Western European leaders will gather in Luxembourg on Monday amid growing doubts that they can overhaul the 10-nation European Economic Community before Spain and Portugal join next year. Foreign Ministers from the Common Market countries met in Luxembourg today in an effort to narrow differences before the two-day meeting of national leaders, but they reported little progress. The French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, said the ministers made “some progress” but added that there was still “no common ground” between them on the central issue: how quickly Western Europe should move toward a federal structure.
A foe of Poland’s Government will receive the highest honor the United States Government confers for achievement in the humanities. Leszek Kolakowski, an authority on Marxism who teaches at Oxford University and the University of Chicago, has been selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to give its annual Jefferson Lecture next May.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl joined in an appeal to Norway’s Nobel Prize committee to refrain from awarding the 1985 Peace Prize to Soviet doctor Yevgeny I. Chazov on December 10 in Oslo. Kohl, head of West Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, and nine other European Christian Democratic party leaders charged in a letter to the committee that Chazov was involved in human rights abuses. They said that Chazov was among 25 members of the Soviet Academy of Science who slandered dissident Andrei D. Sakharov in 1973, a move that led to Sakharov’s internal exile in 1980. Chazov is co-winner of the peace prize with an American, Dr. Bernard Lown. They are co-chairmen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
Yelena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, is due to leave the Soviet Union today on a flight to Rome for treatment of an eye ailment before going on to the United States for heart bypass surgery. Bonner’s long-sought permission to travel to the West for medical treatment was granted last month. She and Sakharov, who is remaining in the Soviet Union, have been in internal exile in Gorky.
A Church of England panel criticized Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for policies it says help the rich at the expense of poor people living in decayed urban areas. The criticism came in a report commissioned by Archbishop Robert A.K. Runcie of Canterbury in 1983, two years after rioting first broke out in racially mixed districts of London and Liverpool. It urged the government to spend more on inner city housing, social benefits and job creation for the young unemployed.
The police chiefs of Ireland and Northern Ireland will meet for the first time in three years to review border security, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Peter Barry announced. Barry said the meeting will take place in Dublin this week as part of the agreement between Ireland and Britain that gives the Irish Republic an advisory role in Northern Ireland. The Observer newspaper in London said the police officials are expected to pledge improved liaison and a more coordinated anti-terrorist strategy.
Pope John Paul II pledged today to remain open to the suggestions and conclusions of the Synod of Bishops being held in Rome. “I have followed and will continue to follow the work with an open heart and attentive listening to the members of the Synod,” the Pope said in his midday Angelus message. Noting that the two-week Synod had reached the halfway mark, the Pope asked his audience of about 20,000 people in St. Peter’s Square to give thanks for “the grace” that had guided it. The Pope’s words reinforced his appeal at the opening ceremonies of the Synod last Sunday, when he called on the bishops to remain open to the “new vistas” of the Second Vatican Council, whose effects the Synod has been assigned to explore.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl joined a campaign today to prevent a Soviet doctor from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Kohl, chairman of the West German Christian Democratic Party, and 10 other leaders of Western Europe’s affiliated Christian Democratic parties signed an appeal to the prize committee not to give the award to the Soviet doctor, Dr. Yevgeny I. Chazov.
Swiss voters today rejected a proposal to amend the nation’s Constitution to outlaw most medical and drug experiments involving live animals. In a national referendum, 70.5 percent of those voting rejected the proposal, the Federal Chancellery said. The fight against the experiments was led by Franz Weber, Switzerland’s most prominent environmentalist. The Swiss pharmaceutical industry opposed the proposed amendment as endangering vital research, and the Government warned that approval would force such research work abroad, where conditions might be even worse for animal protection.
Israel’s Prime Minister Shimon Peres apologized today for Israeli espionage in the United States, “to the extent that it did take place,” and said the Israeli Government unit purportedly involved in the espionage would be dismantled “if the allegations are confirmed.” For the first time, the Prime Minister appeared to concede publicly that someone in the Israeli Government was involved in “spying on the United States.” He promised to uncover all the facts “no matter where the trail may lead.” The Israeli statement did not address the question of United States access to the two Israeli diplomats linked to the espionage scandal who were suddenly withdrawn from Washington last week. But senior Government officials said Israel had agreed to allow the F.B.I. to send investigators to Israel to speak with the two diplomats. They were withdrawn from the United States the day after a United States Navy analyst was arrested on charges of spying for Israel.
The U.S. welcomed Israel’s apology. Secretary of State George P. Shultz said, “I think this is an excellent statement and we are satisfied with it.” His quick response appeared to be part of an effort to prevent the purported espionage activities of Jonathan Jay Pollard, a Navy employee, from causing permanent damage to relations with Israel. It reflected the views of other senior officials who have said in the last few days that the Administration was determined that whatever the outcome of the Pollard case, it should not disrupt the overall relationship.
Guerrillas ambushed an Israeli patrol in southern Lebanon today, killing or wounding five soldiers, the Beirut radio said. Meanwhile, rival militiamen again clashed in Beirut and in the mountains east of the capital. An Israeli military spokesman said he was checking the report by Beirut radio, which operates under the control of the Shiite Muslim Amal militia. The police said three people were wounded when Christian and Muslim militiamen battled for five hours with small rockets and automatic weapons along the so-called Green Line dividing mainly Muslim west Beirut from the Christian east. Military sources said the fighting in Beirut came shortly after Druze Muslim gunmen and Lebanese Army forces exchanged mortar, rocket and artillery fire in the Shouf mountains.
The Israeli Government today approved the resumption of talks with Egypt on territorial disputes and other issues. The talks were cut off by Egypt after the Israeli air strike on Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunisia on October 1. The Israeli Cabinet, meeting in Jerusalem today, approved the mission, to be conducted by top officials of the Prime Minister’s office and the Foreign Ministry who are to go to Cairo on Wednesday. The decision was made after Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir withdrew his objections. He had blocked the resumption of the talks by insisting on information about the shooting of seven Israeli vacationers at a Sinai resort October 5. An aide to Mr. Shamir said the minister had been assured the matter would be clarified in the talks.
American officials acknowledged today that three American military officers traveled on a C-130 aircraft to Malta with Egyptian commandos who carried out an assault on a hijacked Egyptair jetliner last Sunday. They said the senior United States military official on the flight was General Robert Wiggin, who oversees United States military programs in Egypt. But the officials, who asked not to be named, said the American officers who accompanied the Egyptians were not specialists in counterterrorism and did not take part in the effort to retake the aircraft. The United States officers were sent primarily as a gesture of political support for the Egyptians, Administration officials said. “These three men represented United States moral support for Egypt,” said one high-ranking official.
The United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s key oil-producing states, will build a large naval base to protect its offshore oil installations, a leading official said today. The official, Sheik Khalifa bin Zaid al-Nahayan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and deputy commander of the emirates’ armed forces, said design work on the naval complex would begin next year.
Up to half of all U.S. military aid to Afghanistan’s anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas never reaches them, according to TIME magazine. It said that sources in Pakistan, from where the aid is distributed, calculated that 50% of the U.S.-supplied arms are traded, sold or hidden for dealing later, rather than given to guerrillas for anti-Soviet raids. Pakistani military officers, Afghan leaders in exile in Pakistan and individual guerrillas are involved in the diversions, TIME said. Congress voted $470 million this year in military aid.
The United States and Vietnam completed their first joint excavation of an American warplane crash site today, but they said there were only slim hopes of identifying missing American servicemen from the unearthed bone fragments. Captain Virginia Pribyla, spokesman for the American search team, said that the digging ended today and that the search team was sifting through the soil a second time as it refilled the 36-foot-deep excavation pit. The Americans are scheduled to leave Hanoi on Wednesday after 13 days of excavation. A spokeswoman for the American team said excavators stopped digging after having exhausted the possibilities of finding more remains at Yên Thượng, nine miles north of Hanoi, where a B-52 bomber was shot down in 1972.
A court in Manila acquitted the Philippines’ Chief of Staff, Fabian C. Ver, and 25 other defendants of involvement in the assassination of the opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. in August 1983. The three-judge court ruled in support of the military’s contention that Mr. Aquino was killed by a lone gunman, possibly working for the Communists. President Ferdinand E. Marcos immediately accepted a request for reinstatement by General Ver, who has been on a leave of absence as chief of staff since accusations were brought against him in connection with the assassination. In a statement Mr. Marcos said the reinstatement would be “for such period as may be decided upon by me and on the advice of the senior officers of the armed forces.” “Thank God it’s all over,” said General Ver as security guards hurried him from the hot and crowded courtroom.
Disappearances of detainees, torture and murder are part of daily life in the Philippines, according to a study by the New York-based Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights. The study, reported in the San Francisco Examiner, blamed a “dramatic deterioration” in human rights over the last two years on the Philippine military and judiciary and on President Ferdinand E. Marcos.
Benigno S. Aquino’s widow, Corazon, said she would announce this week whether she would run for President of the Philippines. Corazon Aquino, widow of the slain opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., promised a cheering crowd of 15,000 today that “you will hear what you want to hear” when she announces this week whether she will run for President. Mrs. Aquino told the throng at Santo Domingo Cathedral she would make her “official announcement” after President Ferdinand E. Marcos signs into law the bill calling the February 7 election. Parliament was expected to give the bill its third and final reading Monday, and Mr. Marcos could sign it into law any time after that.
Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the Auxiliary Archbishop of San Salvador, today criticized the country’s judicial system and interrogation methods. “We regret a practice that seems to be on the increase, namely interrogations and inhuman treatment of people accused of political crimes,” he said in his weekly homily.”Generally, they end in declarations at times totally divorced from reality.” The Archbishop also said four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador five years ago would be remembered in special services in the country’s Catholic churches Monday. The women were found dead on December 2, 1980, near the town of Zacatecoluca. Five former members of the El Salvador national guard were sentenced last year to 30 years in prison in the deaths.
Twenty-three leftist rebels, eight civilians and one police officer were killed in two major battles between leftist guerrillas and the army, the Colombian Government said today. In Cali, about 1,000 army troops and police officers used tanks and mortars Saturday to bombard leftist M-19 guerrillas entrenched in the slums of Siloe and La Estrella. The M-19 seized the Justice Palace in Bogota last month in a siege that resulted in about 100 people being killed. In the assault in Cali, the officials said that, in addition to the nine deaths, at least 40 people were wounded, most of them civilians. Guerrilla casualties were uncertain. An army report said 23 rebels of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces were killed Saturday while fighting an army brigade in the Uraba region.
A Ugandan rebel leader accused Ugandan soldiers today of mounting an offensive against his guerrillas, but said a peace agreement still could be signed this week. The rebel leader, Yoweri Museveni, said at a news conference here that his National Resistance Army repelled two attacks Saturday, one by 4,000 to 5,000 troops at the Katonga Bridge about 50 miles southwest of Kampala. The other attack was near the town of Masindi, about 120 miles west of Kampala, he said. The Ugandan Government did not comment on the assertions.
The newly formed Congress of South African Trade Unions, the biggest labor federation in the country’s history, said in its first policy statement today that it supported divestment by American and British companies of their South African holdings. In its statement the Congress also called for the resignation of President P. W. Botha, the nationalization of the country’s mines, the withdrawal of troops from segregated black townships and the abolition of the so-called pass laws that limit blacks’ access to white areas. Radical Political Agenda If those laws are not repealed within six months, the Congress’s newly elected president, Elijah Barayi, told 10,000 supporters in a rugby stadium here, “We are going to burn all the passes of the black man.” The Congress says it has a following of 500,000 workers, predominantly black, from 36 labor unions.
The lore of military ineptitude has gained a new lesson in the fate of the Sergeant York antiaircraft gun. The gun had become the butt of stories, some accurate, some apocryphal, of mishaps on the firing range, inflated costs, rigged tests and conflicts of interests until Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger canceled it, writing off $1.8 billion in costs and ordering the dismantling of the 65 completed weapons. So rare is the death of a major weapon project that Howard H. Cooksey, a retired Army lieutenant general involved in the early stages of the weapon, said he had urged the Army to assemble an independent panel for a formal report on lessons to be learned from the gun. He found no interest. “People just want it to go away,” he said.
The parent union of the defunct Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) announced plans to organize the nation’s 14,000 controllers, who have been without labor representation since an illegal strike in 1981 in which President Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers who defied his back-to-work order. Gene DeFries, president of the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, AFL-CIO, said in a statement: “In recent months, a considerable number of controllers have asked us to undertake an organizing campaign at this time.” PATCO, which was an autonomous affiliate of the Marine Engineers, was decertified after the 1981 strike against the Federal Aviation Administration.
President Reagan travels to Los Angeles, CA from the Reagan Ranch to attend The Variety Club Dinner. President Reagan was honored tonight by friends and former colleagues in the entertainment industry at a black-tie affair for charity. The star-studded event, which was taped for broadcast Sunday evening on CBS-TV, brought the President back to Hollywood, where current and former stars reminisced about his careers as an actor, a sports broadcaster and the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild. Mr. Reagan, who was accompanied by his wife, Nancy, and several family members, was making his first public appearance since leaving Washington on Tuesday for a Thanksgiving vacation. The light-hearted show dropped much of the formality normally bestowed on the President. The entertainers referred to him as “Dutch,” an old nickname, throughout the evening although, at one point, Charlton Heston remarked, “To the world you are America.”
President Reagan accepts the resignation of Assistant for National Security Affairs Robert McFarlane effective the end of December.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-New York), former vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Soviet eavesdropping on U.S. telephones has “practically compromised our entire communications system” through interceptions of conversations transmitted by microwave. Moynihan is sponsor of an amendment to the 1986 Justice Department appropriations bill that would require the FBI to spend at least $1 million to study Soviet interception methods.
Two astronauts stepped outside the orbiting shuttle Atlantis today for a second arduous construction exercise in the weightless vacuum of space. To television viewers on the ground, the astronauts, Major Jerry L. Ross of the Air Force and Lieutenant Colonel Sherwood C. Spring of the Army, looked like swimmers in an underwater ballet as they twisted and turned head-over-heels to get at their work. Despite the seeming ease with which they floated from one task to another while manipulating the heavy structures they were building, both were sweating and breathing heavily after the first 20 minutes of labor. Two hours into their space walk, however, both men had hit their stride, and reported that although their hands, feet and backs were moist with sweat, they were working comfortably.
The STS-61-C vehicle moves to the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center. This would be the 24th mission of NASA’s Space Shuttle program, and the seventh mission of Space Shuttle Columbia.
The Democratic National Committee plans to retire the donkey as a symbol of the party in an effort to put on “a new face,” New York magazine said. It was not immediately clear what the new logo would be, but the magazine quoted party officials as saying it was being designed by Saul Bass of Hollywood, who created the symbols of AT&T, Warner Communications and United Air Lines.
A minute amount of radioactivity was released when the working reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant at Middletown, Pennsylvania, shut down because of a malfunction in its electrical generator, its operator said. The Unit 1 reactor was started about 12 hours later, said Lisa Robinson of GPU Nuclear Corp., which operates the plant. No emergency was declared, she said. The plant was to be returned today to the 75% power production level at which it was operating, Robinson said.
A retired tool-and-die maker accused of Nazi crimes during World War II was hospitalized with respiratory problems near Cleveland despite a federal court order directing him to leave the United States. The Immigration and Naturalization Service said Alexander Lehmann’s health prevented him from leaving for West Germany, as ordered in October. Lehmann, 66, is accused of overseeing the killing of more than 300 people in 1942 in the Ukraine.
The 34 people arrested Saturday in Philadelphia for demonstrating in a racially tense neighborhood were released today pending a court hearing December 20. The marchers said they were members of the International Committee Against Racism and the Communist Progressive Labor Party. Carol Fox, whose interracial family has been harassed by white neighbors since she moved into the area recently, said she did not endorse the march. “Now the community is all riled up,” she said. The Rev. William Yeats, chairman of a group established by Mayor W. Wilson Goode to address racial disputes in the area, said the march might heighten tension. Three members of the Ku Klux Klan handed out literature at the demonstration, and James Farrand, who described himself as a leader of the Connecticut chapter, said he planned to call a rally in the community. “You’ll be seeing us again,” he said.
At a time of increased pressure from top Federal officials and some educators and parents groups for public schools to teach moral values, many educators in the New York area say they deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong. In interviews, educators in the suburbs of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut said their schools did try to introduce students to values, such as honesty, discipline and respect for others and for the rule of law. But they said most of this instruction was indirect, by the example of the staff’s conduct, or embodied in the rules of the school. Values are much less discussed in public schools now than they were in the late 1960’s, educators say. And specific courses in values or religion or democracy, once popular in high school curriculums, are now rare, in part because they are controversial and in part because there are few teachers trained to give them.
Efforts to limit suburban growth are being made by residents and officials who are concerned by a surge in the construction of office buildings, hotels and other commercial projects. They range from fast-growing communities in the West to Princeton, New Jersey, Greenwich, Connecticut, and suburbs of Boston, Chicago and Atlanta.
Raising New York’s drinking age from 19 to 21, which started Sunday, should make roads safer by cutting down on drunken driving, state officials said, but they admitted Washington’s threat to withhold $90 million in highway funds also was a consideration. College students are grousing about the new law, but some say they expect to keep on drinking anyway. New York joins 31 other states in the nation that already have a minimum drinking age of 21. Another five states have approved legislation to raise their drinking ages to 21 sometime next year.
Machinists at three of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft’s four plants called their first strike in 25 years after rejecting a three-year contract offer from the giant engine manufacturer. The members of three Hartford, Connecticut, area locals of the International Association of Machinists voted to begin their walkout at 12:01 AM today while a vote by workers at the fourth and largest plant, in East Hartford, fell short of the two-thirds majority required for a strike. The three plants facing a strike are in North Haven, Middletown and Southington and employ about 5,000 machinists.
The labor union that originally organized the now-defunct union for air traffic controllers said Sunday it planned a new effort to organize controllers. The union, the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association, said the executive committee in its Pacific Coast district had voted to finance the effort. Gene DeFries, the association’s president, said the effort would produce a new union and not “a disguised rebirth of the old Patco.” Patco, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified after President Reagan fired 11,500 members in 1981 for striking.
A major storm dumped up to 2 feet of snow in the Rocky Mountains left drifts and icy roads yesterday from the southern Plains to the Great Lakes and the police warned people across parts of the upper Middle West to stay off the roads. “It’s a bona fide blizzard,” said Gary Forster, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines. The storm was blamed for a traffic accident that killed one man in Kansas City, Missouri, and four people in Kansas. Low temperature records were broken from the northern Rocky Mountains into Texas. Snow fell from Oklahoma to the Canadian border.
A theater game named Harold based on improvisation is spreading on college campuses and may hit the big time with corporate sponsorship, according to Del Close, an actor who said he invented the game. In Harold, teams improvise on the stage in response to themes suggested by the audience, which then scores the teams’ performances.
TV mini series “Anne of Green Gables” based on the novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, starring Megan Follows is first shown on CBS in Canada.
NFL Football:
The Green Bay Packers beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 21–0, today in one of the snowiest National Football League games ever. More than 36,000 fans stayed home. The scene was Lambeau Field, where the Packers played in the coldest N.F.L. game, the famed “Ice Bowl,” in which the Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys for the league championship, 21–17. The temperature on that day, December 31, 1967, has been variously recalled as minus 16 or minus 17, but it has never been disputed that the wind-chill factor made it feel colder. Only 19,856 fans attended today, compared to 36,586 who stayed home. Remaining unsold were 485 tickets. Twelve inches of snow had fallen at game time and about four more fell before the final gun. Snow blowers were used at halftime to clear off some of the snow. Winds gusted to 25–35 miles per hour, plunging the wind chill factor to zero. Despite the weather, the Packers said their plan was to come out throwing. It worked, and the Tampa Bay coach, Leeman Bennett, could attest to that. “They did not let the snow get to them. Lynn threw the ball just great,” Bennett said of Lynn Dickey, the Packer quarterback. “It was 85 degrees in Tampa, and they come up here and the snow’s blowing. I know they’re not used to that,” Gerry Ellis, the Green Bay running back, said. “It’s kind of an advantage for us.” The previous snowiest game also involved the Packers. In October 1984, 15 inches fell in Denver in a Monday night game won by the Broncos, 17–14.
Dave Krieg, recovered from a shoulder bruise, passed for two touchdowns to lead Seattle over the Chiefs, 24–7. Krieg teamed with Dan Ross for an 11-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter and with Steve Largent for a 17-yard score in the third quarter. After being listed as questionable all week, he completed 21 of 34 passes for 254 yards and was intercepted once. The other touchdown for the Seahawks (7–6) came on a 5-yard run by Curt Warner in the second quarter. Nick Lowery kicked field goals of 25 and 35 yards for the Chiefs (4–9).
Morten Andersen kicked five field goals and Jack Del Rio, a rookie linebacker, led an inspired defense today as the New Orleans Saints whipped the Los Angeles Rams, 29-3. It was the first National Football League victory for Wade Phillips, who became interim coach of the Saints Monday when his father, Bum Phillips, resigned. The defense of the Saints (5-8) dominated the Rams (9-4) and blew the game open in the fourth quarter. Johnnie Poe picked off a Dieter Brock pass to set up the first touchdown of the game, a 43-yard pass from Bobby Hebert to Eric Martin two plays after the interception. A little over a minute later, linebacker James Haynes sacked Jeff Kemp, who had replaced Brock at quarterback, causing a fumble that Del Rio scooped up and returned 22 yards for a touchdown. Four minutes after that, Rickey Jackson hit Los Angeles tight end David Hill, knocking loose the ball loose at the Rams’ 32-yard line where Del Rio recovered to set up Andersen’s fifth field goal.
The San Francisco 49ers, who got off to a slow start this season after having won the Super Bowl last January, played their way back into a leading position in the playoff picture today as they trounced the Washington Redskins, 35–8, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. With the Los Angeles Rams losing to the New Orleans Saints, the 49ers are now in a position to tie for the lead in the National Football Conference’s Western Division by beating the Rams next Monday night. For the Redskins, the loss virtually eliminated them from the playoffs for the first time in five seasons and all but ended the possibility of a storybook finish under their young quarterback, Jay Schroeder. Schroeder has started since the regular quarterback, Joe Theismann, suffered a broken leg in the game against the Giants November 18. Schroeder led the Redskins to victories over the Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers, but he could not move the team into the end zone today. Schroeder completed 30 of 58 passes, breaking Sonny Jurgensen’s team record of 50 attempts, but none went for a touchdown. Two of his passes were intercepted, and he gave up the ball once on a fumble that was run back for a touchdown. The tone of the game was set on the first play as the 49ers’ Carl Monroe returned the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. Until the 49er linebacker Keena Turner picked up Schroeder’s fumble and ran 65 yards for a touchdown midway through the second period, the Redskins were still in the game, trailing by 21–5. “I never saw him coming and he just got to me,” Schroeder said of Jeff Fuller, the defensive back who crashed into the Redskin backfield and caused the fumble. The 49er defense allowed no touchdowns; the Redskins’ points came on two field goals by Mark Moseley and on a safety called on Montana when he intentionally grounded the ball to avoid being sacked in the end zone.
The Patriots downed the Colts, 38–31. Tony Eason, completing 10 of 11 pass attempts during a second-half scoring spurt, passed for 293 yards and three touchdowns for New England. Eason’s incomplete pass in the second half was also caught, but by the Colts’ Don Anderson. Eason, who regained a starting spot in place of the injured Steve Grogan, hit seven straight passes after that, including a 25-yard touchdown to Stanley Morgan early in the fourth quarter and a 44-yard completion to Tony Collins that set up the clinching touchdown for the Patriots (9–4). The Colts (3–10) got three rushing touchdowns by the fullback Randy McMillan.
Larry Kinnebrew powered for three first-half touchdowns and Boomer Esiason passed for three more scores as a resurrected Cincinnati offense overwhelmed Houston, 45–27. The Bengals (6-7), who did not score a touchdown in their two previous games, stunned the Oilers (5-8) with touchdowns on their first four possessions. Kinnebrew capped drives with touchdown runs of 7, 1 and 3 yards. Esiason, shaking off a bruised hip, hooked up with the running back James Brooks on a 57-yard touchdown pass play for Cincinnati’s other first-half score. Houston got a pair Tony Zendejas’s field goals and a desperation pass touchdown to Butch Woolfolk on the last play of the first half to trim the lead to 28-13, but Esiason put the game out of reach in the third quarter with his second and third touchdown passes.
Steve Sewell ran 2 yards with 1:45 left for his second fourth-quarter touchdown and Mike Harden returned an interception 42 yards for a score as Denver rallied to beat Pittsburgh, 31–23. The Steelers (6–7) suffered their second home field loss in two weeks despite a touchdown on Mike Merriweather’s 35-yard interception return that gave them a short-lived 23–17 lead with 5:02 to play. John Elway, who had earlier thrown a 24-yard scoring pass to Clint Sampson, set up Sewell’s deciding touchdown run with a 27-yard completion to Clarence Key at the Steelers’ 5-yard line. Sewell’s 12-yard run earlier in the quarter had given the Broncos (9–4) a 17–9 lead. Woodley’s 34-yard touchdown pass to Louis Lipps with 6:32 to play, just 1:30 before Merriweather’s touchdown, had rallied the Steelers to 17–16.
John Hendy intercepted two passes, one of which he returned 75 yards for a touchdown, as San Diego rolled over Buffalo, 40–7. Dan Fouts completed 21 of 36 passes for 261 yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions before being relieved by Mark Herrmann in the fourth quarter. The San Diego defense, rated last in the league entering the game, paved the way for 17 of the Chargers’ points by intercepting the Buffalo quarterback, Bruce Mathison, three times in the first half. The Chargers (6–7) moved to a 24–7 halftime lead on a 38-yard touchdown pass from Fouts to Charlie Joiner, a 1-yard scoring run by Tim Spencer, Hendy’s interception return and Bob Thomas’s 24-yard field goal. San Diego added 10 points in the third quarter on a 28-yard field goal by Thomas and Fouts’ 23-yard touchdown pass to Eric Sievers. Fouts fired a 13-yard touchdown pass to Pete Holohan with 11:01 remaining. The lone score for Buffalo (2–11) came on a 2-yard touchdown run by Joe Cribbs with 42 seconds left before halftime.
The Giants and the Cleveland Browns had expected their game today to be a defensive struggle. Instead, it was a high-scoring, big-play battle that was decided on the final play. The Giants could have won had Eric Schubert made a 34-yard field goal attempt. It would have seemed a routine expectation from someone who had kicked field goals of 35 and 40 yards earlier in the game. Instead, Bart Oates’s snap was low, Schubert’s line-drive kick sailed wide to the left and the Browns won, 35–33. The loss knocked the Giants out of a first-place tie in the National Conference’s Eastern Division, though with three games left in the regular season their playoff chances are still good. The Dallas Cowboys, who won Thanksgiving Day, lead the division with a 9–4 record. Next come the Giants at 8–5, the Washington Redskins at 7–6, the Philadelphia Eagles at 6–7 and the St. Louis Cardinals at 4–9. By winning, the Browns took first place in the American Conference’s Central Division. Their 7–6 record puts them ahead of the Pittsburgh Steelers (6–7), the Cincinnati Bengals (6–7) and the Houston Oilers (5–8). The Giants play the Oilers next Sunday in Houston. The dreary weather at Giants Stadium — overcast, chilly and windy -kept the crowd to 66,482, the smallest of the year for a Giants’ home game. The Giants were 5 ½-point favorites, and when the Browns took a 21–7 lead in the first 20 minutes the crowd booed. But not for long. The Giants then scored 26 straight points and led, 33–21, early in the fourth quarter. The Browns then scored twice and took a 35–33 lead with 1 minute 52 seconds left. The Giants then drove downfield, had a chance to win and failed.
Marcus Allen took over the National Football League rushing lead with a 156-yard effort — his sixth consecutive 100-yard performance — and Marc Wilson threw three touchdown passes as Los Angeles downed Atlanta, 34–24. Allen scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 4-yard pass from Wilson in the third quarter and the Raiders (9–4) added two more scores in the final period to stay tied with Denver in the American Conference West. Allen’s 156 yards gave him 1,392 and moved him ahead of Atlanta’s Gerald Riggs, who had 95 yards. The Falcons (2–11) led 17–13 at halftime, but netted only nine yards on their first three possessions of the second half when the Raiders took control of the game.
Wade Wilson, benched for first-half ineffectiveness, returned in the fourth period to throw three touchdown passes as Minnesota overcame a 23-point deficit to beat Philadelphia, 28–23. The Eagles (6-7) led by 23-0 with eight minutes to play, but the Vikings (6-7) drove 58 yards on 7 plays, with Wilson throwing the final 7 yards to the running back Allen Rice for the first Viking score. Minnesota cut it to 23-14 with 6:01 left when the cornerback Willie Teal picked up a fumble by Ron Jaworski and raced 65 yards for a touchdown. The Eagles took the ensuing kickoff and Jaworski completed a pass to John Spagnola, but the tight end fumbled at his 36 and Joey Browner recovered for the Vikings. On third down, Wilson threw 36 yards to the flanker Anthony Carter for the Vikings’ third touchdown. The Eagles were unable to gain on their next possession, and punted to Carter, who returned the ball 22 yards to the Minnesota 40. The Vikings came up with a fourth down and 5 at the Eagle 42, and Wilson threw the distance to Carter.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 0, Green Bay Packers 21
Kansas City Chiefs 6, Seattle Seahawks 24
Los Angeles Rams 3, New Orleans Saints 29
San Francisco 49ers 35, Washington Redskins 8
New England Patriots 38, Indianapolis Colts 31
Houston Oilers 27, Cincinnati Bengals 45
Denver Broncos 31, Pittsburgh Steelers 23
Buffalo Bills 7, San Diego Chargers 40
Cleveland Browns 35, New York Giants 33
Los Angeles Raiders 34, Atlanta Falcons 24
Minnesota Vikings 28, Philadelphia Eagles 23
Born:
Janelle Monáe, American singer-songwriter (Dirty Computer) and actress (“Hidden Figures”), in Kansas City, Kansas.
Eddy Rodríguez, Cuban MLB catcher (San Diego Padres), in Villa Clara, Cuba.
History Diaries 