The Federal Government is now requiring officials assigned in this country from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria to book their travel arrangements within the United States through the State Department. The new policy, which runs counter to previous efforts to keep travel as uninhibited as possible, will make it possible for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep track of the four nations’ officials. The government did not indicate that travel by the nationals of these four countries would be curtailed. But it has warned all the Eastern European allies of the Soviet Union that their diplomats’ right to travel freely will be curbed if any of their nationals are found spying in areas that are closed to Soviet citizens, State Department officials said today.
The existence of AIDS in the Soviet Union was officially acknowledged for the first time today, although a Soviet professor said the number of cases was less than “the fingers on one’s hand.” The professor, V.M. Zhdanov, wrote in an official daily publication, Sovietskaya Kultura, or Soviet Culture, that he had received letters from readers worried that AIDS — acquired immune deficiency syndrome — had struck in the Soviet Union.
Two explosions ripped through two of the largest department stores in Paris today, wounding more than 25 people, 8 of them seriously, fire and police officials said. An anonymous caller speaking on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Front, a breakaway faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed responsibility for the blasts. The group also carried out the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in October, in which an American passenger was slain. Agence Centrale de Presse, a French news agency that received the call, said the caller had warned that a third bomb had been planted at the Parc des Princes stadium, where a soccer match was being played tonight. A spokesman for the police said a thorough search of the stadium had turned up no bomb.
Yugoslavia, a leader in the group of 77 nations that demands a “new international economic order” on behalf of the developing countries, has a north-south problem of its own. The republics of Slovenia and Croatia are the developed north, and people there say they feel that their less developed brothers are milking them. The feeling is most outspoken in this capital of Slovenia, the republic with the highest living levels. Because jealousies among the Yugoslav republics make standard-of-living comparisons political dynamite, only estimates are given. Stanislav Valant, executive vice president of Ljubljanska Banka, said Slovenia was 50 percent or more above the national average, and Croatia 10 to 15 percent. Slovenia’s per capita gross product is six times greater than that of Kosovo, the Albanian-minority region in the south.
[Ed: We know how this movie ends, and it is not pretty.]
Campaigns for a scheduled referendum in March on the question of whether Spain should stay in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have gone into full swing. At issue in the referendum are not only the political future of Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, but also the unity of NATO and the presence of American bases in Spain. Mr. Gonzalez, a Socialist, favors NATO membership. But polls indicate he may lose the nonbinding vote, raising what Spaniards are coming to call “the Felipe dilemma.”
Remedies for acute church problems that have arisen since Vatican II were called for by the bishops of the extraordinary Synod at the end of their two-week meeting in Rome. They issued a report calling for specific actions that was welcomed and approved by Pope John Paul II.
Two policemen were killed tonight when guerrillas attacked an isolated village police station in Northern Ireland, the police said. The Irish Republican Army, which is fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland, took responsibility for the attack. A Royal Ulster Constabulary spokesman, Jim Green, said guerrillas attacked the police station in Balleygawley, County Tyrone, with guns and also threw a bomb. He said there were normally four or five people on duty at the station.
Robert Graves died at his home in Majorca. The English poet and classical scholar was the author of “I, Claudius,” and “The White Goddess,” among many other works. He was 90 years old.
OPEC oil ministers from 13 member countries meeting in Geneva said oil prices may plunge next year, with grave consequences for the world. Saudi Arabia said today that world oil prices could fall from their present level of about $28 a barrel to below $20 next year unless all oil producers cooperate with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in cutting back surplus production. The assertion by Saudi Arabia’s Oil Minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, came at the opening of OPEC’s fifth meeting this year. The 13-nation organization is striving to shore up oil prices in the face of a glutted world market and widespread price discounting by its members. Western analysts agree that prices are likely to come down in 1986 but contend this will help, rather than hurt, the world economy by spurring growth and reducing inflation. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has been unable to agree on a strategy for propping up prices.
Three men who have admitted killing three Israelis aboard a yacht in Cyprus last September acted out of moral duty to the Palestinian cause, their defense counsel argued. Haris Solomindes told a court in Nicosia that the men acted on reasonable evidence that the Israelis, two men and a woman, were intelligence agents responsible for the capture of Palestinian commandos by the Israeli navy. Israel has said they were innocent tourists. The court said it will hand down verdicts in the case December 13.
The Jordanian Government has begun imposing tight restrictions on Muslim fundamentalists, reflecting a growing tendency on the part of Arab Governments to suppress religious extremists. A bill giving the Government the right to monitor sermons at mosques throughout Jordan has been submitted to Parliament by Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifai, according to press reports from Amman, the Jordanian capital. The authorities were earlier reported to have rounded up 250 members of the Moslem Brotherhood, a fundamentalist organization. The reported sweep came after a pledge by King Hussein last month that Jordanian territory would never again be used as a base for fundamentalist terrorists operating against neighboring Syria. The King admitted that such activity had occurred in the past, but said he had not known about it.
Lebanese Shia Muslim leader Nabih Berri blamed the United States for the continuing captivity of two kidnaped Frenchmen, but he promised to intensify his efforts to secure the release of all hostages held in Lebanon. Berri’s statement was prompted by Israel’s release Thursday of a Lebanese prisoner held for 15 months. Berri said the prisoner was one of two kept at Israel’s Atlit detention camp after the release of nearly 700 Shias and Palestinians held there. He said the two Frenchmen would have been released with the passengers of a TWA jetliner hijacked in June if the United States had pressured Israel to release the two Atlit prisoners along with the others.
President Reagan meets with senior administration officials to discuss the sale of arms to Iran.
The U.N. General Assembly’s Social and Economic Commission condemned alleged human rights violations in Iran and Afghanistan. It voted 53 to 22 with 41 abstentions on a resolution expressing “deep concern” over abuses of human rights in Iran, including summary executions and torture. The resolution on Afghanistan, passed 75 to 23 with 33 abstentions, expressed “profound concern” that a report by a U.N. investigator showed that “disregard for human rights is widespread.” The United States voted in favor of both resolutions. Those voting against the resolutions included members of the Soviet Bloc and some nonaligned nations.
At least 11 people were killed and 10 wounded when gunmen in the Baluchistan region of western Pakistan opened fire on a bus that had ignored their order to stop. The police said today that six people were arrested after the shooting Friday at Dera Murad Jamali, about 250 miles north of Karachi. Bandits in Baluchistan and Sind Provinces frequently attack buses, trucks, cars and trains, but the raids have decreased since the authorities increased security.
Marcos supporters are maneuvering in Manila to get the nomination for vice president. President Ferdinand E. Marcos has given no hints about whom he might select as his running mate in February’s elections, but several of his oldest and most loyal supporters, along with his wife Imelda, are lobbying in private to become his constitutional successor. About 20,000 pro-Government youths rallied today in support of President Ferdinand E. Marcos and took an oath pledging their readiness to “die for the country.” Mr. Marcos, who has called a special presidential election on February 7, addressed the crowd, saying, “I come to you today as one who is leading the effort to convert our people into dynamic and strong elements of society.” The 90-minute rally in front of the presidential palace came a day after thousands of people, some stopping near the palace to burn an effigy of Mr. Marcos, called for the ouster of General Fabian C. Ver, the armed forces Chief of Staff. General Ver, one of 26 defendants acquitted on Monday of murder charges in the 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., took a leave of absence during the trial, but was reinstated within hours of acquittal.
China and Nicaragua announced the establishment of diplomatic relations, with Peking vowing to support Managua’s “just struggle to safeguard national independence.” A joint communique issued in Peking said Nicaragua, which previously had diplomatic relations with Taiwan, now “recognizes that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.” Nicaragua is the first Central American nation to establish formal ties with Peking.
Guatemalans vote today in a runoff presidential election widely expected to bring moderate Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo to power after three decades of almost unbroken right-wing military rule. Cerezo, 43, won close to 40% of the vote in the first round on Nov. 3, almost double the tally of his nearest rival, newspaper owner Jorge Carpio Nicolle of the right-wing Union of the National Center. None of five other right-wing parties that contested the first round has pledged support for Carpio, and foreign diplomats and Guatemalan political analysts consider Cerezo’s victory virtually certain.
The Contadora group has suspended negotiations on a peace agreement for Central America for five months at Nicaragua’s request, Colombia’s Foreign Minister, Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, said today. Nicaragua officially proposed the suspension on the grounds that new Governments that take office in Guatemala and Honduras in January and in Costa Rica in April could change policy toward the talks, Mr. Ramirez said at a meeting of the General Assembly of the Organization of American States. “Contadora depends on the political will of each and every one of the five Central American countries and if one of them thinks that the effort should be postponed, it is very clear that the process is interrupted,” Mr. Ramirez said. Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela and Panama, known as the Contadora group after the Panamanian island where their representatives first met to discuss their ideas for a negotiated settlement for Central America’s problems, have been working for nearly three years in an effort to find peace in the region.
Signs of war are plentiful in Uganda. The signs of war are everywhere: at roadblocks manned by armed men in tattered khaki uniforms, in the antiaircraft guns aimed skyward from hilltops, in trucks loaded with soldiers hurtling through the capital over rutted streets on the way to the battlefront. After nearly two decades of political oppression, religious strife and untold atrocities and massacres, Uganda is locked in a war with itself. The Government, which is a coalition of ethnic and political groups largely from the north, is on one side. On the other is the National Resistance Army, which is made up predominantly of people from southern tribes who have been oppressed by successive Ugandan leaders. So complete is the crisis brought about by fighting between factions from the north and south that it has virtually ceased to function as a nation.
Thousands of mourners attended a funeral for 11 riot victims today and heard the leader of a new black union federation threaten a boycott of rent and tax payments to press the campaign for black rights. The South African Press Association said at least 20,000 people attended the service at a soccer stadium in Mlungisi, a black township of Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. Some witnesses said the crowd was perhaps half that large. The press agency quoted Elijah Barayi, leader of the new Congress of South African Trade Unions, which says it has 500,000 members, as telling the crowd, “If the political order in this country does not change soon, we will refuse to pay taxes and rent.” Mr. Barayi repeated his threat made at the federation’s formation a week ago that blacks would burn their passes if the pass laws controlling black movement in white areas were not repealed in six months. The 11 victims buried today were among at least 17 people killed last month in Mlungisi. Residents said the violence on November 17 began when the police opened fire on blacks at a church meeting called to discuss a consumer boycott of white shops.
Radical budget-making changes would result from the legislation to end the Federal deficits that is expected to pass in Congress this week, lawmakers say. They say the measure would alter the policy goals and political stakes in coming budget battles between the White House and Congress. “We are on the threshold of a whole different approach to dealing with the budget,” said Representative Leon E. Panetta, a California Democrat who participated in House-Senate negotiations on the measure. The plan, expected to pass Congress next week, calls for steadily declining annual ceilings on the deficits, with automatic spending cuts set off when the ceilings are exceeded. Both Republican and Democratic supporters said they hoped that the threat of automatic cuts would prod the White House and Congress to agree to compromise their goals enough to reduce the deficit.
President Reagan today blamed past administrations for the crisis in American agriculture and called on Congress to overhaul the nation’s farm policy and send him a farm bill “I can sign.” Mr. Reagan’s five-minute radio address was his most comprehensive assessment this year of the economic crisis in American agriculture. He said the problems confronting the nation’s farmers were a result of dramatic declines in farmland values, a drop in the demand overseas for United States farm products, and record-low prices for most major commodities. Mr. Reagan said these problems were caused in large part by “grain embargoes and failed policies of other administrations, by past inflation, and the difficulty of adjusting to our success in bringing that inflation under control.”
President Reagan participates in a taping for a West Virginia Flood Relief telethon.
President Reagan and Representative Dan Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, began a campaign for tax overhaul today, and a White House official said Mr. Reagan was ready to back the committee’s plan if a Republican alternative failed. In his radio address, Reagan urged Congress to pass a tax plan, but he did not single out any particular version. A White House official said Mr. Reagan would ask House Republicans to support the Democratic version if their tax plan is defeated as expected. Mr. Rostenkowski, asserting that special interests have campaigned hard against proposals to take away their tax benefits, urged Americans to telephone members of Congress to urge changes in the tax system. Mr. Rostenkowski said he and Mr. Reagan are determined to push the bill through the House before Congress recesses for the year. The Senate is not expected to act on the matter until next year.
Potter Stewart died in a hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire, after suffering a stroke December 2. An Eisenhower Republican from Ohio, he had been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court for 23 years and was often a conservative, dissenting member of the Warren Court. He was 70 years old.
A House subcommittee, hoping to streamline U.S. anti-terrorist forces, began work on legislation to unify the Green Berets, Army Delta force, Navy Seals and other special forces under a single civilian command. The readiness subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is planning a Defense Special Operations Agency that would take over control of the elite forces from the individual services, although they would retain their service identities. At the same time, the Air Force Military Airlift Command is completing a proposal for basing long-range aircraft and helicopters abroad so that they could more quickly rush the specialized outfits to the scene of a terrorist action.
The 33 senators elected or reelected last year spent an average of almost $3 million on their campaigns, and it cost $288,636 to win a House race, the Federal Election Commission said. It said the total cost of the 1984 elections was $374.1 million, or 9.3% more than in 1982. Political action committees provided $105.3 million, or 26.5% of all the money raised in congressional races.
President Reagan’s plans for a spaced-based defense system could dangerously step up the arms race, according to a study published by the New York City Bar Association. But the study argues that substantial opportunities exist for developing a long-term arms-control process that would gradually lead to major reductions in offensive nuclear weapons. After two years of preparation, the bar association’s committee on international arms control and security affairs concluded that superpower relations have reached a crossroads that will require both sides to make landmark decisions in the near future. The study makes recommendations to United States policy makers, and it provides a background analysis designed to help the layman understand developments in arms control.
Yelena G. Bonner, the wife of the dissident Soviet physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, arrived in the United States today to seek medical treatment for a heart ailment. She flew to Boston late this afternoon from New York, where she stopped briefly after a few days in Italy. Soviet authorities last month granted Miss Bonner, 62 years old, a three-month visa for medical purposes. She flew to Italy on Monday to consult with an eye specialist.
The St. Louis Globe-Democrat suspended publication indefinitely after a federal bankruptcy judge said that he would appoint a trustee on Monday to operate the 133-year-old newspaper in place of Publisher Jeffrey M. Gluck. Judge David P. McDonald had been asked to appoint the trustee by a group of 14 former Globe-Democrat employees who filed an involuntary bankruptcy petition against the newspaper last summer. Gerald Rimmel, an attorney for the newspaper, said the company was unable to pay its printers because its principal lender, Citicorp Industrial Credit Inc., refused to guarantee the printer’s bills after the ruling.
Terrence M. Scanlon, seeking confirmation as chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, admitted in a letter that “on occasion” during his three years as a commissioner he used government employees and equipment for personal business. Scanlon was answering an inquiry from Senator John C. Danforth (R-Missouri) about allegations that typing and copying for the anti-abortion Right to Life lobby were done in the commission office. He earlier had denied using his staff for non-governmental business.
A former follower of Charles Manson, the mass murderer, is living in Vermont after being released from a prison in West Virginia, according to Governor Madeline M. Kunin of Vermont. A statement released by the Governor’s office confirmed that the former Manson follower, Sandra Good, arrived in Vermont on Monday after her release from the Federal Correctional Center for Women in Alderson, West Virginia.
A man accused of trying to blow up a jetliner carrying his wife and three daughters to collect their insurance was arrested today in Nevada, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. An affidavit attached to the arrest warrant said the man, Albert Lee Thielman, 34 years old, told bureau agents he needed money to pay debts from gambling, drug use and an affair with a woman described as a “nude model.” A bomb exploded October 30 aboard an American Airlines jet at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport after a flight from Austin. Officials said the homemade bomb was in luggage belonging to Mr. Thielman’s wife, Mary. None of the 147 passengers and seven crew members on board were injured. Mr. Dalseg said Mrs. Thielman and the three children, all under the age of seven, were covered by $250,000 each in flight insurance for which Mr. Thielman was the beneficiary. Mr. and Mrs. Thielman each also carried $150,000 in life insurance.
Caterpillar Tractor Co. announced that it will spend more than $600 million to automate its 21 plants around the world, eliminating about 10,600 jobs in the next four years, or about 20% of its work force. The financially beleaguered firm in Peoria, Illinois, is the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment and employs about 53,000 people worldwide.
A convict who became a surgeon is being denied a license in Pennsylvania because of his conviction on drug charges. Dr. Timothy McCormick, who served a term in the state’s Western Penitentiary, graduated last June in the top third of his class. The state’s refusal to license him has raised a bitter controversy.
The NASA space shuttle orbiter Atlantis (STS-61-B) returns to the Kennedy Space Center via Kelly Air Force Base on its 747 transporter.
A Utah turkey processing plant suspected of using spoiled meat in processed products closed Friday, putting 250 people out of work, a spokesman said. The indefinite shutdown of the Norpro Turkey Processors plant, which makes processed turkey products for Norbest, came the same day that Agriculture Secretary John R. Block ordered a ban on the company’s products in school lunch programs. Mr. Block told state agencies, schools and warehouses to discontinue use of products from the Salina plant because of an investigation. Norpro, a joint venture of the Utah Turkey Growers Association and Norbest brands, also said it would voluntarily recall its processed turkey products from commercial channels.
More than 250 New Jersey school board members, administrators and nurses were told today that concerns about the dangers of spreading the AIDS virus through casual contact in the classroom were not based on scientific evidence. Rather than fighting to keep young AIDS victims out of school, parents and school officials should be educating high school students about the genuine risk factors connected with the disease, according to state health officials. It is probable that 20,000 students and teachers in New Jersey have been exposed to the HTLV 3 virus that causes AIDS but this does not mean they will get the disease or transmit the virus, the participants were told.
National Park Service officials say the longest temporary stretch of the Appalachian Trail will be permanently located along a route favored by naturalists but opposed by local residents. The permanent route for the scenic, 16-mile Cumberland Valley segment southwest of Harrisburg had raised concerns among people in the valley between South and Blue Mountains. The temporary route follows public roads in much of the area. The $6.6 million Ridge Route plan, chosen Friday by the Park Service, calls for setting aside a 750-foot corridor cutting across residential and farm land. Environmental and conservation groups say the Ridge Route will allow safer and more scenic hiking on that stretch of the 2,100-mile trail, which runs from Maine to Georgia.
Forty-four years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America remains determined that it “will not again be caught unready,” a Navy admiral said today at a ceremony marking the anniversary. Two hundred people gathered at the USS Arizona memorial park in remembrance of the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy.” Congress declared war on Japan the next day, and on December 11 the United States entered the war against Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy. The December 7, 1941, attack killed more than 2,300 servicemen and 68 civilians at the Pearl Harbor naval base and at Hickam, Wheeler and Bellows air bases. The lesson of Pearl Harbor is “to send a clear signal to potential enemies that America will not again be caught unready,” Vice Admiral Kendall E. Moranville, commander of the Third Fleet, said at the park ceremony.
Many members of the “baby boom” generation, now in their 30s, are finding that they can’t match their parents’ middle-class achievements of nice homes, financial security and higher education for their children, the authors of a new study said. “All around us, there are signs that the middle class is in trouble,” said the study, commissioned by the congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Australian Open Women’s Tennis: Martina Navratilova beats Chris Evert-Lloyd 6–2, 4–6, 6–2 for her 3rd and final Australian singles crown.
51st Heisman Trophy Award: Bo Jackson, Auburn (running back).
Born:
Emily Berrington, English actress (“Humans”), in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
Died:
Potter Stewart, 94th U.S. Supreme Court Justice (1958-1981).
Robert Graves, 90, English poet and classical scholar.
History Diaries 