Striking in another round of the diplomatic expulsions, the Soviet Union said today that five more staff members of the United States Embassy would have to leave and that all 260 Soviet employees of the embassy would be withdrawn. The Soviet Government further imposed restrictions on the number of Americans who could be stationed in the embassy for temporary duty and on the number of foreign house guests invited by American diplomats. Gennadi I. Gerasimov, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, in announcing the latest expulsions, said other steps would be taken if the United States continued its “discriminatory practices” toward Soviet missions. The Soviet steps were ordered after the United States expelled five Soviet diplomats and, in addition, ordered 50 others to leave to equalize the staffs of the two countries at 251 each. In a televised speech today about his meeting in Iceland with President Reagan, Mikhail S. Gorbachev said that the expulsions by the United States after so important an event appeared “wild to normal people.” “We do not intend to allow such an outrage,” he said. In Washington, the White House reacted to the Gorbachev speech by saying that the two sides seemed in accord on the need for arms control.
Mikhail S. Gorbachev accused the United States today of deliberately misrepresenting the results of the Iceland meeting. At the same time, he affirmed that the proposals he presented to President Reagan at Reykjavik still stood, but only as an indivisible package. The televised, 50-minute speech was his second to the nation on the results of the meetings on October 11 and 12. But this time he appeared grim and at times angry as he spoke of “word-juggling and dissonance” and of “downright deception” in the way the United States was portraying the meeting and Soviet policy positions.
The White House embraced Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s speech today, pointedly ignoring his sharp criticism of Washington’s actions since the Iceland meeting. Instead it tried to depict the Soviet leader and President Reagan in agremeent on moving ahead in pursuit of arms control accords. At the same time, the Reagan Administration seemed relieved that the Soviet Union had expelled only five Americans in retaliation for Tuesday’s ouster of 55 Soviet diplomats from the United States. State Department officials said Secretary of State George P. Shultz and other top officials were weighing whether to call a truce in the expulsion war or to respond in kind to the Soviet expulsions.
The Reagan Administration has not yet presented the arms control proposals it made at the Iceland summit meeting in the arms talks in Geneva because senior military leaders say they first need to review them, officials said today. After the meeting in Reykjavik, Administration officals said the United States and the Soviet Union would pick up in Geneva where the two sides left off in Iceland. Administration officials said this meant that the United States would present the proposals it made in Iceland on on long-range arms, medium-range arms and adherence to the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty. Administration officials also said they would seek to build on the areas of agreement reached in Iceland.
The new chief spokesman for the State Department said today that he was confident the Reagan Administration had no intention of deliberately misleading American news organizations. The chief spokesman, Charles E. Redman, was named on Tuesday to replace Bernard Kalb. Mr. Kalb resigned two weeks ago over reports that the Reagan Administration had conducted a program to sow “disinformation” in the press to cause problems for Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya. Mr. Kalb, a former reporter, said: “Faith in the word of America is the pulsebeat of our democracy. Anything that hurts America’s credibility hurts America.”
An unknown Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the car-bomb murder of a Palestine Liberation Organization official in Athens. An anonymous caller told an international news agency in Beirut that the “Palestinian Revenge Organization-Deir Yassin Unit” killed Monder abu Ghazala, labeling the victim “one of the symbols of Arafat’s gang.” The PLO, whose chairman is Yasser Arafat, identified Abu Ghazala, 45, as chief of the Palestinian naval forces and said the murder was the work of Israeli agents.
The contentious OPEC meeting this week raised the possibility that in several months from now a new price war could again drive oil prices down, perhaps to single digits, American oil experts said.
Jordan seeks to undercut the P.L.O. in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Arab, Israeli and Western sources say the strategy of King Hussein is backed by both Israel and the United States.
A Lebanese professor was freed. Nabil Matar, a Christian who teaches social sciences at the American University of Beirut, was abducted by gunmen five months ago. After being released Tuesday night, the former hostage walked to his home in the Muslim sector of Beirut.
Egypt, under emergency law since Muslim extremists assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, has announced the arrest of more than 50 Muslim fundamentalists for illegal arms possession and plotting sabotage. Interior Minister Zaki Badr was quoted by a government newspaper as saying those arrested had planned to sabotage the state-owned radio station at Alexandria and burn private businesses. Among those in custody, Badr said, were 42 university students arrested after demonstrations in Asyut and 11 students arrested in Beni Suef for stoning the office of a faculty dean. He did not say how many were arrested in Alexandria.
Saudi Arabia is planning to establish a submarine fleet, a move that would make it the Middle East’s dominant naval force by the mid-1990s, Jane’s Defense Weekly reported. The Saudi government has approached six European nations to supply between six and eight submarines at a cost of up to $2.9 billion, the authoritative British defense magazine said. Britain is expected to offer its Upholder submarine, designed mainly for North Atlantic operations, and France, West Germany, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands are also submitting proposals, Jane’s said.
Iranian gunboats launched their second attack in a week on Kuwaiti shipping in the southern Persian Gulf, hitting a tanker off the United Arab Emirates, regional shipping sources said. They said the 136,000-ton Al Faiha, traveling in ballast to Kuwait in the northern gulf, was struck by an Italian-made Seakiller ship-to-ship missile. Damage was minor, and there was no report of casualties, the sources said. The attack was part of Iran’s effort to stop supplies from reaching its war foe, Iraq.
Pakistan needs radar warning planes to counter increasing intrusions by Soviet and Afghan aircraft, but it is not considering using American military planes for the job, a Pakistani Government official said today. Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger said during a visit to Islamabad last week that Pakistan needed airborne warning and control systems, or AWACS, aircraft.
Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi today dropped a politically powerful cousin from a key post and moved to stop dissent in his Congress Party in a sweeping Cabinet shuffle. It was the eighth Cabinet shuffle since he came to power after his mother’s assassination two years ago. Arun Nehru, Mr. Gandhi’s cousin and a member of an elite group of young advisers to Mr. Gandhi, was dropped from the key post of Internal Security Minister. Mr. Gandhi dropped five ministers and named seven new ones, expanding the Cabinet to 58 members. Mr. Nehru’s post went to P. Chidambaram, who is also in charge of personnel.
China and Portugal said they have reached broad agreement on the future of the Portuguese-run territory of Macao on the south China coast. However, a statement issued by the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Portuguese Embassy after two days of talks in Peking gave no details. Portugal has already conceded China’s sovereignty over Macao, a small enclave it has ruled since the 16th Century. China has said it wants Macao’s future to mirror that of Hong Kong, 40 miles to the east, which Peking has promised broad autonomy after it reverts to Chinese control in 1997.
Philippine President Corazon C. Aquino said today that she would soon set a deadline for Communist rebels to accept a cease-fire or face a “declaration of war.” By her action, the President was widely seen here as bowing to pressure from her hardline Defense Minister, Juan Ponce Enrile. “I must declare my intention to soon fix a deadline to mark the end of our efforts to achieve peace by talk, and the earnest start of efforts to establish it by any means the situation calls for,” she said. “Any attack on centers of government by the insurgents will merely accelerate the deadline,” she said, adding, “Our armed forces are ready to take on any challenge to the integrity of the state and the safety of our people.”
Canada is seeking freer trade with the United States, despite being stung by recent major American actions against imports from Canada.
A State Department report made public today says production of marijuana and opium poppy in Mexico has increased dramatically in the last year. The report, the State Department’s midyear update of its annual assessment of drug trafficking worldwide, contradicts the Mexican Government’s assessment of its drug eradication program. According to the report, marijuana production in Mexico rose by more than 25 percent in the last year while acreage planted in opium poppy, used to make heroin, grew by one-third. The report says Mexican drug control programs are faltering despite the increasingly cooperative attitude of the Mexican Government. The statistics, it says, “indicate that Mexico is once again the largest single-country source of heroin and marijuana imported into the United States.”
Mexico’s economy is deteriorating. The Government is floundering in its attempts to bring order to a worsening economy and struggling under a $100 billion foreign debt. For several recent weeks, the people of Mexico City coped with a scarcity of eggs. Producers, eager to raise prices because of Mexico’s potent inflation, held their eggs off the market. They did so to bring pressure on the Government, which controls the price. “You can swear on it that they are going to raise the price soon, and that the egg men are hiding the eggs so that people get desperate,” Dolores Villamil Reyes, a 57-year-old beautician, said during the contretemps. The administration of President Miguel de la Madrid will not fall over the price of eggs, but the shortage was yet another symbol of the deterioration of Mexico’s economy.
Cuba played a key role in supplying large quantities of weapons discovered in Chile two months ago, U.S. State Department spokesman Charles Redman said. “The evidence we have gathered all points to Cuba as the regional supplier,” he said. The arms caches, found shortly before an assassination attempt on Chilean President Augusto Pinochet September 7, consisted of U.S. ordnance apparently left in Vietnam, including 3,351 M-16 rifles, nearly 2 million rounds of ammunition and 167 anti-tank weapons, as well as newer Soviet-made weapons, Redman said. The weapons apparently were destined for leftist forces fighting to oust Chile’s military government.
At least 6 Nicaraguan civilians were killed and 30 seriously wounded Monday when their crowded civilian transport truck ran over a powerful land mine north of Jinotega, according to several wounded passengers and doctors at the scene. The attack was the second major civilian disaster in recent months caused by a land mine that area residents believe was planted by United States-backed guerrillas. A rebel official denied that the guerrillas had planted the mine. The mine blew through the bottom of the village’s daily civilian transport truck, hurling peasant passengers in all directions, according to 10 witnesses who were in the truck or involved in rescue efforts.
The lawyer defending the American captured from a rebel plane challenged the legality of Nicaraguan court documents today and showed a statement signed by the American prisoner that contends his human rights have been violated. The lawyer, Enrique Sotelo Borgen, denied to reporters that his client, Eugene Hasenfus, was an American intelligence agent. He asserted that Mr. Hasenfus had signed police confessions under duress. He then unsuccessfully sought a two-day delay in the trial before the political court in Managua. Mr. Sotelo and Mr. Hasenfus’s wife, Sally, as well as his brother, William, met the imprisoned American for two hours this afternoon. “Considering the situation, he’s feeling O.K.,” Mrs. Hasenfus said.
Two more companies appear ready to cut South African ties. The two are Honeywell Inc. and the Warner Communications Group.
A Soviet diplomat today visited a Soviet crew member injured in the plane crash that killed President Samora Machel of Mozambique, the South African Foreign Ministry said. South Africa, which has no relations with the Soviet Union, allowed the unidentified diplomat and Nadezhda Novoselov, the wife of Vladimir Novoselov, flight engineer, to make the trip from Maputo, the Mozambican capital. Mr. Novoselov, who has a broken leg and head injuries, was transferred from a hospital near the crash site to Pretoria. He was among 10 survivors of the crash Sunday that killed President Machel and 33 others.
President Reagan today signed into law the most thorough revision of the Federal income tax code in more than 40 years, calling the new tax system “less a reform than a revolution.” In a splashy ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, the President said the new law was “the best antipoverty bill, the best pro-family measure and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.” About two dozen senators and representatives who had been instrumental in enactment of the legislation joined Mr. Reagan on the platform. The occasion was witnessed by more than 1,000 Administration officials, specially invited corporate executives and lobbyists and tourists who happened to be at the White House. The President made overhaul of the tax system with dramatically lower tax rates the top domestic priority of his second term. He pledged today to “oppose with all my might” any attempt to raise those rates.
President Reagan addresses a group of 150 Black preachers at the E.O.B.
Schools must remove asbestos to protect the health of children and school employees under a bill signed by President Reagan. The Environmental Protection Agency, which had opposed major parts of the new law, welcomed its enactment.
Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d said in a speech Tuesday evening that Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution were not “the supreme law of the land.” He added that officials should be guided by their own views of that document rather than always deferring to the Court’s. While a Supreme Court decision “binds the parties in the case and also the executive branch for whatever enforcement is necessary,” he said, “such a decision does not establish a ‘supreme law of the land’ that is binding on all persons and parts of government, henceforth and forevermore.” Asserting that the Court itself had sometimes aggrandized its own role by seeming “to equate the judge with the lawgiver,” Mr. Meese assailed what he called a tendency of some senators and others to place judicial rulings “on a par with the Constitution” itself. The speech expanded on critiques of the Court’s constitutional rulings that Mr. Meese has made over the last 15 months by suggesting that only the parties to particular cases were bound by them. The speech was delivered at Tulane University in New Orleans and was made public here today.
Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d vowed today to begin an “all-out campaign against the distribution of obscene material” and announced the creation of a special team of prosecutors to handle pornography cases. In response to findings of a special pornography commission last summer, Mr. Meese said he would also recommend changes in the Federal law to limit sexually explicit material provided on cable television and through pornographic telephone services. “I am committed to redoubling the Federal effort to insure that those criminal elements who are trafficking in obscenity are pursued with a vengeance and prosecuted to the hilt,” Mr. Meese said at a news conference. Justice Department officials said the team of Washington-based prosecutors would be established within the next month. It was unclear how many lawyers would be assigned to the group, although one official said the number would be small.
Six black Foreign Service officers have filed a lawsuit against the State Department, charging it with “continuous classwide discrimination.” The suit, filed last Friday in Federal District Court here, says discrimination exists in virtually every aspect of the Foreign Service personnel system. The suit said the Foreign Service had a tendency of assigning blacks to small or hardship posts in Africa, the Caribbean and developing countries in other parts of the world.
The nation’s economy grew at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the third quarter, a marked pickup from the six-tenths of 1 percent expansion rate in the spring, the Commerce Department reported today. At the same time, the inflation rate climbed to 2.5 percent from 1.7 percent, mainly because of higher food prices, the department reported. But analysts said that they were not worried by this rise because much of it reflected crop and poultry losses caused by drought and hot weather. Today’s preliminary third-quarter report, which was generally in line with expectations, was based on incomplete data and is likely to be revised in the coming month.
A traffic news reporter died after her helicopter crashed in the Hudson River just off 45th Street yesterday while she was broadcasting. The reporter, Jane Dornacker, 40 years old, of WNBC radio, was pulled unconscious from the water and was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where she died 3 ½ hours later, officials there said. The pilot William Pate, 30, was in critical condition at Bellevue Hospital. This was the second helicopter crash involving Ms. Dornacker this year. After the first, April 18 in the Hackensack River, she swam to safety.
Maryland Attorney General Stephen Sachs ruled that mandatory drug testing of state employees is unconstitutional and said that civil liberties cannot be sacrificed in the war on drugs. Sachs, in an opinion for Secretary of Personnel John O’Brien, said mandatory drug testing of most state employees would violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and added there must be “probable cause” before ordering most state employees to take a urinalysis test. “A war on drugs is a good idea,” Sachs said, “but not if its first casualty is the Bill of Rights.”
A federal judge, granting a request by lawyers defending a former FBI agent charged with lying, removed two government attorneys from the prosecution team. U.S. District Judge George H. Revercomb disqualified Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert R. Chapman and Richard M. Rogers, deputy counsel in the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, because they may appear as witnesses against former Cleveland agent Robert S. Friedrick. Friedrick faces a trial on charges that he helped Jackie Presser, president of the Teamsters Union, evade indictment in a payroll-padding scheme.
A State Appeals Court panel in Boston today gave a 15-year-old who is 11 weeks pregnant the right to obtain an abortion despite objections by her adoptive parents. The panel upheld a ruling by a Superior Court judge that said the girl, whose name was not disclosed, was mature enough to decide whether to end her pregnancy. Under state law, a judge may grant an abortion to an unmarried girl under the age of 18 without parental permission if the court is convinced the girl is mature enough to make the decision. The girl’s parents said the law deprived them of their right to take part in key decisions in their child’s life, said Edgar L. Kelley, their lawyer. The abortion is planned for Thursday.
Toxic chemical curbs are backed by Californians, according to surveys. Polls indicate that voters also support a proposal to establish English as the state’s official language that is also on the November 4 ballot.
The New York diocese of the Episcopal Church adopted a resolution implicitly criticizing the Roman Catholic Church as restricting free inquiry and expression. The Roman Catholic Church and specific actions are not mentioned in the resolution, but the resolution’s author, the Rev. Christopher L. Webber, said he wrote it in response to the disciplining of Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle and Father Charles Curran of Catholic University. The resolution was adopted unanimously at a convention of the diocese.
An admitted drug trafficker who is the government’s star witness in the federal trial of seven Miami police officers testified about drug rip-offs with police as partners. The seven officers are accused of participating in a ring that preyed on drug users and dealers and was responsible for four deaths and the sale of $15 million in cocaine. Armando Un, 50, told how officers delivered cocaine and how he paid them tens of thousands of dollars.
A state lawyers’ panel has recommended that the Minnesota Supreme Court take disciplinary action against a county prosecutor, R. Kathleen Morris, for her handling of a case in which she charged 24 adults with sexually abusing children, then dropped charges against 21 of them. The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility filed a petition with the court charging improper action by Ms. Morris, said the agency’s director, William J. Wernz. The petition asserts that Ms. Morris acted improperly when she failed to disclose some evidence to defense attorneys and that she failed to follow a judge’s order that child witnesses be sequestered, according to Mr. Wernz.
The potentially lethal mistake that prompted the Department of Energy to indefinitely shut key links in the nation’s production line for nuclear bombs started with a flexible plastic tube a little smaller than a garden hose. Workers on the graveyard shift at a chemical plant in Richland, Washington were using the tube to transfer some liquid waste laced with plutonium from one 50-gallon tank to another. The first tank was cylindrical, and so was the second. But the workers had not noticed that the second tank was connected by piping to a third tank, which was round, and therefore much more conducive to a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction in which the same fuel that powers an atomic bomb releases a flash of radiation and heat that can kill those nearby and cause extensive damage.
Union officials and managers from five East Coast ports agreed today to a single wage system for all dockworkers, clearing the way for approval of a three-year master contract affecting 30,000 workers, officials said. About 60 representatives of the International Longshoremen’s Association settled their differences with the Council of North Atlantic Shippers Associations at a meeting in Linthicum, a suburb of Baltimore, said Edward Howell, president of Local 333. The talks came after a three-day strike earlier this month put thousands of dockworkers on picket lines in Baltimore, Providence, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Virginia, and Wilmington, Delaware. In ending the walkout October 3, longshoremen agreed to a 45-day extension of the old contract.
Richard Cook, a former budget analyst at the space agency, charged today that the Presidential commission that investigated the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger had failed to carry out its job thoroughly. The commission, headed by former Secretary of State William P. Rogers, “failed on three major counts,” Mr. Cook said. He contended that it absolved top officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from blame despite abundant evidence that they were aware of underlying safety problems. The former NASA whistle blower also contended the panel never determined who was really responsible for launching the shuttle in cold weather despite warnings against it and failed to determine if political pressures had been exerted by the White House.
Jewel thief Jack (Murph the Surf) Murphy, whose theft of the 535-carat Star of India sapphire gave him international notoriety, will be paroled November 11, the Florida Parole and Probation Commission said. Murphy, 48, was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years for the murder of a secretary and the attempted robbery of a Miami Beach socialite in 1968. Murphy, who has said that a religious awakening has changed his life, has been in a work program at a halfway house in Orlando since 1984.
Testimony ended in the trial of a suit challenging the influence of so-called “secular humanism” in schoolbooks. U.S. District Judge W. Brevard Hand, who is presiding at the trial in Mobile, Alabama, gave no indication of when he might rule. The suit against the Alabama Board of Education was brought by about 600 parents and teachers who contend secular humanism is a religion that permeates Alabama’s textbooks while Christian, Jewish and other faiths are ignored.
A fund-raiser for political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr. was arrested on fraud and other charges stemming from $95,000 in loans obtained from an elderly woman in a Missouri nursing home. Michael Billington, 31, was arrested at his home in Leesburg, Virginia, soon after his return from Boston, where he entered a not-guilty plea to 10 counts of wire fraud. He was among 10 named in a 117-count indictment that alleges $1 million was obtained through unauthorized credit card charges by LaRouche fund-raisers.
In an unusually explicit report to the nation, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop today urged parents and schools to shed their inhibitions and start engaging in “frank, open discussions” with very young children and teen-agers about the dangers of AIDS. The Surgeon General said that, in the absence of any cure for AIDS or a vaccine to prevent it, the only effective way to slow the AIDS epidemic was through educating the public about how to avoid infection with the AIDS virus. He rejected the idea of compulsory blood testing to identify infected individuals. He also opposed proposals to quarantine or tattoo carriers of the AIDS virus.
An AIDS victim’s return to work for the first time in 17 months, part of a settlement of a lawsuit against The New England Telephone Company, led to a walkout today by most technicians at a garage in suburban Needham. The technicians said they were refusing to work as a protest of how the company was handling the return of the 31-year-old AIDS victim, Paul F. Cronan. Mr. Cronan, a 12-year employee of the company, filed a $1.75 million lawsuit in State Superior Court last December. He charged that the company had discriminated against him based on a handicap, the acquired immune deficiency syndrome; had breached his right to privacy and had coerced him not to return to work.
John Forster and Lee Holdridge’s musical “Into the Light”, starring Dean Jones, opens at Neil Simon Theater, NYC ; runs for 6 performances.
Major League Baseball, World Series, Game 4:
Gary Carter hits 2 home runs to lead the Mets to a 6–2 win at Fenway Park and even the Series at 2–2. Ron Darling faced off against Boston’s Al Nipper, as the Mets looked to tie the Series. Neither starter allowed a run until the top of the fourth inning, when Gary Carter ripped a two-run home run over the Green Monster and Ray Knight drove in Darryl Strawberry, who had doubled after the home run, with a single. In the top of the seventh inning, Boston right fielder Dwight Evans almost robbed Lenny Dykstra of a two-run home run only for the ball to bounce out of his glove and over the wall. TV replay showed Evans taking off his hat and leaning against the wall in disappointment and frustration. Carter hit a solo shot in the top of the eighth inning, both Dykstra’s and Carter’s second home run came off of Steve Crawford. In the eighth inning, the Red Sox scored two runs on an Evans single and a Dave Henderson sacrifice fly off of Roger McDowell, but it was not enough, and the Mets evened the series at two games apiece to ensure a return to New York.
New York Mets 6, Boston Red Sox 2
Stock prices improved a bit yesterday, thanks largely to a rally in the bond market, but even the release of the gross national product figures did not prod Wall Street to quicken the trading pace. Before the market opened, the Government announced that the G.N.P. grew 2.4 percent in the third quarter, about what Wall Street had expected and better than the six-tenths of 1 percent growth in the second quarter. Investors acted indifferently to the data and the Dow Jones industrial average, helped by a last-minute push, finished at 1,808.35, for a 2.67-point gain. The blue-chip index fell 5 points on Tuesday.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1808.35 (+2.67)
Born:
Kyle Gallner, American actor (“Smallville”, “CSI: NY”), in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
Chris Rusin, MLB pitcher (Chicago Cubs, Colorado Rockies, Atlanta Braves), in Detroit, Michigan.
Justin Freeman, MLB pitcher (Cincinnati Reds), in Macon, Georgia.
Died:
Jane Dornacker, 39, American stand-up comic, songwriter, rock vocalist (The Tubes), and ill-fated traffic reporter, in a helicopter crash.
Albert Szent-Györgyi, 93, Hungarian biochemist (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1937; isolating vitamin C).
Ye Jianying, 89, Chinese communist general and politician (Head of State of the People’s Republic of China, 1978-83).
