Moscow has rejected a request by President Reagan to be allowed to appear on Soviet television, and he will try to speak to the Soviet people on Saturday via shortwave radio, the White House announced. It is uncertain how many people in the Soviet Union will hear the planned 10-minute address, which is to be carried over the Voice of America. Officials said it would be about Mr. Reagan’s hopes for the summit meeting with Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, in Geneva on November 19 and 20. The broadcast will be carried in English and simultaneously translated into Russian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian. It will also be broadcast later in Uzbek, Georgian and Azerbaijani, a Voice of America spokesman said.
Officials plan to detain a Soviet ship in American waters until a sailor aboard the freighter is allowed to appear before Congress, the Customs Service announced. However, a Congressional aide said the White House might overrule the agency. The sailor, Miroslav Medved, a Ukrainian, was subpoenaed today by a Senate committee in a last-minute effort to prevent him from leaving the United States aboard the ship, which was docked in the Mississippi River to load grain. Mr. Medved jumped from the freighter into the Mississippi near New Orleans several days ago but was returned by the United States authorities, who said they had ascertained that the Ukrainian did not want to defect.
A split over Vitaly Yurchenko has deeply divided members of the Reagan Administration, officials said. They said the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council staff were divided not only over whether the senior K.G.B. officer was a genuine defector or an agent planted as part of a Soviet ploy but also over the value of the information he had provided.
Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union increased in October, the Intergovernmental Committee for Migration announced in Geneva. The agency, which is involved in the resettlement of Soviet Jewish emigrants, said 124 new arrivals were registered at the Vienna transit center in October, up by 31 from September. The 1985 monthly record was in July with 174 arrivals, the committee said. The resettlement program, which began in 1971, reached its all-time monthly record in October, 1979, with 4,800 Jews obtaining Soviet exit visas.
A political storm that erupted over a statement on the Middle East by Prime Minister Bettino Craxi intensified today, threatening his revived coalition government. On Wednesday, Mr. Craxi defended the legitimacy of armed struggle by the Palestine Liberation Organization, provoking shouts and catcalls by rightist and other members of the Chamber of Deputies. He went on to win a vote of confidence by a comfortable margin. But today, during a debate in the Senate, Mr. Craxi’s remarks were subjected to sharp criticism from those who are, theoretically, his political allies. Party leaders spent the day in intensive negotiations.
Yasser Arafat said today that the Palestine Liberation Organization condemned terrorist acts against unarmed civilians anywhere and that violators would be punished for carrying out attacks outside Israeli-held lands. He spoke after a long meeting with President Hosni Mubarak and senior Egyptian officials this afternoon. The P.L.O. leader cited a 1974 P.L.O. decision “to condemn all outside operations and all forms of terrorism” and said the P.L.O. today was reaffirming “the commitment of all its institutions and factions to this decision.” “The P.L.O. denounces and condemns all terrorist acts, whether those involving countries or by persons or groups, against unarmed innocent civilians in any place,” Mr. Arafat said, reading from a prepared statement in Arabic. “The P.L.O. as of today will take all punitive measures against violators.”
The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved a resolution passed by the Senate that would shelve until March 1 a $1.9-billion arms sale to Jordan unless King Hussein begins “direct and meaningful” peace talks with Israel in the meantime. The resolution, adopted by the Senate last month, 97 to 1, will come up for a vote in the full House next week. President Reagan notified Congress last month that he wants to sell Jordan up to 40 warplanes, defensive missiles and other arms.
The Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi, said today that President Reagan should be put on trial for a purported Central Intelligence Agency plan to undermine him. Colonel Qaddafi called the plan “more scandalous than Watergate.” He said that if the report of the plan proved true, Libya would retaliate with a campaign of internal subversion in the United States. Colonel Qaddafi, 43 years old, said at a news conference at his office that reports that Mr. Reagan authorized a plan to undermine the Libyan Government amounted to “a new Nazism.” “I think this is a serious violation of the law perpetrated by the American President, and I think he should be tried according to American law,” Colonel Qaddafi said.
Iraq has intensified land and air attacks amid reports today that Iran may mount a major thrust through southern Iraqi marshland. Iraq said its warplanes raided Iran’s main Kharg Island oil terminal today for the 36th time since mid-August and reported three Iraqi ground attacks in the past 24 hours. Diplomats in Baghdad and Tehran believe Iran is preparing for an offensive in the Hawizah Marshes area, the scene of a big Iranian thrust in March of last year and almost daily shirmishes now. In Tehran, some diplomats said they believed recent Iranian arms purchases and a flow of volunteers to the fronts had put Iran in a position to mount an offensive, or at least threaten an attack. Iraq said today that one of its attacks in the past 24 hours was against Iranian forces in the Hawizah Marshes, which straddle the common border. Baghdad said its planes bombed troop concentrations in the area last Saturday.
About 80 Soviet soldiers were killed in a daylong mutiny at their base in northern Afghanistan, Afghan exiles in Pakistan said. Troops from Soviet Tadzhikistan battled fellow soldiers early last month after Soviet officers executed one of their comrades for setting off a rebel-supplied mine inside the base, the exiles said. They did not know why the executed soldier exploded the mine, but said that he had bought hashish from rebels.
India resumed talks with Tamil militants today in an effort to help resolve ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka as Tamil guerrillas were said to have massacred Sinhalese villagers in Sri Lanka in a fresh outbreak of violence. The United News of India agency, reporting from Colombo, said Tamil guerrillas had stormed the village of Navalwathe in Trincomalee district, killing 32 men, women and children, and setting their homes on fire.
A Japanese jumbo jet strayed off course last week in the same general area where a Soviet fighter shot down an off-course South Korean airliner two years ago, killing all 269 people aboard, Tokyo Government officials disclosed. They said the straying airliner caused Soviet fighter planes to scramble on nearby Sakhalin Island, but said there was no encounter of any sort between the airliner and military jets. “However, we regard this quite seriously because such an incident happened in a region where we should be paying special attention,” Hideo Hirasawa, the airline’s senior managing director, said.
Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos ordered all armed forces units confined to their barracks during the special presidential elections he has called for Jan. 17. He said the order is meant to persuade the opposition to refrain from violence and not to come to an agreement with the Communistled New People’s Army “for their own purposes.” Opposition sources said military operations have interfered with past elections. Marcos’ ruling KBL party will caucus today to consider legislation clearing the way for the election.
Greenpeace will risk a confrontation with the U.S. Navy in Antarctica next month to highlight the environmental group’s campaign to have the frozen continent declared an international park, the organization’s director said in Auckland, New Zealand. “We plan to go into the U.S. Navy base at McMurdo Sound in the Ross Sea and photograph their rubbish dumps, their supermarkets, their telephone poles, to show what they are doing to the last great wilderness,” said Peter Wilkinson, who plans to lead the expedition.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided the homes of Sikhs and arrested two men today in their continuing investigation into a possible connection between last summer’s crash of an Air-India jet off Ireland and an explosion in the baggage handling area at Narita International Airport in Tokyo. The Mounties began the raids Wednesday when they took Talwinder Singh Parmar into custody. A second man, whose name was not made public, was arrested in the southern Vancouver Island community of Duncan. Mr. Parmar, of Burnaby, British Columbia, founder of the Sikh group Babar Khalsa, is wanted in India for questioning in the killing of two police officers.
Colombian forces broke a siege that began Wednesday after guerrillas stormed the Palace of Justic in Bogota and took dozens of judges and other Government employees hostage. The President of Colombia’s Supreme Court and five other judges were among dozens of people killed in the battle. Radio stations quoted a military commander as saying all the rebels were dead. At least 42 people were reported to have been killed since the rebels attacked Wednesday. In an emotional television address tonight, President Belisario Betancur confirmed the death of the President of the Supreme Court, Justice Alfonso Reyes, and the other jurists and called their slayings a “criminal sacrifice.” President Betancur said he assumed total responsibility for the “terrible nightmare.”
Hundreds of soldiers and police officers patrolled the streets of Santiago, Chile today, seeking to prevent a renewal of two days of anti-government protests in which four people were shot dead and more than 750 arrested. The police said that 40 people were wounded Wednesday, including eight who suffered gunshot wounds, bringing to 13 the number hospitalized with bullet wounds since the protests began Tuesday against the 12-year-old military government of General Augusto Pinochet. The street clashes tapered off in time for the daily three-hour curfew that begins at 2 AM, but the police and army patrols continued.
The Food and Agriculture Organization reported a dramatic improvement in African harvests but urged international action to tackle a long-term food shortage on the continent. Edouard Saouma, director general of the U.N. agency, said 1985 main crops will set records in many parts of Africa hit by drought. For 16 of the 21 droughtafflicted countries, the emergency is over, he said. But he added that those countries will still need to import more than 3 million tons of food in the coming year.
AIDS seems to be spreading by conventional sexual intercourse among heterosexuals in Africa and is striking women nearly as often as men, according to researchers in Rwanda. Scientists are striving not only to control the incurable disease but also battling governments’ suppression of information crucial to the search for the origin, cause and cure of AIDS. Perhaps of greatest long-term importance in Africa, where birth rates are booming, is that a continued unchecked spread of AIDS among sexually active women has caused many babies to be born with the disease and could lead to many more such births. The AIDS virus can pass from mother to fetus in pregnancy and through breast milk to an infant after birth. Why the pattern of communicability seems to differ so drastically in Africa from that elsewhere is one of the major mysteries of one of the most confounding medical stories of this century.
The South African government is prepared to negotiate with black men “of influence,” such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Rev. Allan Boesak, on moves to dismantle apartheid, Deputy Foreign Minister Ron Miller said. “We will not speak to them on a one-to-one basis but rather around a negotiating table at which various leaders from all communities are represented,” Miller said. He ruled out talks based on the idea of one-man, one-vote in South Africa, but he said anything else is open for discussion.
Tension is rising between the White House and Capitol Hill over the potential impact of legislation that would require Congress to balance the budget in five years. According to lawmakers in both parties, the legislation is threatening to bring to a climax two long-simmering disputes between the legislative and executive branches. One source of tension is that Congress gives much stronger emphasis to reducing the budget deficit than does President Reagan. The second clash is over how the deficit should be reduced once the government is forced to balance its books.
Flood waters that killed at least 40 people and left scores missing in the Middle Atlantic states this week swirled into Richmond and other municipalities along a half-dozen major seaboard rivers. Farther upstream, thousands of flood survivors surveyed lost homes and businesses, fouled water supplies, waterborne health hazards, closed shipping routes and other problems. Damage in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland was estimated at $350 million. The James River, moving to a crest 24 feet above flood stage, surged yesterday onto the cobbled streets of downtown Richmond and turned many low-lying parts of the city into a lake, disrupting commerce, travel and the lives of thousands of people.
The roiling Potomac River surged through the Washington area, flooding parts of the Georgetown section and Alexandra, Virginia, closing monuments and snarling roads. A few miles above Washington, the river hit a peak flow of 207 billion gallons a day, the fifth-highest flow rate ever recorded for that area, a spokesman for the United States Geological Survey said. The Washington area was among many communities in the Middle Atlantic states affected by heavy rains and widespread flooding over the last few days. Some low-lying parts of the historic Georgetown area, particularly along K Street, were under three to four feet of water by early afternoon, even before the river had crested, officials said.
The President named Otis R. Bowen, a doctor and former Indiana Governor, to be the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. The President said Dr. Bowen had “all the qualifications” to run one the government’s largest civilian department. The nomination of Dr. Bowen, a family doctor and clinical professor at Indiana University, ended a five-week search by the White House in which several prominent candidates for the position removed themselves from consideration. Dr. Bowen will replace Margaret M. Heckler, who left the Cabinet post October 1 to become the Ambassador to Ireland after clashes with White House officials, including Donald T. Regan, the chief of staff.
President Reagan participates in a swearing-in ceremony for Edward Hickey as Chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission.
The Senate gave final approval for $3.2 billion in spending this fiscal year for the White House, the Treasury Department, the Postal Service and other federal agencies. The measure appropriates $951 million more than President Reagan had requested, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kansas) said: “If it is over the budget, I would hope there is a veto.” The bulk of the increase over Reagan’s request was a provision for $820 million in postal rate subsidies.
A bill to set up an optional new pension plan for federal workers, including members of Congress, was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate. The bill, passed by a vote of 96 to 1, now goes to the House. The bipartisan measure would create a civil service retirement plan parallel to the Social Security system, which now covers government workers hired on or after January 1, 1984.
Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole said that for fiscal 1987 the Administration would ask Congress for $50 million to help states improve truck and bus safety, a 150% increase over current spending. Dole will also propose a major program of federal-state inspections of the nation’s bus fleet. She said that a commercial driver whose license has been suspended in one state can obtain a license in another state and continue driving and that in 20 states anyone with an auto driver’s license may operate tractor-trailer trucks without additional testing or training.
About ⅓ of toxic waste landfills now operating may be forced to close because of a Federal deadline today for the dumps to comply with groundwater monitoring and insurance requirements, Environmental Protection Agency officials estimate. Environmental Protection Agency officials said they could not predict exactly what would happen as a result of the Federal deadline. But they said 30 to 40 percent of the 1,575 dumps operating under “interim status” permits could not comply with permit rules. Lee M. Thomas, Administrator of the environmental agency, said in a telephone interview that the Friday deadline marked an important milestone on the road to “fundamental changes” in the way hazardous substances are disposed of in the country. As Congress intended when it amended the toxic waste handling and disposal law last year, industry is now moving away from dumping toxic materials into landfills and toward the incineration and treatment of hazardous wastes, he said.
Jury deliberations in the espionage trial of Richard W. Miller, which ended in a mistrial Wednesday, broke down mainly over whether admissions he made in interrogation by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been coerced, a juror said today. Most of the jurors did not think Mr. Miller, a former F.B.I. agent, had been coerced, the juror said, but at first three did, and two held out through 71 hours of deliberation over 14 days.
Upholding Rubin (Hurricane) Carter and John Artis, a Federal judge overturned their triple-murder convictions and cited “grave constitutional violations” by New Jersey prosecutors. The ruling by Judge H. Lee Sarokin of Federal District Court in Newark marked the latest milestone in a series of courtroom conflicts that over 19 years resulted in two guilty verdicts and two reversals of the convictions on appeals.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh arrived back in Oregon tonight to face Federal charges of covering up sham marriages and lying to immigration officials. The 53-year-old guru waved to reporters after stepping off a twin-engine plane at Portland International Airport and he was taken to the Multnomah County Justice Center in a motorcade of law-enforcement vehicles.
The government asked a federal judge in Waterbury, Connecticut, to order the deportation of a former Yale lecturer accused of being a Nazi collaborator who called for the extermination of Jews. Vladimir Sokolov, 73, of Milford wrote anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi propaganda for Russian-language newspapers during World War II and concealed his past when admitted to the United States in 1951, prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Murphy Sr. Sokolov, the first of about 25 alleged Nazi collaborators to face civil proceedings brought by the Office of Special Investigations, denied the charges.
New York City closed a bar frequented by homosexuals, charging that it allowed “high-risk sexual activity” linked to the spread of AIDS. The city also said the bar, in Greenwich Village, has been operating without a liquor license.
A Puerto Rican independence group that has claimed responsibility for shooting a U.S. Army major threatened to “fill the cemeteries” with other military recruiters. The Organization of Volunteers for the Puerto Rican Revolution, which has claimed at least five other attacks on U.S. personnel or installations, said Maj. Michael Snyder was ambushed to protest a visit to the U.S. commonwealth by FBI Director William H. Webster. Snyder remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the abdomen.
The four schools in the Sandy (Oregon) School District were closed for lack of money after voters rejected a $2.2-million property-tax levy. The district board voted to request an emergency election on November 26 to re-submit the tax increase to voters. The district has 1,444 students and 88 teachers, district Superintendent Clark Lund said. The levy was defeated 1,269 to 1,304. Turnout was 42%.
Saccharin, an artificial sweetener that the Food and Drug Administration tried to ban because studies linked it to bladder cancer in rats, appears to be safe for use by humans, the American Medical Assn. said. Numerous studies on several other species, including humans, have shown no link between saccharin and cancer of any kind, the AMA’s Council on Scientific Affairs concluded. The council reported in the AMA Journal that saccharin should continue to be available. However, the report urged careful consideration of use by children and pregnant women, monitoring for possible adverse health effects, and a continued search for an “ideal” sweetener. The council concluded that consumers should use a wide range of sweeteners to minimize exposure to any one.
The Pittsburgh Pirates hire Syd Thrift as General Manager.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1399.54 (-3.90)
Born:
Darnell Jackson, NBA power forward (Cleveland Cavaliers, Milwaukee Bucks, Sacramento Kings), in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Chaz Schilens, NFL wide receiver (Oakland Raiders, New York Jets), in Lancaster, California.
D.J. Johnson, NFL defensive back (New York Giants, Washington Redskins), in Texas City, Texas.
Adrian Arrington, NFL wide receiver (New Orleans Saints), in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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