President Reagan speaks with Secretary of State George Shultz who is in Moscow meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev. Washington and Moscow have failed to reach agreement or to narrow differences significantly in any area to be discussed by President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva in two weeks, according to Secretary of State George P. Shultz. At a news conference after a total of 14 hours of discussions with Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, and Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze, Mr. Shultz said diplomatic efforts would continue in Moscow and Washington until the summit meeting two weeks from now, but he seemed to hold out little expectation of a major breakthrough. “I can’t say anything definitive was settled,” he said. “Basically, we have a lot of work to do.”
President Reagan’s interview with Soviet journalists, published in today’s issue of the Government newspaper Izvestia, was not exactly the talk of the town, but it did attract considerable attention. Muscovites seemed not only aware of Mr. Reagan’s comments but keenly interested in them. The interview was the first by an American President with Soviet journalists in more than two decades. Izvestia published a full page of Mr. Reagan’s remarks but deleted some of them, including some of his criticism of the Soviet role in Afghanistan. The newspaper’s version of the interview was accompanied by a full-page critique by the four Soviet reporters who interviewed the President at the White House last week.
Vitaly Yurchenko has freely decided to return home to the Soviet Union, State Department officials said after a meeting with the K.G.B. official who had been described as a prized defector to the United States. Several officials said he had been disappointed by the collapse of a love affair with a woman in Canada and angered by a succession of news articles about him.
To American intelligence officials, Vitaly Yurchenko’s defection last summer seemed an extraordinary coup, a clear signal that the tide in the ideological war between East and West was turning in favor of the United States. But yesterday C.I.A. officials said they were stunned and perplexed. Just last week, officials were calling Mr. Yurchenko a new breed of defector who left because he was disillusioned with Communism, not because he was in trouble or in debt. Before his redefection, a White House official, speaking of Mr. Yurchenko and other recent defectors, said, “It certainly has caught the attention of senior people in Government, the difference between these cases and the ones of the past.”
Legislators assailed the C.I.A. for its handling of Vitaly Yurchenko. The Senate intelligence committee charted plans to review the extraordinary case. “There are an awful lot of very angry senators on this matter in both parties, and rightly so,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee. “You assume the C.I.A. is trained professionals, that they know what they’re doing. That assumption is now being questioned.”
Doctors examining a Soviet sailor who jumped a freighter into the Mississippi 10 days ago found his wrists might have been slashed and were told by the ship’s captain that the sailor, Miroslav Medved, cut them after he was forcibly returned to the ship by American officials, according to a State Department official. The sailor was later returned to the ship a second time.
The Polish Communist Party’s Central Committee met amid reports that General Wojciech Jaruzelski will step down today as premier, to be replaced as head of government by Deputy Premier Zbigniew Messner. Under a plan reportedly discussed by the Central Committee, Jaruzelski would remain as first secretary of the Communist Party and the principal Polish leader, but he would concentrate his efforts on rebuilding the party, weakened by the workers’ revolt five years ago that gave birth to the now-outlawed Solidarity union.
Poland said senior officials have been assigned to investigate the death of an honors student who was severely injured after the police detained him in the northern city of Olsztyn. The youth, Marcin Antonowicz, 19, was a chemistry student at Gdansk University. Lech Walesa and other leaders of the banned Solidarity union have cited the youth’s death as an example of police brutality. But the government said that an investigation shows that Antonowicz, suspected of being drunk, was injured when he leaped from a moving police van in an apparent effort to escape.
A witness told an Italian court today that Mehmet Ali Ağca received a cash payment from the Turkish underworld in a Bulgarian hotel before he shot Pope John Paul II in 1981. The witness, Omer Mersan, a Turkish businessman from Munich, West Germany, told a Rome court that he had handed Mr. Ağca the equivalent of $770 at a meeting in the Vitosha Hotel, Sofia, in July 1980.
An Iraqi plane fired a missile into a Greek supertanker in the Persian Gulf, ripping a hole in the ship’s hull and setting it ablaze with 16,000 tons of oil aboard, Lloyd’s of London said. No casualties were reported on the vessel, the Canaria, which was heading toward Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal. However, all crew members except the captain were forced to abandon ship after the engine room was flooded. The attack was acknowledged by Iraq, which is trying to halt oil exports by its Iranian war foes.
The General Assembly called on Vietnam tonight to withdraw its forces from neighboring Cambodia. The margin — 114 in favor, 21 against and 16 abstaining — was the largest in seven years of voting on the resolution. In the debate today the United States urged the Soviet Union to use its influence to bring about the withdrawal of the Vietnamese troops. Vernon A. Walters, the chief American delegate, said the United States was willing to play an active role in achieving a settlement to the occupation of Cambodia. Similar resolutions have been adopted in the Assembly since 1979, a year after Vietnam invaded Cambodia. The margin last year was 110 to 22.
China and Libya have agreed to expand their economic ties, the New China News Agency said in reporting the end of a four-day visit to Libya by Vice Premier Tian Jiyun, who is touring five African countries. Tian’s visit was the latest in a series of meetings by high-ranking officials of the two countries over the last six months.
Winston Lord is the envoy to China. The Senate approved his nomination by a vote of 87 to 7 after President Reagan intervened to end a five-week stalemate caused by the opposition of Senator Jesse Helms. Mr. Helms, Republican of North Carolina, had bottled up the nomination in an effort to win assurance from Mr. Reagan that the United States would provide no assistance to Chinese population control programs. Helms said that, prior to his conversation with Reagan, he was unable to secure assurances from the State Department or the Agency for International Development that no American assistance would be channeled through the United Nations for what he called China’s “programs of coercive abortion and involuntary sterilization.”
With his announcement this week that he intends to call an early presidential election, President Ferdinand E. Marcos has for the moment defused mounting criticism of his Government and has regained the political initiative. At the same time, questions are being raised about the President’s real intentions, because of some ambiguities in his statement. President Marcos said Sunday night that he would ask the Legislature to set elections for Jan. 17. His announcement appeared to have been forced at least in part by pressure from Washington, including warnings that his control was slipping in the face of a growing left-wing insurgency and a deteriorating economy.
A new diplomatic dispute between France and New Zealand seemed in the making today after the French Foreign Minister asserted that negotiations between the two countries had led to the dropping of murder charges against two French agents in the sinking of a Greenpeace anti-nuclear protest ship in New Zealand. On Monday, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, David Lange, denied that his country had made a political deal with France that enabled the two agents to plead guilty to less serious manslaughter charges. The guilty plea means there will be no trial of the agents and thus no presentation of the evidence collected by the New Zealand police on the French operation against the Greenpeace vessel. The defendants also escaped the possibility of prison terms of seven years to life, although they could still be sentenced to prison.
A Mexican diplomat and his maid were beaten, then shot to death in Moscow, the Mexican Embassy said. Their bodies were found in his apartment inside a guarded compound for foreigners. The whereabouts of the Russian ex-wife of the slain diplomat, Manuel Portilla Quevedo, was not known. He divorced her last year, sources said. Portilla, 43, was a graduate in chemistry of Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University for foreigners. One of the embassy’s few fluent Russian-speakers, he had been stationed in Moscow since 1981.
More than 100 protesters who took over the Metropolitan Cathedral in Guatemala City last week to demand information about missing relatives left the church peacefully. The military government had refused to meet with representatives of the group, saying it would not “negotiate with terrorists.” The protesters accuse Guatemalan security forces of kidnaping or arresting 775 of their relatives over the last few years.
Two brothers of an American journalist who has been missing in Guatemala for seven months asserted this week that neither the Guatemalan Government nor the American Embassy here had done as much as it could to learn the missing man’s fate. Nick Blake, 27 years old, and a companion, Griffin Davis, also an American citizen, disappeared in the rugged Guatemalan highlands in March. Soldiers, guerrillas, armed civil defense patrols and bandits are known to roam the region. “After seven months, we can assume they’re dead,” Sam Blake, 23, said here in an interview here Sunday night. “We’d like to know by whom.” “We don’t believe we’ve had the full cooperation of both governments,” he said. “We have not had the full cooperation of our embassy.” Sam and his brother, Randy, came to Guatemala last week for a brief visit.
At least 34 people were injured and about 150 arrested in clashes with Chilean security forces during protests today, the police said. Four of the injured had gunshot wounds. Bomb attacks on power lines tonight left the capital, Santiago, and much of central Chile without electricity. A leftist guerrilla group took responsibility for the attacks. The protests were called for today and Wednesday by unions and leftist parties in support of six jailed opposition leaders. The six have been on a hunger strike since last Wednesday. The police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse demonstrators in the center of Santiago. Other clashes were reported at four university campuses in the capital and in the cities of Valparaiso, Antofagasta, Punta Arenas, Talcahuano, Concepcion and Temuco. Outside the center, police were backed up by troops ordered on to the streets by President Augusto Pinochet. But protestors defied the military patrols and put up barricades of rocks, burning matresses and tires, disrupting transportation.
Ali Hassan Mwinyi was sworn in as Tanzania’s second president, succeeding Julius K. Nyerere, who had ruled since independence from Britain in 1961. Mwinyi, 60, a former home affairs minister and most recently Tanzania’s vice president, was the only candidate for the post in elections last month. He named former Justice Minister Joseph Warioba as prime minister to replace Salim Ahmed Salim. Nyerere, 63, is expected to continue to wield considerable power as chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Party, a post he plans to retain until 1987.
The South African Government overruled a magistrate’s court today and withheld the passport of the Rev. Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a patron of the multiracial United Democratic Front. The authorities did not immediately give a reason for the move, which prevents Dr. Boesak from traveling to the United States to accept the Robert F. Kennedy humanitarian award. The action came as seven South African ministers canceled plans to meet with the African National Congress in Lusaka, Zambia, after the authorities denied them travel documents.
American news organizations are unlikely to openly defy South Africa’s strict new restrictions on coverage of violent demonstrations, according to officials at the three television networks, wire services, newspapers and news magazines. But they are trying to find out just how the restrictions will be put into practice, in hopes that they will not be strictly enforced. And though all of the news organizations strongly disapproved of the restrictions and most have sent messages of protest, they expressed concern for the safety of their staff members in South Africa and said they would be compelled to live within the rules. “We don’t have any real choice,” said Richard C. Wald, senior vice president of ABC News.
The Senate Rules and Administration Committee opened hearings on a bill that would curb the power of political action committees and clean up what Senator Gary Hart (D-Colorado) called “the toxic waste of American politics.” The bill, by Senators Charles McC. Mathias Jr. (R-Maryland) and Paul Simon (D-Illinois) seeks to limit the influence of PACs by providing for public funding of Senate races. The only outright opposition came from Senator Jake Garn (R-Utah). “I don’t think that is the solution to the problem,” he said.
President Reagan meets with his official biographer Edmund Morris.
Two major abortion cases came before the Supreme Court in oral arguments. Neither the lawyers who urged the High Court to uphold Pennsylvania and Illinois laws restricting abortion, nor any of the nine Justices suggested the Court should overrule its 12-year series of precedents recognizing the constitutional right to abortion.
The Supreme Court heard arguments today that the rights of a man accused of murder had been violated because his lawyer insisted he tell the truth on the witness stand. Some justices expressed skepticism. Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist said he found no difference between a lawyer’s concealing perjury to aid a client and keeping silent about a client’s plans to bribe or kill a witness. Arguing that there was a distinction “may satisfy you,” Justice Rehnquist told Patrick Reilly Grady, who represents the accused killer. ‘It’s utterly unconvincing to me,” Justice Rehnquist said. Emmanuel Charles Whiteside was convicted of stabbing to death Calvin Love on February 8, 1977, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in a fight over drugs and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The conviction was overturned on appeal and Iowa is seeking to have it reinstated.
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger today put the finishing touches on their many scientific experiments and were set to conclude the weeklong mission with a landing Wednesday at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Officials at the West German Space Operations Center near Munich spoke of the mission’s success in glowing terms, saying that the crew had accomplished nearly all the assigned research into the effects of weightlessness on metals processing, crystal growth, biological growth and human physiology. West Germany chartered the shuttle, paying the National Aeronautics and Space Administration a $65 million fee, and controlled the flight’s scientific operations. Mission Control here directed the other operations.
Three Virginia Democrats swept the offices of Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. The Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, L. Douglas Wilder, was the first black nominated by a major party for statewide office in Virginia since Reconstruction, and Mary Sue Terry, the next Attorney General, is the first woman to be elected to statewide office in Virginia.
Environmental Protection Agency officials are negotiating with grower and farm worker representatives in an effort to write a new federal rule designed to protect workers from pesticide exposure. The negotiations are expected to continue until March, when the new regulation will be unveiled. EPA officials say the law will be shaped to protect workers who administer pesticides or work in areas where they are used, including greenhouses. The rule would set minimum safety standards. California, which has the toughest pesticide law in the nation, probably would not be affected.
The main co-founder of the radical cult MOVE and five children were identified as being among those killed in the fiery confrontation with police May 13, a medical expert revealed in Philadelphia. Dr. Ali Hameli, Delaware’s chief medical examiner, said that MOVE co-founder John Africa, also known as Vincent Leaphart, was one of six victims the Philadelphia medical examiner’s office was unable to identify. Hameli disputed a ruling of accidental death made in the case last July. The children died because of “the consequence of the measured and deliberate acts of, and the interactions between, the adults responsible for the MOVE house and the officials of the city of Philadelphia,” he said.
Civil rights lawyer William Kunstler contended that government investigators withheld evidence linking the Ku Klux Klan to the Atlanta child murders because they feared a “race riot” in the city. Kunstler said he will seek to overturn Wayne Williams’ conviction in the case based on documents that include statements from two police informants that a klansman had threatened 14-year-old Lubie Geter, one of the victims. Williams, 25, who is serving two life sentences, was charged with only two of the 28 murders of young blacks.
A recent Federal appeals court decision may have far-reaching effects on where toxic waste dumps can be established around the country by making it difficult for communities to reject such sites. In the decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled last Friday that the national interest in the safe disposal of hazardous materials outweighed wishes of towns and counties to keep dangerous waste dumps outside of their boundaries. William H. Lewis Jr., attorney for the waste disposal company in the case, noted that under the decision a local jurisdiction would have to make a showing that the health and safety of its citizens were at risk in order to reject a site. The Supreme Court has not addressed this specific issue of community rights to reject toxic waste dumps, according Oliver A. Houck, professor of environmental law at Tulane University.
Reform Jews representing 791 synagogues in the United States and Canada ended a five-day convention here today with a denunciation of racism in South Africa and a call to provide sanctuary for Central American refugees. About 3,000 delegates attended the 58th biennial convention of the Union of American Hebrews Congregations, which has 1.3 million members in the United States and Canada and is the most liberal Jewish denomination. Among the resolutions adopted by delegates at the closing session today was one that condemned South Africa’s policy of strict racial separation and another that endorsed “legislation which would temporarily suspend deportations of those fleeing El Salvador and Guatemala and oppressive regimes until they can safely return to their countries of origin.”
Mayor Koch easily won a third term at City Hall, leading a Democratic sweep of virtually every citywide office at stake in the election. Although he faced two major-party opponents — City Council President Carol Bellamy and Diane McGrath — and six other lesser-known rivals, Mr. Koch was polling at least 75 percent of the vote and winning every borough. In other Democratic landslides, City Comptroller Harrison J. Goldin won an unprecedented fourth term and Andrew Stein was elected City Council President.
Saying there was no evidence of criminal intent, the California Attorney General’s office has declined to press charges against a court bailiff accused of interfering with the jury that convicted Mayor Roger Hedgecock. Disagreement among the 12 jurors was also cited by Assistant State Attorney General Harley Mayfield as a reason for not pursuing criminal charges against the bailiff, Al Burroughs Jr. In a letter Monday to Edwin Miller, District Attorney in San Diego County, Mr. Mayfield said 10 jurors disputed contentions of two others that Mr. Burroughs improperly influenced the jury, which convicted Mayor Hedgecock of perjury and conspiracy on October 9. In another development Monday, a self-employed mason was arraigned on a charge of trying to extort $50,000 from Mr. Hedgecock’s attorney, Oscar Goodman. Robert Rose, an Assistant United States Attorney, said the mason, Leon Haywood, told Mr. Goodman that for $50,000 he could deliver a juror capable of winning a new trial for the Mayor. Mr. Haywood was ordered held on $25,000 bond.
In one of the nation’s largest libel verdicts against a news organization, a jury has decided that the former owner of a Louisville television station should pay a businessman $2.8 million in damages. Jurors deliberated more than 11 hours before finding Monday that television station WLKY and one of its former reporters, Mark Koebrich, had defamed H. W. Thompson by broadcasting false reports about his efforts to store recycled sewage sludge across the Ohio River in Clark County, Indiana.
Rivers surged over their banks, leaving 23 people dead in Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland as a storm deluged the mid-Atlantic states and forced thousands to evacuate their homes.
Charging that consumers are misled by current labeling, a coalition of consumer groups is petitioning the government to restrict use of terms like “lite” and “lean” to meats with 10% fat or less. Currently, some products with more than 30% fat content can be labeled lean, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based consumer health group. Zeller said his group will file a formal petition today asking the Agriculture Department to change its labeling rules.
Paul Schierhorn’s rock musical “The News” opens at Helen Hayes Theater, NYC; runs for 4 performances.
CBS premieres “Stone Pillow”, a dramatic made-for-TV movie starring Lucille Ball as a homeless woman.
Hal Lanier, a former major league infielder and minor league manager who spent the last five seasons as a coach with the St. Louis Cardinals, was named manager of the Houston Astros yesterday and promptly announced that he would try to hire Yogi Berra as a coach. “I talked to Yogi yesterday and we think he’ll be a good addition,” the 43-year-old Lanier said at a news conference in Houston, after signing a two-year contract as the ninth manager in the Astros’ 24-year history. He replaces Bob Lillis, who was dismissed after leading the club to a third-place finish in the National League West.
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Kate DeAraugo, Australian singer (3rd winner of Australian Idol, 2005), in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
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