White House officials, warning that the detention of an American reporter in Moscow could affect a summit meeting, said today that the United States had made a proposal to gain freedom for the journalist. The offer, which officials said had been conveyed to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, calls for freeing of the reporter, Nicholas S. Daniloff, and for release of a Soviet espionage suspect in New York into Soviet custody pending a trial. American officials said there had been no immediate Soviet response. Although the State Department has refused to link the Daniloff case with that of the Soviet suspect, Gennadi F. Zakharov, who is a United Nations employee, the White House made it plain that a linkage had been made. In discussing the offer, Larry Speakes, the White House spokesman, said the arrest of Mr. Daniloff, who is the Moscow correspondent of the news magazine U.S. News & World Report, “could have a negative effect on U.S.-Soviet relations.” Later another White House official said the detention of Mr. Daniloff for what the Russians said was espionage could endanger the possibility of a meeting this year between President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
Reagan Administration officials said today that they hoped the Soviet Union would use the next round of talks on nuclear testing to explain its technique for measuring the size of nuclear explosions and its assertion that a test ban could be verified. The officials hope that the talks, which resume in Geneva on Thursday, will help lay the basis for additional verification measures for two treaties that limit the size of nuclear explosions. The United States has refused to ratify the treaties, signed in the 1970’s, until verification is improved. Ratification, in turn, may break a deadlock on the testing issue, thus adding momentum to the arms control process. The Soviet Union has pressed for a total test ban.
Senior U.S. and Soviet officials meeting to discuss the conflict in Afghanistan held business-like talks in Moscow and completed their agenda a day early, U.S. Embassy officials said. The two sides exchanged views at the talks, which officials said were not intended to negotiate an end to the seven-year-old conflict. “There are things we do not agree much on,” one embassy official said. “They have their views and we have ours and our views are not the same. But the talks were conducted in a businesslike manner.” The one-day meeting, originally scheduled for two, was the latest in a series aimed at laying the groundwork for a superpower summit later this year.
About 4,900 apartment buildings and 45,000 private homes were damaged in Moldavia by an earthquake and a strong aftershock this week, the Government newspaper Izvestia said today. The article was the most detailed report of damage from the quake, which rocked the Balkans and part of the Soviet Union early Sunday. It was the first mention of an aftershock Tuesday in Moldavia, which Izvestia said registered 5 on the Soviet scale.
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou has told his Socialist Party’s central committee that he has “personally informed” the United States that Greece may at some unspecified time demand the removal of nuclear weapons stored here. Western officials said they were unaware of such an approach to the United States. Mr. Papandreou also said that the threat against which Greece’s armed forces were on guard came from Turkey, Greece’s ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and not the country’s Communist neighbors. Mr. Papandreou said Greece had been pursuing the objective of removing nuclear arms stockpiles within the framework of a longstanding initiative involving Communist and pro-Western Balkan nations to make the peninsula a nuclear-free zone. He noted that Turkey had been blocking the effort. “If there is no progress there, we will unilaterally send back all the nuclear weapons in Greece,” he said last weekend. “This is a commitment to the people. I have personally informed the United States accordingly.”
A special Middle East mission by a senior United States envoy has failed to produce enough results to warrant a trip to the region by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, high-ranking Reagan Administration officials said today. They said that after months of reluctance about making such a trip, Mr. Shultz had been leaning in recent days toward going next week. But the officials said Mr. Shultz, now on vacation at his farm in Massachusetts, decided today against going himself because the mission by the envoy, Richard W. Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, had not made enough progress. Mr. Shultz has been under heavy pressure from Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel to visit the Mideast. Mr. Peres, the Labor Party leader, who is to switch jobs next month with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the Likud bloc, has been seeking a public show of United States support for his diplomatic efforts.
Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres said that snags in resolving a dispute over Taba, a beach area on the Sinai Peninsula, are holding up plans for a summit with President Hosni Mubarak that had been tentatively scheduled for next week. In remarks to Israel’s Foreign Press Assn., Peres said: “As may happen in negotiations, there are always difficulties at the last moment. For the time being, neither a time or a place has been designated. It’s still hanging in the air.” In Alexandria, Egypt, Israeli negotiators met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Esmat Abdel Meguid in an effort to settle the nettlesome points.
Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir has been questioned secretly by police about his alleged role in the killing of two Palestinian prisoners by security agents when he was prime minister in 1984, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. Shamir repeated his stand that he had not known about the killings until after they occurred and denied accusations that he approved a cover-up by agents of the Shin Bet security service, the newspaper added. He also denied approving the perjury of witnesses and the falsification of evidence submitted to three separate inquiries into the affair.
An effort at reconciliation between Muslim and Christian officials appears for the moment to have rescued the Government of President Amin Gemayel from near collapse, officials and commentors here believe. They said the effort had also given this strife-torn country a badly needed respite. A meeting here Tuesday of the half-Muslim, half-Christian Cabinet — its first this year — in effect stopped a Syrian-backed campaign by Muslim leaders for Mr. Gemayel’s resignation. The President is a Maronite Catholic who has completed four of six years of his term. Mr. Gemayel’s refusal to succumb to political and military pressure plus the support he received from fellow Christians are credited for his official survival. But it is widely agreed here that he may still become Lebanon’s last Christian head of state if the Cabinet fails this time to lay down a new power-sharing formula that would meet Muslim aspirations for equality with the Christians.
Iran stopped two Soviet ships in the Persian Gulf this week, shipping executives here said today. They said the actions, one of which occurred today, were the first against the Soviet Union, Iraq’s main arms supplier, since the Iranian Navy began searching freighters for military cargo early last year. On Tuesday, Iranian warships were reported to have chased the Pyotr Yemtsov in the southern Persian Gulf and then forced her into the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to be searched. The shipping executives said the second vessel was briefly detained today. The ship was identified only as the Tutov.
Heavy fighting erupted between Sri Lankan troops and Tamil separatist guerrillas in northwestern Sri Lanka after the rebels blew up a bridge from an island to the mainland, military sources and residents reported. Naval vessels surrounded Mannar Island while helicopter gunships pounded guerrilla positions and troops moved on the ground, residents in the town of Mannar said by telephone. The guerrillas of the Tamil minority, opposed to the majority Sinhalese population’s domination of Sri Lankan affairs, are fighting for a separate state.
The Soviet Foreign Ministry has sent the head of its recently created Southeast Asia department to the region for discussions in advance of the annual United Nations General Assembly, according to Thai officials. Thailand is a member of the Security Council. The Soviet envoy, Anatoly M. Zaitsev, who has already visited Manila and Jakarta, arrived here this week and repeated Moscow’s strong opposition to Washington’s plan to change the status of Pacific Trust Territories that the United States administers. The United States intends to relinquish its United Nations mandate in Micronesia in return for “compacts of free association” with Pacific island countries that would leave military decisions in American hands. The Soviet Union, which has been building up its Pacific fleet and seeking fishing, port and aircraft-landing agreements with Vanuatu, Kiribati and other small Pacific countries, would like to block the American request in the United Nations, Soviet diplomats and regional officials said.
A senior Vatican official said today that Pope John Paul II had given his full backing to Nicaraguan church leaders in a confrontation with the Managua Government over what critics says is harassment of the church and violations of human rights. The Roman Catholic Church’s complaints are expected to be raised at a future meeting between Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, Archbishop of Managua, and President Daniel Ortega Saavedra. Mr. Ortega has repeatedly sought direct contacts with the Holy See to discuss disputes. But the Vatican official said Cardinal Obando had been authorized to insist that the Government must first prove its good faith in talks with local church officials before the Vatican would consider negotiations with the Sandinistas.
The Reagan Administration has refused to let a private relief agency send farm tools to leftist-ruled Nicaragua. U.S. officials rejected an application from Oxfam America, a Boston-based relief agency, to ship $41,000 worth of farm equipment, Oxfam officials said. John Hammock, Oxfam’s executive director, said in an interview that the shipment to two private Nicaraguan agencies had been intended to help alleviate hunger in the country, the target of a U.S. trade embargo for more than a year. “We are dealing with the politics of hunger,” Hammock said, “the government playing politics with the poor overseas.”
Spain, angered over alleged spying by Chilean agents who it says rummaged through wastebaskets at its embassy in Santiago, recalled Ambassador Miguel Solano from Chile “for consultations.” A Foreign Ministry spokesman said, “We have sought explanations from the Chilean authorities, and what they told us was unsatisfactory and unconvincing.” Spanish officials said last month that Chilean agents rummaged through refuse for several weeks to recover used typewriter ribbons, carbon paper and shredded documents that they pieced together and read. The officials said no sensitive information was in the trash.
A Zimbabwean Government official said his country would not change certain policies because of a cutoff of new economic aid by the United States. The United States’ move followed a bitter attack by a Zimbabwean Cabinet minister on United States policy in Southern Africa at a reception at the American Embassy in Harare on July 4.
The South African authorities imposed new and tougher measures today barring reporters from covering any actions of the security forces. The new measures include a prohibition on reporters’ being “within sight” of any unrest, restricted gathering or police action. The order by the Commissioner of Police, Gen. Johan Coetzee, was published the day before mass funeral services were expected to be held in the black township of Soweto, near Johannesburg, for 20 blacks killed in disturbances last week. On Tuesday the authorities issued orders banning outdoor ceremonies attended by more than 200 people, and any political speeches or signs, at funerals for those killed in black unrest.
John Lewis defeated State Senator Julian Bond for the Fifth Congressional seat in Atlanta by a margin of nearly 4 percent, according to polls. Political experts in Atlanta viewed the outcome as a victory for the city’s poor and working-class blacks. “It was a quiet scream from people who were saying, ‘We’re tired of you ignoring us,’ ” said a candidate who had quit the race earlier.
Atlanta woke this morning to find that yesterday’s political assumptions were today’s trash. And standing in the midst of the litter, in a city known for the power of its black establishment and black oratory, was the short, inelegant, stubborn man who had taken on that establishment and broken the mold: John Lewis. Three weeks ago he and two other candidates in the primary election for the Democratic nomination to represent Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes most of Atlanta, had been beaten rather decisively by State Senator Julian Bond, a tall, eloquent politician with a patrician manner who has been a national spokesman for civil rights and the concerns of blacks for 20 years. Mr. Bond won 47 percent of the vote in the Aug. 12 primary, short of a majority, setting up a runoff with Mr. Lewis, who placed second, with 35 percent. In three more weeks of campaigning, Mr. Bond, a skilled debater, talked circles around Mr. Lewis, all the while brandishing the names of his supporters: the bishops and officeholders of the black establishment.
President Reagan places a call to James R. Spencer, Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
President Reagan places a call to Colonel Richard E. Peasley, Commanding Officer, Marine Helicopter Squadron One.
Public approval of President Reagan’s job performance has declined slightly, the latest New York Times/ CBS News Poll shows. Sixty-two percent of the 1,210 respondents interviewed from August 18 to 21 said they approved of how he was handling his job while 25 percent disapproved. In a Times/CBS News Poll conducted in late June, 67 percent approved and 23 percent disapproved of his performance. Both surveys had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points. Approval dropped most sharply among women, from 65 percent to 58 percent; people 18 to 29 years old, from 77 to 66 percent; Democrats, from 51 to 42 percent, and among residents of the Northeast and Middle West. In the Northeast approval declined from 71 to 62 percent. In the Middle West the fall was from 66 to 57 percent.
Four and a half years after Vice President Bush established the South Florida Task Force, the most ambitious and expensive drug enforcement operation in the nation’s history, the Federal officials who run it say they have barely dented the drug trade here. Far more cocaine is being smuggled through Florida today than before the task force was established in February 1982, numerous officials from nearly a dozen state and Federal agencies said in interviews. The Reagan Administration is preparing an even more ambitious new program, patterned in part on the South Florida Task Force, to attack the large increase in drug trafficking and related violence along the Mexican border. In Florida, law-enforcement officers charged with intercepting smugglers say the traffickers have countered their presence by becoming more adept, using digital beepers to evade telephone wiretaps and boats that elude radar, for example. Officials say they have had almost no success in penetrating the principal drug smuggling organizations and in most cases do not even know who the major traffickers are.
The Agriculture Department said today that it had turned over the pursuit of 6,500 delinquent Federal farm loans to a commercial bill collector. The action was the latest step in Government efforts to broaden and intensify the collection of delinquent farm loans, which total at least $630 million. It was the first time the Farmers Home Administration, the department’s rural credit office, had given a private bill collector the right to collect bad debts, according to Ron Ence, an agency spokesman. In the past the agency has relied on its own state and county supervisors and, in a few cases, on lawsuits brought in Federal court by United States attorneys.
Earnings by black men improved dramatically over the last 45 years, according to a new study by the United States Commission on Civil Rights. The study said civil rights laws “broke down barriers for many blacks” leading to changes in hiring practices of corporations and making it easier for blacks to obtain training and benefits of labor union membership.
Federal aviation officials gave the pilot of the small plane that collided Sunday with a jetliner, killing all passengers aboard, a clean bill of health. The pilot’s condition became a focus of controversy when officials said he suffered a heart attack immediately before the crash.
A train hauling the second of an expected 20 shipments of radioactive debris from Pennsylvania’s 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident to Idaho carried twice as much waste as was carried on the first cross-country trip in July, an Energy Department official said. The train, with about 15,000 pounds of nuclear waste, was bound for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in Idaho Falls.
The Alabama Supreme Court in Montgomery rejected Attorney General Charles Graddick’s appeal for a new runoff, leaving Lieutenant Governor Bill Baxley as the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nominee. The court, in a 6–2 decision, upheld a party subcommittee’s ruling that Graddick’s 8,756-vote runoff victory over Baxley resulted from illegal Republican crossover votes. The subcommittee declared Baxley the winner of the June 24 election, making him the nominee to succeed Governor George C. Wallace.
A factory cooling tower was the primary source of bacteria responsible for a fatal outbreak of legionnaires’ disease, Wisconsin state officials said today. The cooling tower, where the bacteria was found, has been cleaned, officials said. The factory, which makes auto parts and accessories, is on the city of Sheboygan’s northwest side, where almost all of the victims lived. Dr. Jeff Davis, an epidemiologist with the State Health Division, said the bacteria probably was blown from nearby soil and “seeded in the holding tank.” After it reached maturity, the bacteria was blown around the 15-square-block area near the plant by an exhaust fan, he said.
The nation’s military services managed to meet or exceed their recruiting goals in the first nine months of the fiscal year 1986, but the Navy continued to lag behind the other services in signing up high school graduates, a new report shows. The report, released Tuesday, shows the Air Force exactly matched its nine-month recruiting goal while the Navy, Army and Marine Corps slightly exceeded their objectives. All told, the four services recruited 233,000 men and women from October 1, 1985, to June 30, 1986, as against a combined objective of 231,500. Of the total, 218,400 recruits had not previously served in the military and the 14,600 others were returning to the services after breaks in their military careers.
Extra security surrounded the Moiseyev Dance Company as it performed in New York, one day after a tear-gas bombing forced the evacuation of 4,000 people from the Metropolitan Opera House during a show by the Soviet dance troupe. The company received a standing ovation as the performance ended without incident. The FBI and city police, meanwhile, joined to investigate Tuesday’s incident, which caused minor injuries to 30 people. “It’s a very intense investigation,” said James Fox, deputy head of the FBI’s New York office.
Attorneys for Samantha Smith’s mother, Jane, filed a $50-million lawsuit in Boston against Bar Harbor Airways Inc., operator of the commuter plane that crashed in fog and rain August 25, 1985, killing the 13-year-old girl, her father, Arthur, and six others. Samantha had attracted national attention by writing to then-Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov, mentioning her fears about the possibility of nuclear war. At Andropov’s invitation, the Maine girl and her family visited his country in 1983.
A “soldier” in the Gambino organized-crime family became an informer and wore a secret recording device during clandestine meetings with John Gotti and others in the crime group for more than two years, according to court papers that were unsealed yesterday. One of the recordings made by the informer provides “direct evidence of John Gotti’s role as manager” of a gambling enterprise, the papers say. Law-enforcement experts said this was the first time a “made” member of an organized-crime family — someone who had taken an oath of secrecy — had cooperated with investigators by wearing a recording device while participating in mob activities. Other organized-crime members have become informers, but only to tell of past activities, the authorities said.
Two new studies provide evidence that electronic fetal monitoring and Caesarean delivery are not significantly improving the health of infants. A study of nearly 35,000 births in Dallas found that routine use of continuous electronic monitoring of the fetal heart rate led to an increase in Caesarean deliveries but no major improvement in the health of babies, said doctors at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. A study of more than 65,000 births at four Brooklyn hospitals found that private physicians performed “significantly more” Caesarean deliveries than doctors in hospital clinics, without “demonstrably improving” the outcome for most babies, said researchers at State University of New York.
A man described only as in his early 20s collapsed and died in Runnemede, New Jersey, after apparently drinking a cup of chicken noodle soup that was contaminated with cyanide, authorities said. Leigh Cook, a state Health Department spokeswoman, said tests revealed “there was cyanide poisoning in both the body fluids of the man and cyanide in the residue” of the soup packet. Camden County Prosecutor Samuel Asbell said the man died Monday at a hospital.
Top vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary prepared strategies for Florida’s statewide runoff election September 30 to decide which candidates will compete for the governorship in November.
Alan Ayckbourn’s “Woman in Mind” premieres in London.
Major League Baseball:
The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Braves in Atlanta, 5–3. Terry Pendleton had four hits for the second time in his career and drove in one of three first-inning runs that boosted St. Louis. Right-hander Danny Cox, 9–11, allowed seven hits over 6 ⅔ innings for the Cardinals.
Wade Boggs doubled home LaSchelle Tarver with one out in the ninth inning to give the Boston Red Sox their fifth straight victory tonight, a 4–3 decision over the Texas Rangers. The Red Sox maintained their four-and-a-half-game lead over Toronto in the American League East. Mike Greenwell opened the Boston ninth with a single and was replaced by Tarver. Spike Owen struck out trying to sacrifice, but Boggs lined a 3–2 pitch to left-center field, scoring Tarver. Boggs went 3 for 5, including a home run.
Gary Pettis tripled home the tiebreaking run in the fifth inning and scored on Rob Wilfong’s single as the California Angels beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5–2.
In a two-day, 18-inning marathon at Wrigley the Cubs and Astros set a Major League record by using 53 players, including 17 pitchers, tying the number used 3 weeks ago. Chicago loses this game, 8–7. After the Astros score 3 runs in the top of the 17th, Greg Maddux makes his debut as a pinch runner for Jody Davis as the Cubs score 3 runs in the inning on Keith Moreland’s homer. Maddux stays in to pitch the top of the 18th and takes a loss on a Billy Hatcher home run. The winner is Danny Darwin, who also was victorious on September 1 as a starter. The Cubs then lose the regularly scheduled game, 8–2. collecting just 4 hits. Dickie Thon, a pinch-hitter, belted a three-run homer and Denny Walling added a two-run home run as Houston beat Chicago for a sweep of their three-game series. In the 8–2 victory, Mike Scott, the National League’s strikeout leader, struck out 12, including a record-tying four in one inning. He raised his season’s total to 253 and his record to 15–9.
Sid Bream hit a two-out double in the 10th inning to drive in two runs as the Pittsburgh Pirates snapped the Cincinnati Reds’ six-game home winning streak, beating them, 5–3.
Willie Wilson dashed home from third base on Kevin Seitzer’s infield single with one out in the 10th inning to boost the Kansas City Royals over the Chicago White Sox, 2–1. Seitzer, a rookie, was credited with a single on the high bouncer to third baseman Dave Cochrane, who fielded the ball barehanded but threw wide to the plate.
Kirby Puckett, Tom Brunansky and Al Woods hit home runs, powering the Minnesota Twins to an 11–5 victory over the visiting Milwaukee Brewers. Puckett, who went 4 for 5, and Brunansky both connected for two-run shots during a five-run second inning against Ted Higuera, 17–9.
The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Montreal Expos, 5–3. Bill Madlock had two hits and drove in three runs, and Ralph Bryant hit a two-run homer for Los Angeles.
Pitching in the 3rd inning against the New York Mets, San Francisco Giants rookie Terry Mulholland snags a hard grounder off Keith Hernandez but can’t retrieve the ball from the webbing of his glove. Thinking fast, Mulholland runs towards first and tosses his mitt to first baseman Bob Brenly for the out. Brenly later regrets, “I should have flipped the glove around the infield.” The Giants still come up short, losing 4–2. Bobby Ojeda froze the Giants on one hit for the first six innings, and nobody else reached base. Then he gave up two more hits, a walk and two runs in the seventh. But, at the close, he was pitching with precision, and he delivered a professional three-hitter only five days after he had delivered a five-hitter against the Dodgers.
The news that Lou Piniella delivered this afternoon was grim. The defeat was one thing, but now the Yankee manager had to contend with two more untimely injuries — one of them to Tommy John, who sustained a thumb injury to his pitching hand in a freakish accident before the game and may be lost for the remainder of the season. The loss came to the Oakland A’s, 5–3, but there was far greater concern for John and Rickey Henderson, who sustained an injury to his right hand diving for a fly ball in the fifth inning. X-rays taken later today were negative, and Henderson’s condition will be evaluated on a day-to-day basis.
Terry Kennedy hit a three-run double as the San Diego Padres rallied for six unearned runs with two out in the ninth inning to beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7–5.
The Detroit Tigers fell to the Seattle Mariners, 3–2 at Seattle. Pinch-hitter Ken Phelps connected for a solo home run with two outs in the ninth inning to give Seattle the victory.
The Toronto Blue Jays beat the Cleveland Indians, 3–1. Dave Stieb won his 100th career game, checking Cleveland on seven singles over seven and two-thirds innings. Stieb (5–10) struck out three and walked one in his longest outing since July 9, a span of nine starts. The victory gave him a career record of 100-90. Tom Henke finished for his 20th save.
St. Louis Cardinals 5, Atlanta Braves 3
Texas Rangers 3, Boston Red Sox 4
Baltimore Orioles 2, California Angels 5
Houston Astros 8, Chicago Cubs 2
Pittsburgh Pirates 5, Cincinnati Reds 3
Chicago White Sox 1, Kansas City Royals 2
Milwaukee Brewers 5, Minnesota Twins 11
Los Angeles Dodgers 5, Montreal Expos 3
San Francisco Giants 2, New York Mets 4
New York Yankees 3, Oakland Athletics 5
San Diego Padres 7, Philadelphia Phillies 5
Detroit Tigers 2, Seattle Mariners 3
Cleveland Indians 1, Toronto Blue Jays 3
A spurt of buying in the last hour yesterday helped Wall Street rebound somewhat from Tuesday’s big loss. But the recovery was confined to blue-chip and transportation issues, and gainers and losers in the broader market were at a virtual standoff. Buying programs by big institutions were said to be responsible for pushing trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange up yesterday to a brisk 154.3 million shares, 30 million of which came in the final hour. Tuesday’s volume was 135.5 million shares. The Dow Jones industrial average, which finished the day with a gain of 10.97 points at 1,881.33, also had most of its improvement late in the day. At 3 PM, for instance, the blue-chip index was down 0.42 point.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1881.33 (+10.97)
Born:
Shaun White, American snowboarder (Olympic gold medals, 2006, 2010, 2018), in San Diego, California.
Brandon Beachy, MLB pitcher (Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers), in Kokomo, Indiana.
History Diaries 