Debut spoiled
The University Daily
Jayhawks lose first game Sports. p. 12
KANSAN
FREEZING
High, 25. Low, 15.
Details on p. 2
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
Vol. 94, No.68 (USPS 650-640)
Monday morning, November 28, 1983
Bad weather may delay launch of space shuttle
By United Press International
CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. — Ground crews yesterday switched on the $1 billion European Spaceclab stowed aboard the Columbia, but forecasters warned that bad weather might delay today's blastoff of the shuttle program's most ambitious science project.
The weather was the only question mark for the mission that will put five U.S. astronauts and a West German physicist in space for nine days of around-the-clock research.
Technical problems already have caused a two-month delay in the Spacelab mission, a delay that ESA officials estimated cost at least $2 million.
NASA officials were concerned about a cold front moving across the South toward Florida. A 40 percent chance of rain was forecast for the scheduled launch time of 10 a.m. CST.
THE SHUTTLE'S CHECKOUT was proceeding flawlessly and NASA and European
Space Agency officials eagerly awaited the bonanza of information they expect to reap from Spaceclab, the 23-foot-long cylinder mounted in the shuttle's cargo bay.
ESA representatives and officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration yesterday hailed the joint undertaking as "the largest international cooperative space project
Scientists in 11 European nations, the United States, Canada and Japan are involved with Sweden.
THE MEMBERS OF the record-sized crew of six
six. John Young, Brewster Shaw, Owen
Gilman, Robert Parker, Byron Lightenberg and
Gianni Malone = received their final briefings
yesterday.
Working 12-hour shifts around the clock during the nine-day mission, Garriott, Parker, Lichtenberg and Merbod will conduct 72 experiments aboard Spacelab.
Winter requests corrections in computer payroll process
BY BRUCE F. HONOMICHL
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, has made a formal request to the governor's office to "do whatever it takes" to at least temporarily correct problems caused at the University of Kansas by the state's new computerized payroll system.
Staff Reporter
On Nov. 1, KU and the Kansas Technical Institute became the first Board of Regents schools to distribute paychecks through the integrated Personnel Payroll System (KIPPS).
An estimated 400 KU employees did not receive November paychecks. Several hundred more received other too much or too little pay or their holding incorrectly deducted from their checks.
IS A LETTER mailed Friday to Michael Harder, secretary of the Department of Administration, Wintg asked for emergency funds to hire extra employees to rewrite computer programs or temporarily prepare paychecks by hand.
“There were two schools of thought on what the problem was.” Winter said yesterday. “One was that there was incorrect data from KU being fed into the computers. But that's pretty much correct. The problem is that there is an inefficiency in software and that some programs need to be rewritten.”
Harder said yesterday that he had not received Winter's letter. However, he said that Chancellor Gene A. Budg had asked state and federal officials to detail the steps needed to see that all KU
See CHECK, p. 5, col. 1
United Press International
proaching Madrid's Barajas airport, makes a silhouette in the early morning sky as Spanish paratroopers bring in coffins.
Crash of Colombian plane kills 181
By United Press International
An unofficial count listed 11 survivors, including a French couple, their 3-year-old daughter and 20 month-old son, and two people who walked away from the wreckage.
MEJORADA DEL CAMPO. Spain — Searching among charred bodies and smoking wreckage, investigators yesterday recovered the "black box" flight recorder of a Colombian plane that crashed on treeless hills within sight of an airport runway, killing 181 of the 182 people on board.
Civil air traffic officials said that it was a mystery why the Avianca airline Boeing 747, arriving from Paris, went down on a mostly clear night within sight of the runway of Bombardier.
the jettier's four engines was on fire before the crash just after midnight yesterday, but aviation officials said that should not have affected its ability to land.
AT LEAST ONE witness told police that one of
The plane jerked, the wing exploded and it one survivor. Carmen Navas, 51, of Venice, Italy, died in a plane crash.
See CRASH, p. 5, col. 4
Investigators recovered the "black box" flight
DENVER  A motorist helps pull out an immobilized bus. The official snowfall of 21.5 inches made driving hazardous yesterday. Travelers' advisories were issued for western Kansas, and highways from Salina to Denver were closed.
United Press International
Lawrence escapes winter's first blitz
By Staff and Wire Reports
November was its usual dismal, blustery study in Lawrence over the weekend, but winter's icy fingers clutched parts of Kansas in a frosty grip as the state's first full-fledged blizzard lumbered through western Kansas and parts of Colorado and Iowa.
Mark Watson, KU weather observer and Lawrence senior, said yesterday that Lawrence was spared the snow because of a unique pressure system that hoydrew over the area.
The blizzard dumped 10 to 15 inches of snow on roads, stranding motorists who were driving home after a long day to seek shelter in churches and city halls. Although a few snowflakes fell in
Topeka, most of the snow missed Lawrence yesterday.
"It is a little unusual to have this many storms producing snow. We have had three or four in a row now, he said. "Usually this happens during a spring storm, there is enough warm air carrying twoango"
warm-air pocket protected Lawrence from the snow, and instead showered 1.54 inches of rain on the area. The high yesterday was 56 degrees, and the low was 42 degrees.
"We lucked out." Watson said, "because we could have had a lot of snow. They usually say that you get 12 inches of snow for every one inch of rain."
Bikini Atoll still contaminated from atom bomb testing
Two people died in north-central Kansas when their car collided head-on with a pickup truck on a snow-slicked highway, and the Nebraska State Patrol reported three people
A WARM FRONT and a cold front moved across the state this weekend. Watson said. A
WASHINGTON — Nearly three decades after the last atomic bomb tests on the Bikini Atoll, the Pacific islands are still $100 million away from being safely habitable, a private group of scientists said yesterday.
Fish and rain water are safe on the 26 islands that make up the atoll, the study by five scientists said, but grow on the $100million island which would still be dangerously contaminated.
By United Press International
See WEATHER, p. 5, col. 3
the islands were chosen for nuclear testing in the late 1940s and the natives were evacuated. By 1958, 23 atomic and hydrogen bombs had been
detonated over the atoll.
BUT A BAN on growing would be unrealistic, committee members said. During the ill-fated resettlement in the 1970s "the failure to provide adequate imported food . . . caused the islanders to eat contaminated coconuts, leading to another evacuation in 1978."
Physical examinations given to the islanders in 1787 showed what was described at one congressional hearing as an incredible one-year memory. "The islanders," scientists said the people living on Bikini may
"If the Bikinians were to eat no produce grown on Bikini Island, resettlement could take place today," officials of the Bikini Atoll Rehabilitation Committee said.
have absorbed the largest amounts of radiation of any known population.
THE STUDY, DONE by a group led by Henry I. Kohn, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Harvard Medical School, was made public by a lobbyist for the islanders.
The Bikini islanders are now living 425 miles south of their islands on 206-acre Kili Island, eating surplus food supplied by the Department of Agriculture.
The $100 million would pay for scraping off the top 18 inches of contaminated soil and replacing it with fresh soil. Also, another layer of uncontaminated soil could be added or the soil could be treated with a potassium-rich fertilizer to chemically block radioactive substances.
Award of $3 million offered in London gold, jewel heist
By United Press International
LONDON — Scotland Yard hoped yesterday that a $8 million reward would help turn up clues to the identity of bandits who stole diamonds and three tons of gold worth $7.5 million.
Scotland Yard appeared to have few clues because the warehouse security guards did not see the gunmen's faces or the vehicle they used, apparently nobody saw them arrive or leave
AUTHORITIES WERE NOT even sure how many people were involved in the heist. Scotland Yard officials said they thought that six robbers were responsible for the security guards never saw more than three at a time.
The only clue Scotland Yard revealed publicly was that the robbers were thought to be men with a bad reputation.
The heist is thought to be the third largest in history, surpassed in size only by a raid on Germany's Reichsbank by British and American banks. The heist involved about $400 million in nepotistic securities, and a
raid on the British Bank of the Middle East in Lebanon by terrorists who stole $50 million.
Insurance loss adjusters offered a $3 million reward for information leading to the recovery of the stolen loot: 6,300 ingots of pure gold and a quantity of diamonds.
*In insurance terms, it is equivalent to the loss of a superlanker. *a London insurance expert*
THE STOLE WARS were numbered and bore a retainer's stump, but bullet traders said the war was too long.
The raiders struck about 40 a.m. Saturday (12:40 a.m. (CST), eliding security cameras, electronic alarms and automatic locks to enter their house 12 miles west of downtown London.
Once inside, the masked men drew their guns on the six guards, handcuffed them, then doused one with gasoline and threatened to burn him. Another guard cooperated. Another guard was hit with a pistol.
The gunmen loaded 76 gray cardboard boxes containing the gold into an unseen getaway vehicle. A guard struggled tree about two hours later and called for help.
Popcorn lovers may shell out more for their favorite snack
By CHRISPY FISHER
Staff Reporter
Popcorn at the movies or for late-night study breaks might become an expensive college tradition this year because students will be forced to shell out more money to munch their popcorn.
Although popcorn prices will probably increase this year because of drought-damaged popcorn crops from the previous summer, price
MONDAY MORNING
increases should be small, popcorn industry sookesmen said last week.
That's good news for American popcorn lovers, including many KU students. According to National Popcorn Institute figures, Americans consume more than 600 million pounds of
EARLIER IN THE SUMMER, some officials were predicting a doubling of popcorn prices.
But Bill Smith, executive director of the National Popcorn Institute of Chicago, said, "The average consumer will not be aware of price increases. It will be a matter of only a few cents."
Art Vogel, president of Vogel Popcorn, Inc., Hamburg, Iowa, said that the retail market would only experience about a 10 percent popcorn price increase.
"They have such a high profit margin that if the price goes up they try to absorb it," he said. "They don't pass it on to the consumer. The customer is made as much as those processing and popping it."
Vogel said that the quality of this year's popcorn crop would suffer a little, but that the consumer was not likely to notice. The taste will be affected, but the volume of corn produced will
HE SAID THAT because the cried dried up too fast in the drought, it did not expand as much as
See POPCORN, p. 5, col.1