A high official of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence agency, fled the Soviet Union last year and may be the most valuable defector from the Soviet bloc in recent years, Congressional sources said. The defector was said to have escaped last spring from East Germany and to be providing information that “is much more important” than any provided by Vitaly S. Yurchenko, the turnabout Soviet defector who returned to Moscow last year. One source described the defector as a senior Soviet officer of the K.G.B., the Soviet intelligence and security agency, who escaped by helicopter last spring from East Germany. According to that source, the officer was questioned at an American military base in West Germany before traveling to the United States, where he has assumed a new identity.
The Soviet economy grew by 3.1% in 1985, slightly below planners’ targets but up compared to 1984, the Central Statistics Board said. Western economic experts in Moscow said the figures for national income and industrial production indicated that the Soviet economy had rebounded from a slow start to achieve moderate growth for the year. But they noted that weak production of oil, a major export, continues to hamper Kremlin efforts to modernize the economy.
The Soviet Union today dismissed Vitaly V. Fedorchuk, 67 years old, as Interior Minister and replaced him with a provincial party leader. The new head of the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the regular police, is Aleksandr V. Vlasov, 53, who has held party posts in the Northern Caucasus, where Mikhail S. Gorbachev had his beginnings. The change was the latest in a wide shake-up of high-level positions, in which two dozen ministers have been replaced since Mr. Gorbachev took office as Soviet leader. The announcement today said Mr. Fedorchuk, a Ukrainian, had been transferred to another post, which was not specified. There have been unconfirmed reports that he may replace Vladimir V. Shcherbitsky as the Ukrainian leader. Mr. Fedorchuk is a career officer of the K.G.B., the security police, who rose through the ranks in the Ukraine before being brought to Moscow as national K.G.B. chief by Yuri V. Andropov in the summer of 1982. The following December, Mr. Fedorchuk was transferred to the Interior post.
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, her government rocked by two forced resignations of Cabinet ministers in two weeks, named Paul Channon to replace Trade and Industry Secretary Leon Brittan. Channon, 50, Brittan’s No. 2 man since 1983 as deputy minister for trade, is an heir to part of the Guinness brewery fortune. Meanwhile, a Harris poll taken for today’s editions of the Observer newspaper said 43% of those surveyed think Thatcher should resign, while 48% said she should stay in office.
A strike by printers stopped publication of today’s issues of two of Britain’s main daily newspapers, The Times and The Sun, both owned by Rupert Murdoch. [ However, early editions of Mr. Murdoch’s two Sunday papers, The Sunday Times and The News of the World, were printed and distributed despite the strike, The Associated Press reported from London. ] At issue in the strike by 6,000 printers and other workers against News International, Britain’s largest newspaper group, is the introduction of new technology and Mr. Murdoch’s refusal to pledge that no jobs will be eliminated as a result. Mr. Murdoch has also called for a no-strike agreement, a demand the unions have rejected. The strike against News International is viewed as the start of a battle this year between unions and newspaper publishers determined to introduce cost-saving computer technology.
A Nepalese sergeant serving with the United Nations force in Lebanon was killed today when the Israeli-backed militia known as the South Lebanon Army fired five tank-cannon rounds into the center of Kafra, a Shiite village of 900 people 12 miles east of here, according to United Nations officials. A Lebanese civilian woman was also killed, and seven Lebanese civilians were wounded in the attack, which lasted only a few minutes. The Nepalese sergeant’s death brings to 115 the number of United Nations soldiers killed since the peacekeeping force was deployed in March 1978. He became the first casualty since August, when a Fijian soldier was killed in an ambush near Tyre, probably by Shiite militiamen, officials of the United Nations force said.
Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi boarded an armed Libyan patrol boat today and sailed into the choppy waters of the Gulf of Sidra to stage what he called a confrontation with the United States Sixth Fleet. The colonel was wearing a royal blue jump suit trimmed in emerald green and a navy captain’s hat. He waved his green swagger stick at about 20 foreign reporters who had been taken to Misurata harbor, 120 miles east of Tripoli, to witness the Libyan leader’s defiance of United States air and naval maneuvers off the Libyan coast. “I am sailing out along parallel 32.5 to stress that this is the Libyan border,” he said, referring to Libya’s claim to the entire 150,000-square-mile Gulf of Sidra between Misurata and Benghazi as Libyan territorial waters. “This is the line of death where we shall stand and fight with our backs to the wall,” Colonel Qaddafi said, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter. The colonel’s patrol boat was last seen by reporters heading northeast into the gulf. There was no independent confirmation about his whereabouts tonight or whether he had actually sailed along the latitudinal parallel to Benghazi at the other end of the gulf.
South Yemen’s new head of state, Haider abu Bakr Attas, returned to the Marxist nation from Moscow with a pledge of Soviet support, Aden radio reported. Attas, 49, a civil engineer, was named interim head of state by the Central Committee of the ruling Yemeni Socialist Party after Ali Nasser Hasani was stripped of power following an uprising. A Central Committee statement said the new leadership had fired 19 other officials, including the interior minister and the head of state security.
A fresh wave of bombings, killings and mass arrests in northern India this week has created new tensions between Sikhs and Hindus and damaged the effort to resolve the crisis in the Punjab. In addition, a simmering dispute between factions of Sikhs has burst into the open, with clashes between these groups erupting inside the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikh religion’s holiest shrine. There was a clash between moderate and radical Sikhs in the temple last Sunday. Gunfire was exchanged, and several people were wounded. In response, the four-month-old government of moderate Sikhs in Punjab state sent police reinforcements to the temple for the first time.
Trade between China and the United States rose 26% to a record $7.28 billion in the first 11 months of 1985, compared with the same period in 1984, the U.S. Embassy in Peking reported. The U.S. Commerce Department calculated a U.S. trade deficit of $495 million with China. Clothing valued at $937 million was the largest single import, and U.S. aircraft equipment, machinery and computers accounted for almost half of U.S. exports to China, the department said.
The United States and Japan agreed today that United Airlines could replace Pan American World Airways on trans-Pacific routes, thus clearing the last major obstacle to United’s $750 million purchase of Pan American’s routes in that part of the world. A spokesman for United Airlines said the company would begin flying the newly acquired routes on Feb. 11. The sale of Pan American’s routes to United was contingent, the United spokesman said, on United’s being able to obtain landing rights in Japan and other nations in Asia.
The departure of President Marcos is critical to a non-Communist future for the Philippines and to United States interests there, the Reagan Administration has decided. This view was made clear, explicitly or indirectly, in interviews last week with key officials from the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and other agencies. But the Administration has also decided not to try to push Mr. Marcos from power by covert means, although that was considered by some officials, or by public attacks on him, which some officials have advocated.
Incidents of assassination and intimidation, part of the political tradition in the Philippines, are an increasing factor in the campaign for the presidency, with 13 slayings reported in the Government’s latest count issued today. Nine of the victims have been supporters or campaign workers of the opposition candidate, Corazon C. Aquino, and four were members of President Ferdinand E. Marcos’s party, according to the Government report. Most of the shootings and slayings have occurred in the last six weeks in the provincial areas in central Luzon, 50 miles or more from the capital. This was described as the nation’s “No. 1 hot spot” in a report issued by the military and police authorities.
Searchers combing a Gander, Newfoundland hillside where a DC-8 plane crash killed 248 United States soldiers and 8 crew members say they have found wallets, military dog tags and burned bits of medical records that could help identify bodies. Sgt. Hank Johnston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Friday that searchers found the items as they crawled on their hands and knees in heated 12-square-yard areas covered with plastic sheeting at the crash site. Fewer than half of the 256 victims, most of them soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, have been identified. Canadian investigators say they still do not know why the plane crashed just after takeoff from Gander December 12.
The new Honduran government, which takes office this week, has agreed to allow shipments of U.S. non-lethal aid to Nicaraguan rebels, ending a bottleneck that has hampered the guerrilla war, Washington officials said. Insisting on anonymity, the officials said incoming President Jose Azcona Hoyo will permit the aid — mostly clothing and boots — to be funneled to the insurgents, known as contras, who are battling the leftist Nicaraguan government from base camps along the Honduran border. The supplies have been piling up in New Orleans since the outgoing Honduran government turned back an aid flight last October.
Nicaraguan security officials said they uncovered a ring of CIA-trained and supplied saboteurs planning to blow up targets in Managua, ranging from commercial sites to embassies. They told a Managua press conference that 25 people were arrested on Christmas Day, including a labor leader and an opposition politician. Four of the accused were presented to newsmen, along with weapons and other materials.
An explosion ripped through a Chilean arms factory that makes controversial cluster bombs, and police reported four workers dead, 11 injured and 24 missing and presumed dead. The blast occurred at the Industrias Cardoen factory 20 miles from the northern city of Iquique. The company, Chile’s principal private arms producer, was set up in response to a U.S. arms embargo because of human rights violations under the military-backed dictatorship of President Augusto Pinochet. Workers recovered four bodies at the plant near Iquique, a port city 900 miles north of Santiago, and officials said 24 employees were missing and presumed dead. As the authorities appealed over the radio for blood donations, the area around the factory was cordoned off after “secondary explosions took place in the afternoon,” according to Capt. Juan Saavedra of the police. Company officials said they were trying to find out the cause of the explosion and the extent of the damage, and refused to comment further.
Somalian President Mohammed Siad Barre declared a general amnesty today for thousands of Somali who have been living in exile for nearly a decade. The official Somali radio quoted the President as saying during a visit to Hargeisa, a northwestern regional capital, that exiles wanting to return home should register at the nearest Somali Embassy or Consulate. The exiles, who include former Cabinet ministers, politicians and military officers, fled the country during and after the 1977-78 war with Ethiopia over the disputed Ogaden region.
Two prominent Liberian politicians who contested the October general election that kept Gen. Samuel K. Doe in power have been formally charged with treason, officials said Friday. The officials said a magisterial court in Monrovia served formal arrest warrants last week on Jackson F. Doe, presidential candidate of the Liberia Action Party, who is not related to General Doe, and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was elected to the Senate from the same party. Both were already in jail. General Doe came to power in a 1980 coup and was elected President in October, in a vote that opposition leaders have charged was rigged. General Doe has accused the Liberia Action Party of sponsoring an abortive coup November 12 that was led by Brigadier General Thomas Quiwonkpa, who was shot dead. Jackson Doe, a former Education Minister and Senator in the previous civilian Government, and Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, a former Finance Minister who is on leave from her job as a vice president at Citibank, were implicated in the coup attempt.
Washington’s latest policy on Angola will seek a joint Congressional resolution to provide the anti-Communist rebels in Angola with moral support, but not military and economic aid, Reagan Administration and Congressional sources said. With Jonas Savimbi, the head of the leading rebel group in Angola, due in Washington next week to seek military aid, Secretary of State George P. Shultz outlined the Administration’s latest approach for the first time in an interview on Friday night. The goal of the policy, aides said today, is to show sympathy for the Angolan rebels while keeping alive American efforts to bring about a diplomatic settlement in southern Africa, which might be jeopardized by outright aid. The Angolan rebels have wide backing among American conservatives.
General Tito Okello’s government flees Kampala, Uganda. Western diplomats here said today that rebel troops were virtually in control of Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and that fighting was continuing in and around the city. But telephone and telex links between Nairobi and Kampala were cut this morning, and it was virtually impossible to obtain firsthand verification of the situation. Embassies in Uganda used radio to contact their diplomatic missions here. “Kampala is in N.R.A. hands,” a radio transmission to the British High Commission in Nairobi said tonight, referring to the guerrilla force, the National Resistance Army. “There are still pockets of resistance,” the report said. “Things have quieted down, but there is still shooting.”
Lesotho’s new military rulers deported a group of South African political fugitives today in return for the lifting of a blockade imposed by Pretoria more than three weeks ago. The state-run Lesotho radio said a charter Air Zimbabwe plane flew the 60 South Africans, described as supporters of the African National Congress, to an undisclosed destination. The Congress is the most prominent of exile groups seeking the overthrow of white minority rule in South Africa.
President Reagan makes a radio address to the Nation on his upcoming State of the Union Address. President Reagan, girding for a year of politically-tinged budget battles, called on Congress to “work in a bipartisan spirit to make 1986 the year of opportunities for America….” If Republicans and Democrats work together, Reagan said in his weekly radio talk, delivered from the White House, 1986 can be “a year to unite for full employment from Harlem to Hawaii, so that every American who seeks work can find work.” Delivering the Democratic response, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan said Democrats share Reagan’s hopes but disagree with his approach to the budget deficit, which stresses opposition to tax increases and seeks growth in defense spending.
President Reagan attends the 72nd Annual Alfalfa Club Dinner.
The launching of the space shuttle Challenger planned tomorrow has been postponed because of menacing weather. Space agency officials said it was tentatively rescheduled for 9:37 AM Monday, pending further review Sunday afternoon. The flight had been scheduled for liftoff Sunday at 9:36 PM, carrying a crew of seven, including a schoolteacher. Officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the postponement tonight, as a cold front threatened to bring low clouds, wind, rain and thunderstorms into the area by Sunday morning. The front was expected to have passed through the area by Monday.
Voyager 2’s cameras discovered another small moon and another faint ring of particles orbiting the planet Uranus and also observed a strange “electro-glow” and a surprising tilt to the Uranian magnetic field. The spacecraft, which flew by Uranus Friday, was transmitting more detailed pictures showing mountains, craters, and deep trenches on the major moons of Uranus. Voyager is now 700,000 miles beyond Uranus, traveling 33,000 miles an hour and looking back with its cameras and remote sensors for further glimpses of the planet. The discovery of another moon, about 32 miles in diameter, brought to 15 the number of satellites known to circle Uranus. Only five had been observed before Voyager’s explorations.
After an overnight meeting with Senate tax writers and top officials of the Treasury Department, Bob Packwood, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said today that he sensed his committee would vote to limit Federal deductions for some state and local taxes. Mr. Packwood said the “overwhelming preponderance” of the committee opposed tax increases and that the members had a “strong feeling” that the Senate measure should provide better incentives for business investment than the measure the House of Representatives passed last month. The Senator, an Oregon Republican, spoke at a news conference after the committee members and Treasury officials returned from a day and a half of meetings at a country inn in West Virginia. Mr. Packwood and Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d convened the retreat at the outset of the Finance Committee’s work on tax legislation to allow the lawmakers and Administration policy makers to exchange views without interference from reporters, lobbyists and staff members. “I know we can get a bill of some kind that will be satisfactory to 14 to 16 members of the committee,” Senator Packwood said. The committee has 20 members.
About 30 corporate chiefs and University of Pennsylvania trustees listened politely as Bishop Desmond M. Tutu of South Africa told them recently that they should be ready to use their influence to withdraw American investments from his country if its Government did not act quickly to end strict racial separation. Three days later, on January 17, the board of trustees voted to wait at least 18 months before deciding whether to divest the university of any of its $92 million in holdings in companies that do business in South Africa. “Bishop Tutu does not have to run a university,” said Paul Miller, chairman of the trustees. But 1,500 students at the university who had also heard the Bishop speak showed wholehearted agreement with his position, greeting him with a long standing ovation and vowing to press the divestment issue. “They had already decided they were going to love us,” said Bishop Tutu, who won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.
The FBI entered the search for a missing Army weapons research engineer who reportedly has a top-secret security clearance. A spokesman for the U.S. Army Armament Research and Development Center in Dover, New Jersey, said Gary Gnibus, 31, last reported for work on December 13. The spokesman said the research center is the site of at least one project related to President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars” space defense program. The FBI and the Army declined comment on whether foul play or espionage might be involved.
About 200 demonstrators, some toting baseball bats, marched through Philadelphia in freezing rain to protest recent racial violence in the city and to warn they would meet future incidents with equal force. “Racists are going to be scared of us,” said Robert Anderson of Boston, one of several speakers who addressed the racially mixed group. “We don’t believe in nonviolence or pacifism. We don’t believe that’s the way to solve problems.” Much of the rhetoric was directed at Mayor W. Wilson Goode for his actions in the May 13 MOVE disaster.
Dallas school officials, admitting they were negligent in checking the criminal histories of the county’s 900 school bus drivers, said they plan to fire four drivers with criminal records and are considering the dismissal of 13 others. The announcement came after a twice-convicted rapist was charged last week with molesting a 13-year-old handicapped girl who was a passenger on his bus.
The swift and drastic fall in the price of oil on world markets over the last week has sent a deep shudder throughout Texas, stirring fears that this oil-rich region will be thrown into a recession. The price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil, a key indicator of the Texas energy industry’s health, fell to $19.60 by Friday, the lowest price in eight years. That was a drop of more than $5 a barrel in one week, as much as it had fallen in the five years before that. At one time many oil experts were predicting that oil would be selling now at $50 or even $70 a barrel. Economists say the ultimate effect of this on the regional economy here will depend on where the volatile market settles, and they point out that many industries here, as in the Northeast, would benefit from sustained low energy costs. But M. Ray Perryman, director of the Baylor University Forecasting Service in Waco, said oil prices below $22 a barrel would lead to a “significant recession” in Texas that would affect all portions of the economy except agriculture.
Negotiations for a new contract to end the strike of fishermen against boat owners in New Bedford, Massachusetts have broken off. “We are still far apart,” David Barnet, attorney for the owners’ group, the Seafood Producers Association, said Friday. Talks between the association and the Seafarers International Union resumed Friday but ended after the boat owners rejected a union proposal. The main issue is how to split the proceeds from the sale of fish. The fishermen say their share has not changed for 25 years as catches have declined.
Eight people were killed and more than a dozen were injured in a 27-vehicle, chain-reaction accident in dense fog today near Marion, Arkansas, the police said. The series of accidents on Interstate 55 four miles north of West Memphis, Arkansas, began about 9:30 AM, the state police said, after fog rapidly formed west of Marion. The vehicles included eight tractor-trailer rigs. A load of pipe came loose from a tractor-trailer that jackknifed and the pipe crushed a late-model sedan, in which two people died.
The police have charged 27 people, including a Red Cross worker, with misusing more than $40,000 given to Puerto Rico by the American Red Cross after flooding last October. The suspects, who were arrested Friday, appeared in the Ponce Superior Court and were charged with fraud and illegal appropriation. Among them was Julio Enrique Santiago, who was in charge of distributing Red Cross vouchers in Santa Isabel, a city of 20,000 people just east of Ponce, where all 27 suspects live.
For more than a decade the black political agenda in Alabama has been dominated by the Alabama Democratic Conference and its chairman, Joe Reed. But Mr. Reed’s longtime role as power broker now faces a challenge from the Alabama New South Coalition, formed today by several hundred black politicians led by Mayor Richard Arrington Jr. of Birmingham and younger legislators from the mostly black counties of western Alabama. In a speech this morning, Mr. Arrington said the purpose of the new organization was “not to sow seeds of division or dissension but to do things better, to broaden political participation.” The state’s black political leadership has been involved in increased feuding in recent years, including a deep rift in the 1984 Democratic Presidential primary campaign in Alabama, when Mr. Reed’s group backed Walter F. Mondale and many other blacks sided with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
An environmental group charged that the Environmental Protection Agency is using “stop-gap” methods in hazardous-waste cleanups that simply transfer contaminated soil from one place to another. The Washington-based National Campaign Against Toxic Hazards said that cleanups planned under the federal Superfund program will leave toxic materials in the ground and do nothing to cleanse poisoned ground water. The EPA denied the allegations and said it is considering alternatives to redumping the wastes collected from hazardous sites.
A jury has ordered a Massachusetts company to pay Greenville, South Carolina $8.4 million in damages for selling it an asbestos-based fireproofing material used in City Hall. Attorneys for the seller, W. R. Grace & Company, said they would appeal Friday’s verdict. The city alleged that Grace was negligent and had broken an implied warranty by selling the city a product made with asbestos, which can cause cancer. According to testimony, city officials did not realize until 1982, 11 years after City Hall was built, that the fireproofing in it contained asbestos.
Reversing earlier statements, the Army admitted it found a poisonous chemical at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal five months before reports disclosed the chemical had polluted nearby drinking wells. Army officials had claimed the toxic solvent TCE was discovered only after the Denver Post reported in July that the chemical had contaminated wells supplying 30,000 people. The Army now says it had the first test results from well samples last February.
Edmonton’s Paul Coffey sets NHL record for defensemen with a point in his 28th consecutive game, as the Oilers beat the visiting LA Kings, 5-2.
Born:
Vogue Williams, Irish model and media personality, in Dublin, Ireland.
Died:
Ernst Schnabel, 72, German writer and pioneer of the radio documentary.
History Diaries 