The leaders of six countries have sent a joint message to President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev asking for a 12-month moratorium on nuclear tests. The Soviet news agency Tass reported that the six leaders also said they are ready to help arrange third-party verification if that is a stumbling block. Tass said the message was signed by the leaders of Argentina, Greece, India, Mexico, Sweden and Tanzania.
President Reagan attends a National Security Planning Group meeting to discuss the Soviet arms reduction proposal.
Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and his British counterpart, Michael Heseltine, failed today to reach agreement on terms that would commit Britain to participation in the Reagan Administration’s research program for a space-based missile defense. At a one-hour meeting here during a gathering of North Atlantic Treaty Organization defense ministers, the two did agree to assign aides to address the issue of technology sharing, according to officials in both delegations. Mr. Weinberger and Mr. Heseltine are to hold a news conference on Wednesday. The main point of contention is Britain’s demand for a guaranteed $1.5 billion share of what the Administration has projected as a $26 billion research undertaking. The project, the Strategic Defense Initiative, is popularly known as “Star Wars.” In negotiations in recent months, Pentagon officials have told the British that Congress would balk at guaranteeing one NATO ally a share of funds that have yet to be appropriated, and that the British demand would set an unacceptable precedent for other participating nations.
Portugal’s Social Democratic leader Anibal Cavaco Silva accepted an invitation from President Antonio Ramalho Eanes to form the nation’s 16th government since its return to democracy after the 1974 revolution. Cavaco Silva, 46, was named prime minister-designate after his party’s October 6 election victory over its former coalition partners, the Socialists of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Soares. The Social Democrats hold only 88 of the 250 seats in the new Parliament.
An Italian court is expected to give magistrates in the port city of Genoa jurisdiction to investigate the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and the killing of an American passenger, court officials said today. But it remained unclear whether the five-member court, which is to rule Wednesday, would uphold an arrest order issued last weekend for Mohammed Abbas, a Palestinian guerrilla leader accused by the United States of masterminding the hijacking, which led to the death of Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old New Yorker.
The United States said today that it welcomed the reported decision by the Soviet Union to allow the wife of Andrei D. Sakharov to go abroad for medical treatment. It also called on Moscow to end Dr. Sakharov’s own exile in the city of Gorky. The State Department, in commenting on the unconfirmed report that Dr. Sakharov’s wife, Yelena G. Bonner, had been given permission to go abroad, repeated its concern about the well-being of Dr. Sakharov.
Fashion is big business in Paris. More than 3,000 non-Parisians arrived there this month for displays of ready-to-wear clothes by the world’s leading designers. The industry is France’s second-largest foreign-currency earner, after cars.
Yasser Arafat rejected U.S. terms for his participation in Middle East peace negotiations and warned there would be no peace or stability in the region if the Palestine Liberation Organization was left out. Mr. Arafat, the chairman of the organization, made the statement at a news conference in Amman.
A Senate appropriations sub-committee, critical of Egypt for allowing Palestinian hijackers of the Achille Lauro to leave the country, recommended cutting $85 million from a special aid fund for Cairo. Before the hijacking, the panel had approved a $200-million cash transfer to assist Egypt in its balance of payments. But Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) said Egypt does not deserve the full amount. The subcommittee approved a total foreign aid bill of $14.8 billion, about $190 million below the Reagan Administration’s request.
More pro-Syrian militiamen withdrew from positions on the Muslim side of Beirut’s Green Line battle zone in what they called “a sign of good will” to aid Syrian efforts to end Lebanon’s factional fighting. The pullout by about 260 gunmen of the Lebanese Baath Party coincided with an expanded crackdown by the major Christian militia on newspapers loyal to President Amin Gemayel. Elie Hobeika, head of the Lebanese Forces, closed Le Reveil, of the Christian Falangist Party, five days after closing another Falangist paper, Al Amal.
An Afghan guerrilla leader charged that India has provided more than 100 military advisers to assist the Soviet-backed Afghan army and has also supplied anti-personnel mines. Gulbudin Hekmatyar, of the Afghan Islamic Party, said at a press conference at the United Nations that the Soviet-installed government is also aided by “some Cuban commandos,” units from South Yemen and Bulgaria and advisers from the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Rajiv Gandhi has so dominated the Indian Government in the year since his mother was assassinated that the memory of her has receded. The new Prime Minister has shown a new style of cooperation, sharply increased the role of private enterprise and cut back on Government regulations. But even many of Mr. Gandhi’s backers agree he has made minimal progress in reducing Government corruption and inefficiency, alleviating poverty and malnutrition or improving the schools.
Many survivors of the Union Carbide pesticide gas leak in Bhopal suffered chromosomal changes and damage to their immune systems, the head of a Government study into the tragedy said today. S. Ray, director of the Industrial Toxicology Research Center, told the Press Trust of India in Lucknow that his team of 25 scientists heard complaints from the survivors of impotency, menstrual disorders and sleeplessness.
The South Korean authorities, extending a crackdown on political dissidents, today announced the arrest of 26 people accused of inciting anti-Government protests by students and workers. The 26, all present or former students at Seoul National University, were charged under the harsh National Security Law, which is normally reserved for suspects labeled as pro-Communist, according to reports reaching here. Conviction carries the possibility of the death penalty.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos jogged and played golf in an apparent effort to dispel reports that he is gravely ill. The 68-year-old Marcos was shown on the state network’s nightly newscast, jogging on the palace golf course. Marcos has denied that he is suffering from a kidney ailment, and a spokesman said that a report that he has a fatal form of lupus is wrong and “old hash.” The ailment, lupus erythematosus, is incurable and debilitating but not fatal, as reported earlier.
Left-wing guerrillas have agreed to free three United States missionaries kidnapped 24 days ago in Colombia’s eastern jungles and turn them over to a Government peace commission, a commission source said today. The source said the kidnappers were members of the First Front of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. A guerrilla representative promised the peace commission Monday night to free the missionaries at a meeting in Bogota, the source said.
Ugandan government and rebel troops have failed to reach a cease-fire agreement despite an offer by the guerrillas to stop fighting while talks are going on in Nairobi, rebel leader Yoweri Museveni said. Museveni’s Uganda National Resistance Army had proposed the truce to provide “a suitable atmosphere” for the talks. The Kampala regime has offered the guerrillas equal power on the ruling military council, an offer the rebels rebuffed. Museveni’s group also opposed representation on the council by small rebel factions.
Major General Samuel K. Doe won the presidency of Liberia and his party swept the legislature in this country’s first multiparty election, the election commission announced today. Opposition parties in this West African nation founded by freed American slaves had charged General Doe with intimidating their candidates and with setting up an election process under which voting could be rigged.
The President, urging balancing of budgets, reaffirmed his endorsement of a bill to shrink the deficit to zero by 1991, despite private warnings by some key advisers that it would interrupt the Reagan Administration’s military buildup. House Democrats said the Senate-approved measure was likely to win final Congressional approval by the end of the week, even if Republicans in a House-Senate conference reject proposed Democratic modifications.
Programs for the poor would be exempt from automatic spending cuts under a proposal to be made today by House Democrats. The provision is one of the changes that Democrats seek in the Senate-passed bill to balance the budget by 1991. Republicans oppose the changes.
The Secretary of the Navy assailed the Justice Department’s decision to arrange a plea bargain with John A. Walker Jr., saying the information Mr. Walker could provide about his spying for the Kremlin would be of little value to the government. The Navy Secretary, John F. Lehman Jr., said he opposed “the treating of espionage as just another white-collar crime.”
The computer systems that the government uses to pay monthly benefits to millions of Americans, store sensitive information and pay its bills are vulnerable to fraud and waste because of improper security, officials told Congress. Associate Director William Franklin of the General Accounting Office told a House subcommittee that a survey of 25 automated information systems at 17 federal agencies showed a need for better security.
The Republican and Democratic parties are beginning the process to select the cities where they will hold their 1988 nominating conventions and expect to announce their choices far earlier than in the past. Republican Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. said six cities already have expressed interest — Miami, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and San Diego. Democratic spokesman Terry Michael said cities on his party’s list are Washington, Atlanta, Orlando, Fla., San Diego, Philadelphia, Kansas City and Houston.
A discrimination study is flawed and biased against busing, according to a professor monitoring the study for the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The professor, Gary Orfield of the University of Chicago, resigned from the post.
A Soviet sailor who jumped ship in the Mississippi River but was returned by American officials will go back to the Soviet Union at his request, the State Department said.
Fearing “the invasion of the encryptors,” dealers and owners of backyard dishes rallied, seeking support for proposed legislation that would prohibit scrambling of satellite television signals. Rep. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colorado), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications, promised about 500 people gathered on the Mall in Washington that hearings will be held on the issue early next year. He said the hearings will focus on bills that would require programmers to design a way to license dish owners to decode programs before they can be encrypted. Rep. W.J. (Billy) Tauzin (D-Louisiana) said satellite reception often is the only way you can see television in rural areas and places where the terrain blocks TV signals.
John Z. De Lorean blamed his ex-wife’s greed for heart problems that led to his hospitalization, saying in a statement released from a hospital in Somerville, N.J., that the pain of watching his two children dragged into a custody battle “was more than my heart could handle.” Ex-wife Cristina Ferrare Thomopoulos retorted through her lawyer that De Lorean used his “illness to create a legal circus….”
Lawyers for 11 religious leaders accused of smuggling Central American refugees were turned down in their request in Tucson that the judge in the case be disqualified because he owns stock in a mining company with a plant in El Salvador. Defense lawyers had” claimed that Judge Earl Carroll of Phoenix owned stock in the Phelps Dodge Corp., and one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the case had worked at a Phelps subsidiary in El Salvador and was tortured for union organizing.
The S.E.C. ordered E. F. Hutton to reimburse investors in two of its mutual funds more than $1 million for money the commission said the investors lost because of mismanagement by Hutton. The action was part of a package settlement with the major brokerage house arising from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into another matter -whether Hutton’s admitted 1980-82 scheme to overdraw its bank accounts by millions of dollars violated securities laws. The company has pleaded guilty to 2,000 counts of fraud in that scheme.
A surgeon has been given approval to simultaneously transplant six organs — a liver, stomach, large and small intestine, pancreas and spleen — into a man at Presbyterian-University Hospital in Pittsburgh. Awaiting the surgery is Herbert G. Seal, 36, of Pekin, Indiana. Four years ago, Seal, who initially suffered from ulcerative colitis, had all but six inches of his intestines removed in two operations. Since then, he has been fed intravenously. Over the years, his other organs have begun to fail.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh today was refused special food and a throne that the 53-year-old guru sought to make jail comfortable while awaiting a hearing on charges of immigration fraud. Mr. Rajneesh and six followers from his Oregon commune were arrested Monday at the Charlotte-Douglas Airport when their two chartered jets stopped on a flight to Bermuda, where Federal agents said the guru intended to flee to avoid prosecution.
As rescue money ran low and frustration ran high, a wayward humpback whale splashed in the Sacramento River today, eluding rescuers trying to attach a transmitter that would enable them to keep tabs on its movements. On the whale’s 16th day away from its deep-sea home, beleaguered marine scientists gave the 45-ton humpback, dubbed “Humphrey,” a rest from the pipe-banging flotillas trying to drive it back to the Pacific.
Hurricane Juan made a return visit ashore today, then stalled again, knocking down a third oil rig as its heavy rains and winds of 85 miles an hour whipped waves 20 feet high and drove tides up to 10 feet above normal. At least four people were dead, and three people were missing, including two believed trapped in an oil rig that toppled in a marsh. The Coast Guard said about 160 people had been rescued from drilling rigs and boats in the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent waters over three days. By 3 PM, after the hurricane came ashore near Lafayette, Louisiana, about 100 miles west-northwest of New Orleans, the storm’s winds had diminished to 65 mph, and the National Weather Service downgraded it to a tropical storm. At 8 PM the poorly defined center of the storm was estimated to be near 30.2 degrees north latitude, 92.3 degrees west longitude, near Lafayette. New Orleans and its suburbs were hit by flooding, with as much as three feet of water reported. The hardest hit areas were on the west bank of the Mississippi River.
A surprisingly close genetic link between certain microbes that cause disease in plants and others that cause illness in humans has been found, according to scientists. The evidence suggests strongly that the two species of bacteria had a common ancestor about 300 to 400 million years ago, or, possibly, that the bacterial species that infects humans evolved somehow from the species that infects plants.
St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Joaquin Andújar is suspended by MLB for 10 games for bumping an umpire.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1368.73 (+8.74)
Born:
Gio Benitez, American TV journalist (“Good Morning America”), in Miami, Florida.
Died:
John Lodge, 82, American actor (“Witchmaker”) and Republican politician (79th Governor of Connecticut).
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