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Nicaragua Compensates U.S. Firm

The Sandinista government of Nicaragua yesterday signed an agreement to compensate an American gold and silver mining company it nationalized when it took power in 1979, calling the negotiated settlement "a model for the relations between our two countries."The signing ceremony with Rosario Mining Co. seemed as much a political statement by the Nicaraguans as the settlement of an economic dispute.

Wall Street's reaction to the international loan problems of the major banks is not at all alarmist. Troubled loans to less-developed nations such as Mexico and Brazil did not prevent Citicorp, the nation's largest bank, from reporting 1982 income up 35 percent. This performance came even though non-performing loans rose $626 million, to $1.7 billion, or 1.9 percent of all loans outstanding.

BECAUSE a mob of congressional pygmies insists upon playing small-minded politics, the international financial system is endangered. That menaces everything from Latin American economies to your job. This is intolerable. It is high time that President Reagan and the bipartisan leadership on Capitol Hill put a stop to it.The congressional pygmies are blocking a sorely needed measure that would increase U.S. loans to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by $8.4 billion.

Bonnie Newlon, independent candidate for the House of Delegates' 48th District seat held by Democrat Mary A. Marshall, has been endorsed by the Arlington Republican Committee.The committee voted in a telephone poll last week to endorse Newlon, who had not declared her candidacy in time to be listed on the ballot for the May 17 canvass.

Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat voiced urgent concern today over what he described as Israeli-instigated disturbances and violence on the West Bank, but he and key advisers indicated that the tensions there would not cause them to rush into unqualified acceptance of President Reagan's Middle East peace proposal.Arafat, who is here for talks with Jordan's King Hussein on the Reagan plan.

When Jake F. Butcher was running for governor, he told a heckler who questioned his freewheeling business practices that his goal in life was "to make more money than Rockefeller."At the age of 46 he still has time, but the odds against him lengthened considerably last week. He lost the cornerstone of his growing financial empire with the collapse of the United American Bank, the fourth-largest commercial bank failure in this country.

United American Bank of Knoxville, declared insolvent in the fourth-largest commercial bank failure in US history, reopened today after a $70.5 million merger with First Tennessee Corp. of Memphis. Federal regulators yesterday let First Tennessee, the state's biggest bank-holding company, acquire UAB-Knoxville hours after the state's banking commissioner declared it insolvent because of multimillion-dollar loan losses.

Hundreds of commuters and tourists spent much of Friday night in stalled cars, buses, Metro stations, motels and temporary shelters after being stranded by the worst snowstorm to hit the Washington area in four years.The largest number of people were stranded in the Woodbridge area, where three temporary shelters were set up for motorists unable to travel on Interstate 95. No serious injuries were reported, but for many the experience was harrowing.

A San Francisco research group has reported that when Mitsubishi Bank Ltd. of Tokyo takes over the Bank of California later this year, six of the 10 biggest banks in the state will be foreign-owned.BanCal Tri-State Corp. which now owns the Bank of California, recently accepted a $50-per-share offer from Mitsubishi, rejecting a $53 proposal from locally owned Wells Fargo. The transaction is expected to be completed later in the year.

THE PROSPECTS for Williamsburg are not altogether reassuring. Can anything serious come out of economic discussions that attract 6,000 journalists? The idea is to bring together once again the seven people who run the governments of the leading industrial countries. But the Europeans have been pressing anxiously for reassurance that President Reagan will not reopen the inflammatory subject of trade with the Soviets.

Almost all the Palestinian schoolgirls hospitalized in a mysterious West Bank epidemic went home from a hospital here yesterday rather than face examinations in Israel.Dr. Abdul Rahim Namura, deputy director of Amira Alia Hospital in Hebron, said Israeli "soldiers and detectives" took three patients for tests in Israel Tuesday night."They said that they wanted to take 43 but they took three

Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar says that Third World countries should avoid the temptation to default on portions of the $600-billion debt that they owe to foreign banks.The former Peruvian diplomat said Tuesday that developing countries should put their own economies in order before asking for more financial help from the industrial world. Perez de Cuellar was asked at a luncheon of the United Nations Correspondents Association to comment on suggestions.

When psychiatrist Robert Sadoff first went to visit George Banks in his Luzerne County Jail cell in Wilkes-Barre, he found the 40-year-old accused mass murderer hiding under his bed with a blanket over his head.Banks refused to come out, and Sadoff finally walked out, while other prisoners cheered and applauded.Sadoff, one of five psychiatrists to testify at Banks' trial last week, came back a month later and was able to interview the former prison guard.

The impact of increased crop production from competing countries, the strong U.S. dollar and the lingering effects of weak world economic activity will depress agricultural imports through the rest of the year, according to a Chicago bank.""As a result, U.S. agricultural export sales probably will slip to around $35 billion this year,'' said Terry L. Francl, vice president and economist at Continental Bank."

Finance ministers from around the world agreed Friday to boost an emergency lending fund by 47.5 per cent to keep debtor nations from defaults that could set off an international financial panic.The settlement, representing a compromise between the United States and other major industrial powers, means that more than $31 billion -- at current exchange rates -- could be available for lending by the International Monetary Fund by the end of this year.

Recent agreements by international lending and financial institutions: International Monetary Fund * Purchases totaling the equivalent of 65.1 million special drawing rights by the government of Indonesia under the buffer stock financing facility. The purchases are to help Indonesia make compulsory contributions under the International Natural Rubber Agreement.* A purchase of 3.605 million special drawing rights by the government of Mauritius under the buffer stock financing.

Feeling rejected and unloved by his parents, Alain Paul de Cock, 21, took a rifle from his bedroom closet and shot his mother and father in the head at their McLean home on a snowy Dec. 13 afternoon, according to statements police said de Cock made three days after the killings.During a preliminary hearing in Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court yesterday, Fairfax County police related details of de Cock's statements to investigators after the slayings of his Belgian.

A major policy debate has developed within the Reagan administration over whether to accept essential Israeli dominance over the West Bank, thereby abandoning central elements of President Reagan's Mideast peace initiative of a year ago, according to administration officials.In a major policy speech Sept. 1, Reagan strongly urged an Arab-controlled West Bank, in association with Jordan, and the question now being considered is whether to allow Israel a free hand.

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