Moscow has begun deploying a new intercontinental nuclear missile in violation of the 1979 treaty limiting offensive strategic weapons, the Reagan Administration said. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger said in a speech that he could “confirm officially” that deployment of the single-warhead missile, known as the SS-25, had begun. The State Department spokesman, Bernard Kalb, said the Soviet Government had informed the United States that SS-25’s had been deployed. In Sofia, Bulgaria, according to CBS News, a Soviet spokesman, Vladimir B. Lomeiko, denied that the deployment was a treaty violation. Mr. Lomeiko, in Sofia for a Warsaw Pact meeting, affirmed the Soviet position that the SS-25 was a modification of an existing weapon, the SS-13, and that the modification was permitted by treaty. Mr. Weinberger’s remarks on the SS-25 missile seemed intended to portray the Soviet Union as a violator of international agreements when there is debate about a new United States interpretation of the 1972 treaty limiting antiballistic missile defenses.
Moscow is ready to spend whatever is necessary to develop a space-based missile defense if Washington does not abandon efforts to build one, according to Soviet officials. Denying American assertions that the Soviet Union is already conducting an extensive effort in this area, the officials said the Soviet Union could afford to divert resources to the new weapons systems without compromising plans to spur economic growth. The officials appeared at a news conference. They were Marshal Sergei F. Akhromeyev, chief of the General Staff; Georgi M. Korniyenko, a First Deputy Foreign Minister, and Leonid M. Zamyatin, the Soviet spokesman.
President Reagan attends a National Security Planning Group meeting to discuss Soviet Arms proposals.
The President voiced determination “to build a more constructive relationship” with the Kremlin and to seek reductions in nuclear arsenals. Mr. Reagan spoke with Republican legislators on the eve of a visit to the United Nations. Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, quoted President Reagan as having told the legislators that he planned to take up a broad range of issues with the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Mr. Gorbachev, the President said, has “demonstrated a more polished public style,” but “we have yet to see a change in fundamental Soviet positions.” At the same time, the White House announced that Vice President Bush would join Mr. Reagan in New York for a series of meetings and for the celebration on Thursday of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations.
Three congressmen announced plans to introduce legislation to impose a six-month suspension on Romania’s preferential trading status with the United States for what they called the Soviet Bloc nation’s abuse of human and religious rights. “Their record on human rights is shameful,” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-New Jersey), who is to introduce the bill along with Reps. Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio) and Frank R. Wolf (R-Virginia). Smith said Romania’s rights violations “are the worst of any Soviet Bloc country.”
Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou delivered a “strong protest” to American Ambassador Robert V. Keeley over alleged violations of Greek airspace by U.S. planes based on the aircraft carrier Saratoga, government spokesman Kostas Laliotis said. A U.S. Embassy spokesman said the embassy had no details on the alleged intrusion during a joint U.S.-Turkish exercise near the Greek island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.
The United States welcomed as “statesmanlike, thoughtful and forward-looking” the peace proposals outlined Monday by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the United Nations. The Administration said that Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the United States agreed on “the urgency of moving forward in the peace process.” In particular, the Administration focused on the seeming willingness of Mr. Peres to take into account the insistence by King Hussein of Jordan that negotiations between Israel and Jordan could only occur under the umbrella of an international conference. King Hussein has said that the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, should be invited to such a meeting, along with nations from the Middle East.
Lebanon’s top Christian militia chief held talks in Damascus today to complete a draft agreement reached by his representatives with Muslim groups for ending Lebanon’s 10-year-old civil war. The militia leader, Elie Hobeika, met with Syria’s First Vice President, Abdel Halim Khaddam, and was to talk with President Hafez al-Assad. As the discussions got under way, Muslim and Christian militias exchanged artillery fire and rockets across the Green Line dividing Beirut. The police said two people were killed and two were wounded. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Parliament met and re-elected Hussein al-Husseini as Speaker for another year.
Washington deplored the bombing by Israeli planes of the Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters outside Tunis on October 1 that killed 60 Palestinians and 12 Tunisians. Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead, who was sent to help damaged relations with Tunisia, also said that Washington “deplored all acts of terrorism.” Whitehead met with Tunisia’s top leaders, seeking to repair ties in the aftermath of the recent Israeli bombing of PLO headquarters in Tunis. The Tunisians told him that they need “tangible proof” of Washington’s desire to strengthen relations, which were badly strained by President Reagan’s early expression of support for the Israeli raid. Whitehead expressed “the deep regret of our President” over the bombing and assured the Tunisians that the United States did not know of the attack in advance.
Rajiv Gandhi, arriving here on his first visit to the United Nations since he became India’s Prime Minister, today reaffirmed his Government’s professed policy of nonalignment and warned against isolationism. In a speech to a meeting of the nations espousing nonalignment, Mr. Gandhi warned that nations “not aligned with either of the power blocs face new and sinister threats of intervention, interference and pressure.” “The world continues to be threatened by bloc antagonisms and disfigured by inequalities,” Mr. Gandhi told a standing-room-only crowd in the Trusteeship Council chamber that included leaders from around the globe. We prize our independence and equality and reject attmpts to dominate us.”
A typhoon last week in Vietnam’s central region killed 670 people and injured 257, the Vietnam News Agency reported. It said that 128 people were missing in Bình Trị Thiên province. Almost 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with six provincial hospitals and 250 medical stations. A total of 150,000 acres of farmland were flooded, and irrigation channels were damaged, the agency said.
President Reagan attends a National Security Council meeting to discuss the situation in the Philippines. Ferdinand E. Marcos has agreed to permit United States observers at Philippine elections in 1986 and 1987 and to relax his control over the military, according to Senator Paul Laxalt. Mr. Laxalt reported to President Reagan on his talks with the Philippine President. “We now have a base line from which future reforms can be assessed,” said Mr. Laxalt, a Nevada Republican. Mr. Laxalt said that contrary to what some Administration officials had earlier told reporters, “there were no hostile messages delivered on my part, and there was no rejection of our views on President Marcos’s part.”
The Salvadoran government and rebels holding President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s kidnaped daughter have reached an agreement to free her, Salvadoran Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said. Last week, church officials reported a deal in the works, but it fell through. Sources said the new agreement involves releasing about 20 political prisoners in exchange for Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran and her companion and safe passage out of El Salvador for about 100 wounded guerrillas in exchange for release of 23 kidnaped mayors.
Argentine President Raul Alfonsin invoked special executive powers early today and ordered the immediate arrest of six military officers and six civilians suspected of participating in a recent wave of right-wing violence. The arrest decree said the government had “detected the existence of a group of persons acting in a coordinated way with the common objective of using violence against democratic institutions and people.” Those listed in the decree, which did not list specific charges, included a cashiered general who has been a fugitive since last year, three active military officers, a military cadet, two journalists and two civilians who held posts in former military governments. It was unclear if there was any connection between the suspects.
Medical experts from a dozen Western and African countries began a four-day meeting aimed at finding ways of combating AIDS in Africa, where many researchers believe it originated. The conference, in Bangui in the Central African Republic under World Health Organization sponsorship, will include practical demonstrations in the laboratories of the Pasteur Institute branch there.
An interracial group of South African clerics, led by an Afrikaner who has chosen to preach and live in a black township, announced plans today to travel to Zambia to meet with leaders of the outlawed African National Congress. President P. W. Botha, already angered by other attempts by South Africans to meet with his exiled adversaries, characterized the planned visit a “challenge to the state’s authority.” Last week, Mr. Botha ordered that the passports of a group of Afrikaner students be withdrawn after they, too, said they would go to Lusaka, Zambia, to talk with figures from the African National Congress, the most prominent of exiled groups seeking the violent overthrow of white minority rule.
African leaders told the General Assembly today that the world faced a choice between imposing economic sanctions on South Africa or watching a destructive explosion by the black majority there. “A catastrophic explosion which will engulf all of us in the region is imminent,” said President Kenneth D. Kaunda of Zambia. Sanctions are “a better of two evils,” he said later at a news conference. “If you don’t apply sanctions,” he said, “hundreds of thousands of people will die and the investments will go up in flames. With sanctions, there is a possibility of recovery.”
An international task force urged an $8-billion campaign to curb destruction of the world’s tropical forests, warning that delay could doom half the human race to hunger. A third of the world’s 3 million square miles of tropical forest may vanish in 15 years unless there are changes in Third World development and farming policies, according to the study of 56 nations by the World Resources Institute, World Bank and U.N. Development Program. Such devastation could wipe out 10% to 20% of animal and plant species and worsen shortages of firewood, fertilizer and other essentials for fast-growing populations, it said.
The Senate voted tentatively to make permanent the 16-cent-a-pack federal tax on cigarettes, rejecting on a technicality an effort to boost the levy to 24 cents. On a 66-30 vote, the Senate showed its support for a Finance Committee proposal to retain the present 16cent tax, impose new taxes on snuff and chewing tobacco, and inaugurate a new program of price supports for tobacco farmers. The vote was the first taken on a package of spending cuts and revenue increases designed to reduce the federal budget deficit by $85.6 billion over the next three years. White House aides say they will recommend that President Reagan veto the bill because of the cigarette tax, which amounts to a tax increase, and several other provisions.
Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III warned that if Congress fails to lift the debt ceiling by November 4, the government will have to juggle Social Security assets to pay recipients, and further delay could cause default. Baker, in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, said default would loom November 15 without action. Action on the borrowing ceiling increase from $1.8 trillion to $2 trillion is being held up by a balanced budget proposal the Senate attached to the bill.
Millions of employees working without retirement benefits because of loopholes in federal law would be guaranteed pension coverage under a bill introduced in the House and Senate. The measure, designed to expand retirement coverage to 80% of American workers by 1991, would offer incentives for small businesses to offer pension plans and entitle employees to benefits after five years on the job.
Key aides, weighing affirmative action in Federal contracting, decided to send President Reagan three policy options after they could not agree on a single recommendation, according to Administration officials. Thus, it will be for Mr. Reagan to decide whether to make changes in the requirement that all federal government contractors set numerical goals for hiring women and members of minority groups.
Attorney General Edwin Meese III argued his case before other members of the Cabinet for an end to affirmative action requirements used for the last 20 years to fight job discrimination by federal contractors. During a meeting of the Cabinet-level Domestic Policy Council, officials said Meese urged that President Reagan overturn the present requirements for federal contractors with a new executive order. Officials said the council will forward a set of options to Reagan that includes repeal of the 20-year-old rules.
Chiefs of 3 Federal employees’ unions face suspension from Federal employment for 60 days. The suspensions were ordered by a Federal administrative law judge after he ruled that the union leaders had violated the Hatch Act, which severely limits political activities by Federal employees, when they supported the 1984 Mondale campaign.
Philadelphia’s news strike ended after 45 days with the ratification of a new four-year contract by the last of nine striking unions. Workers at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Daily News, which are owned by a member of the Knight-Ridder chain, began preparing to publish their first full issues since September 6.
Philadelphia’s mayor faces rising criticism from both allies and adversaries. Some of the worried supporters of the Mayor, W. Wilson Goode, say the difficulties not only dim Mr. Goode’s once-bright political prospects, but also jeopardize the disparate coalition of backers that elected him Philadelphia’s first black Mayor in 1983.
A judge denied a family’s request to withdraw food and water from a vegetative patient, but reinstated orders that no special measures should be taken to keep the patient alive. Probate Judge David H. Kopelman issued an injunction in Dedham, Massachusetts, blocking a removal or clamping of a feeding and drinking tube in the stomach of Paul E. Brophy, a 48-year-old firefighter who suffered severe brain damage from a broken blood vessel.
Adlai E. Stevenson 3d, who lost in 1982 to Governor James R. Thompson in the closest gubernatorial race ever in Illinois, announced today that he would seek the 1986 Democratic nomination for governor. Mr. Stevenson began his campaign where he left off three years ago, by criticizing Governor Thompson, a Republican, who has said he would seek a fourth term.
More arrests are expected in a pair of fatal bombings for which Salt Lake City police are considering forgery, counterfeiting and double-dealing in historical documents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as possible motives, authorities said. On Monday, Shannon Patrick Flynn, 27, the first man to be arrested in the investigation, was released on $50,000 bond on a gun possession charge. Police have said Mark Hofmann, a documents dealer who was seriously injured when a third bomb demolished his car last week, is their chief suspect.
Artificial heart recipient Anthony Mandia lapsed into critical and unstable condition with reduced brain function but later rebounded and spoke to his brother, said Dr. John W. Burnside, a spokesman for the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Medical Center. Burnside said doctors suspect that the 44-year-old Mandia, who received the Penn State artificial heart on Friday, is suffering from spasms of the brain’s blood vessels.
In possibly the largest state capital protest since the Vietnam War era, as many as 12,000 doctors and their supporters rallied in Lansing, Michigan, to demand curbs on medical malpractice suits. “The chaos of the liability system is about to bring a collapse of the entire judicial system,” said Dr. Richard McMurray, president of the Michigan State Medical Society, prime organizer of the event. The state estimates the average Michigan physician pays $52,000 per year for insurance with an average premium increase of 47% in 1985.
The dean of Bates College, James W. Carignan, was in critical but stable condition today after a sniper shot him in the back through a window at his house just off campus, the authorities said. The Lewiston police questioned and released a student soon after the shooting, which occurred about 7:30 PM Monday. District Attorney Janet Mills said no arrests had been made. The college initially reported, in a brief letter circulated to students and faculty today, that Mr. Carignan would undergo surgery for the removal of bullet fragments, but Bates officials later said that surgery had been deferred until doctors learned more about his condition.
The Air Force Academy has reduced its top junior cadet to enlisted rank and suspended him for one year for violating the cadet honor code in not immediately admitting he had broken a window. The cadet, John M. Hillyer of Honolulu, who was formerly a sergeant major responsible for the morale, welfare and training of the lower three classes, was placed on active duty as an airman for one year by the academy’s honor board, a spokesman at the academy said Monday. The spokesman said the decision stems from an Aug. 24 incident in which Mr. Hillyer, 21 years old, accidentally broke a dormitory window while he ran down a stairway.
1985 World Series, Game Three:
The Royals got back into the series by riding ace Bret Saberhagen to a 6–1 victory against twenty-game winner Joaquín Andújar. Saberhagen flashed messages on the television screen to his pregnant wife who was due to give birth any day. She eventually gave birth on October 26 (in Game 6). The Royals went up 2–0 in the fourth on Lonnie Smith’s two-run double that scored Jim Sundberg and Buddy Biancalana, who had walked and singled, respectively. Royals second baseman Frank White made history by becoming the first second baseman in the history of the World Series to hit in the clean-up spot in the batting order. White came through with a two-run home run off of Andújar in the fifth after George Brett got on base. The Cardinals scored their only run of the game in the sixth off of Saberhagen on consecutive singles by Ozzie Smith, Tom Herr, and Jack Clark. The Royals padded their lead in the seventh off of Ricky Horton when George Brett drew a leadoff walk, moved to second on a balk, then scored on White’s double. Two outs later, White scored on Biancalana’s single to cap the scoring.
Kansas City Royals 6, St. Louis Cardinals 1
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1364.36 (+0.22)
Born:
Zac Hanson, American pop drummer and singer (Hanson — “MMMMbop”), in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
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