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Vol. 94, No. 81 (USPS 650-640)
Thursday morning, January 19. 1984
Officials denounce killing of U.S. educator in Beirut
WASHINGTON — The White House today deplored the assassination of Dr. Malcolm H. Kerr, president of the American University in Beirut.
“it's certainly tragic,” said presidential
speaker Larry Speakes, “and we deplore asse
ments.”
State Department spokesman Alan Romberg said, "We view Dr. Kerr's assassination as an outrageous and contemptible act directed against a respected educator who tirelessly and courageously served the principles of academic freedom and excellence in education. We wish to express our deepest sympathy to the Kerr family."
ROMBERG SAID THAT Kerr's death "at the hands of these despicable assuists must be avoided."
terrorists." He said that terrorism "is repugnant and contrary to the principles for which Dr. Kerr stood. Terrorism must not be allowed to take control of our lives, our actions or our future."
Kerr, 52, a U.S. citizen born in Beirut, was killed by gunmen as he stepped off the elevator outside his campus office. The Islamic Jihad, the pro-Iranian terrorist group that said it was responsible, has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on American and French embassies in Lebanon, including the Qatar bombings of the U.S. Marine headquarters at the Beirut airport, which killed 241 Americans, and at the French headquarters, which killed 58 French.
"Kerr was the victim of the American presence in Beirut," said a caller to the French news agency, who said he represented the organization.
Jihad has previously claimed it bombed the U.S. embassies in Beirut and Kuwait as well as
French and American peace-keeping troops in Lebanon. The earlier attacks killed 258 Americans.
"WE PLEDGE THAT there will no longer be a single American or Frenchman on this soil," the caller said.
Kerr was alone as he stepped out of the elevator, having dispensed with the use of a bodyguard shortly after assuming his duties in October 1982 "because he felt at home and was surrounded by friends," said university spokesman Radwan Mawlai.
However, he had reason to be concerned, as he replaced David Dodge, who was kidnapped while walking on campus in July 1982 and taken to prison. He said the captors following Syrian mediation a year later.
Mawlawi said the assassins were able to carry out their attack, despite a heavy army and police guard at the campus gates, because "when one plans such a dirty thing, they have their ways."
KERR, A PROMINENT Arabist, was born in Beirut in 1931, and his father was a medical doctor and professor of medicine at the school. Before his appointment, Kerr spent 20 years on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Steve, Kerr's son, is a guard on the Arizona basketball team, but he was born in Beirut.
Tom Duddleton Jr., a university spokesman, said assistant basketball coach Scott Thompson learned of the killing and "spent the rest of the day with him," and "o'clock on in his dorm room to be with the kid.
"According to Thompson, Steve's immediate concern was the safety of his mother who lived next door," he said.
THOMPSON AND ANOTHER person with him
teacher helped her and assured her
her safety, Dudleston said.
"After talking with his mother, Steve told me his father 'was where he wanted to be — doing
what he wanted to be doing — trying to help the people he wanted to help. " Thompson said
An official statement released by the college said Kerr was hit by two bullets but doctors said only one bullet wound was found in his body after he was pushed to nearby American University Hospital.
The bullet "entered the heart and came out from the left side of the head passing through the left ear," said Dr. Ahmed Harati, a Lebanese government medical examiner.
Med Center officials try to attract more patients
Kerr's wife, Ann, was at the hospital when her husband was pronounced dead. It was the same day she had been taken to a
FOR FOUR HOURS following Kerr's death, the Lebanese army sealed the American campus, in west Beirut on a bluff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea and regarded as an axis of resistance.
But the official university statement said after an intensive search of the grounds, "the gunmen
By ROB KARWATH Staff Reporter
TOPEKA — Since August, the University of Kansas Medical Center has begun trying to attract more patients, but it still needs to improve its marketing techniques. Med Center officials told a joint legislative committee yesterday.
The three officials told the joint Committee on Ways and Means that they had convinced more Kansas doctors to send patients to the Med Center. But they are behind in their marketing tactics compared to other hospitals in the country, they said.
"We've talked to hospitals in California and Iowa and found out that they are about five years ahead of us," said David Waxman, special counselor to the chancellor for health sciences.
WAXMAN PRESENTED A report to the legislators about the marketing progress the hospital had made since members of the Legislative Budget Committee spent a day at the Med Center in August discussing ways to improve the hospital's image.
Accompanying Waxman yesterday were Kay Clawson, executive vice chancellor at the Med Center, and Eugene Staples, hospital administrator.
Waxman said he thought the Med Center had done a good job of starting a marketing program designed to get Kansas doctors — especially KU doctors — to visit the area. The center rather than to other hospitals in the area.
Since the meeting in August, Waxman said, he
has traveled to 20 towns and cities across the state making his pitch to doctors, legislators.
"We need to get our share of Kansas referrals," he said. "My approach has been that of a salesman. When people ask what we have to do, the best answer is that we have the best cancer research hospitals in the country."
WAXMAN SAID THE Med Center was comparable in quality with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and to other famous research centers.
He told the joint meeting that he was optimistic last fall when the legislators told him to run the hospital like a business. But because it was not a good time, he had a lot of time, that is not always possible, he said.
"There have been some motivational problems," he said. "We start thinking, 'Why should we detract from our teaching and concentrate on learning? What money we make from filling beds is lost!'"
Waxman was referring to the fact that the Med Center does not directly keep all the money it puts in.
ONE OF THE MAIN points the KU officials stressed was the need to advertise. Waxman said that other hospitals in the Kansas City area recently had put out brochures and advertised on television. Unless the Med Center does the same, it might lose patients, he said.
"I believe you need an effective visual tool to help you." he said.
Waxman told the committee that the Med Center would hire a marketing specialist next month to start an advertising campaign.
Cattails, sitting in frozen soil, reach skyward toward the warm afternoon sun on a farm in North Lawrence.
Rural roads to be labeled by numbers New system to help emergency crews get to the scene quicker
By ROBIN PALMER Staff Reporter
The Douglas County Commission yesterday voted to assign numbers to township roads to help ambulance attendants and firefighters find emergencies in the county.
The new system will number township roads according to their distance from the town center.
For example, a township road with the number 40042 is 4 miles east of the west county line. A road with the number 1530N is 15 and one-half mile north of the south county line. Signs will be posted to notify township residents of the numbers of their roads.
TOWNSHIP ROADS DIFFER from city
ROADS, because they are not named, and that
makes them more difficult to find, said
Beverly Bradley, a Douglas County Commis-
sion.
But it will take township residents five to 10 years to learn the new road numbers, said Ted McFarlane, director of the Douglas County Ambulance Service.
For five years the county commission has been debating various ways to combat this problem. The new system has been sent to the District Sheriff so he can become familiar with it.
"There have been times when we've been unable to find the incident without further investigation."
Bradley said that when people who lived on a township roads called for emergency aid, they often referred to roads by colloquial names like "Mary," "Andrew" or cannot find them or get lost trying, she said.
The county's past numbering system was not used by the public. McFarlane said that it would also take a few years, for the police personnel to get used to the system.
Shultz says discussion with Gromyko went well
By United Press International
STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Secretary of State George Shultz met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko for five hours yesterday in a bid to smooth strained relations between the superpowers and said later that the talks "went well."
Details were not immediately disclosed, but the meeting at the snow-covered Soviet embassy in Stockholm's western suburbs lasted two hours more than scheduled — a sign that the two had made at least grudging progress.
Both men are in Stockholm for a European security conference, and in an angry morning speech to the European security conferences Gromyko charged that "nuclear war is the enemy of democracy." He said the usually dour diplomat seemed cordial when facing Shultz in the wood-paneled room.
A senior State Department official later said the talks were "detailed" and included nuclear arms control, human rights and the general
SHULTZ REPORTED BY telephone to President Reagan in Washington immediately after returning to his hotel suite.
'It is fair to say the talks were detailed and candid. There are differences, obviously, but the discussions were good ones.' State Department official
state of relations between Washington and Moscow
"We have differences," the official said. "Both made an effort to explain their position to the other.
"It is fair to say the talks were detailed and candid. There are differences, obviously, but the discussions were good."
Shultz, according to a member of his delegation, conceded he was "jittery" about the outcome of the talks, but appeared援救 later in the dinner with Swedish Prime Minister Olf Palme.
"I thought the talks went well," Shultz said. Soviet officials said they would have no official comment until today.
THE MEETING WAS THE first at such a high level between Soviet and American officials since Shultz and Gromyko exchanged angry words in Madrid after Soviet fighters shot down a South Korean airliner Sept. 1.
Since then, the United States has begun deployment of 572 Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in NATO countries to counter the triple-warhead Soviet SS-20s, which prompted Moscow to break off all arms and troop reduction negotiations.
The Kremlin has warned that it will not resume the talks until the missiles are removed and said yesterday that it had begun deploying new missiles in East Germany and Czechoslovakia in response to the NATO deployment.
THE RECENT CHILl in relations prompted fears of a new cold war, but Reagan moved for a conciliatory line in an address Monday that Shultz was believed to have echoed.
Unlike the stormy Madrid meeting, the State Department official said that yesterday's meeting was businesslike but had a veneer of cordiality.
"It was five hours and 10 minutes of diplomacy," the official said.
However, despite a brief mention of the Korean airliner incident, in which 269 people died, Shultz and Gramyko controlled their differences and shook hands before and after the meeting.
The U.S. official said Shultz had decided to view Gromyko's morning address as a public position that could be shrunge off in private.
"He recognized it as a speech," the official said, being lightly sarcastic.
SHULTZ AND HIS MIDES left the Soviet embassy at 8:10 p.m. local time, five hours and 15 minutes after his arrival.
Shultz was accompanied by the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Arthur Hartman; Richard Burt, assistant secretary of state for Europe; Jack Matlock, a Soviet expert with the National Security Council; and interpreter William Krimer.
Directly across from him was Gromyko, accompanied by his personal assistant, Vasily Makarov; Georgi Kornyenko, the first deputy foreign minister; S.P. Taraenko, deputy director of U.S. affairs in the Soviet Foreign Ministry; and interpreter Viktor Subkhodrov.
Reporters were not allowed into the embassy grounds at the end of the meeting.
Local cable company can't afford to prosecute bandits
By JILL CASEY Staff Reporter
KU students and other Lawrence residents who have opted for free cable television usually aren't penalized, but that doesn't mean that the local cable operator is unaware of cable theft.
The company operators normally do the cable hook-ups for subscribers neatly. Power said. So when he sees a cable that has been spliced, or "tied in knots and is nailed to the house in four feet," he trailing into a window," then he can reasonably assume that it is an amateur's work, he said.
"I can tell if people are stealing cable just by asking," said James Power, assistant chief tech.
KU STUDENTS ARE the main culprits, Power said.
In one apartment complex, where KU students are the primary inhabitants, Power estimated his company lost $1,200 last year.
Losses result not only from the uncollected subscription fees, he said, but also from damage to equipment during amateurs' clumsy attempts to connect.
But Power said that Sunflower had neither the time nor the personel to seek offenders or press charges. Because Sunflower's cable operators keep busy taking care of paying subscribers, finding thieves is low on the company's list of priorities, he said.
However, the company does maintain a file of addresses where tampering is obvious, he said, and eventually the company gets around to shutting off service. Only in extreme cases does Sunflower actually bring charges against violators, he said.
AND IN SOME INCIDENTS, thieves disconnect paying customers when they hook up their own service. This doesn't go undetected for long, he said.
Sunflower did recently report a suspected thief to Lawrence police. Power said, but only because the perpetrator had reconnected his cable after it had been shut off and he had been warned.
"The guy wasn't even paying and had the nerve to call and ask why he'd been cut off." Power said.
Although Sunflower is lenient with its offenders, a cable television company in Kansas City, Mo., has taken more aggressive action against cable thieves.
The company, American Cablevision, recently sponsored an ordinance passed in the city that calls for stricter penalties for cable thieves, said
Craig McCrystal, the company's general manager.
revenue last year due to cable theves," he said. Because the city lost from $40,000 to $80,000 in funding, the council did not oppose the ordinance, the council did not oppose the ordinance.
ALTHOUGH POWER SAID he did not know how much Sunflower had lost because of thieves, he estimated that 120 televisions are illegally hooked up in Lawrence. He said that the figure was about $1,895 for Sunflower's 12,000 customers, and that most corporate companies had only a 5 percent stolen service rate.
The cost to cable companies due to bandits ultimately falls back on subscribers, McCrystal said. Recently, American Cablevision raised its base rate $2.
"If I could retrieve that loss from people state service," he said. "I wouldn't have to raise pressure."
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