President Reagan plans to address a joint session of Congress on the night he returns from the Geneva meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, White House officials said today. Mr. Reagan also wants to meet with leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Brussels on his way home from Geneva, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said. Mr. Speakes said no decision had been made as to where or when the United States would respond to the recent Soviet arms proposal of a 50 percent reduction in Soviet and American nuclear missiles that can hit each other’s territory. But Administration officials said a response would probably be made before the President’s summit meeting, with Mr. Gorbachev, scheduled for November 19-20 in Geneva.
Moscow would halt building a radar in central Siberia in return for Washington’s forgoing plans to modernize radars in Britain and Greenland, according to American and Soviet officials. Washington says the Siberian installation is an early warning radar and violates the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Moscow contends that the radar is for space tracking and is allowable.
Michael Heseltine, the British Defense Secretary, is to meet with Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger in Brussels on Tuesday. British sources say Mr. Heseltine will press for assurances that Britain will get a $1.5 billion share of the estimated $26 billion to be spent on the United States’ space-based missile defense program, known as “Star Wars.” Britain also wants the right to use the new technology in its own missile research programs. According to American officials, it may be impossible to meet some of the British demands.
The longest and costliest spy trial in British history ended in a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s legal officers when a jury acquitted the last of seven suspects on all charges. Prosecutors had charged that the seven, all servicemen, passed Western secrets “by the bagful” to Soviet agents after being blackmailed over homosexual orgies. Thatcher is expected to face a storm in Parliament over what critics called a prosecution fiasco based on flimsy evidence. The 119-day trial is estimated to have cost $7 million.
President Reagan is informed that the Soviet Seaman who attempted to defect has been put on a U.S. Coast Guard Cutter in New Orleans, Louisiana.
A Sicilian prosecutor said today that there were no grounds for a formal investigation of the behavior of United States soldiers after the interception of an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Sicilian prosecutors let it be known over the weekend that they were looking into possible crimes committed by United States military forces during a standoff with Italian soldiers at Sigonella Air Base near Catania, Sicily, on the night of October 10. But Dolcino Favi, the assistant prosecutor in Syracuse, Sicily, said by telephone that a study of an exhaustive police account of the 22 hours the Egyptian plane was on the ground at Sigonella found no cause to continue inquiries. “Nothing emerged that would mandate a further urgent investigation,” Mr. Favi said.
The son-in-law of Andrei Sakharov, the physicist and Soviet rights activist, said it seemed likely that Dr. Sakharov’s wife, Yelena G. Bonner, had received permission from officials to leave the Soviet Union for medical treatment abroad.
Shimon Peres won a confidence vote, 68 to 10, in the Israeli Parliament for his peace overture to Jordan, but only after a bitter struggle with the Prime Minister’s right-wing partners in the national unity Cabinet.
Samuel Flatto-Sharon, an Israeli financier and former member of Parliament wanted for tax offenses in France, has been arrested in Italy, police in Milan reported. An Italian court will decide whether to extradite him to France, where he was sentenced in absentia in 1979 on a charge of evading $92 million in taxes. For a time, Flatto-Sharon evaded French efforts to try him by winning a seat in the Israeli Parliament, thus gaining immunity. But he lost the immunity when an Israeli court convicted him of bribery in 1981.
Two Lebanese Christian leaders, President Amin Gemayel and former President Camille Chamoun, expressed approval of a peace agreement hammered out in Syria aimed at ending nearly 11 years of Lebanese factional fighting. Both expressed doubts earlier about the accord, crafted by Lebanon’s major Christian, Druze and Shia Muslim militias. Among its proposals are the abolition of the country’s sectarian power-sharing system, dominated by Christians.
Druze militiamen and Lebanese Army troops fought with rockets and artillery today in the Shouf Mountains overlooking Beirut. The battles broke out around the Lebanese Army garrison town of Souk al Gharb, military sources said. There were no immediate casualty reports from the area, where the Druze and the army have fought off and on since September 1983. The state-run Lebanese television said an Israeli gunboat opened fire on the southern Lebanese port of Sidon today but there were no casualty reports. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
President Reagan meets with the families of the hostages abducted in Lebanon.
Telling her story publicly for the first time, the widow of Leon Klinghoffer described yesterday how hijackers aboard the Achille Lauro put a machine gun to her head when she pleaded with them to let her stay at the side of her 69-year-old wheelchair-bound husband. Leon and Marilyn Klinghoffer were among the group of 11 American and six British hostages who had been ordered up a narrow staircase toward the upper deck of the Italian cruise ship. “I attempted to push my husband in his wheelchair in the direction of the staircase,” Mrs. Klinghoffer, 58, said at a news conference in Manhattan. “The terrorists ordered me to leave him. I told them that I couldn’t leave him and begged them to let me stay with him. They responded by putting a machine gun to my head and ordered me up the stairs.”
King Hussein and Yasser Arafat met for two and a half hours at the Jordanian monarch’s palace over strains in their uneasy alliance. The meeting at the Royal Palace, at which both leaders were accompanied by a large number of aides, broke up apparently without a resolution. More talks were scheduled for Tuesday. “It won’t be solved in one meeting,” Hani al-Hassan, one of Mr. Arafat’s chief political advisers, said. According to Western, Jordanian and Palestinian sources, King Hussein is determined to force commitments from Mr. Arafat on such issues as acceptance of key United Nations resolutions, a renunciation of violence and recognition of Israel. The commitments are all American or Israeli preconditions for negotiations.
The Iranian Parliament approved 22 nominees for a new Cabinet proposed by Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi, endorsing the Islamic government’s plans to pursue economic policies that lean more toward private enterprise. According to diplomats, the new Cabinet will not alter Iran’s basic foreign policy of “war until victory” in the five-year-old conflict with Iraq. Among seven new faces in the Cabinet are Ali Akbar Mohtashami, heading the powerful Interior Ministry, and Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the new oil minister. Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati retained his post.
The Foreign Minister of Afghanistan said today that his nation could not reach agreement on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghan territory unless Pakistan enters into direct negotiations. The official, Shah Mohammad Dost, said, “It would bring a very good result if talks are direct.” Afghanistan and Pakistan have been holding indirect talks under the auspices of a United Nations mediator since 1982. Pakistani officials have said repeatedly that they will not negotiate directly with the Soviet-backed Government of Afghanistan. Spokesmen for the guerrilla forces fighting the Afghan Government have said the negotiations are invalid because their groups have been excluded.
Maoist guerrillas struck again in Lima, killing a policeman and wounding another and setting off a time bomb on a major street that wounded two pedestrians. The attacks by Sendero Luminoso came as Interior Minister Abel Salinas said that a recent wave of defections has dealt a psychological blow to the guerrillas.
President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, black Africa’s longest-serving leader, won 99% approval in a referendum for a sixth five-year term, the government announced. More than 98% of the West African country’s voters reportedly cast ballots. Houphouet-Boigny, 80, who ran unopposed, has led the nation since independence from France in 1960.
Uganda’s government offered the country’s main guerrilla group an equal say on the ruling military council and the vice chairmanship of the body. The offer to Yoweri Museveni’s Uganda National Resistance Army was cited by the new military leaders as proof of their commitment to end 4 ½ years of intermittent civil strife in which thousands of people have been killed or displaced in the East African nation. There was no immediate word on whether the rebels would accept the offer, but its seriousness was underlined by the presence at the Nairobi discussions of top leaders — General Tito Okello, Uganda’s chief of state, and Museveni. The talks continue today.
A debate has erupted within the Reagan Administration and in Congress over whether the United States should assist the Angolan rebels, who are aided by South Africa, in their fight against the Soviet-backed Angolan Government. Senior Administration officials said today that the dispute is sharp. The State Department seems to stand alone within the Administration in opposing either open or secret aid to the rebels. The department argues that such aid would align Washington with South Africa and upset chances for a settlement of the conflicts in southern Africa.
Bishop Desmond M. Tutu accused President Reagan and the leaders of Britain and West Germany today of racism for their opposition to economic sanctions against South Africa. “I have tried to be as nice as I could be, but we’re talking about children being killed by a racist Government that is being protected from the consquences of its actions by Mr. Reagan, Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Kohl,” Bishop Tutu said in an interview, referring to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany. “Certainly the support of this racist policy is racist.”
President Reagan accused Congress today of “inexcusable dithering and delay” in its consideration of both an increase in the Government’s debt ceiling and the Senate-approved plan to balance the budget by 1991. Mr. Reagan’s remarks appeared to be part of an Administration effort to win Congressional approval of the measures by the end of the week. Democrats in the House, led by Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill Jr., responded that they, too, wanted action by Friday. But the Democrats have yet to agree on what changes to seek in the budget-balancing plan except to force Congress to confront the deficit before the 1986 elections.
John A. Walker Jr. pleaded guilty to charges that he spied for Moscow and recruited his son, brother and a friend into an espionage operation that the authorities have called one of the most damaging in American history. Under a plea agreement, Mr. Walker admitted his role in the spy ring and will receive a sentence of life in prison in return for a reduced prison term of 25 years for his son, Michael, a Navy yeoman. Mr. Walker, a retired Navy communications specialist, told Federal District Judge Alexander Harvey 2d that he would give Government investigators a complete account of the material that he and his associates delivered to the Soviet Union in 17 years of espionage. He also agreed to testify in other cases, including the trial of Jerry A. Whitworth, a retired Navy radioman described as Mr. Walker’s closest friend, who is charged with stealing secrets that were delivered to Soviet agents.
President Reagan has lifted restrictions on the export of oil from Alaska’s Cook Inlet to permit its sale to Japan and other nations on the Pacific Rim, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige announced. Baldrige said the action means that initially at least 6,000 barrels of oil a day may be sold abroad. The amount represents Alaska’s royalty share of daily production of about 60,000 barrels at Cook Inlet, he said. The decision does not affect the export ban on Alaska’s North Slope oil.
The military will dismiss automatically anyone who acknowledges in an AIDS screening process that they have used drugs or had homosexual contact, the Pentagon said, reversing a previous statement. The Pentagon, in a significant reversal, said it had not ruled out the dismissal of servicemen who acknowledge drug use or homosexual activity in the course of screening for exposure to AIDS. Such individuals can, in fact, incriminate themselves during medical interviews by physicians, a top legal official said. Individuals who inform doctors during medical screening that they have been abusing drugs or engaging in homosexual activity can be discharged even if they do not show evidence of the disease, but they must be given an honorable discharge, added Pentagon spokesman Bob Gilliat. “There is no absolute privilege there (of confidentiality) and the information can be passed along (for discharge proceedings),” Gilliat said. “It would be a non-stigmatizing discharge, but it can happen.”
The House, moving to nullify a Supreme Court ruling, voted to allow state and local governments to continue offering time off in lieu of overtime pay. The bill, similar to a measure approved last week by the Senate, was supported by both business and labor groups as a compromise intended to save state and local governments millions of dollars in overtime pay.
Hurricane Juan left at least three people dead and four missing, sank one offshore oil platform and damaged another in the Gulf of Mexico, and stranded hundreds of people today as it thrashed the Louisiana coast with winds of 85 miles per hour and waves up to 20 feet. One man was killed when 80 workers were forced off an oil rig that smashed into another after it lost its moorings, said Keith Spangler, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. He said several of the survivors, taken off the rig in a morning-long helicopter airlift, suffered broken bones and other injuries. The Coast Guard reported that 146 people, including the survivors of the damaged rig and the five crew members of the rig that sank, had been rescued since Sunday afternoon. It said it was also searching for three people missing in other accidents in the Gulf, and a man was reported missing on Lake Ponchartrain.
Representative Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, announced today that she would run for the Senate seat being vacated by Charles McC. Mathias Jr. Miss Mikulski, 49 years old, kicked off her campaign surrounded by family and supporters in front of her row house in Baltimore. “Today I’m stepping forward where there are no guarantees — only opportunities,” she said. “I’m running because I believe I can win.” Miss Mikulski, a six-term member of the House, became the first candidate to file for the seat with the State Elections Board. Senator Mathias, a Republican, has said he is leaving office to devote more time to his family. Another Democratic member of Congress, Michael D. Barnes, is among those who are also expected to enter the Senate race.
Federal agents arrested a guru they said was trying to flee the country. The guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, 53, who has been charged with conspiring to violate immigration laws, was taken off a private plane in Charlotte, North Carolina, and ordered held without bail in a county jail by a federal magistrate.
Former automaker John Z. DeLorean was hospitalized in Somerville, New Jersey, for an irregular heartbeat after complaining of dizziness and palpitations while preparing for a court appearance in his divorce trial. DeLorean was listed in stable condition in the coronary care unit at Somerset Medical Center after driving himself to the hospital and walking into the emergency room, hospital spokeswoman Joanne Thorsen said.
A new imbroglio has sprung up in Los Angeles over reopening the case of Marilyn Monroe’s death 23 years ago. At a news conference yesterday shortly after he resigned as the foreman of the Los Angeles County grand jury, Sam Cordova called for a new investigation, saying that two rulings of suicide left unresolved questions. The Board of Supervisors had asked the jury to consider such an inquiry. But the District Attorney, Ira Reiner, contended that there was no need for a new investigation and said Mr. Cordova was making the plea for a special prosecutor so as to gain personal publicity. It was, Mr. Reiner asserted, “the swan song by a man hungry for popular attention.”
A wayward humpback whale again outmaneuvered marine biologists early today, and efforts to coax the whale back to the Pacific Ocean were temporarily suspended. The biologists, using clanging devices Sunday night, were trying to lure the whale toward the Golden Gate, but early today the whale made a U-turn and swam 10 miles back up the Sacramento River. The biologists were regrouping today, and a spokesman for the group said they would try to tag the whale with a transmitting device and monitor its movements. The 40-foot whale, dubbed Humphrey and E.T., wandered into the river October 11 after making a wrong turn while migrating from Alaskan waters to Hawaii.
School officials in Boston, who have seized four guns from students in three weeks, met today to consider recommendations by a task force on school safety, including an anonymous tips program and routine locker searches. Also, teachers at the city’s 120 elementary and high schools held extended classes to discuss the dangers of weapons in school and to warn students that they face expulsion of up to a year if caught with a firearm.
A former Brinks Company security guard, testifying today at the racketeering trial of a neo-Nazi group, admitted being a racist, but he said he never would have helped the group steal $3.6 million if he had not feared for his life and the safety of his family. The witness, Charles Ostrout of Hayward, California, agreed to testify as a witness for the Government against 10 members of the group known as the Order.
Washington zookeepers have new hope that Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, the giant pandas at the National Zoo, may soon be the proud parents of a bouncing baby cub. “There are good indications that Ling-Ling may be pregnant,” zoo spokesman Dr. Robert Hoage said. “If she is, then we can expect her to give birth any time between next week and December.”
Duke University researchers in Durham, North Carolina, announced they will try to determine whether exercise is critical to slowing the deterioration of the mind and body in elderly people. University doctors have begun recruiting 120 healthy men and women over 60 for a nine-month exercise study, considered the first of its kind. “We know that younger and middle-aged people can improve their level of functioning with exercise, but we don’t know if the same is true of the elderly,” a researcher said.
Navajo Indians and supporters marched through Santa Fe, New Mexico, protesting the planned relocation of 10,000 Navajos from northeastern Arizona to other regions in the state and New Mexico. The marchers oppose a 1974 law designed to resolve a land dispute between the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The law calls for the relocation of the Navajos by next July. The protest march by about 75 people was timed for opening day of the Inter-American Indian Congress, a gathering of Indians from throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Many poison gas arms are leaking at military depots in eight states, according to the Pentagon. It said the “hundreds” of leaks had caused no casualties but warned they constituted a safety concern.
Americans are saving a smaller part of their incomes than at any time since the early 1950’s. The savings rate plummeted during the summer to 2.9 percent, less than half the rate that prevailed for eight of the last nine years, and the rate for September was still lower, a minuscule 1.9 percent.
NFL Monday Night Football:
Marc Wilson picked apart a shaky San Diego secondary, and Marcus Allen ran for three touchdowns as the Los Angeles Raiders rolled to a 34–21 victory over the Chargers tonight. It was the fifth straight victory for the Raiders (6–2), who maintained a tie with Denver for first place in the American Football Conference West. The Raiders are now 23–3–1 in Monday night games. Wilson completed 15 of his 31 passes for 258 yards, including 7 to the tight end Todd Christensen for 134 yards. Allen, who rushed for 111 yards on 30 carries, scored on runs of 3 and 1 yards in the second quarter and 4 in the third period. He left the game midway through the fourth quarter with a bruised shoulder. The Raiders went ahead for good 6 minutes 41 seconds in the first period on a 20-yard field goal by Chris Bahr. Jessie Hester, a wide receiver, made it 10–0 with 4:37 remaining in the period by scoring on a 13-yard reverse on his first NFL carry.
The Chargers, who are now 3–5, cut the deficit to 10–7 on the first of two Fouts touchdown passes, but then Allen ran for two second-period touchdowns to put Los Angeles in control. Wilson’s 28-yard throw to Christensen set up the Allen’s first score of the period and his 48-yard pass play set up the touchdown that gave the Raiders a 24–7 halftime edge. Allen scored his third touchdown with 4:24 to play in the third period and Bahr added his second field goal, a 35-yarder with 12:45 remaining, to make it 34–14. Gary Anderson scored twice for the Chargers and Fouts got the final touchdown on a 1-yard pass to Jesse Bendross with 2:20 left. It was the 213th scoring pass for Fouts.
San Diego Chargers 21, Los Angeles Raiders 34
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1359.99 (+3.47)
Born:
Troian Bellisario, American actress (“Pretty Little Liars”), in Los Angeles, California.
Early Doucet, NFL wide receiver (Arizona Cardinals), in New Iberia, Louisiana.
Darcel McBath, NFL safety (Denver Broncos, Jacksonville Jaguars, San Francisco 49ers), in Gainesville, Texas.
Lendy Holmes, NFL safety (Wasingotn Redskins), in Dallas, Texas.
History Diaries 