Federal investigation of American Airlines show that mechanics delayed repairing a jetliner until an engine fell off and another mechanic used an automobile spring to repair a jet. Officials of the Federal Aviation Agency said all problems had now been corrected. The F.A.A. fined American $1.5 million September 27. The results of investigations of maintenance from June to September were made public Wednesday after requests filed by The Dallas Times Herald and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram under the Freedom of Information Act. In June an informer told the F.A.A. a supervisor used a spring from an auto parts store to fix a critical control system on a DC-10 because the part was out of stock in Chicago. The mechanic said he was trying to keep the flight on schedule. In April, a leaking toilet led to the loss of a Boeing 727 engine between Dallas and San Diego.
A strike by 80,000 U.S. and Canadian auto workers against Chrysler continued for a second day, as company and union bargainers in both countries were unable to agree on a range of unresolved issues. The United Auto Workers’ demands for greater job security and limits on Chrysler’s purchases of foreign parts appeared to be the major stumbling blocks in the U.S. talks, while local issues at two Windsor, Ontario, assembly plants, among other problems, were said to be holding up the Canadian negotiations.
New York Mayor Edward I. Koch said he has ordered city employees not to report illegal aliens to federal authorities because their presence “is not a New York City crime.” Koch estimated that there were between 400,000 and 750,000 undocumented aliens in the city. “For the most part, these aliens are self-supporting. law-abiding residents.” Reporting the aliens, the mayor said, would discourage them from applying for such basic city services as medical treatment and police protection.
$100 million to assist AIDS victims may be required in New York City this year, most of it to provide intensive care for patients in municipal hospitals and clinics, according to city health officials.”French author Claude Simon wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A humpback whale whose instincts scientists say have gone awry was still in a central California waterway today, a Coast Guard official said. The whale, about the size of a bus, was first seen last Friday in San Francisco Bay, apparently straying from its fall migration route from Alaska to Mexico. It began moving up the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta seven days ago, away from the sea. The whale has been nicknamed “E.T.” by some scientists and spectators. Others call it “Humphrey.” It was last seen by the Coast Guard near Rio Vista, on the fresh-water Sacramento River about 55 miles, by water, from the Golden Gate. A fisherman said he saw the whale in the river today.
Lou Piniella is named the new New York Yankees manager. Billy Martin, who had become the team’s skipper for the fourth time after the Yankees fired Yogi Berra in April, is replaced by Lou Piniella. “Billy the Kid’ piloted the 97-64 Bronx Bombers to a second place finish, ending the season two games behind Toronto.
The first all-Missouri World Series evoked ecstatic reactions by residents of St. Louis and Kansas City. The first two games of the showdown between the Cardinals and the Royals will be played in Kansas City tomorrow and Sunday evenings.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1369.29 (+0.79)
Born:
Carlos González, Venezuelan MLB outfielder (All-Star, 2012, 2013, 2016; Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies, Cleveland Indians, Chicago Cubs), in Maracaibo, Venezuela.
José De La Torre, Puerto Rican MLB pitcher (Boston Red Sox), in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Kellen Heard, NFL defensive tackle (Buffalo Bills, St. Louis Rams, Indianapolis Colts), in Galveston, Texas.
Baran Kosari, Iranian actress (“The Nameless Alley”, “Cold Sweat”), in Tehran, Iran.
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