University Daily Kansan, April 18, 1985
NATION AND WORLD
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Page 2
NEWS BRIEFS
Crime rate in China drops
PEKING — A law-and-order campaign that human rights groups say led to at least 10,000 executions has lowered China's crime rate by 15.7 percent in the past five years. In 1950s, the country's security chief said in an interview published yesterday.
The China Daily newspaper quoted justice officials as saying that China's courts, using laws adopted in September 1983, convicted 470,000 people between April 1984 and last February, 140,000 of them being murder, rape, robbery, arson, theft, kidnapping and prostitution — all punishable by death.
CBS to resist takeover efforts
CHICAGO — CBS Board Chairman Thomas H. Wyman told about 200 shareholders attending the annual meeting yesterday that corporate leaders would takeover attempts aimed at grabbing control of the network's news department.
Although not mentioning anyone by name, Wyman referred to hostile takeover attempts by cable entrepreneur Ted Turner and a conservative political action group spearheaded by Sen, Jesse Helms, B.N.C.
Acquiring 51 percent of CBS' 29.7 million outstanding shares would cost at least $2.5 million.
31 injured in derailment
GRANBY, Colo. — A section of roadbed weakened by melting snow slid out from beneath tracks that buckled and derailed Amtrak's California Zephyr in the Colorado Rockies, injuring 31 of the 147 people aboard, officials said yesterday.
The derailment occurred at 7 p.m. Tuesday, just before the 14-car Zephyr rumbled through the Fraser River Canyon in northern Colorado. The two engines and one tractor were among Four cars sled into the river, but none of the cars carrying passengers overturned.
Decimal causes tax confusion
BEAUMONT, Texas — When Joyce Ratley sent in her 1040E federal income tax form, she expected to get a $100 refund.
Instead, she received a letter from the revenue Service telling her she owed $290.00.
"I was shocked," said the department store clerk, "I only made $7,922.70."
Ratley, 53, said she had made a mistake on the form and put the amount withheld for Social Security in the place where she should have entered the amount withheld for income taxes.
Compiled from United Nations.
Compiled from United Press International reports.
Republicans try to salvage rebel aid bill
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Senate Republican leaders sought yesterday to write a compromise to salvage President Reagan's tattered Central American policy in the face of the likely defeat of his $14 million aid package for Nicaraguan rebels.
Reagan said Democratic congressman that he was willing to compromise although his spokesman said the White House was not giving ground.
Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole of Kansas; Sen. Dave Durenberger, R-Minn.; head of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; headed the effort that might have included scrapping any aid for the anti-Sandinista
Reagan's aid package is due for a vote in the House on Thursday, and he will take responsibility and the charges of passage are slim.
rebels, a source close to the leadership said
IN THE HOUSE, Republican Leader Robert Michel of Illinois is forecasting defeat of the package and is seeking a compromise with the Democrats.
Faced with these bleak facts, the Senate Republican leadership yesterday sought to forge a compromise that may deny aid to the Contras but allow passage of a resolution supporting Reagan's concerns about leftist subversion by Nicaragua in Central America, the source said.
The resolution could recognize that the anti-Sandista force must be considered as a legitimate political factor in the future of Central America, he said.
Rep. Roy Dyson, D-Md., and other
Democrats who generally support Reagan's policies, said the president would accept some compromise.
**HE WANTS TO win and he wants to look macho on you. Dove's outside the White House.**
"He so quickly said yes we are — no hemming and hawing" about a compromise, Dyson said. "I'm not sure he even knows what compromise he wants."
But it is clear to everyone that the proposal will fail in the House. Dyson said.
Reagan has proposed that the $14 million be spent on humanitarian aid to the rebels for 60 days while they have peace talks with the leader, while he will be mediated by the Roman Catholic Church.
If Reagan decides the talks have failed — and Nicaragua has already said it will not — the United States must wait.
for military aid Congress may vote down any proposal that sends any form of aid to the Contras.
HOUSE SPEAKER THOMAS O'Neill, D-Mass., said the House would vote on Reagan's proposal Tuesday or Wednesday, surprising the White House, which thought it would come up on April 30. Assuming the package passes the Senate on Tuesday, Reagan would have a week to lobby the House.
White House spokesman Larry Speakes said the House vote was scheduled as a legislative tactic to defeat Reagan.
But that may happen first in the Senate, unless a compromise is achieved.
"I think we could approve it as is," Dale said without any great confidence. "It's a hunch. I talked to someone on the other side and he told me, 'You have the votes.'"
Cuba celebrates, U.S. remembers Bay of Pigs
By United Press International
MIAMI — Cuba celebrated the 24th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion by a force backed by the CIA as a victory yesterday, while anti-Castro exiles in Miami remembered it as a bitter defeat.
In Cuba, men and women alike dressed in drab blue and olive military uniforms to celebrate the Day of the Militia, according to
the state-run Cuban Radio Rebelde monitored in Miami.
"Each year on the Day of the Militia the combative traditions are revitalized and the remembrances of the old returns to thoughts of those historic days and revolutionary effervescence before the imperialist's claws." the radio said.
in a speech to militia yesterday, Rene Penalher, spokesman for the Communist Workers' Central, praised the "heroic militia
that stained with their blood on a day like today the sands of Playa Giron."
THE RURAL MILITIA was largely responsible for staving off the assault by the army of exiled Cubans on Playa Giron at the Bay of Pigs in southern Cuba on April 17.
President Fidel Castro reportedly led the counterattack and routed the exiles. Only 72 hours later, the men were either headed
toward Havana in trucks as prisoners of war or had fled.
In Miami, members of the ill-fated 2506 Brigade commemorate the day by laying a wreath at the 'Heroes and Martyrs' church in Vailada. Local Catholic churches held masses.
One Spanish-language newspaper, the Diario Las Americas, called the invasion "an immense historical and political blunder of the U.S. government."
Court says states can't set time limit for rights suits
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court yesterday made it easier for people to seek damages for civil rights violations, ruling 7-1 that states cannot impose a time limit on the filing of discrimination suits against public officials.
The justices, in a New Mexico case, said filing deadlines for lawsuits filed under federal civil rights laws must be the same as personal injury actions. The ruling will affect policies in about 30 states, which require citizens to file discrimination suits within one year of the alleged violation.
Writing for the court, Justice John Paul Stevens said it would be unfair to require that discrimination suits be filed within a shorter
time period than other civil injury claims,
time as loss of property or wrongful death.
He said, "It is most unlikely that the period of limitations applicable to such claims ever was, or ever would be, fixed in a way that would discriminate against federal claims."
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor cast the sole vote against the decision, which she said "does not so much resolve confusion as banish it to the lower courts. The court's new analogy lacks any magical power to conjure uniformity where diversity is the natural order."
The ruling, in which Justice Lewis Powell did not participate, came in a case brought by Gary Garcia, who filed a lawsuit against a New Mexico state police officer and the state police chief for damages caused by an allegedly unlawful arrest and brutal beating in 1979.
Reagan plans to include concentration camp visit
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Public outrage over President Reagan's plan to visit a German military cemetery led the White House to add a stop at a Nazi death camp to the president's trip next month, a White House spokesman acknowledged yesterday.
White House spokesman Larry Speaks also confirmed that the first suggestion of a concentration camp visit came from West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Nov. 30, during talks with Reagan at the White House.
Michael Deaver, deputy White House Chief of Staff, scouted appropriate sites in West Germany for the president to pay tribute to victims of the Holocaust as criticism continued over the president's plan to lay a wreath at the military
cemetery at Bitturg, where 2,800 German soldiers are buried, including members of the notorious Nazi Waffen SS. Many of their bodies were killed in action at the Battle of the Bulgle.
The controversy hit the White House in the midst of a flurry of ceremonies marking the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps.
Today, under the dome of the Capitol, the U.S. Army is to pay tribute to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by presenting the flags of the 10 army units that liberated the camps to Elie Wiesel, member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
Tomorrow, Reagan is to present a congressional gold medal to Wiesel at the White House and participate in ceremonies marking Jewish Heritage Month.
Taste diet Coke.