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University Daily Kansan, April 21, 1983
News Briefs From United Press International
Nicaraguan rebels accused of flame-thrower ambush
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Exiled rebels fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government burned nine Miskito Indians to death with flame throwers and shot a tenth in an ambush, a state engineer said yesterday.
yesterday.
In another development, the Honduran military charged that Nicaraguan troops sprayed mortar and machine gun fire on the Honduran towns of Palo Verde and San Benito Tuesday.
There was no independent verification of either charge. Eduardo Fonseca Moncada, an engineer with Nicagraa's state-run Forestry Corporation, said in a radio broadcast that anti-Sandinista insurgents ambushed the truck he was riding in with 10 Miskin Indians.
"I threw myself from the truck. I saw how they shot the driver, Santos Ramos. I couldn't do anything for him. I saw him twisting in pain and bleeding profusely. Later he died," Fonseca Moncada said.
Brazil to intercept arms from Libya
BRASILIA Brazil — Brazilian authorities will seize an estimated 200 tons of arms and explosives from four Libyan cargo planes discovered to be making secret shipments to the revolutionary government of Nicaragua, officials said yesterday.
Air force troops guarded the planes, three of them huge Russian-made liyushins, at airports in the northern Brazilian cities of Recife and Manaus.
Government sources said they expected the aircraft to be unloaded by last night and said air force officials would study the arms cargo.
Brazilian government sources said the material should eventually be returned to Libya but that the planes would probably return empty.
Church conference draws criticism
UPPSALA, Sweden — Christian church leaders from 60 nations met yesterday at a "Life and Peace" conference aimed at condemning nuclear arms, but critics charged they were Soviet pawns.
"They will be weights in the balance on the Russian side in the campaign in Western Europe against the NATO decision to outweigh the Soviet supremacy in nuclear arms," wrote the influential Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet in an editorial.
Other critics attacked the conference for not discussing the issue of human rights.
human rights. Conference participants will meet in an attempt to agree on a final declaration to world leaders that will include concrete steps to end the threat of nuclear war.
Bans on reactor construction OK'd
WASHINGTON — States may ban nuclear power plant construction as long as they do it for economic reasons, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
In a 9-0 decision weighted heavily toward states' rights, the justices upheld a California moratorium on new reactor construction. While the moratorium was linked directly to finding a way to dispose of radioactive waste, the high court concluded the ban fell within the scope of a state's traditional economic power to regulate its utilities.
California acted to protect consumers from paying higher utility rates stemming from costly reactor construction, not from concerns about reactor safety, which are the federal government's responsibility, the court said.
GNP growth rate highest in 2 years
WASHINGTON — The nation's gross national product grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent from January through March in the strongest three-month period for the economy in two years, the government said yesterday.
yesterday.
Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige said the improvement marked the end of "four years of economic stagnation" but record federal deficits still jeopardized the expanding economy.
While the first quarter's performance was the best since the start of 1901, it was less than the vigorous growth expected by the administration and most private analysts. The GNP shrank 1.1 percent during the previous quarter.
bring the previous quarter." This is the first quarter of recovery," Baldrige said.
Interview ban unfair, Soviet says
WASHINGTON — The State Department said yesterday that Soviet spokesman Georgi Arbatov violated the terms of his U.S. visa by giving an interview to an Iowa newspaper, but the Russian called that view "undecent."
Arbatty complained that his "human rights are being endangered" by a ban on interviews imposed by U.S. officials.
by Arbatoov, a director of the Soviet Institute on the United States and Canada, and a frequent spokesman on Soviet policy in the Western press, was permitted to enter the country on the basis of having "no contact" with the media.
U. S. officials based that ban on Soviet refusal to give American officials access to the Soviet media.
Victims rescued after 9 days at sea
SINGAPORE — Three men and a woman who abandoned their burning yacht under a hail of Vietnamese bullets were rescued on the South China Sea after drifting injured in a dinghy for nine days without food or water, a ship's captain said yesterday.
Two crewmen died in the ordeal, one just a day before the survivors were rescued by the Panamamanian-registered cargo ship, the Linden.
Intelligence sources here said Amboyna Cay has been occupied since 1975 by a force of several hundred Vietnamese troops.
Thief palms iewel worth $600,000
NEW YORK - A daring thief stake a rare pink emerald-cut diamond worth $600,000 from the Sotheby Parke Bernet auction house, substituting an inferior gem painted with pink nail polish, the FBI said yesterday.
The survivors — three West Germans and a Singaporean — said their 51-foot catamaran Siddhartha was attacked by the Vietnamese garrison at Amboyna Cay in the Spratly islands, 350 miles southeast of Vietnam, the captain said.
The thief evidently palmed the stone, which was on display Tuesday before its scheduled sale yesterday, and walked away with it, police and the FBI said.
FBI spokesman Joseph Valliquette said the unmounded diamond, weighing 18.98 carats, was put on display at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
giving 9-30 cameras. A Sotheby's spokesman said that under normal circumstances, the jewels were placed in glass cases that were watched by videotape cameras.
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Embassy attack suspects held ninth American victim found
By United Press International
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Four suspects were held yesterday for the blast that tore through the U.S. Embassy, killing 35 people and burying 25 others under rubble of a mine of 10m depth in the Marine guard at the mission — was recovered.
In Washington, President Reagan ordered the White House flag flown at half-staff and ordered a special delegation to Beirut to honor the victims and bring home the bodies of the slain Americans.
Reports in Israel and Egypt said Syrian-trained commandos were responsible for the Monday "kamikaze" attack that demolished what was once the safest haven in war-ravaged Beirut.
THERE WAS NO OFFICIAL confirmation of the radio report.
The Christian Phalange radio claimed that a booby-trapped van stolen from the embassy during the height of the Israeli invasion last June was used to drive the explosive blast into the eight-story building.
In Vatican City, Pope John Paul II led 50,000 people in prayers for the
"Today I invite you to pray with me for the situation in tormented Lebanon, where the destructive forces of blind violence have once again caused numerous victims with the extremely high number of the United States Embassy," John Paul said.
viations of the bombing, an act he condemned as the work of "the destructive forces of blind violence."
OFFICIALS, SAID .35. BODIES had been recovered and another 25 people were missing and presumed dead. Nine of the confirmed dead are Americans and eight other Americans are missing and presumed dead.
Although a final death toll was not expected for several days, the union representing American career diplomats said the blast was "the worst single blow the foreign service ever has received."
At least 105 Americans and Lebanese were injured in the blast.
were injured in the attack.
"It may be some days before we realize the full extent of our loss," Ambassador Robert Dillon said.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Elie Salem said four suspects were in custody, but declined to give their nationalities or say when they were arrested.
Officials in Beirut said that about a third of the Embassy staff was back on the job 48 hours after the blast.
"The embassy endures," said a bandaged Vice Consul Dundas McCullough, 25, a native of Berkeley, Calif. He survived the blast and now works out of his apartment.
PRESS ATTACHE JOIN REID said embassy offices had been moved to more than six apartments in downtown Reitur.
Both Dillon and U.S. envoy Philip Habib discredited a previous Lebanese news agency report that Habib had been the bomb's primary target, saying he was not expected at the embassy at the time of the blast.
Among those claiming responsibility was a group called the Islamic Struggle Organization, which previously said it had captured six insurgents and attacked that injured two U.S. Marines.
state-run Damascus radio accused the Israelis of masterminding the explosion "to support their claim that the international and multinational forces are not capable of securing peace and stability in Lebanon."
Rescue operations were still going on at the embassy last night.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — It sounded like roiling thunder, but then there was a flash, a wall collapsed and Dundas McCullough was struggling to breathe in the dust-filled darkness of the U.S. Embassy.
Blast victim plans to stay
"I was speaking with someone, and then I heard this rolling thunderous sound," the 25-year-old vice consul said yesterday.
By United Press International
"There had been a thunderstorm earlier in the day," McCullough said. "But this went on too long."
"I REALIZED MY CHIN WAS on the counter and there was a big flash or light in front of me and then the wall separating the file room from the waiting room fell on me and my interpreter," said the diplomat.
McCallough, his head still bandaged and his voice trembling, said he had no intention of asking for a job in Lebanon despite his brush with death.
"The Embassy endures," McCullough said. "There's not much point in giving the people who place bombs in our embassies the satisfaction of driving us out early."
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