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University Daily Kansan, July 6, 1983
News Briefs From United Press International
Blast at the NEA backfires; president bombs with AFT
LOS ANGELES — President Reagan got an ice reception from the American Federation of Teachers yesterday as he sought to woo the group by attacking a larger rival union, the National Education Association.
Albert Shanker, president of AFT, told reporters after yesterday's address that "areas of disagreement still remain and aren't mild disagreements in our view."
More than 100 delegates of the AFT, the nation's second largest teacher's organization with 580,000 members, silently left the hall as Reagan began a speech urging the group to join his excellence-in-education campaign.
While Shanker has supported about Reagan's proposal for merit pay for outstanding teachers, the federation strongly objects, for instance, to tuition tax credits backed by the administration. And Shanker has said the president deserves no more than "an F-plus" grade on education issues and has no chance of receiving the group's political endorsement.
White House aides had predicted Reagan's cause would be aided by speaking to the AFT, even if he met protest. They reasoned a bad reception would help him paint teachers as an obstacle to needed reform.
Salvadoran officers attack U.S. aid
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A group of junior army officers criticized growing American influence in El Salvador and said their country has become a "guinea pig" for U.S. foreign policy. The charges came in a letter distributed among the ranks and obtained by UPI yesterday.
"Everything is designed from the north (Washington), with veiled orders to fulfill or suffer the consequences " a cut in aid, et," the
The letter was issued by the "Blue and White Movement," a newly created and little-known group of junior military officers.
The letter said that the U.S. continued to follow foreign interests which "undoubtedly do not concern the solution of our internal problem, but rather involve us as guinea pigs within their geopolitical conceptions."
Reagan increases steel import tariffs
WASHINGTON — President Reagan yesterday ordered four years of import relief for the specialty steel industry and called for talks with other steel-producing nations to work toward free and open steel trade.
U. S. Trade Representative William Brock said at a news conference that the two moves were designed to enforce U.S. laws against unfair trade practices but to do so in a way that led toward more open trade rather than protectionism.
The relief will take the form of additional tariffs on flat-rolled specialty steel products and quotas on all imports of stainless steel bar, rod and alloy tool steel.
The Commission of the 10-nation European Communities said the U.S. industry's problem was not imports but "the overall economic situation which led to a severe slump in steel consumption worldwide."
CIA was target of bomb, story says
LONDON — The explosion that devastated the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was an inside job carried out by 16 Islamic fundamentalists hoping to disrupt a CIA meeting, Britain's Independent Television News said yesterday.
In a report quoting diplomatic and intelligence sources, ITN said 16 non-Americans who worked as office cleaners and cafeteria workers planned the attack, which killed some 60 people and injured more than 100 others.
The ITN report said none of the 16 embassy workers involved in the plot was killed or captured.
It said the group of plotters included two Lebanese and 14 persons with Iranian or Syrian connections.
ITN said the explosion was timed for maximum effect — to disrupt a CIA meeting going on in the building. Several key CIA employees were killed in the explosion.
Steep tortilla prices anger Mexicans
MEXICO CITY — Mexicans yesterday bemoaned a 40 percent hike in the cost of tortillas and a doubling of the price of bread, and some irate consumers stomping around the counter to register their complaints.
But although some protested in the small bakeries where the pancake-like tortilla corn bread is made, most cash-strapped vendors have kept their bakery business.
The Commerce Ministry authorized the hike after a five-month campaign by the National Association of Tortilla Makers and Corn Millers.
Inflation estimates in Mexico are running from 80 percent to 114 percent a year.
Italian police face charges of torture
PADUA, Italy — Four of the special anti-terrorist policemen who freed U.S. Brig. Gen. James Dozier from his Red Brigades captors went on trial yesterday on charges of torturing one of the kidnappers.
The men are charged with torturing convicted Red Brigades terrorist Cesare Di Lenardo, 23. A fifth policeman was removed from the trial because of parliamentary immunity gained when he was elected to Parliament last week.
Di Lenaro, who was sentenced to 27 years in prison for his part in the 1981 kidnapping of the U.S. general, charged that the five policemen used electric charges on his body, forced him to drink gallons of salted water, burned his hands, cut his calves and staged fake executions.
Nuke tests erode island, study says
PARIS — Although French scientists denied yesterday that Mururuca Atoll, the French nuclear test site in the South Pacific, is sinking because of repeated explosions, they admitted the blasts have created a risk of tidal waves.
A report delivered to the Defense Ministry said the underground nuclear tests had triggered sediment erosion and shaken its infrastructure.
French vulcanologist Harou Tazieff, who headed the research team, admitted that shock waves rippling through the core of the atoll by the blasts could cause landslides and erosion.
Government starts hot line for AIDS
WASHINGTON — The government opened a toll-free hot line for questions about AIDS and is publishing new leaflets for the public and professionals on the deadly disease, Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler said yesterday.
AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a disorder in which the body's ability to ward off infections is reduced, clearing the way for invasion of certain cancers and other lethal infections.
The hot line number is 800-342-AIDS, and will be open weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. CDT.
The government is also publishing a new leaflet — "Facts about AIDS" - intended for the public. Copies are available by writing the Public Health Service, Office of Public Affairs, Room 721H, 200 Independence Ave. S.W., Washington, D.C. 20201.
Court OKs legislative prayers
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Legalitaries may pay a chaplain to open their sessions with a prayer, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 yesterday, because such appeals for divine guidance are "part of the fabric of our society."
Chief Justice Warren Burger, writing for the court, said the prayers were simply an "acknowledgment of beliefs widely held" by the people and not an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state.
THE HIGH COURT'S decision in the case of the Nebraska Legislature's chaplain apparently will allow Congress to continue its practice of paying House and Senate chaplains to begin its sessions — a tradition that began with the first session of the Continental Congress in 1774.
Rather than a strict constitutional test, Burger relied heavily on tradition to justify upholding the invocation practice and the use of tax money to pay for it against charges that it violated the First Amendment.
A group of atheists has filed suit against the congressional practice of having permanent, appointed chaphares, who are paid $52,750 a year. Similar challenges have been raised about military chaphaples.
Every state legislature, except the Massachusetts Senate, opens its daily sessions with a prayer, usually offered by the governor. The governor directly affects Kansas and 17 other
Justice William Brennan, one of three dissenters, said a ruling striking down legislative prayer "would likely have stimulated a furious reaction. But it would also. I am convinced, have the right to speak in religion and the spirit of freedom."
THE CHAPLAINS OF the Kansas House and Senate are paid $349 a month for the four months a year that the Legislature is in session.
states with permanent, salaried chaplets.
Justice Thurgood Marshall and John
Stevens were the other two
officials.
Breman, noting he voted the opposite way in a case 20 years ago but has changed his mind, said such an invocation "intrudes on the right to conscience" by forcing legislators to agree with him or "make their disagreements a matter of public comment."
NEBRASKA'S LEGISLATIVE PRAYER practice was challenged in 1979 by state legislator Ernest Chambers, the son of a fundamentalist minister.
He said he did not share, or agree with, the Presbyterian religion of the Rev. Robert Palmer, who served as the Nebraska Legislature's chaplain for 16 years until January 1981 when a court ruled against the practice.
Burger rejected arguments that Palmer's long tenure amounted to
"The content of the prayer is not of concern to judges where, as here, there is no indication that the prayer opportunity has been exploited to advance any one, or to disparage any other faith or belief," he wrote.
establishing an official religion and showed a preference for one denomination over another.
PRESIDING OVER THE court's meeting, Burger said today was likely to be the last day of the court's 1982-83 term. Several major cases are still awaiting decision, including the Betamax case about videotaping the debate in a US court and the penalty dispute and a controversy over sex discrimination in pension plans.
In other rulings handed down Tuesday, the justices;
- Voted 6-3 that police did not need a warrant to search a package delivered to an Illinois man after customs officers discovered it contained illicit drugs.
- Splitting 5.4, narrowed the right of non-union workers to seek money damages from unions under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan civil rights law.
- On a 7-2 vote said lawyers appointed to represent poor criminal defendants may ignore some of their suggestions on how to handle the case.
*Condemned 6-2 a Texas property tax on bank shares that included no deduction for tax-exempt federal obligations held by the banks.
Student aid to be topic at hearings
The public will have an opportunity to evaluate federal student aid programs at hearings tomorrow and Friday at the Hilton Airport Plaza Ima, 8801 NW 112 St., Kansas City, Mo.
Duncan Helmick, public affairs specialist for the U.S. Department of Education, said yesterday that the department will conduct the public financial aid programs from the educational community and the public.
The hearings will be from 8 a.m. to
5 p.m. tomorrow and from 8 a.m. to
noon Friday in the Litton South
Room of the Hilton.
The Higher Education Act of 1965, which governs all federal student aid, expires in September 1985. Before that time, Congress will review changes to the act suggested by the Education Department.
Helmrich said the Guarantee Student Loan program had received the greatest attention at past hearings.
He said that suggestions made at past hearings included simplifying student aid application forms, speeding up the application process for Guaranteed Student Loans and expanding the Pell Grant program.
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