University Daily Kansan, January 28, 1985
NATION AND WORLD
Page 2
NEWS BRIEFS
Strikers to vote on contract
WENTZVILLE, Mo. — Striking auto workers at General Motors Corp.'s one-year-old plant have scheduled a ratification vote for today on a tentative contract agreement reached in a 32-hour negotiating session.
The tentative agreement was made at 3:10 p.m. Saturday, 11 days after 3,125 members of United Auto Workers Local 847 met to discuss the company's "pay for knowledge" plan.
Berta Avila, trustee for the union's executive board, said pickets would continue at the plant until the contract was "atified at 4 p.m. today."
Senate starts hearings for post
WASHINGTON — Senate confirmation hearings open today on the nomination of William J. Bennett to head an agency the department has already eliminated — the Department of Education,
One question certain to be asked of Bennett, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1981, is whether he thinks the department created by former President Jimmy Carter should be dismantled.
Terrel H. Bell resigned as secretary on Dec. 31, expressing hope Reagan would keep the agency. Bell said he did not think he would allow the department to be broken up.
Jail may await book hoarders
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Slow learners in Missouri beware. A proposal before the Missouri Legislature calls for a law that would prohibit who don't return library books on time.
Two bills concerning overdue library books are pending in the Legislature. One bill would make it a felony for borrowers to keep books worth more than $150 out of pocket and days past their due date. Violating the law may result in maximum five-year sentence and $5,000 fine.
The other bill would make it a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a 30-day jail term and a fine of up to $200.
Prince leads award nominees
LOS ANGELES — Rock singer Prince leads all contenders with 10 nominations for the American Music Award trophies in the season's first hardware handout for music excellence. The program will be telecast nationally tonight.
Lionel Richie, who will the host the three-
driest win at the Rookie derby, is second with eleven
runs in assemble.
Other multiple nominees were Bruce Springsteen, Tina Turner, the Pointer Sisters, Huey Lewis and the News, Anne Murray, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.
Compiled from United Press International reports.
Officials' exit from Colombia prompts rumors
By United Press International
BOGOTA, Colombia - The rumors started as soon as U.S. Ambassador Lewis Tambs, several other U.S. diplomats and their children left Colombia.
This week, Colombia's radio and newspapers told of an exodus of U.S. residents frightened by death threats, apparently from drug traffickers outraged by Colombia's first arrest of a drug official in U.S. officials. Some reports said as many as 5,000 have left the country since Jan. 1.
But Colombian officials, worried about their country's international image, deny there is a stamped for the first plane out of town.
"There is no flight of North Americans," said Foreign Relations Minister Augusto
"It's the biggest lie I've heard in my life," said Heriberto Tamayo, chief of the foreigners' division of a Colombian police agency.
businessmen have left, it was difficult to determine if an exodus was under way.
its division of a colonization force agency.
THOUGH SOME U.S. diplomats and
At least three U.S. business executives have left as a direct result of the death threats and as many as 10 others may leave soon, according to a spokesman at the American-Colombian Chamber of Commerce.
"In several cases, the local managers have resisted, saying 'I don't see any need of it.' the spokesman said. "Very few if any initiated the idea. Instead the corporate headquarters arbitrarily ordered people out."
Two reporters left the country after receiving death threats, but one of them returned a short time later.
THE EXODUS IS most noticeable at the U.S. Embassy, Tamas, a former Arizona State University professor, took his family and it was unclear if he planned to return.
At least 10 U.S. diplomats left with their families, and the children of all the remaining diplomats have been evacuated.
The embassy personnel started moving out just before Thanksgiving after Colombia President Belisario Betanur signed orders to extradite five Colombians to the United States on drug trafficking and money laundering charges.
Those orders provoked the death threats and fear in the U.S. community, estimated at about 20,000 throughout the country.
The fear turned into near panic after Jan. 5 when the first four Colombian drug suspects were apprehended.
"WE'VE RECEIVED hundreds of calls from people asking what the situation is and what they should do," said one U.S. Embassy official.
The embassy is not advising people to home, only to be cautious. On Jan. 12, the State Department revised a longstanding travelers' advisory, adding that the extra-immigrant may increase the possibility of criminal violence against Americans in Colombia."
The result was an uproar among Colombian travel agencies worried about losing business during the peak travel season.
Most U.S. residents in Colombia, however,
appeared to be staving up — cautiously.
"Did you know last week they canceled the American Women's Club meeting because of this?" said one U.S. resident. "They thought it wasn't a good idea to have so many Americans in one place. That's the first time in my memory that's ever happened."
The Chamber of Commerce spokesman said long-term residents tended to panic less, than newcomers. He said that while some business executives left for good, others are on "extended Christmas vacations" and plan to return.
"As far as the business community goes, I give up any mass exodus," the chamber spokeswoman said.
Whether or not U.S. residents are leaving, everyone seems to think they are. A Colombian bureaucrat told a recently arrived U.S. reporter:
Tough questions expected as Meese's hearings begin
"Its kind of funny. The Americans are leaving and you're coming."
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Edwin Meese, whose nomination as attorney general was derailed a year ago by controversy about his finances, this week faces a Senate confirmation hearing amid new questions about his fitness for the job.
Although special prosecutor Jacob Stein found no evidence to warrant bringing criminal charges against Meese, his critics still question his ethical standards and are expected to press several issues at hearings scheduled to begin tomorrow.
While tough questioning from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee is likely, Meese's nomination is expected to be approved by the panel and approved by the full Senate.
It has been more than 25 years since the Senate rejected a presidential nomination. In 1958, it refused to confirm President Kennedy's nominee for commerce secretary.
SENATE REPUBLICAN leader Robert Dole of Kansas said he hoped to complete work on the Meese nomination before Congress took its mid-February break.
In an article in yesterday's Washington Post, Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor and chairman of Common Cause, compared the Meese matter to the case of the former Clinton campaign manager who was forced to resign for accepting a vicious coat and other favors from a businessman.
Mesee, 53, President Reagan's trusted White House counselor, was nominated for the nation's top law enforcement job last January to replace Attorney General William French Smith, who wanted to return to his private law practice.
However, in an unprecedented move, the citizens lobby Common Cause has launched a new campaign to block Messe's confirmation on grounds he showed a serious lack of experience in dealing — a breach the group contends makes him unfit to be attorney general.
But the nomination quickly ran into trouble when it was disclosed Meese, a on-time California prosecutor, failed to list a $15,000 interest-free loan to his wife, Ursula, on his financial disclosure statement. The loan came from a friend who later got a government job.
Last September, after a five-month investigation, Stein found "no basis" for bringing a criminal prosecution against Meese, but he declined in his 385-page report to comment on Meese's fitness to serve as attorney general.
Members of the Judiciary Committee are expected to question Meese about his role in recommending friends for federal jobs who helped him financially, his failure to list pertinent information on financial disclosure forms and his failure to recall conversations and events when he was questioned by the special prosecutor.
Shuttle returns to Earth; mission called a success
By United Press International
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The military shuttle Discovery returned to Florida yesterday from a secret three-day spaceflight that apparently placed an advanced radio eavesdropping satellite in an orbit overlooking the Soviet Union.
Discovery, manned by a crew of five,
announced its arrival by two sonic booms
and glided to a smooth touchdown at 3:23
Centers' Center. Center's three-mile-long concrete runway
"The crew has been welcomed home." he mission control spokesman Steven Nastl
The 47-orbit mission opened a new era of military operations in the "high frontier" of space. Never before had American astronauts been able to space mission for the Department of Defense.
UNLIKE ALL previous shuttle returns, Discovery's communications were encoded and blacked out to the public as had all communications since last Thursday from the oceanside launch pad five miles east of the landing strip.
There also was no word immediately after landing from Nav Capt. Thomas Mattingly, Air Force Lt. Col. Loren Shriver, Marine Corps Lt. Col. James Buchli and Air Force Majs. Ellison Onizuka and Gary Payton.
A post-landing news_conference was
cancelled, marking the first time in 15
years that a spaceflight landed after a spaceflight landing.
Hugh Harris, a spokesman for NASA, said the news conference was canceled because Jesse Moore, the chief of the program for NASA, was in Washington.
THE UNPRECEDENTED blackout was requested by the Air Force, which chartered Discovery from the civilian space agency for $1.2 million.
The Air Force, however, did confirm that Discovery's cargo was successfully deployed and that the $50 million, two-ton package of "successfully" meet its mission objectives."
Successful operation of the rocket, called an inertial upper stage or IUS, was critical because the rocket failed on its last outing, in 1983. The success cleared the need for use of an identical rocket on the short flight schedule, scheduled to begin Feb. 20.
Defense sources identified Discovery's payload as an advanced signals intelligence satellite.
The sources had said that the "big ear" spacecraft was bound for a stationary orbit 23,200 miles above the equator south of Earth. The spacecraft pick up radioed engineering data from missile tests and tune in on military communications.
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