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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Thursday, Nov. 21, 1985
News Briefs Economic growth rises at rate of 4.3%
WASHINGTON - U.S. economic growth spurted upward at a surprisingly rapid 4.3 percent annual rate from July through September, the fastest pace in more than a year, the government reported yesterday.
While the Reagan administration hailed the increase as significant growth in economic activity, private economists were not as impressed, contending that the added growth during the summer may well subtract from activity in coming months.
GENOA, Italy — One of the four Palestinian hijackers who seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship in October is only 17 years old and must be tried separately by a juvenile court, legal officials said yesterday.
The Commerce Department said the gross national product — the total output of goods and services — grew at the fastest rate since a 7.1 percent increase in the second quarter of 1984.
Hijacker too young
The officials said the development meant that an arms conviction brought by an Italian court against the young hijacker Monday would be thrown out. The age of Bassam Al Ashker emerged during a three-hour interrogation by U.S. legal officials in Genoa yesterday.
Rig hits monument
WASHINGTON — The driver of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer was arrested yesterday after crashing his rig into the Washington Monument.
Garrow Ernest Brigham, 36, of Savage, Md., drove across 500 feet of grounds and through fences and benches before hitting the monument, said U.S. Park Police Major Richard Cusick.
Brigham's rig scraped against the obelisk, leaving a streak of green paint about four feet long across the northwest side of the structure.
From Kansan wires.
Senators offer measure on trade
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Twenty-six senators, setting aside 12 months of partisan squabbling, yesterday introduced sweeping legislation designed to spur the Reagan administration to step up action against unfair trade practices abroad.
The president isn't going to like some of the things in this bill," Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., said in outlining the first bipartisan trade measure placed before the Senate this year.
Comprehensive measures offered amid heightened concern over the estimated $150 billion U.S. trade deficit have until now been marked by partisan rivalries.
Despite support from 15 Republicans and 11 Democrats, the measure arrives with built-in drawbacks. Sen. Robert Packwood, R-Ore., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, top Democrat on that panel's international trade subcommittee, are missing from the sponsors' list.
Senators ruled out action on the trade issue in the dwindling weeks left to Congress this year but said a serious effort to pass the bipartisan measure could come early in 1988.
Moreover, Danforth, chairman of the international trade panel, made clear that disputes existed among the sponsors over specific provisions. These disagreements mean that the measure must be accompanied by 10 other bills, he said, to make clear which lawmakers are sponsors of which proposals.
Major provisions of the proposal would:
- Increase presidential power to shield U.S. industry against damaging imports but narrow White House leeway to reject recommendations of such action from the U.S. International Trade Commission.
- Force the administration to initiate action against unfair trade barriers abroad and retaliate with tariffs and quotas within 18 months.
■ Renew presidential authority to enter into negotiations aimed at revising the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the main pact governing world commerce. President Reagan's authority to do so expires in 13 months.
- Force the president to start negotiations within six months with the objective of reversing the ill effects of the increase over the last five years in the value of the dollar.
Require a set of standards that would mean graduation of certain developing nations from the Generalized System of Preferences, an American program that provides preferential tariffs to products from developing nations.
Advisers oppose apartheid
United Press International
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — An economic government committee that advises President Pieter Botha yesterday recommended the abolition of racial segregation laws, which are considered pillars of the apartheid system.
In Durban, a coastal city on the Indian Ocean, seven blacks were killed in tribal warfare between the Zulus and Pondos, authorities said.
Police said they arrested 29 blacks for racial violence Tuesday night and yesterday in scattered incidents across white-ruled South Africa.
The economic committee of the President's Council, established in 1980 to advise the president on political and economic policy, recommended the abolition of racial segregation laws that discriminate against non-whites.
have urged the repeal of race laws that help make the government's policy of racial segregation, known as apartheid. The government is not obliged to accept the advice.
In its report, the economic committee specifically condemned the Group Areas Act, which divides the nation into segregated residential areas, and the Black Urban Areas Consolidation Act, which is used to create segregated black townships, homelands and business areas.
Other committees of the President's Council also
The report said. "They are of extreme importance because they deny Asian, black and mixed-race businessmen and potential businessmen access to the economically dominant areas of the country.
"The committee emphasizes that it supports the principle of full and free participation in economic activities by all population groups. Entrepreneurial talent in the informal sector should be nurtured, and not persecuted."
Weather extremes hit country
A bitter cold wave swept out of the Rockies into the Plains yesterday with temperatures as low as 21 below zero and raced eastward, chasing away springlike highs with record lows and blustery 60-mph winds.
United Press International
Hurricane Kate swelled to a 115-mph storm in the Gulf of Mexico after battering Cuba. A hurricane watch posted for the storm-weary central Gulf Coast prompted early evacuations from Florida to Louisiana.
Kate was churning northwest at 15 to 20 mph and forecasters said it could reach land this afternoon, which would make it the first November hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland in 50 years.
Hurricane forecaster Mark Zimmerm said that although Kate was most likely to hit Florida's Panhandle, there was a 10 percent chance it could hit all the way from New Orleans to the Tampa area.
Showers and thunderstorms associated with Kate reached from the northeastern Gulf of Mexico across the southern Atlantic Coast!
Nine people have died across the country in tornadoes, flooding and other weather-related accidents this week.
The mercury plummeted to 21 below zero at Havre, Mont., and record lows were set in nine cities from the West Coast to Michigan.
Mob attacks top official in Ireland
Tides 2 to 3 feet above normal threatened to cause coastal flooding along the west coast of Florida.
Wind chillies were 25 to 40 below zero from the Dakotas to Wisconsin.
United Press International
On the East Coast residents basked in a second day of warm weather with record highs in the 60s and 70s.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Protestants angered by an Anglo-Irish pact on Northern Ireland attacked Britain's top official in the province yesterday and trapped him in City Hall for two hours before he was rescued by police.
A visibly shaken Northern Ireland Secretary Tom King was punched and kicked as he was whisked to safety by police, backed by a British army patrol, with a mob of 50 Protestants chanting, "Traiter, traitor."
An ashen-faced King called his attackers "thugs" and said "such violence and abusive reactions did not reflect the feelings of the vast majority of people.
One witness said King, Britain's highest representative in Northern Ireland, was struck in the head by a flagpole draped with a British flag, but did not require medical attention.
"If they are not capable of rational argument and resort to this method, then it can only hurt their case."
Under the agreement, the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic will play an advisory role on matters dealing with the British province in a bid to help stem violence in Northern Ireland.
Remarks criticized by women
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Congressional Women's Caucus demanded an apology yesterday for White house chief of staff Donald Regan's comment that women were more interested in fluff than foreign affairs — and within hours it got one.
Rep, Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo,
co-chairman of the 23-member
caucus, said the women members of
Congress were drafting a letter asking
President Reagan to fix the
damage inflicted by the comments of
his White House chief of staff about
women's views of the Geneva
summit.
There was no immediate apology directly from Reagan, but later in the day a statement was issued by the White House press office in Geneva, where the superpower summit was in progress.
"Mr. Regan's statements . . . were made in an interview several weeks ago for (an) article for Mrs. Regan's reagain at the summit," the statement said. "Mr. Regan meant nothing derogatory by his remarks and regrets if they were taken to be offensive."
In the interview published Monday in The Washington Post, Regan said he thought women would be particularly interested in coverage of Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, rather than the issues their husbands would discuss.
Regan was quoted as saying, "They're not . . . going to understand throw-weights (or how much mass a missile can deliver) or what is happening in Afghanistan or what is happening in human rights. Some women will, but most women . . . would rather read the human interest stuff of what is happening."
Reaction to the comment was cutting. "We're glad the president brought Bonzo to the summit," Eleanor Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women, said.
"My feeling is that this administration is headed by men whose minds are frozen in the 1950s," said Irene Natividad, head of the National Women's Political Caucus.
UP IN THE AIR
ABOUT WHAT TO DO?
WE PROMISE NOT TO LEAVE YOU HANGING IN MID-AIR. IT WON'T COST A DIME TO WALK THROUGH THE DOOR TO SEE THE EXCITEMENT THAT THURSDAY NIGHTS HAVE BEEN GENERATING, YOU THURSDAY NIGHT PEOPLE SIMPLY LOOK MAHVELOUS.
$1.25 DRINKS ALL NIGHT LONG