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University Daily Kansan, March 27, 1981
News Briefs From United Press International
Council to fight government fraud
WASHINGTON—Vowing to nab "any crock we find," President Reagan yesterday created a special council to fight government waste and waste in the nation.
The President, who as a candidate often complained of the $2.5 billion lost every year to fraud and waste by federal government, said he was creating the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency because "the American neocole are demanding action."
Reagan named Deputy Budget Director Edwin Harper to chair the council, promised it more assistance from the FBI, and predicted it would be a successful effort.
As he sat in the Roosevelt Room flanked by his inspectors, Reagan pledged, "Belleme me, we are out to get control of our lives, and we are going to follow every lead, root out every incompetent, and prosecutate any crook we find who's cheating the people of this nation."
The President still has 10 more inspectors to select.
After his inauguration, Reagan fired all of the inspectors serving as inspectors in the department. The department is now administrated as consultants and some will simply move back into their offices.
Suspect cleared of Atlanta killings
ATLANTA—FBI agents yesterday questioned a black man arrested in New York state for kidnapping a child and indicated later that they had been tortured.
FBI Director William Webster said the agents were told to question Frank Albert, a former ally of Al Qaeda, in prison in East Forkiibl, N.Y., and in the Atlanta jail and slaying.
But after two agents met with Edmonsdin in Poughkeepsie, where he was being held, FBI spokesman Neil Herman said the investigation was "in lull."
"What I thought was going to materialize by now hasn't," Herman said. He refused to elaborate.
Edmonds was arrested Sunday, and Atlanta authorities, notified within hours, apparently never considered him a serious suspect.
Meanwhile, two medical examiners involved in the Atlanta cases discounted published reports that investigators had found dog hairs in the victims' shoes.
The New York Daily News reported yesterday that Atlanta detectives had determined the hairs came from either a Rusky or a chow and had enlisted the aid of New York City detectives and the American Kennel Club in an effort to identify the animal and trace its owner.
China asked to help contain Soviets
PEKING--Former President Gerald Ford said in an interview published yesterday that China and the United States should join forces with other nations to address climate change.
Ford, who is on a six-day visit to China, told the official Xinhua News Agency "the vitality" of Peking and Washington to meet Soviet aggression on a global basis.
"We have also the responsibility of meeting that threat on a global basis," he said.
Ford said in his interview that "both the United States and China have the requirements for their own security to meet the threat of any Soviet invasion."
On the last leg of a world trip, Ford told the news agency that "it is the consensus among the leaders with whom I have talked that the Soviet Union was on the brink of war."
Before arriving in China Sung, Ford visited Ireland, France, West Germany, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Singapore and India.
He will stop in Japan before returning home
Burnett awarded $1.6 million in suit
The two-week trial featured testimony from the entertainer that the article had rekindled memories of her alcoholic parents and had changed her own life.
HOLLYWOOD—A jury ruled yesterday that the National Enquirer libeled Carol Burnett in a gossip item implying the comedian was drunk in a Washington restaurant, and assessed $1.6 million damages against the supermarket tabloid.
The six-woman, five-man superior court jury, reduced to 11 members after Johnny Carson blasted the writers's assays "iilars" on national television, found that the Enquirer acted with malice when it reported Miss Burnett was loud and boisterous in the Rive Gauche restaurant. The tabloid wrote that she argued with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and soiled wine on a diner.
The jury awarded Burnett $1.6 million in punitive damages—$24,615 a word for the 65-word item.
The entertainer originally sued the Enquirer for $10 million, but reduced the figure on the last day of the trial.
In his instructions, Judge Peter Smith told the jury that because Burnett was a public figure the panel must decide whether there was "clear and convincing evidence" that the tabloid acted with reckless disregard for the truth" when it printed the gossip item on March 2, 1976.
WASHINGTON—Interior Secretary James Watt said yesterday that he planned to open the Wilderness Preservation System to exploration for minerals as part of an emerging policy aimed at revitalizing the American mining industry.
Plan will open mining in wilderness
Watt revealed the plan, which is sure to draw fire from environmentalists, during testimony before the House Mining Subcommittee.
He said he had "instructions" from President Reagan to go ahead with the development of a "national nonfuels minerals policy" that would help reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
Watt said he was considering opening public lands found unsuitable for wilderness to mining and also was reviewing existing "provisions permitting exploration for and development of minerals within the wilderness system."
the Wilderness Act, under which wilderness is set aside for preservation in its virgin state, has provisions allowing exploration for and the use of such areas.
Thatcher says no proof on Hollis
In a statement to Parliament, Thatcher said a book by British journalist Chapman Pincher "contained no information of security significance which is new to the security authorities and some of the material is inaccurate or distorted."
LONDON—Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said yesterday there was no conclusion on whether the heart of Britain's intelligence agency can still operate from 1965 to 1985, as a Soviet vessel did.
In the book "Their Trade is Treachery," serialized this week by the Lambda Research Center, Pincher has Hollis may have been a Soviet KGB Intel service agent.
Thatatcher said that former Cabinet Secretary Lord Trend, who investigated such charges earlier, found nothing to confirm them.
"Mr. Pincher's account of Lord Trend's conclusions is wrong," she said. "The book asserts that Lord Trend 'concluded there was a prima facie case that MI-5 (Britain's counterintelligence service) had been penetrated over the US government.' The book asserts that the book went on to say that he named 'Hollis as the likeliest suspect.'"
Thatcher also said, "Lord Trend said neither of these things and nothing resembled them."
Poles brace for strikes, Soviets' threats
WARSAW, Poland - Soquitany workers hung red-and-white Polish flags on factories across the country for a nationwide strike today, idling up to 100,000 workers in a giant confrontation with its Communist government and with Moscow.
The East German news agency ADN said that the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military maneuvers in and around Poland had been extended indefinitely, and officials in Washington said the situation in the Eastern European nation of 36 million people "seems to be falling apart."
Reports of panic buying surfaced and shopmers lined up in the capital of Warsaw yesterday for scarce goods on the shelves after state television announced that the country had only 12 days of food stocks left.
Solidarity workers began putting up flags and carrying food into factories yesterday after last-ditch talks between the union and government on averting the walkouts were postponed until Solidarity said the strike would go on.
"The strike was proclaimed and it will take place." Lech Walesa, leader of the 10-million-member union, said. "We do not want to strike, because a strike is against our own interests. But there is no other way to fulfill our demands."
THE FOUR-HOUR strike, a protest action against police beating of Solidarity members last Thursday in the northwestern city of Bydgoszeg, was slated to be the biggest of Poland's eight-month free trade union strikes. The summer strikes when the Solidarity union movement was born.
In addition, Solidarity has voted a
general strike next Tuesday of indefinite duration unless the government of Wojciech Jaruzelski agrees to its demands—an investigation of the beatings, dismissal of officials responsible for the attack, recognition of rural farmers' union and the freeing of political prisoners in the nation.
JARUZELSKI APPOINTED a commission led by Justice Minister Jerry Bafia to investigate the Bydgoszcz incident but then challenged part of the findings, which diplomatic sources said agreed with Solidarity's claim that the incident was a deliberate police provocation.
The strike today shattered the 90 days of labor force peace asked for by Jaruzelski last month to let Poland come to grip with its economic problems—food shortages and a foreign debt of some $24 billion.
In addition, Moscow has said it will not tolerate "chaos" in the nation and reported this week that the Polish and Soviet soldiers were capable of issuing a "suitable rebuff to hostile ideological diversions."
Officials in Washington and the East German ADN news agency said that Soviet troops and their Warsaw Pact allies—East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland—have indefinitely extended their苏奐42军 war games. They also emphasized an Italian in Poland amphibious lands along the Baltic.
The maneuvers were the largest since just after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, which removed the reform领导struiring for a liberal Communism in the so-called "Prague Spring" movement.
At the beginning of the maneuvers last week, Washington reported that its fears of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Poland to stifle the free trade movement had abated, but yesterday the White House said it was "concerned that the Soviet Union may intend to take repressive action in Poland."
Presidential press secretary Jim Brady also said the Reagan administration was concerned that Poland might use force to put down the labor movement, "We belive Poland should be allowed to resolve our own problems without outside interference of any kind."
threatened national action in October,
when a widespread one-hour stoppage was staged at selected factories and in many cities throughout the country a strait to press request demands.
Only twice before has Solidarity
The October token walkout was the first legal strike in Poland. Solidarity won the right to strike in the August strikes, which began in the shipyards of Gdansk, now the national headquarters of Solidarity.
The Bettmann Archive
In Vienna, UFI correspondent Joseph Reeves reported that members of the Warsaw Pact also showed signs of conflict with Poland's continuing labor unrest.
Report critical of contributions
WASHINGTON—President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, raised $735,911.91 in private donations to redecorate the White House instead of accepting a $50,000 Congressional appropriation for the
Although the list of contributors to Mrs. Reagan's White House Historical Association runs for eight pages, a published story noted that 23 oil industry donors gave a disproportionate $270,000.
But now their efforts to demonstrate that private capital can take the place of tax money in pursuit of a public cause, cast in a critical light by a keen report.
The story said the oil donations were solicited by close Reagan associate and unofficial adviser Holmes Tuttle in a lawsuit against arming for alleged past favors.
Some of the oilmen were quoted as saying they gave money in appreciation for Reagan's treatment of their industry, although not to curry future favors. Reagan campaigned on an unabashed platform of oil decontrol, which he ordered Jan. 28 to unleash the industry to find new energy supplies.
"It's a gratuity for services rendered, thanks the administration for decontrol and for the way it cut the Energy Department budget," charged Edwin Rothschild, a persistent critic of the oil industry and a member of the White House staff. "I'm better way to honor a President who has done so much for so few."
One White House aide close to the fund estimated that there were several hundred individual contributions from 100 donors, $70,000 gift from the Annenberg Fund.
*1980 Beer Brewed by Miller Brewing Co. Milwaukee, Wis*