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University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Wednesday, Nov. 13, 1985
News Briefs
Companion files suit against actor's estate
LOS ANGELES — A close companion of Rock Hudson yesterday filed a $14 million lawsuit which maintains that he now runs a high risk of contracting AIDS because the late actor lied to him when he denied he was suffering from the deadly disease.
The man, Marc Christian, 31, said that he and Hudson began a love affair in March 1983 that lasted until the actor's death last week. The complications from acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
Christian, an unemployed musical archivist, said Hudson learned in June 1984 that he had AIDS but withheld the diagnosis from Christian and continued to have sex with him.
Cuban leads election
MIAMI - Millionaire banker Raul Mavisl gravbed an early day yesterday over Xavier Suarez in a run-off election that will give the city its first Cuban-born mayor.
In scattered returns from 10 of Miami's 85 precincts, Masvidal, making his first bid for public office, received 2,292 votes and Suarez, a lawyer educated at Harvard, in his second run for mayor, received 975 votes.
Election officials said the turnout of voters was less than they predicted earlier — about 50 percent of the 114,173 registered. But few analysts could predict the effects of the lower response.
GENEVA — Summit postcards went on sale yesterday and became an immediate collector's item because they gave the wrong dates.
Postcards hot items
"21-22 Nov. 1985" were printed as the Summit dates when it should have been Nov. 19-20.
The Jaeger publishing company said it printed 20,000 of the cards, which feature color portraits labeled "Reagan" on the left and "Gorbachev" on the right, with both men pictured against the U.S. and Soviet flags, but was selling them anyway.
From Kansan wires
Liberian coup attempt fails
From Kansan wires
MONROVIA, Liberia — A former military commander attempted to topple President Samuel K. Doe in a coup yesterday but Doe said he crushed the revolt 13 hours after it began in this West African nation.
Doe called on rebel holdouts to lay down their arms, ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew and closed Liberia's borders and its international airport to aid in the search for rebels led by Gen. Thomas Quinowkpa.
"I take this opportunity to inform the nation that the coup has failed." Doe said in a "special statement" broadcast on a Monovia radio station that had been taken over by rebel forces 13 hours earlier.
"I am still the commander in chief
The broadcast was heard at 7 p.m. (2 p.m. EST), about 17 hours after fighting started with an attack on Doe's exile mansion.
of the armed forces of Liberia and head of state." Doe said.
Diplomats in Monrovia had reported fierce fighting between loyal forces and rebel troops that left at least 16 people dead. It was not known whether the fighting had ended.
Witnesses said at least a dozen bodies were seen being taken to a hospital.
Qiwitunkpa had said that he seized power in the pre-dawn coup attempt. But Doe countered that loyal forces had crushed the revolt and killed 15 rebels. Doe said one loyal soldier was killed in the fighting.
First word of the coup came when troops supporting Quiwonkpa seized and held the Elwa radio station and appealed for support. But hours later an announcer said the station had been "seized" again and he urged people to "combat General Quiwonkpa."
Quiwonkpa, commander of the Liberian military since April 1980, was named secretary-general of the ruling People's Redemption Council in October 1983. He refused the post and was stripped of authority in the armed forces. Quiwonkpa also was part of a bloody military coup in 1980 that brought Doe to power.
U. S. Embassy officials said many Liberians were dancing in the streets in celebration of the coup attempt. Doe has become increasingly unpopular because of his policies and elections last month that Doe won but that critics said were rigged.
Liberia, became Africa's first independent republic in 1847 after being colonized by freed American slaves who returned to Africa with U.S. support.
Doe was an army master sergeant on April 12, 1980, when he and a group of fellow sergeants killed President William Tolbert and seized power in a coup, shooting to death former government officials in a televised spectacle on a beach.
Doe held presidential elections last month and was declared the winner with 51 percent of the vote, although opposition leaders and Western news agencies reported widespread fraud.
Debt hike sought before summit
United Press International
WASHINGTON — With balanced budget negotiations still stymied, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a small hike last night in the national debt ceiling as a "falsafe" aimed at preventing a U.S. fiscal crisis during the Geneva summit next week.
If approved by the full Congress, the $80 billion hike in the nation's borrowing authority — to a record $1.9 trillion — would tide the government over until Dec. 13, long after President Reagan returns from the summit.
There were indications the full
House would approve the small debt ceiling hike, though the Senate's position was in doubt.
The move was necessitated by stalled negotiations on the balanced budget, which is tied to a one-year increase in the debt ceiling of up to $2 trillion. Without a debt ceiling hike, an empire faced default by tomorrow.
Earlier in the day, Reagan and congressional leaders urged agreement on the balanced budget legislation by tomorrow to avoid a default in the midst of the summit. But as the day wore on and agreement looked elusive, the small hike appeared necessary.
Assistant House Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, who proposed the short-term hike, said he thought the White House "would approve this extension while we continue to work on it (the balanced budget) and avoid the potential chaos Thursday night."
"The president made it clear this morning he wanted the (balanced budget)." Lott said, referring to a White House meeting with congressional leaders. "But he would be very much concerned if he went to the summit while we were shutting down the government."
conference) at least the functions of government won't go out of existence. It's kind of our fallisae."
Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-III, leader of both the Ways and Means Committee and the balanced budget conference, said he would have preferred "having our feet held to the fire" on balancing the budget but went along with the temporary hike because a federal default "could weaken (Reagan's) playing hand" at Geneva.
Rep. Robert Matsui, D-Calif., said,
"If we do reach an impasse (in the
Reagan addresses the nation tomorrow night on the summit and leaves for Geneva on Saturday.
Member of family spy ring sentenced
NORFOLK, Va. — Convicted spy Arthur Walker, who told a judge "no one could be sorrier than I am for what I've done." was sentenced to three life terms and 40 years in prison after he brother run a Soviet espionage ring.
Under the terms of the sentence, Walker, 50, could be paroled in 10 years.
United Press International
U. S. District Judge J. Calvitt Clarke Jr. also fined Walker $250,000. He told Walker the prison terms would run concurrently, thus allowing his parole in 1955. Walker's at torness said they would appeal.
"No one could be sorrier than I am for what I've done. I have dishonored myself and devastated my family," said Walker, a retired Navy lieutenant commander from Virginia Beach.
Walker, convicted Aug. 9, confessed he slipped confidential military documents to his brother, convicted spy John Walker, 48, a former Norfolk private detective and retired Navy chief warrant officer.
The two-hour sentencing hearing shed new light on Arthur Walker's involvement in the spy ring, hinting he possibly played a deeper role than previously indicated.
His wife, Rita, told the court that Arthur Walker was a kind man who was concerned about his younger brother and did not intend to hurt his sister. Arthur Walker had married her husband told her he had an affair with John Walker's wife, Barbara.
Tommy Miller, assistant U.S. attorney, said the government was not convinced Arthur Walker had been "totally truthful."
Arthur Walker's version of the family espionage ring "is not corroborated by other witnesses." Miller said. "There are other witnesses that have indicated further involvement by Arthur Walker."
Miller also said John Walker had told his wife "you'd be surprised to know who got me into spying."
Asked whether it may have been Arthur Walker who got his brother in spying — not the other way around as Arthur Walker's lawyers argued — Miller said, "Anything is possible."
Cleanup is started at reactor
Arthur's wife, Rita, testified that she did not like John Walker and considered him a "vulgar" man.
Aided by long-handled tools and a closed-circuit video camera lowered into the water-filled core, workers placed a piece of fuel rod in a stainless steel canister, GPU Nuclear Corp. said.
HARRIBURG, Pa. — Workers at Three Mile Island yesterday began the delicate process of removing the once-molten fuel and other rubble from the core of TMT's crippled Unit No. 2 nuclear reactor, the plant's operator said.
United Press International
Previously, only samples of the debris had been removed from the reactor.
About 100 tons of damaged uranium dioxide fuel and 50 tons of reactor parts eventually will be loaded into canisters, GPU Nuclear said. The team has been preparing before shipment to train a federal research laboratory in Idaho.
"The whole operation of defueling, the reactor is going to take 16 to 18 months," Franklin Standerfer, director of Unit 2, said at a recent news conference. "The fuel will start next spring. That should take about two years."
Unit 2 was crippled on March 28, 1979, in the nation's worst commercial nuclear power accident. Up to 20 million people were identified at the base of the reactor core.
The Unit 1 reactor at the nearby power plant was idle at the time of the accident and was not damaged. It was restarted Oct. 3 following a 6% year legal fight by anti-nuclear activists to keep it closed.
The cleanup of Unit 2 is expected to be completed in three years at a cost of $1 billion, half of which already has been spent. The defueling, considered the heart of the cleanup, will cost up to $900 million.
The defueling work is being done by reactor operators perched on a rotating platform above the reactor vessel, about 35 feet deep. They are shielded from the core by about 20 mesh and a 6-inch-thick steel platform floor.
Dozens of long-handled tools and a giant vacuum system have been specially designed for the unprecedented project.