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University Daily Kansan, January 25, 1984
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NATION AND WORLD
News briefs from UPI
Envoys say that Afghans assassinated Soviet official
NEW DELHI, India — Afghan guerrillas assassinated a Soviet official thought to be the military attack at the Soviet Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in a bold operation last week. Western diplomats said yesterday.
The diplomats, in a regular briefing on Afghanistan, also said President Babrak Karmal, installed by the Soviets in a coup at the end of 1979, has completed a major shake-up of the Afghan military high command.
Karmal has ousted many commanders in a campaign to bolster the Afghan army, whose ranks have been thinned in four years of Soviet occupation by mass defections and failure to draft new soldiers the diplomats said.
The diplomats also said rebels in Kabul have stepped up assassination attempts against Soviet personnel.
Saving water said to be states' duty
PHILADELPHIA — The administration's plan to protect America's ground-water supply gives states the responsibility to carry out the job, a House subcommittee chairman said yesterday.
a house subcommittee for D-Okla, made the allegation in a speech to a conference on water pollution attended by 360 people, including leading scientists and government regulators.
The Environmental Protection Agency was scheduled to unveil its long-awaited "ground water protection strategy" this month, but the agency has postponed its release until May.
agency has posited that Synar said the latest draft proposal for protecting ground water from toxic chemical contamination stated that states have the responsibility for protecting ground water.
New Boston archbishop sets goals
BOSTON — Archbishop-elect Bernard F. Law said yesterday that he planned to concentrate on personal spiritual renewal, social justice and peace when he became the eighth leader of the Boston Archdiocese on March 23.
Law, the bishop of the Springfield-Cape Girardeau, Mo., Diocese for 10 years, was named yesterday by Pope John Paul II to replace Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, who died of heart failure on Sept. 17 at the age of 67.
age of 61. Meirosei, who had become archbishop of Boston in September 1970 and a cardinal $2^{1/2}$ years later, underwent triple bypass heart surgery before his death
Law will be installed as the eighth bishop and fifth archbishop of the nation's third largest Roman Catholic diocese.
exxon's last-quarter profits increase
Exxon Corp., the world's largest oil company and industrial company, yesterday reported that its fourth-quarter profits rose 9.7 percent as demand for petroleum improved somewhat from severely depressed levels a year earlier.
Exxon officials said that the stronger 1983 results also reflected increased crude oil production, particularly in the North Sea.
increased crude oil prices, Standard Oil Co. of California, the fourth largest U.S. oil company, announced that its fourth-quarter earnings declined 5.2 percent in the face of falling petroleum prices and higher U.S. exploration expenses.
In the October-December quarter, Exxon earned $1.62 billion, or $1.91 a share, up from $1.48 billion, or $1.71 a share, in the closing 1982 quarter.
Bubik's Cube a copy, witness says
WILMINGTON, Del. — A Massachusetts man patented a six-sided brainstae game seven years before the Ideal Toy Co. began marketing the similar Rubik's Cube, a witness testified yesterday in federal court.
Larry D. Nichols, 47, and his employer, Molecular Research Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., have filed suit seeking $60 million in damages against ideal and its parent company, CBS Inc., alleging that the firm infringed on a 1972 patent protecting his puzzle.
Lewis W. Eslinger, an attorney for CBS, denied the allegation. He said ideal acquired exclusive rights to make and sell Rubik's Cube in 1979 from its inventor, professor Erno Rubik who patented the device in Hungary in 1976.
LONDON — Linda McCartney, American-born wife of singer Paul McCartney, was fined $105 yesterday on her second marijuana conviction in eight days but shrugged off the case as "much ado about nothing."
Her husband, who watched the 12-minute court proceedings from the public gallery, said that the cause for decriminalization of marijuana, which he supported, was gaining strength.
"It is 20 years since the '60s," said McCartney, whose first drug conduction dates back to 1972.
In the Uxbridge magistrates court, Linda, 42, pleaded guilty to carrying about 5 grams of cannabis in her bags last week when she and Paul flew into Britain from the Caribbean island of Barbados where they had been vacationing.
Warmer weather in sight-for 1990s
NEW YORK — The long-range forecast for the planet Earth is for warmer weather in the 1990s.
The February issue of Omni magazine, released on the newstands yesterday, said that a team of French scientists at the University of Paris's Institut de Physique du Globe calculated that the earth's surface was covered with 1.8 billion cocks that showed days getting several thousandths of a second longer.
A change in spin alters the friction between the globe's surface and the air, eventually affecting atmospheric patterns, the scientists said.
WEATHER FACTS
The outcome will be a rise in temperature of about a half a degree Celsius warmer worldwide when the next decade rolls around, the scientists said.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST to 7 PM EST 1-25-84
URL WEATHER FOTOCAST
Today will be fair across the nation except for some rain in the Southeast.
Locally, today will be mostly sunny with a high of 45 to 50, according to the National Weather Service in Topeka.
Tonight will be mostly clear with a low of 20 to 25. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny with a high in the mid- to upper 40s.
Inflation rate reaches 11-year low
Only used cars and tobacco showed annual price rises of 10 percent or more last year, a sharp contrast from 1979 when prices for everything soared to 13.3 percent.
WASHINGTON — Consumer prices rose 0.3 percent in December and just 3.8 percent in all of 1983, the best inflation rate since Nixon administration price controls more than a decade ago, the government said yesterday.
By United Press International
"Today's news is very heartening, especially for those on fixed incomes," a White House spokesman said. "We're on the way to sustained growth with low inflation and that's good news for everybody."
Energy prices dropped 0.5 percent last year, the biggest decline in that area in 20 years and the most significant break for consumers.
The 1983 inflation rate, the best since the 3.4 percent of 1971 and 1972, was a more dramatic improvement than comparison with 1982's 3.9 percent suggests. If the Labor Department switched its Consumer Price Index to read rents instead of home ownership costs a year earlier, 1982's inflation has have been a percent -1.1 points higher than 1983, the department said.
NATURAL GAS PRICES were up only 5.2 percent for the year, not even close to 1982's 25.4 percent increase. Gasoline prices dropped 1.6 percent during 1983, climbing just 0.1 percent in December.
The broad category of fuel oil, coal and bottled gas costs dropped a record 9.4 percent last year, even though fuel oil costs go up in price at the end of December.
THE PRESIDENT'S chief economist, Martin Feldstein, said that the
"By virtually every major inflation index, the line is being held on cost," he said. "Unlike 1972, inflation this year was low without price controls."
In a separate report yesterday, the Labor Department said that the spending power of the average blue-collar family kept 0.4 percent ahead of price increases in December and ended 1983 with a 2.5 percent gain.
CPI reflected the trends throughout the economy.
But weekly earnings — adjusted for inflation — still lost an average 65 cents a year since 1967. By the end of 1983, the average worker had 5.6 percent less spending power than 16 years ago, the department said.
"Workers' hourly earnings in 1983 lagged behind even the modest increase in inflation," up only 3.7 percent, AFL-CIO labor economist Rex Hardesty noted. And, he added, "The improvement in inflation was paid for
by the very deep costs of a severe recession."
Food costs in December, up 0.3 percent, also would have been higher had the price survey been later in the month when a freeze destroyed more than a fifth of Florida's orange crop in Florida and Texas in crops in both Florida and Texas.
FOOD PRICES FOR all of last year were up only 2.7 percent.
December's inflation report promises to be the best for some time because the January index will register the fuel oil and produce surges. But analysis still agree that 1984's inflation rate is below 2 percent, the acceleration, to around 3 percent.
THE REASONS FOR 1983's good inflation performance offered most frequently are intense competition with foreign imports for American spending money and a shortage of cash among those still unemployed.
Pollsters list top issues
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Rising budget deficits and the threat of war are shaping up as the major issues of the 1984 campaign and could threaten President Reagan's chances for re-election to a few prominent pollers said yesterday.
Independent pollster Louis Harris told reporters at a breakfast meeting that Reagan "has polarized the nation more than anyone since Franklin D. Roosevelt" and could be vulnerable because polarization causes a large turnout which usually favors Democrats.
"I'd say Ronald Reagan is vulnerable and can be taken," Harris said. "This looks to me to be very close — a 50-50 election."
REAGAN'S CHIEF POLLSTER, Richard Würthlin, joined Peter Hart, who does the same job for former Vice-President Walter Mondale, across town at another breakfast for reporters and journalists to detect defects and the war issues are critical.
are "hard-core core Re-again," while 38 percent are "hard-core anti-Reagain.
Harris also said his latest poll showed 70 percent of the people now want the Marines out of Lebanon and 81 percent getting the United States into war.
When it comes to deficits, 72 percent feel the budget must not be balanced if they want to reduce deficits.
Harris said 35 percent of the voters
Hart said it was time for Democrats to take advantage of the deficit issue. While Republicans once held a 55-14 margin over democrats as the party that could best balance the budget, that has now dropped to 33-22, he noted.
"THEIR SQUIRM INDEX is up," he said, meaning Republicans have trouble giving good answers about why the deficit is up to $200 billion.
"Forty-two percent of the public knows Ronald Reagan has given us larger deficits than any other president," he said, going to increase that percentage.
"we can say that Ronald Reagan has broken a covenant with the American people — he told you he would balance the budget and he's given you a trillion-dollar deficit," Hart said.
Poles accuse attorney of buying state secrets
By United Press International
WARSAW, Poland — Poland's communist authorities accused a pro-solarity lawyer yesterday of briking a riot-squad deserter to hand over state security secrets to underground dissidents.
Chief government spokesman Jerzy Urban told a news conference that Maciej Bednarkiewicz, a prominent lawyer arrested Jan. 11, was in prison between dissidents and the desert from a Polish riot squad.
It was the government's first public explanation of charges against Bednarkiewicz, a member of the board of the Polish Lawyers Association who had planned to accuse several key dissident court cases.
Urban said the deserter, identified only as Janusz B., was introduced to Bednarkiewicz in 1982.
In return for bribes totaling $2,900,
the derried试来 to steal a police
radio transmitter and revealed
secret state security arrangements
in the Warsaw area. Urban charged,
with no details of the alleged
secrets.
Urban said Bednarkiewicz also bribed the deserter to find phony evidence against two police officers accused of causing the death of Grzegorz Przemyk, 18. a pro-Solidarity student allegedly beaten in a Warsaw police station last May 14.
"Despite the money, the results were poor." Urban said.
He said the deserter later gave himself up, confessed to the police, and was pardoned under last year's political amnesty.
Bednarkiewicz has defended several坠坠issidents and was due to appear next week for Przemyk's family at the trial.
TONIGHT IS PITCHER NIGHT at THE HAWK
Hillel
It Could Only Happen at ...
THE HAWK • 1340 OHIO
SHABBAT DINNER and services
Friday, Jan. 27
6:00 at the
Lawrence Jewish Community Center
917 Highland
Members-free Non-Members-$1
for reservations and/or rides
call 864-3948
by
Thursday. Jan. 26
Sponsored by SUA and Lambda Sigma
January 30-February 2
Sign up in the SUA office (Union) by Jan. 26
WEEKLY KEG SPECIALS!
HAS A FEW QUESTIONS FOR YOU.
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Cosmetics
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MATHEMATICSPRIZE COMPETITION
Junior Level: Open to all undergraduates
of non-senior standing.
First Prize — $75
Second Prize — $40
Senior Level: Open to all undergraduates.
First Prize—$100
Second Prize $50
Both exams will be given on Feb. 21, 1984
7-10 FM in 100m 107 Outgoing
To participate you must register in 217 Strong
by noon, February 21, 1984.
COPIES OF LAST YEAR'S COMPETITIONS ARE POSTED OUTSIDE 217 STRONG
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